PUTIN’S PAUSE: With the failure of a U.N. call for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a daily five-hour pause in the fighting to give time for civilians to evacuate before the bombs and shells start falling again in eastern Ghouta. The pause, which  has just ended for today, seemed to mostly hold, but few people appear to be taking advantage of a so-called humanitarian corridor to leave the beleaguered area. That’s probably because in the past, evacuation routes have been shelled and didn’t offer any real guarantee of safe passage. But the fact that the pause largely held, notwithstanding some sporadic shelling, shows it’s Putin, not his client Bashar Assad, who is calling the shots in Syria.

HAPPENING TODAY — DUELING ARMED SERVICES HEARINGS: This morning at 9:30 the Senate Armed Services Committee will hear testimony on cybersecurity from Adm. Mike Rogers, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency. Meanwhile, Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central Command, will be on the other side of the Hill at the House Armed Services Committee to testify about defense challenges in the Middle East.

WHAT SCARES JAMES INHOFE? In this week’s Washington Examiner magazine, our Travis Tritten sits down with Sen. James Inhofe, who has been presiding over the Armed Services Committee as Sen. John McCain undergoes cancer treatment in Arizona. In the interview, Inhofe reflects on the “good old days” of the Cold War, suggests acquisition reform may finally be working, and makes the case for more money for missile defense.

“I’ve often referred to the good old days of the Cold War because I really believe that where we had two superpowers, and we knew what they had, they knew what we had, and mutual shared destruction meant something. I never thought I’d call the Cold War the good old days, but I do now because now rogue nations, not necessarily just North Korea because you’re talking about Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, so many other countries, it doesn’t take a giant country to have a weapon that can blow up an American city. And so, that’s the new threat that’s out there that scares me the most,” Inhofe said. Read the full interview here.

MCCAIN, WICKER PLAN TO FIX THE NAVY: A Senate-confirmed senior civilian should be put in charge of the Navy’s ship maintenance, McCain and Sen. Roger Wicker say. The new position is part of legislation the duo released on Monday aimed at fixing the Navy’s readiness issues following deadly at-sea collisions and aircraft crashes last year. “The ship collisions, including the USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain, degraded the capabilities of our fleet, cost hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, and – most importantly – took precious lives. The status quo is unacceptable,” McCain said in a statement. “Congress must provide the funding and oversight required to keep our military safe in peace and effective in combat.”

The legislation also would give the Navy more time and flexibility to spend maintenance funds, requiring more realistic projections of sailors’ workloads and ship maintenance, and set minimum at-sea and simulator-based training requirements to qualify for critical ship positions. McCain, the Senate Armed Services chairman, said he would work with Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services’ seapower subcommittee, to put the legislation into the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act.

“Overextended and undermanned ships, overworked crews, fewer officers with naval mastery, and confusing chains of command have contributed to a decline in our naval power. My legislation – based on the Navy’s own recommendations – is specifically designed to address these and other challenges,” Wicker said.

EAST COAST MISSILE SITE COMPETITION: The Trump administration may be close to a decision on whether to create a new East Coast missile interceptor site, and the House’s New York delegation is again pitching Fort Drum as the best location in a letter released Monday. “An East Coast missile defense site located at Fort Drum would expand the battlespace, provide greater decision time, protect the entire continental United States, and increase the accuracy and effectiveness of our missile defense strategy,” the group of lawmakers led by Rep. Elise Stefanik wrote in a letter to Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, director of the Missile Defense Agency.

Congress has pushed the additional site for years, and now lawmakers anticipate the administration’s soon-to-be-released Ballistic Missile Defense Review will finally decide whether the interceptor site will be built at all. The only U.S. ground-based missile interceptors are located on the West Coast at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. At the behest of Congress, the Missile Defense Agency has been surveying Fort Drum and two other potential sites, including Camp Ravenna Joint Military Training Center in northeastern Ohio and Fort Custer Training Center in Michigan. Both the Ohio and Michigan delegations have been pushing their own states.

“Fort Custer benefits from excellent existing infrastructure, including efficient access to two major interstate highways and a nearby 10,000-foot runway. The fields at Fort Custer are shovel ready and it is our understanding the [site] can be constructed at the lowest cost with the least environmental impact,” Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow as well as 13 House members wrote to Greaves in December.

NO GUN REVIEW, YET: It’s too soon to say if Trump’s weekend statement that he plans to “look into” the policy that bars most military personnel from packing heat while working at military bases and other DoD facilities was just a random rumination or a prelude to a presidential directive. But the Pentagon says so far it has no orders to review its policy on guns in the workplace that was reviewed and revised in 2016 after a fatal shooting at two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn., the year before.

“We have not received any new guidance,” said Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. “Typically, only those engaged in law enforcement-related duties carry firearms.” Davis told me that military commanders can grant permission for individuals to carry a privately-owned firearm for personal protection on a case-by-case basis.

HURRICANE RESPONSE SUBPOENA: Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he has run out of patience with the Defense Department and wants the committee’s Republican chairman to back a subpoena for documents on hurricane relief operations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands last year. The Defense Department’s “response to our committee’s bipartisan request has been inadequate,” Cummings wrote on Monday to Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman. “To date, DOD has made only one production, on Dec. 19, 2017, and this production included only a few pages of email communications, which are essential for the Committee to conduct a thorough and credible investigation.”

The committee opened a review in October of the response to hurricanes Irma and Maria, which barreled into the territories back to back in September. “If you decide not to issue this subpoena yourself, then I ask you to place this matter on the agenda for our next regularly scheduled business meeting so all committee members will have the opportunity to vote on a motion to subpoena these documents,” Cummings wrote. The military deployed troops, ships and aircraft to the islands in the aftermath. But some critics charged the White House was too slow to react and request additional forces. Days into the disaster, the Defense Department sent a three-star Army general to Puerto Rico to lead recovery efforts, and by early October there were 10,000 U.S. troops there.

FIGHTING PROPAGANDA: The Trump administration will launch a $40 million program to beat back overseas propaganda, including from Russia, in an effort run by the Pentagon and State Department, U.S. diplomats announced Monday.

The money will finance various initiatives from the Global Engagement Center, a State Department entity established by Congress in 2016 as part of a defense authorization law. The program was developed in response to Russian interference in the 2016 elections, as well as the kind of cyber-driven jihad that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria made famous.

“This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley, and other partners in this fight,” said Steve Goldstein, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. “It is not merely a defensive posture that we should take, we also need to be on the offensive.”

NEW CLIMATE CHANGE WARNING: Over the coming century, the military’s major transportation, command and control, intelligence, and deployment hubs around the world may be disrupted by sea level rise and storm surge, according to a new report published by the Center for Climate and Security. The panel of retired general and flag officers who wrote the second edition of “Sea Level Rise and the U.S. Military’s Mission” warn that the disruptions threaten greater costs, delays and shortfalls in military assets at critical moments.

“This report update asks the questions: ‘How bad could it be, could we operate through that, and if not … then what?’ The answer is that climate change is already presenting significant risks to military infrastructure, will continue to do so throughout this century, and if we don’t make some changes, will make the military’s job much harder,” said retired Air Force Gen. Ronald Keys, a member of the panel. The officers recommend the Pentagon work climate change scenarios into regular planning and wargaming, as well as invest in improving climate data and analysis.

THE RUNDOWN

War on the Rocks: Salvaging Trump’s Legacy in Europe: Fixing NATO Burden-Sharing

The Hill: First transgender recruit signs contract to join military

Washington Post: Russian state media just mixed up Syrian war footage with a video-game clip

Task and Purpose: America Will Never Win The War In Afghanistan

Reuters: Saudi reshuffles top military posts, adds a woman deputy minister

USNI News: Hearings Delayed for Officers Accused of Negligence in Fitzgerald, McCain Collisions

Defense One: Russia Claims It Now Has Lasers To Shoot Satellites

New York Times: Erdogan Tells a Weeping Girl, 6, She’d Receive Honors if Martyred

Defense News: Raj Shah exits DIUx

Foreign Policy: China’s Stability Myth Is Dead

Breaking Defense: No, Trump Nuke Strategy Doesn’t Doom Planet: DUSD Policy

Business Insider: Russian mercenaries reportedly want revenge after getting whooped by US forces in Syria