AFGHANISTAN CARNAGE: As the U.S. ramps up its air war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, terror attacks in the Afghan capital of Kabul are on the rise. The death toll is now over 100 from Saturday’s suicide bombing in which an ambulance, packed with explosives, was able to pass through a security checkpoint by claiming it was rushing a patient to a hospital. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack, which wounded another 235 people, including some police.
The Islamic State group says it was behind a separate attack this morning on a military academy in Kabul, which was being guarded by an Afghan army unit. The pre-dawn assault killed at least five soldiers and wounded 10 others, the AP reports. Two of the attackers died when their suicides vest went off, two others died in the firefight with Afghan troops.
Saturday’s ambulance attack occurred in Kabul’s heavily-guarded city center, near a number of embassies and government buildings. The explosion was so powerful it was felt at the Afghan Defense Ministry blocks away, where U.S. Central Commander Gen. Joseph Votel happened to be meeting with Afghan officials. Reporters traveling with him were farther away at Operation Resolute Support headquarters. “At the time of today’s bombing in Kabul, Gen. Votel was at the Ministry of Defense, near the attack site. Staffers w/him heard and felt the bombing,” tweeted the Wall Street Journal’s Nancy Youssef.
The attacks come as the United States greatly increases the intensity of its airstrikes on the Taliban, targeting drug labs and other sources of revenue in the hope of driving the group to the table for peace talks with the Afghan government. Reporters at the Pentagon will get the perspective from a recent U.S. commander when Marine Brig. Gen. Roger Turner briefs about his time as head of Task Force Southwest, Operation Resolute Support. The 1 p.m. briefing will be live-streamed at www.defense.gov/live.
PAKISTAN’S PUSHBACK: Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi denies his country is providing havens for the Taliban within its borders, and says despite President Trump’s harsh words and cutoff of security assistance, Pakistan will not retaliate. But it will restrict the movement of U.S. troops and supplies through the country. “We have assisted the U.S. forces and will continue to assist them. There have been over 1.1 million overflights within our airspace — U.S. aircraft going to Afghanistan and fighting the war there. There have been millions of tons of equipment and cargo going there,” Abbasi said in an interview with the Washington Post. “That will continue. Because we believe that helps in the war against terror. It helps bring stability to Pakistan, so we support that effort.”
At the Pentagon last week, Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff, confirmed there has been no disruption of the ground and air routes that are used to resupply U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “I think that’s a pretty strong signal of Pakistan’s position,” McKenzie said in a Thursday briefing.
Abassi was asked about Trump’s New Year’s tweet in which the president said the U.S. has “foolishly” given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years and has gotten nothing in return but “lies and deceit.” “The ground realities do not support what President Trump is saying. We are committed to fighting the war against terror. There are no two ways about it.” He again strongly denied turning a blind eye to Taliban sanctuaries along its northern border with Afghanistan. “There are no sanctuaries in Pakistan. If someone provides us with a location, we take action against that.”
Good Monday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre), National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten) 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 add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @dailyondefense.
THIS WEEK IN NAT SEC: This is a jam-packed week for national security, bookended by tomorrow night’s State of the Union address by the president and Friday’s scheduled rollout of the Nuclear Posture Review. In between we are expected to begin getting a much clearer picture of the fiscal 2019 defense budget, which is expected to mark the beginning of the much-heralded Trump military buildup.
TONED DOWN SOTU: Don’t expect “fire and fury” rhetoric when Trump mentions North Korea in his State of the Union address. A White House official who briefed reporters Friday said the president will use a more measured tone when he cites the escalating nuclear threat posed by North Korea. Trump will focus on national security more broadly, along with domestic themes of immigration, infrastructure improvements and trade. “The president is going to talk about rebuilding our military, returning to a policy of peace through strength, returning to clarity about our friends and our adversaries, and his efforts to defeating terrorists around the world,” the senior administration official said.
TRUMP’S $716 BILLION TOP LINE: There’s been a lot of speculation over how far the Pentagon and White House would go toward Trump’s promised military buildup in the 2019 defense budget. Deputy Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan suggested last month that the bulk of the buildup could be pushed into 2020. It now appears the administration does not want to delay. The president will propose $716 billion in his upcoming defense budget request to Congress, which could provide a significant hike in funding for the military and could kick off his long-promised buildup. His full request could be submitted in mid-February and taken into account by lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they work through the year to write a final defense budget. As with the current overdue 2018 budget, the hike still faces Budget Control Act caps that must be raised via an agreement by Congress, which has yet to emerge.
Trump has promised a historic military buildup since he was a candidate but his first defense budget request in May was a letdown for Hill hawks and the defense industry. For the coming year, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had said the Pentagon wanted about 3-5 percent real growth above the 2 percent rate of inflation. The new $716 billion request would provide about a 7 percent boost over the president’s $668 billion request for the current year’s defense budget, though Congress has still not finalized the current budget. Analysts say that increase is needed for a buildup that includes both modernization and increased troop levels. It would set a path toward Trump’s vision of the military, which he has said includes expensive initiatives such as a larger Navy fleet and a bigger Army.
The large request is a victory for Mattis, who had been a top proponent for a military spending hike within the administration. Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, was a deficit hawk in the House before joining the administration last year and widely seen as Mattis’ foil in the internal funding debate. He headed up Trump’s first budget request and projected no growth above inflation over the coming five years. At the same time, Mulvaney had planned to reduce money for Overseas Contingency Operations, a war account that generally holds tens of billions of dollars in additional funding for the military. But the final top-line agreement comes in at the top range of Mattis’ estimate. Mattis and other top military leaders have said increases in funding will be needed for years to dig the services out of a readiness hole that has left them far too small and stretched too thin around the world.
THIS IS THE NPR: As of this morning, the Pentagon’s plan is to unveil the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review with a series of briefings and backgrounders Friday. To say the document has caused some angst in the arms control community would be to risk understatement. Nuclear policy wonks will be looking to see how much, if at all, the final document varies from a leaked pre-decisional draft published by the Huffington Post.
In our Nuclear Posture Preview, we examine arguments surrounding four major points of debate; that maintaining all three legs of the nuclear triad is overkill, that rebuilding the triad is unaffordable, that this NPR is a major break with the past, and that small nuclear weapons pose a bigger risk of nuclear war.
U.N. MEETING: Trump is set to meet with United Nations Security Council diplomats today as part of an effort to rally an international coalition against Iran. The meeting, which will be Trump’s second working lunch with the Security Council, comes in the middle of a two-track effort in Congress and with European allies to address flaws that the Trump administration perceives in the nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama and other world powers.
The meeting is one stop on a tour that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley arranged to highlight Iran’s role in conflicts around the Middle East. Haley will lead the Security Council diplomats in an inspection of debris from a ballistic missile fired from Yemen into Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. mission, as well as a tour of the Holocaust Museum’s exhibit on the war in Syria. U.S. officials declassified the wreckage to make the case that Iran is arming Houthi rebels in the Yemeni civil war.
GATES: NO CHINA STRATEGY: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates was a guest on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, and in an extended podcast interview with host Chuck Todd, Gates was sharply critical of U.S. China policy. “Part of the problem in dealing with China today, in my view is, we don’t have a strategy. We don’t know what we are going to do in the South China Sea.” Gates notes that under Chinese President Xi Jinping, China continues to assert domain over large swaths of the South China Sea, and is fortifying both natural and manmade islands to intimidate other nations, including the United States.
“We challenge these islands, we do freedom of navigation, but they’re still building,” Gates said. “Xi promised they wouldn’t militarize them, they are militarizing them.” Gates said whatever you thought of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump’s decision to withdraw handed China an enormous victory, and that China is now exploiting trade and infrastructure deals to expand its influence around the world. “The first thing we need is to figure out what’s our strategy, how do we present ourselves in the rest of the world as an alternative to China,” Gates said on NBC’s “1947” podcast.
LOOSE APPS MAKE MAPS: A fitness app has released data showing the location of some secret American military bases because some military personnel used the app while running and recorded their GPS locations. The Guardian reported Sunday Strava released its data in November 2017, and now the public has been able to track the runs of military personnel on military bases that are supposed to be secret.
“US Bases are clearly identifiable and mappable,” said Nathan Ruser, an analyst with the Institute for United Conflict Analysts, to The Guardian. “If soldiers use the app like normal people do, by turning it on tracking when they go to do exercise, it could be especially dangerous.” Troops can expect lots of briefings today about privacy settings.
A-10s ARE IN: As expected, Arizona Rep. Martha McSally is cheering the Air Force decision to keep the A-10 “Warthog” funded in next year’s budget. “The Warthog is currently one of the most utilized aircraft across multiple theaters. I’m pleased to see that this aircraft’s indispensability is accurately reflected in the Air Force’s budget request for FY 2019,” said McSally in a statement. McSally, a former A-10 squadron commander, says she’s been informed by the Air Force that its budget request will include money for additional wings. In an interview with the Washington Examiner published last week Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson called the A-10 “a very good aircraft for its close-air support mission,” and said, “I think we need more squadrons not less.”
AIR FRIDGE ONE: Will the $24 million refrigerator enter Pentagon lore along with the legendary $600 toilet seat? The Air Force admits replacing the fridges on Air Force One will cost taxpayers an eye-popping $23.6 million, as first reported by Defense One.
In a statement, the Air Force concedes that the old “chillers,” as they are called, could be replaced with cheaper standard models, but says that Air Force One has some special requirements. A commercial airliner need only hold enough food for one leg of a trip, but the White House requires the capacity to carry enough food for an entire multi-nation flight, up to 3,000 meals.
“Although the units are using available industry technology, the units and associated aircraft structural modifications are being specially designed to provide nearly 70 cubic feet of temperature-controlled (refrigeration/freezer) storage to support on-board personnel for an extended period of time, without having to restock while abroad,” said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokesperson in an email.
“The current rear lower lobe cold chiller units being replaced are the original commercial equipment delivered with the aircraft in 1990,” Stefanek said. “Although serviced on a regular basis, reliability has decreased with failures increasing, especially in hot/humid environments. The units are unable to effectively support mission requirements for food storage.”
Oh, and just for the record: That infamous $600 toilet seat wasn’t like the kind you buy at Home Depot. It was actually a molded lavatory liner that had to be specially designed to fit an aircraft, and as anyone who has ever remodeled a bathroom knows, $600 for a tub surround is a bargain.
THE RUNDOWN
Navy Times: Secrecy And Uncertainty Surrounds Navy Discipline For Fatal Ship Collisions
Washington Post: For government contractors, no end in sight to budget uncertainty
New York Times: Female Kurdish Fighter Kills Turkish Troops in Likely Suicide Bombing in Syria
Wall Street Journal: Iraq Says U.S. Strike Killed Local Forces by Mistake
Reuters: Shock gives way to despair in Kabul after ambulance bomb
Bloomberg: China Will Join First Japan, South Korea Summit Since 2015
Politico: The Army’s latest weapon to turn around the war in Afghanistan
Fox News: Iran spends billions on weapons programs, terrorism while ignoring Iranians’ basic needs, report finds
Defense News: Is the Army ready to transform its missile defense force?
Military.com: Navy Sets Social Media Guidelines for Identifying Deceased Sailors
Defense One: Chelsea Manning’s Campaign Website is Based in Iceland. Why?
Army Times: ‘Beetle Bailey’ cartoonist Mort Walker dies at 94
Washington Post: Families have left cremated remains at the Vietnam Wall for decades. Now officials want them to stop.
AP: Super Bowl flyover won’t be the usual demonstration
Calendar
MONDAY | JAN. 29
10 a.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. What to expect from Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address. brookings.edu
10 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave. NE. U.S.-Qatari Military-to-Military Relations. heritage.org
10 a.m. 529 14th St. NW. Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, will provide a briefing for foreign media on the Department of Defense’s 2018 National Defense Strategy. fpc.state.gov
11:30 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. A Conversation with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. wilsoncenter.org
12 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Maritime Strategy in a New Era of Great Power Competition. Hudson.org
1 p.m. Pentagon Briefing Room. Marine Brig. Gen. Roger Turner briefs on operations while he was commander, Task Force Southwest, Operation Resolute Support. www.defense.gov/live.
1 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Russia’s Electronic Warfare Capabilities to 2025. csis.org
1 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Korean Unity at Pyeongchang: Prospects for Dealing with North Korea. wilsoncenter.org
TUESDAY | JAN. 30
8 a.m. 2401 M St. NW. Defense Writers Group breakfast with Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
10 a.m. Rayburn 2118. Readying the U.S. Military for Future Warfare. armedservices.house.gov
10 a.m. Hart 216. Situation on the Korean Peninsula and U.S. Strategy in the Indo-Pacific Region. armed-services.senate.gov
3:30 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Book launch of Vietnam’s American War: A History. wilsoncenter.org
WEDNESDAY | JAN. 31
1 p.m. 529 14th St. NW. Regional Stability: U.S.-Turkey Strategic Alliance and Cooperation under NATO with retired Gen. James Conway, former commandant of the Marine Corps. press.org
2 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. The Tet Offensive: Lessons from the Campaign After 50 Years. csis.org
THURSDAY | FEB. 1
9 a.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The Strategic Significance of the South China Sea: American, Asian, and International Perspectives with retired Adm. Gary Roughead, former chief of naval operations. hudson.org
9 a.m. 1789 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Changing dynamics in the Gulf: A conversation with Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. aei.org
10 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. The Direction of Russian Politics and the Putin Factor. atlanticcouncil.org
MONDAY | FEB. 5
8 a.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Taking Stock of Mexico’s Security Landscape. wilsoncenter.org
10 a.m. 2121 Eye St. NW. Rep. Michael McCaul delivers the “State of National Security Address” at the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. homeland.house.gov
2 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Enhanced Deterrence in the North: A 21st Century European Engagement Strategy with retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and retired Adm. Mark Ferguson.
2 p.m. 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW. The Demise of America’s First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation. carnegieendowment.org
