Daily on Defense — June 3, 2016 — Clinton, Trump battle on foreign policy

WHAT CLINTON SAID: “Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different — they are dangerously incoherent. They’re not even really ideas, just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies. He is not just unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes, because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”

WHAT TRUMP SAID: Tweeting even before Clinton had finished talking: “Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter! [sic] She doesn’t even look presidential!” In an interview with the The New York Times Trump added: “I’m not thin-skinned at all. I’m the opposite of thin-skinned.” And he also assigned Clinton a new nickname.

WHAT SANDERS SAID: “I agree with Secretary Clinton that Donald Trump’s foreign policy ideas are incredibly reckless and irresponsible,” Bernie Sanders wrote in a statement. “But when it comes to foreign policy, we cannot forget that Secretary Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history, and that she has been a proponent of regime change, as in Libya, without thinking through the consequences.”

OTHERS REACT: Former DIA Director retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn called Clinton’s foreign policy experience “failures,” saying he considers Trump a “more secure” commander in chief because Clinton has a record of lying to the public.

The intelligence community has its own concerns that Trump’s uncensored style of speaking could lead to the disclosure of classified information once he starts getting the routine briefings as the nominee, Reuters reports.

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DEADLY DAY: Five Fort Hood soldiers have died, four others are missing after floodwaters engulfed their vehicle as it forded a fast-moving creek in the latest Texas flooding.

Meanwhile, in one of those eerie coincidences two fighters from the Air Force and Navy’s elite demonstration flying teams crashed Thursday in separate, unrelated accidents.

CRASH 1: An Air Force Thunderbird F-16 crashed shortly after performing a flyover of the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony in Colorado. The pilot ejected safely, and President Obama, who was speaking at the commencement, met with the pilot after the crash and thanked him for his service.

CRASH 2: A short time later a Navy Blue Angels F/A-18 went down in Tennessee along with the pilot, who did not survive. Anna Giaritelli has our wrap-up on both crashes.

INNOCENT PASSAGE BROKEN: Lawmakers introduced legislation this week that would sanction Iranians involved in the detention of 10 U.S. sailors this year if the administration found that it violated either the Geneva Conventions or the law of innocent passage — and one analyst says that it did.

While the Geneva Conventions don’t apply here, the overnight detention in January is a “clear cut” violation of the law of innocent passage, said James Kraska, a law professor at the Naval War College. “That concept to identify and individually hold responsible people by limiting financial transactions or travel would be a good idea I think,” he said. “It’s some measured level that you can do to try to hold people responsible.”

THE LIFE OF BRYAN: Embattled and embarrassed Pentagon official Bryan Whitman is now on paid administrative leave, his security clearance suspended while the Pentagon looks into the curious case of the purloined plates. Whitman was caught on video removing license tags from a vehicle in his Capitol Hill neighborhood that belonged to a nanny working for a neighbor. Whitman apparently thought he was dealing with a parking scofflaw who was a Capitol Hill staffer. Whitman is the most senior official in the Pentagon’s public affairs office. He’s also a former Army Special Forces commander, who was among the last U.S. troops to depart Somalia in 1995.

OBAMA PROUD OF SYRIA CALL: In his commencement address at the Air Force Academy yesterday, Obama characterized a decision, widely-criticized as a military failure, as a victory for diplomacy. “My decision not to conduct strikes against Syria after it used chemical weapons was controversial among some in Washington. But because we seized a diplomatic option backed by our threat of force, nations came together and we accomplished far more than military strikes ever could have. All of Syria’s declared chemical weapons were successfully removed.”  Obama did, however, admit his administration’s shortcomings in Libya, writes Susan Crabtree.

OFFENSIVE UPDATE: U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Pat Ryder briefs reporters this morning at 11:00 a.m. on the stalled effort to liberate Fallujah from Islamic State control, detailed here by the Wall Street Journal. He’s also expected to provide an update on the Kurdish offensive in Northern Syria, and U.S. “advise and assist” efforts in Yemen.

CARTER KEYNOTES: Defense Secretary Ash Carter has arrived in Singapore where he is scheduled to give the keynote address to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue tomorrow, (tonight our time.) Carter told reporters traveling with him that the U.S. won’t back down in the face of provocations from North Korea and China, according to Breaking Defense.

TALE OF THE TAPE: A State Department spokesman said they haven’t been able to get to the bottom of the edited video of a 2013 press conference, Pete Kasperowicz reports. “We believe we’ve carried out the necessary investigation,” spokesman Mark Toner said. “We have hit a dead-end in terms of finding out more information.” The exchange that was cut from the video that was posted showed a spokeswoman indicating to a reporter that it could be OK for the department to lie to the public under certain circumstances.

But House Speaker Paul Ryan’s not done, Susan Ferrechio reports. “If they truly care about transparency, the administration should investigate who requested this selective editing and why,” Ryan said Thursday in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.

So who ordered the Code Red? Former State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said she wasn’t the one who ordered the film to be edited, Susan Crabtree reports. Yesterday, former spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she didn’t do it either. Over at the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest insisted this would never happen under his watch.

DRONE CONTRACT: Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $62 million contract for operation and maintenance services for the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrator program, the Pentagon announced yesterday. The Navy uses the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle for the program.

COUNTDOWN TO WI-FI: Midday yesterday, the DoD press operations office on the D-ring was locked down tight for a crucial exercise. Some 60 public affairs officials all fired up their mobile devices, and began looking for the most bandwidth-intensive apps they could run. Their boss Capt. Jeff Davis was live streaming a baseball game. From another device, the strains of Pink Floyd could be heard from Spotify. The stress test of the new wireless-fidelity system was declared a success, which means beginning next week, free Wi-Fi will be available in the Pentagon briefing room during news events. But under order from Cyber Command, the system will not be run 24/7.

THE RUNDOWN

Defense One: Gunfight! Does the Navy’s Little Warship Need a Bigger Cannon?

Air Force Times: B-52s head to Europe for summer exercises

War on the Rocks: The price of admission: Understanding the value of stealth

Defense News: Air Force F-35A To Skip Farnborough Air Show

UPI: Lockheed Martin flies T-50A

Defense News: NATO Weighs Making Cyber Wartime Domain

UPI: Keel laid for new U.S. Navy destroyer

Army Times: Army Secretary Eric Fanning calls his promotion ‘remarkable’

Defense News: Sticky Problems Await Congress’ Return Next Week

Military.com: Prisoner Tells of ‘Mental Torture’ in Secret Guantanamo Camp

Wall Street Journal: Iraqi Forces Halt Advance Into Fallujah

CNN: Meet the man saving Yazidi slaves from ISIS

Calendar

FRIDAY | JUNE 3

10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. CSIS will host a panel to discuss the efficiency of public and private defense industry partnerships. csis.org

MONDAY | JUNE 6

8:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. CSIS and Department of Justice computer crimes division will host a symposium on safety, security and privacy related to cybercrimes. csis.org

9 a.m. Kempinski Hotel, Lithuania. The Atlantic Council hosts a conference on sustaining NATO’s strength and deterrence.  atlanticcouncil.org

TUESDAY | JUNE 7

10 a.m. Dirksen 342. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will discuss TSA operations in light of the current threat to aviation. hsgac.senate.gov  

10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. CSIS hosts a discussion on the potential for international cooperation on future vertical lift aircraft. csis.org      

THURSDAY | JUNE 9

3 p.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. The Heritage Foundation hosts a panel to discuss the major foreign policy and defense issues related to Asia. heritage.org

5:30 p.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Brookings Institution discusses the future of Islam and the Middle East through Shadi Hamid’s book, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World. brookings.edu  

FRIDAY | JUNE 10

1 p.m. Newseum, Washington D.C. Defense Secretary Ash Carter speaks at the Defense One Tech Summit. defenseone.com