Rep. Duncan Hunter says Trump’s Coast Guard budget cut hurts national security

This is nothing new for the Coast Guard, by the way. The lifesaving service is chronically underfunded and overtasked. But we’re in new administration that has promised to rebuild the military, and Hunter pointed out that the cut “egregiously conflicts with your [Trump’s] stated goal to strengthen national security.

“These proposed cuts, should they proceed, will guarantee negative consequences,” Hunter wrote. “Undoubtedly, America would be less safe based on the suggested recommendations of career bureaucrats positioned within OMB.”

WE’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER FLEET: Sporting a USS Gerald R. Ford ballcap and an official jacket emblazoned with military patches, President Trump spoke from the hangar deck of America’s newest supercarrier and promised again to rebuild the U.S. military, including returning to the 12-carrier Navy (we have 10 now, 11 when Ford is commissioned). “What a place. It really feels like a place,” Trump gushed. “You stand on that deck and you feel like you’re standing on a very big piece of land, but this is better than land… We are standing today on 4.5 acres of combat power and sovereign U.S. territory, the likes of which there is nothing to compete. There is no competition to this ship… Hopefully, it’s power we don’t have to use. But if we do, they’re in big, big trouble.”

Trump said he was given the jacket and hat by the crew to take home as a souvenir, but he decided to wear them instead. “I say this is a special day, we’re wearing this, right? So I have no idea how it looks, but I think it looks good. It’s a great looking hat. Just like this is a great looking ship.”

Trump again vowed to unshackle the Pentagon’s budget from sequestration, which he argued would — by eliminating uncertainty — make it easier for the Navy to control costs and get “the best deals” for the taxpayer. “Very important. Right? Got to get a good deal,” Trump said. “We don’t make a good deal, we’re not doing our job. The same boat for less money. The same ship for less money. The same airplanes for less money. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’re doing. Means we’re going to get more of them, and we can use them.”

MORE BOATS FOR THE BUCK: Trump wasted no time going into deal-maker mode, using the occasion to talk to Huntington Ingalls Industries CEO Mike Petters about driving acquisition costs down. Petters didn’t disclose any details of his private discussions with the president, but told the Washington Examiner afterward, “We talked about how can you buy these things smarter,” adding, “He was very engaged in meeting sailors and shipbuilders and what the ship can do and how it operates.” Newport News Shipbuilding is a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.

OKAY, MAYBE NOT THAT BIG: While at Newport News Shipbuilding, the president said this: “Our Navy is now the smallest it’s been since — believe it or not — World War I. Don’t worry, it’ll soon be the largest it’s been, don’t worry, think of that.”  If Trump were to follow through on that, well let’s just say it would be a tall order. Consider: the Navy now has 274 ships. At the end of World War II, it had more than 6,700, according to Naval History and Heritage Command. This is one of those cases where it’s best to take the president seriously, but not literally. He’s looking at a 350-ship Navy, which brings us to back 1997 levels.

NOT TO BE LEFT OUT: The generals is Moscow are watching what Trump is doing, and they are feeling a little intimidated. As we noted a few days ago, the entire Russian defense budget is less than the $54 billion increase Trump is proposing for the Pentagon. Russia’s defense minister has told the Kremlin that to maintain the pace of Russia’s military overhaul, he needs about $200 billion, according to a report on CNN. During the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup was credited among other things with pushing Moscow to spend beyond its means on a military that ultimately could not compete with the U.S.

Good Friday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Jacqueline Klimas (@jacqklimas) and Senior Editor David Brown (@dave_brown24). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll be sure to add you to our list.

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YEMEN IN CROSSHAIRS: The Pentagon confirmed yesterday that multiple al Qaeda targets were hit in Yemen overnight Thursday, as debate continues over whether a January raid by U.S. Navy SEALs produced “vital intelligence.” The military as a rule doesn’t like to talk about intelligence publicly, but a senior official confirmed to the Washington Examiner that while the Yemen raid yielded valuable intelligence, “it was not directly related to these strikes.”

More than 20 separate strikes, carried out by both manned and unmanned aircraft, targeted members of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) along with their equipment and infrastructure in the Yemeni governorates of Abyan, Al Bayda and Shabwah, and were conducted in partnership with the government of Yemen, according to the Pentagon.

The U.S. has called AQAP the most capable element of al Qaeda due to its ability to export terror to the West, and says it was behind the “underwear bomber,” Boston Marathon bombing and the 2015 attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

As we reported yesterday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was unhappy with media reports saying the January raid has thus far failed to produce actionable, vital intelligence. Officials have told us that many terabytes of information, including list of contacts, have been extracted from laptops, mobile phones, and encrypted hard drives captured in the raid that claimed the life of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens. CNN is reporting that the U.S. is “hunting” for some of the people whose names were discovered among the data, though it’s not clear what that means. A senior military official tells us, “All of the collected intelligence we accumulate adds to our understanding of how best to attack, degrade and destroy AQAP’s ability to export terror across the globe.”

HAPPENING ON THE HILL: The House votes next week on the fiscal 2017 defense appropriations bill. The bill already passed the chamber in August, but failed to pass the Senate, forcing the Pentagon, and most of the rest of the government, to operate under a continuing resolution that’ll expire at the end of April. The fiscal 2017 spending bill is the first of three budget-related tasks Congress will need to get through. Next up is the fiscal 2017 defense supplemental followed by the fiscal 2018 budget later this spring.

ABOUT THE FY 17 SUPPLEMENTAL: The defense supplemental is meant to address urgent readiness needs, things such as more bombs, more flying hours for pilots, more spare parts and maintenance hours to get broken down planes out of the depots and into the air. The document was due over at the White House Office of Management and Budget March 1, and a Pentagon spokesman told us yesterday the DoD is still working with OMB to finalize the numbers. “We are not at liberty to confirm any specific numbers at this time,” said Lt. Col. Eric Badger, a Pentagon spokesman. “As the budget amendment is pre-decisional, the department is not identifying any specific programs that may or may not be included in the submission.”

Bloomberg is reporting the $30 billion supplemental includes funding for 24 additional Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and about five more Lockheed Martin F-35s. The report notes that the additional F/A-18s reflect a need to meet immediate Navy shortages and are not the result of a review ordered by Mattis to examine potential of replacing some Navy versions of the F-35 with souped-up Hornets. The Navy says it wants a mix of F/A-18s and F-35s in its future carrier air wings.

BOEING WINS UNION CONCESSIONS: Speaking of Boeing and efforts to get costs down, the company has accepted 1,880 voluntary layoffs from its union machinists and engineers in the Seattle area, reports Reuters.

SESSIONS EXCUSES, RECUSES: Attorney General Jeff Sessions promised Thursday he would recuse himself from any investigation relating to Trump’s campaign, including the probe into Russia’s alleged influence into the U.S. election, Kelly Cohen writes. “I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States,” Sessions said in a statement just before he held a press conference at the Justice Department, at which he said, “I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign. And the idea that I was part of a quote ‘continuing exchange of information’ during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government is totally false.”

Sessions’ news conference came 24 hours after it was revealed he met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last year when he was advising the Trump campaign. Democrats noted that Sessions told the Senate in January that he had never met with any Russian officials.

But Sessions was adamant that he did nothing wrong, and had no intention of misleading his Senate colleagues. He noted he was asked by Sen. Al Franken about a “breaking news” story on CNN that he knew nothing about. “I was taken aback a little bit about this brand new information, this allegation that a surrogate — and I had been called a surrogate for Donald Trump — had been meeting continuously with Russian officials, and that’s what I — it struck me very hard, and that’s what I focused my answer on,” Sessions said. “And in retrospect, I should have slowed down and said, “But I did meet one Russian official a couple of times, and that would be the ambassador.”

TRUMP’S TAKE: Trump said Thursday he has “total” confidence in Sessions. “I don’t think so,” Trump said, when asked if Sessions should recuse himself from a potential Justice Department investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Then last night Trump took to twitter to vigorously defend his AG. “Jeff Sessions is an honest man. He did not say anything wrong. He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not … intentional. This whole narrative is a way of saving face for Democrats losing an election that everyone thought they were supposed … to win. The Democrats are overplaying their hand. They lost the election, and now they have lost their grip on reality. The real story … is all of the illegal leaks of classified and other information. It is a total ‘witch hunt!’”

NOW THAT THAT’S DONE: Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente will now take over any and all investigations into Russia’s potential meddling in the 2016 election now that Sessions has recused himself from those matters. In his statement released Thursday, Sessions said Boente “shall act as and perform the functions of the Attorney General with respect to any matters from which I have recused myself to the extent they exist.”

Boente was appointed to be acting deputy attorney general in late January after Trump fired Sally Yates for refusing to defend his immigration executive order.

THEN THIS HAPPENED: Three more members of Trump’s campaign spoke with Kislyak, according to reports Thursday evening. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who is now a White House senior adviser, met with Kislyak at Trump Tower in December, though it’s unclear what they discussed, according to the New York Times.

Staffers J.D. Gordon and Carter Page also met with Kislyak at a diplomacy conference last July, according to USA Today. (Older Pentagon hands will remember Gordon as a Navy public affairs officer working under former secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.)

TURNING THE TABLES: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes warned reporters on Capitol Hill to be careful what they wish for in asking for transcripts of private phone calls between former national security adviser Mike Flynn and the Russian ambassador. “If, for example, you were on the phone with the Russian ambassador and somehow your phone call got recorded, would you want them turning over that phone call and that transcript to the committee?” Nunes said. A reporter then asked, “Isn’t there a difference between a public person and a private person?” To which Nunes replied, “Well, that’s the point here. General Flynn was a private American citizen. So, you know, look, I’m sure some of you are in contact with the Russian embassy. So be careful what you ask for here because if we start getting transcripts of any of you or other Americans talking to the press, then … do you want us to conduct an investigation on you or other Americans because you were talking to the Russian embassy? I just think we need to be careful.”

THE RUNDOWN

Defense News: National security adviser to make rare appearance before Senate Armed Services Committee

Military Times: One of these four men could become Donald Trump’s Army secretary

Reuters: Trump’s ‘bromance’ with Russia’s Putin appears to be cooling

The UK Telegraph: Isil ‘regrouping in southern Libya with support of al-Qaeda and preparing for further attacks’

AP: US steps up in Somalia as al-Shabab proves a stubborn foe

Defense News: Russia buzzed NATO aircraft four times in a single day

Defense One: Pentagon Advisers Want Cyber ‘Tiger Teams,’ More Authorities for Cyber Command

Navy Times: ‘Loose lips sink ships’: Adm. Richardson asks Navy to dial back discussion of capabilities

Defense News: Goldfein: Air Force must hone its skills to face growing global threats

UPI: Boeing, Leonardo offer MH-139 for U.S. Air Force tender

UPI: Sweden reinstates military draft, includes women

Calendar

FRIDAY | MARCH 3

12:30 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. A top adviser to Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani speaks about the relationship between the U.S. and Afghanistan under the Trump administration. csis.org

WEDNESDAY | MARCH 8

10 a.m. Rayburn 2118. The vice chiefs of the military services testify about nuclear deterrence requirements. armedservices.house.gov

2 p.m. Rayburn 2212. The House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee hosts a panel of Army officials to testify on the service’s readiness. armedservices.house.gov

2:30 p.m. Russell 222. Retired Gen. C. Robert Kehler, the former leader of U.S. Strategic Command, testifies about the global nuclear weapons environment. armed-services.senate.gov

3:30 p.m. Rayburn 2118. Navy and think tank officials testify on the service’s fleet assessment. armedservices.house.gov

THURSDAY | MARCH 9

9:30 a.m. Capitol H-140. The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee holds its members’ day. appropriations.house.gov

3:30 p.m. Rayburn 2118. Three members of the Defense Science Board testify on nuclear deterrence. armedservices.house.gov

FRIDAY | MARCH 10

9 a.m. Rayburn 2118. The House Armed Services Committee hosts a hearing about sequestration’s impact on Marine Corps readiness. armedservices.house.gov