AFGHANISTAN’S SHRINKING MILITARY: On the same day the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a deadly attack in the heart of Kabul that killed 31 people, including nine journalists, the Pentagon’s independent Afghanistan watchdog reported a sharp decline in both the authorized and actual troop strength of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.

HAPPENING TODAY: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is back in Washington from his first overseas trip, and reports to his Foggy Bottom office for the first time today. He is scheduled to address State Department employees, and is expected give them a pep talk along the lines of what he told U.S. diplomats in Brussels on the first stop of his trip.

“They may have been demoralized, but they seemed in good spirits,” Pompeo said at a press conference at NATO headquarters. “They are hopeful that the State Department will get its swagger back, that we will be out doing the things that they came onboard at the State Department to do. To be professional, to deliver diplomacy, American diplomacy around the world – that’s my mission set, is to build that esprit and get the team on the field so that we can effectuate American diplomacy. I know that the State Department and the people there can do that.”

ALSO TODAY — ESPER TALKS PRIORITIES: The Atlantic Council will host Army Secretary Mark Esper at 10 a.m. to talk about how the service’s policy could affect industrial markets. Esper is set to discuss his priorities for the Army, such as how it will rebuild readiness under Congress’ two-year budget deal, the new Army Futures Command, and reforms.

NOT READY FOR A HIGH-END FIGHT: The Pentagon may be shifting its focus to potential conflicts with great powers such as Russia and China, but a new paper by the American Enterprise Institute argues military aviation will be ill-prepared. “Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps aviation units do not have the people, training or equipment they need to prepare for a high-end conflict, as the new National Defense Strategy directs,” AEI senior research contributor James Cunningham writes. What’s more, the years of slim budgets, constant deployments, and troop shortfalls are likely to stymie the military for years to come. “The costs of ongoing readiness shortfalls are not temporary nor will they go away anytime soon if the services manage to restore training rates or fill aircraft inventories,” Cunningham writes.

BIG F-35 CONTRACT: Lockheed Martin was awarded a $1.4 billion contract for sustainment work on the F-35, the company announced yesterday. “This contract is critical to ensuring the transformational F-35s are mission ready to support our men and women in uniform,” said Bridget Lauderdale, vice president of F-35 global sustainment. “We are taking aggressive actions to improve F-35 aircraft availability and reduce sustainment costs. As the sustainment system matures and the size of the operational fleet grows, we are confident we will deliver more capability at less cost than legacy aircraft.”

BIBI’S ACCUSATIONS: Israeli intelligence operatives obtained “Iran’s secret nuclear files,” according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the documents prove that Iran lied to international monitors about the scope of its nuclear weapons program before and after the signing of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

“Iran lied, big time,” Netanyahu said in a Monday night address to Israelis, carried live midday on American cable networks. “This atomic archive clearly shows that Iran planned, at the highest levels, to continue work related to nuclear weapons under different guises and using the same personnel.”

CRITICS SAY IT’S OLD NEWS: Netanyahu revealed “nothing new” in his dramatic briefing on “Iran’s secret nuclear files,” according to foreign policy advisers from former President Barack Obama’s administration. “For those who have followed the Iranian nuclear file, there is nothing new in [Netanyahu’s] presentation,” Robert Malley, a former National Security Council senior director who helped negotiate the Iran deal, tweeted Monday. “All it does is vindicate need for the nuclear deal.”

IRAN AND OTHERS WILL PAY: Trump will impose “secondary sanctions” on European allies that do business with Iran if he decides to withdraw from the nuclear deal, according to a top Republican senator.

“I think that we would implement the secondary sanctions component of our sanctions, which would mean countries and companies in those countries would have to decide are they going to do business with Iran or do business with us,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, said Monday when asked on Bloomberg what would happen if Trump abandoned the deal.

ALL QUIET ON THE KOREAN FRONT: South Korea has dismantled huge loudspeakers used to blare anti-Pyongyang broadcasts and K-pop songs across the border into North Korea, the AP reports. The dismantling of dozens of South Korean loudspeakers was the latest sign of the thaw between the two Koreas following their historic summit last Friday.

WHY NOT THE DMZ? Trump seemed captivated by the symbolism of last Friday’s meeting between South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. And just as planners for his summit were settling on a location in a third country, Trump decided the DMZ looked like just the right place for his upcoming summit with Kim. “There’s something that I like about it, because you’re there — you’re actually there. Where if things work out, there’s a great celebration to be had on the site, not in a third-party country,” Trump said yesterday.

“We’re looking at various countries including Singapore. And we are also talking about the possibility of the DMZ — Peace House, Freedom House. There’s something that I thought was intriguing,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House with Nigeria’s president.

“I think that some people maybe don’t like the look of that, and some people like it very much,” he said. “I threw it out today as an idea. I also told President Moon, and through President Moon we connected with North Korea.”

MOON’S NOBEL PICK: And yesterday Moon joined the Trump-for-Nobel parade, suggesting the U.S. president deserves the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for his effort to help improve relations between South and North Korea, according to reports.

U.S. TROOPS OUT OF SOUTH KOREA? That NBC News report about John Kelly calling Trump an “idiot” contained this shocking tidbit: “In one heated exchange between the two men before February’s Winter Olympics in South Korea, Kelly strongly — and successfully — dissuaded Trump from ordering the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, according to two officials.”

Kelly, by the way, dismissed the NBC report as “total BS.”

COOL JFK CARRIER VIDEO: Like the world’s largest and most lethal Lego set, the new Ford-class aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy is being assembled one hulking block at a time in Newport News, Va. Huntington Ingalls Industries has released a time-lapse video here of the so-called “superlift” of a front deck section that made the carrier 75 percent complete. The $11 billion JFK, designated CVN 79, is the second Ford-class carrier. Next up is the Enterprise, and the House is looking to fund the fourth unnamed CVN 81 this year.

McCAIN’S UNCHAINED: Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain says his brain cancer diagnosis has given him a sense of freedom to speak his mind in what is his final term in the Senate. “This is my last term,” McCain said in an excerpt of a new memoir set for release next month. “If I hadn’t admitted that to myself before this summer, a stage 4 cancer diagnosis acts as ungentle persuasion.”

He has harsh words for Trump. “He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones,” McCain writes. “The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values.”

REMEMBERING STEVE KOMAROW: On a personal note I was sad to hear of the passing of a long-time colleague Steve Komarow, who suffered a brain tumor and then complications from a  fall. I first met Steve when we were covering local D.C. politics during the administration of Mayor Marion Barry in the 1980s. Steve worked for the Associated Press, and I was a young reporter for WTOP radio.

“He covered the presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992 before joining USA Today in 1993 as a defense correspondent. He accompanied the first U.S. ground troops into Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti. And he was the first reporter to cover a cruise missile launch from inside a B-52 bomber,” wrote his colleague David Hawkings, at CQ Roll Call. Komarow, who was executive editor and senior vice president, “accomplished something very rare in the often cutthroat worlds of Washington bureaus and foreign correspondence,” wrote Hawkings. “Across a varied and accomplished career of four decades, his calmly confident news judgment and patiently clear-eyed managerial style produced nearly universal respect and virtually no lasting enmity.

“One of the best Pentagon reporters of his generation, during an historic time,” recalled David Lapan, then a Marine Corps press officer and now a spokesman for the Bipartisan Policy Center. “He was unfailingly curious, dedicated and good-natured.”

THE RUNDOWN

Reuters: Israel presents Iran nuclear files, putting pressure on U.S. to scrap deal

Air Force Times: US service member killed in Afghanistan, 1 wounded

Roll Call: John McCain Asked Son-In-Law to ‘Take Care Of’ His Daughter

Defense One: Did Your Company Make that Warplane? Don’t Count on the Upgrade Work Anymore

Breaking Defense: Allies Must Develop Own Robots, Not Just ‘Copy’ US: Aussie War College Chief

Foreign Policy: Optimism About Korea Will Kill Us All

Defense News: Trump trips up on attack aircraft sale to Nigeria

Navy Times: Article 32 hearings and court-martial for Fitzgerald officers to begin in May

Task and Purpose: No Sky Dong Over Ramstein, Air Force Tells T&P About Phallic-Looking Contrails

The Hill: US shuts down ground operations command in Iraq