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FOLLOW THE MONEY: The Pentagon has done what for years seemed impossible — it dispatched more than 1,200 auditors to examine hundreds of thousands of items at over 600 locations to figure out if taxpayer money was being used wisely. And the auditors examined if systems were effective in tracking inventory and ensuring they followed proper security practices. With approximately $2.8 trillion in total assets, accounting for over 70 percent of the U.S. government’s total, the FY 2018 DoD consolidated audit includes over 20 standalone audits. It’s arguably one of the largest and most complex financial statement audits ever undertaken. The result: The Pentagon came up short. “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan yesterday in advance of the formal release of the 236-page report. But Shanahan says just completing the audit is a huge accomplishment. “Everybody was betting against us — that we wouldn’t even do the audit,” he told reporters at the Pentagon. The whole point was to find the shortcomings, so they can be fixed. “We need to put corrective action. We need to develop the plans to address the findings, and actually put corrective actions in place,” he said. HILL REACT: Both the incoming and outgoing chairmen of the House Armed Services Committee applauded the audit and called for reforms. “As expected, this audit has uncovered a number of matters that Congress and the Pentagon must work together to address,” said the current chairman, Republican Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas. “We must take advantage of this opportunity to continue our reform efforts and make the Pentagon more efficient and agile.” Rep. Adam Smith, who will take the committee gavel when Democrats assume control in early January, suggested the audit is a good starting point. “If we want to reduce defense waste, have greater transparency over defense dollars, and eliminate mismanagement, it is essential that we get the Defense Department to a position where Congress, taxpayers, and DOD itself can track and account for the money that is being used,” Smith said. “The results in this report show exactly why it is so important that we continue to press forward with that effort.” TOO BIG TO AUDIT: It’s only because Congress demanded the audit — and kept pressing — that it ever happened. As far back as 2010, Congress inserted language into the National Defense Authorization Act requiring the review. For years the Pentagon insisted the job was just too big to do. It was only under Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that the Pentagon pledged to make it happen. “The findings and recommendations of the auditors provide us with invaluable information that will help us target and prioritize corrective actions,” wrote Mattis in a message accompanying the report. “We recognize that opportunities for continued improvement exist, and we embrace the challenges we must overcome.” PICK YOUR BUDGET: Shanahan yesterday confirmed yesterday that the Pentagon was taken by surprise when President Trump announced during a Cabinet meeting he wanted a 5 percent cut in defense spending for the next fiscal year. “We spent the better part of 10 months developing a budget. That’s the $733 billion. And that was a strategy-driven budget,” Shanahan said when Trump threw them a curve. “But the good news on that is, we finished a month early,” meaning the budgeteers at the Pentagon could get right to work on a scaled-down $700 billion budget. Shanahan says they hope to finish a draft of that version after Thanksgiving and present both options to the president in the coming weeks. The skinny version will require slowing down modernization programs and paring back acquisition of weapons systems, planes, and ships. “I think what I want the president to understand when we bring forward is, what are those tradeoffs,” Shanahan said. Whether those tradeoffs will convince Trump to change his mind about defense spending is uncertain, but Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe has already laid down a marker, citing a Congressional commission’s finding that Pentagon’s stated National Defense Strategy is not adequately resourced. “That is why I believe the $733 billion defense budget originally proposed by President Trump for fiscal year 2020 should be considered a floor, not a ceiling, for funding our troops,” Inhofe said in a statement. LOWER PRICE TAG FOR SPACE FORCE: The Pentagon now says the cost of standing up a new Space Force could be less than $5 billion, but would certainly be far below a $13 billion estimate floated by the Air Force in September. Shanahan made the cryptic prediction during his media availability yesterday when he said the latest update on the estimated cost of starting up the new service was a “single digit, not a double-digit.” When pressed, Shanahan said the number was between $5 billion and $10 billion but could be on the low end. “It might be lower than five, it could be lower,” Shanahan said. On Monday we’ll get an independent assessment from Todd Harrison at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project and Defense Budget Analysis at CSIS, will be presenting calculations for the cost of various possible configurations of national security space reorganization, including a Space Corps and two different organizations of the Space Force. Good Friday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and National Security Writer Travis J. Tritten (@travis_tritten). 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. |
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BORDER DEPLOYMENT ‘PEAKS’: With asylum-seeking migrants from Central America now gathering at the U.S. Mexico border in Tijuana, across from San Diego, Calif., the deployment of more than 5,800 active duty troops to Texas is coming to an end. The troops have pretty much laid as much barbed wire and built enough barriers as they can, and now they are waiting for their mission to run out. “There’s been a formal request that was made of the Department, and that runs through the 15th of December. There’s still a number of days between now and the 15th of December, so that can always be amended,” said Deputy Defense Secretary Shanahan, who said there no plans to send any more troops to the border. “We’re pretty much peaked in terms of the number of people that are down there right now.” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the commander of the border support mission, told Reuters he would start looking next week at whether to begin sending forces home or perhaps shifting some to new border positions. Meanwhile, The Associated Press reports nearly 2,000 caravan migrants had reached Tijuana mostly by buses and were overwhelming local shelters as they settle in to wait for processing at the U.S. border. With U.S. border inspectors processing only about 100 asylum claims a day at the main border crossing, to San Diego, the AP reports the migrants could be stuck waiting in Tijuana for months. PAUL LOSES YEMEN VOTE: A day after House Republicans scuttled a vote on Yemen, the Senate has also rejected a move by Sen. Rand Paul to chip away at backing for the conflict by blocking the $300 million sale of Lockheed Martin missiles to Bahrain. Senators voted against it 77-21. “For us to block offensive sales to the country of Bahrain — that is housing one of our most important naval bases — over something that has nothing to do with them but has something to do with another country, is not a pragmatic nor a sensible step,” said Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Paul called his resolution “your proxy vote on the war in Yemen.” The Kentucky Republican’s reasoning was Bahrain is part of the Saudi coalition against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, and nixing the arms sale announced in September would send a message of opposition to the three-year-old war, which has become a humanitarian catastrophe. “I think that the war in Yemen is counterproductive. I think that our involvement there is leading to more chaos. I think the Senate has abdicated their duty and their role,” said Paul, a longtime critic of U.S. intervention in the Mideast. AFRICOM DRAWDOWN: The Pentagon is calling it a “Force Optimization.” But the reality of yesterday’s announcement is the withdrawal of hundreds of troops focused on counterterrorism in Africa, to focus more on countering Russia and China. U.S. forces deployed across Africa will shed up to 720 troops over the next few years, the Pentagon announced. The modest drawdown is less than 10 percent of the 7,200 military forces serving in Africa Command. It will allow the military to refocus on, among other things, the threat of conventional wars with adversaries Russia and China. Still the timing is hard to ignore. The decision comes six months after an investigation found serious failures led to the ambush killings of four U.S. soldiers working with local forces in Niger. The deadly ambush sparked scrutiny of special ops missions in Africa against Islamic extremist groups, which occur across the continent and almost entirely out of the public eye. The Pentagon said the drawdown will leave the U.S.-backed war against al Shabaab in Somalia, the American hub of operations in Djibouti and operations in Libya largely unchanged. Meanwhile, operations in Niger, Mali and other areas in West Africa will shift from tactical support to advising and intelligence sharing. TURKEY’S ‘LAND GRAB’: The Institute for the Study of War is warning that Turkey in the midst of a ‘land grab” in Northern Syria. Here’s the key assessment: “Turkey has effectively annexed large parts of Northern Syria since 2016. Turkey seized control of a wide swath of terrain along the Syrian-Turkish Border in two separate operations against ISIS and the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). Turkey has installed local proxies to manage the region — but these proxies remain subordinate to state institutions in Turkey. Gaziantep and Kilis Provincial governors in Southern Turkey exercise direct oversight of governance in Northern Syria. The Turkish Police Academy is training a force of Free Syrian Police while the Turkish Armed Forces is organizing opposition groups into a parallel Syrian National Army. These institutions could ultimately expand to other parts of Northern Syria including Idlib Province.” WILSON WITH TYNDALL UPDATE: It turns out the Air Force was right about the F-22 Raptors caught in the destructive path of Hurricane Michael. They are all airborne again. Secretary Heather Wilson told an audience at a Defense One conference Thursday that the last of the fifth-generation fighters have left Tyndall Air Force Base on the Florida Panhandle. “All of the F-22’s have been flown out now, so the damage to all of them was minor enough that they were repaired and flown out,” Wilson said. But the devastated base will have a long road to recovery. “We’re now assessing building by building, what needs to be done. All but 500 people will be back on the panhandle either at Eglin [Air Force Base] or Tyndall by January,” she said. “But the base recovery as a whole is probably going to take 3-5 years.” SERVICEMEMBERS FACE MURDER CHARGES: Two Navy SEALs and two Marines have been charged with murder, in the death of Army Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar, who was found strangled last year in Mali. The SEALs and the Marines, charged Wednesday, allegedly barged into Melgar’s room on June 4, 2017, in Bamako, Mali. Melgar had been sleeping and was subsequently confined with duct tape and choked to death, according to charge sheets. The SEALs and the Marines also provided investigators with misleading information surrounding Melgar’s death. SAUDIS SANCTIONED: The U.S. has imposed human rights sanctions on 17 people “involved in the abhorrent killing” of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, including a former adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “These individuals who targeted and brutally killed a journalist who resided and worked in the United States must face consequences for their actions,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a message accompanying the sanctions designations. “The United States continues to diligently work to ascertain all of the facts and will hold accountable each of those we find responsible in order to achieve justice for Khashoggi’s fiancée, children, and the family he leaves behind.” ARMY LAGS IN RECRUITING: The Pentagon released its final recruiting and retention statistics for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2018. And, as the Army already announced, it was the only service to miss its goal. Here are the numbers for the active-duty force:
THE RUNDOWN Washington Examiner: Trump administration greenlights $324M border wall in Arizona Foreign Policy: How the Generals are Routing the Policy Wonks at the Pentagon Washington Post: Afghan election, Taliban talks may be on collision course AP: North Korea to deport American it detained for illegal entry Defense News: The Pentagon failed its audit, but officials aren’t surprised Washington Examiner: US attorney accidentally reveals feds have charged Julian Assange Task and Purpose: ‘I Got Him With My Hunting Knife’: SEAL Allegedly Texted Photo Cradling ISIS Fighter’s Head Roll Call: Awkward Moments from Donald Trump’s Veterans Day Do-Over New York Times: Are Killer Robots the Future of War? Parsing the Facts on Autonomous Weapons Defense News: STRATCOM head on key lawmaker’s arms control agenda: ‘If you want to save money, change the threat’ Reuters: California taps war-zone DNA specialists after wildfire USNI News: One Year Later, Search For Missing Argentine Submarine Continues War on the Rocks: Podcast: Net Assessment: Does the Pentagon Deserve Our Trust? |
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FRIDAY | NOV. 16 8 a.m. 900 S Orme St. CyberSat 2018 Conference. cybersatsummit.com 10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Russian Nuclear Strategy after the Cold War. csis.org 10 a.m. 529 14th St. NW. Gold Star Families to Discuss Legal Action Regarding Murders of Three Green Berets at Air Base in Jordan. press.org 11 a.m. 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Will America Remain the World’s Only Superpower? carnegieendowment.org Noon. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Implications of U.S.-China Tensions in the Indo-Pacific. hudson.org 1:30 p.m. 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Moon Jae-in and Inter-Korean Détente: Korea Strategic Review 2018. carnegieendowment.org MONDAY | NOV. 19 11 a.m. 2301 Constitution Ave. Questions from CENTCOM on Achieving Peace in Afghanistan. usip.org TUESDAY | NOV. 20 10 a.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. The Future of the Defense Budget. brookings.edu |
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