SHANAHAN UNDER INVESTIGATION: The Department of Defense inspector general’s office has opened an investigation into complaints that Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan may have exerted improper influence by touting his former employer Boeing while bad-mouthing its major competitor Lockheed Martin.
The Pentagon decided to buy fewer Lockheed Martin fighter jets next year in favor of more upgraded F-15s made by Boeing, a decision budget officials say was made by former defense secretary Jim Mattis, not Shanahan, who has recused himself from matters affecting Boeing.
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“Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement,” said Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino, a spokesman for Shanahan. “This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue with Boeing.”
Politico reported in January that Shanahan ridiculed Boeing competitor Lockheed Martin while he was deputy defense secretary during meetings at the Pentagon. Shanahan reportedly said that the Lockheed Martin F-35 program was “fucked up” and Lockheed Martin “doesn’t know how to run a program.”
YOU ASKED FOR IT: There was a moment in last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing when Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked Shanahan a simple question: “The independent watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington recently asked the Department of Defense inspector general to investigate whether you have broken any ethics rules by promoting Boeing while you served as deputy secretary of defense. Do you support such investigation?
Shanahan gave a simple answer. “Yes, I do.”
The DoD IG was listening. “In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations. We have informed him that we have initiated this investigation,” DoD IG spokeswoman Dwrena Allen said in a statement.
Allen says the office will be specifically investigating complaints that Shanahan allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors, in violation of ethics rules.
GOING, GOING…: President Trump keeps telling us that ISIS is very nearly, almost completely finished holding any land in Syria and that the end could come any minute now. Yesterday he displayed before and after maps showing the wide swath of territory held by ISIS in November 2016 compared with a tiny sliver today.
“This was on Election Night in 2016. Everything red is ISIS,” Trump said, pointing to the map. “When I took it over, it was a mess. Now, on the bottom, that’s the exact same. There is no red. In fact, there’s actually a tiny spot, which will be gone by tonight.”
200 + 200 = 400: Trump also confirmed the plan is to leave 400 U.S. troops behind, not the 1,000 reported as under consideration by the Wall Street Journal. “In Syria, we’re leaving 200 people there and 200 people in another place in Syria, closer to Israel, for a period of time,” Trump said before leaving for Lima, Ohio and a tour of the Army Tank Plant.
Trump didn’t say where exactly American troops would be based, but Pentagon officials have indicated one group of 200 will stay in the Middle Euphrates River Valley, or MERV, where U.S.-backed Syrian fighters hold territory they liberated from ISIS, while the other 200 literally hold the fort down at Al Tanf near the Syrian border with Iraq and Turkey, where U.S. forces man a garrison that serves as a check on Iranian militias.
AS ISIS FADES, TURKEY SHOWDOWN LOOMS: The 200 U.S. troops that will remain in northeastern Syria are not only meant to ensure ISIS doesn’t come back but also to serve as a buffer between America’s Kurdish allies and Turkey, which is itching to launch a military campaign to push them out of the northern border region.
So far there has been no agreement reached between the United States and Turkey on establishing a safe zone for the Kurds, whom Turkey continues to label terrorists.
AND THEN THERE’S THE F-35 PROBLEM: Reuters reports this morning that the Trump administration is moving closer to freezing the delivery of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, which is a partner in the production of the fifth-generation stealth fighter.
You may recall that two weeks ago Pentagon spokesman Charles Summers threatened “grave consequences” if Turkey completed a deal to acquire Russian S-400 air defenses. “If they take the S-400s, they would not get the F-35s,” he told reporters. The concern is that having a NATO ally using an advanced Russian system would be akin to handing over the keys to the kingdom.
“The S-400 is a computer. The F-35 is a computer. You don’t hook your computer to your adversary’s computer, and that’s basically what we would be doing,” Katie Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told Reuters.
Good Thursday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Kelly Jane Torrance (@kjtorrance). 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.
HAPPENING TODAY: Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., hosts a town hall with commanders and a “meet-and-greet” with junior airmen at Luke Air Force Base today to champion her newest top priority: rooting out sexual assault in the military.
McSally — an Air Force Academy graduate, 26-year military veteran, former squadron commander, and military sexual assault survivor herself — got a commitment from Acting Secretary Shanahan at last week’s Senate hearing to work with her on coming up with a fresh approach to tackling the problem.
In a follow-up letter to Shanahan, McSally stressed that she does not favor taking decisions about prosecution and punishment out of the hands of commanders and turning them over to professional prosecutors.
“I strongly believe we cannot take responsibility away from commanders due to the unique role commanders play in culture, readiness, good order and discipline, and mission,” McSally wrote. “However, we cannot accept the status quo.”
“My goal, and the goal of the Department of Defense, is to eliminate sexual assault and sexual harassment in the United States military,” responded Shanahan. “DoD leadership is committed to fixing this and I look forward to working with Senator McSally and our taskforce to find solutions that will eliminate this issue from our ranks.”
SPACE FORCE LOOKING UP: At yesterday’s forum on space policy sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a key Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee offered an upbeat assessment of the chances of President Trump’s Space Force winning congressional approval.
“I think the prospects could hardly be brighter,” said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn. “I think we’re on a path here to achieve everyone’s goals, which is first, you know, greater capability for our country.”
Cooper and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., drew up a bipartisan bill in 2017 that would have created a separate Space Corps under the Air Force, but the legislation died, in part because the Air Force and then-defense secretary Jim Mattis opposed what they called unnecessary bureaucracy.
Cooper said that while he initially thought Space Force was “over the top,” he credited the president for his advocacy, which helped “break some ice” within the Air Force and possibly the Senate, which had been lukewarm to the idea.
And Cooper said when he saw the legislative proposal crafted by Shanahan, he was pleasantly surprised to find it appeared “way more modest” and closely resembled the 2017 plan that failed to get Senate backing. “In fact, it’s about as close to our original House proposal as you can get,” he said.
JUST CALL IT ‘SPACE FORCE’ AND WE’RE GOOD: Cooper noted that President Trump doesn’t seem caught up in the details of the bureaucratic structure of the new organization, as long as it fits his goal of creating a sixth branch of the armed forces.
“My guess is from the administration standpoint, they may only care that we call it a Space Force, whatever we’re doing,” Cooper said, adding under his breath, “OK, we can do that.”
SMALL BUT VITAL: At the CSIS forum, Shanahan defended the Space Force as “15,000 to 20,000 people defending $19 trillion,” a reference to the U.S. economy, which could collapse if there were ever a successful attack on America’s communications and navigation satellites.
“We would be blind, deaf, and impotent before we even knew what hit us. Everything from ATM machines to Zumwalt destroyers would be paralyzed,” Shanahan said, echoing previous remarks by Cooper. “If you’re faced with threats like this, you say yes to change,” Shanahan said.
Shanahan hasn’t had a chance to walk through the plan with House Armed Services chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., but said his experience with Congress is that most members are open-minded when it comes to protecting vital U.S. interests.
“I think the compelling piece here is that $19 trillion economy and the military run on space, and we need to have confidence that we’re really protecting that,” Shanahan said. “You know, when somebody says, ‘We’re going to start a new service,’ you start to think about, well, like the Army, you know, with half a million people. We’re talking 15,000 to 20,000 people defending $19 trillion.”
MARINES’ CORE MISSION ERODING: If I were to summarize Dakota Wood’s latest installment in the Heritage Foundation’s “Rebuilding America’s Military” project on a bumper sticker, it would be this: “The Marines: not just a cooler Army.”
Wood, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, points out that by law the Corps’ core mission is “for the conduct of such land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of a naval campaign,” not to be another ground force. “The ability to project ground combat power by sea is what differentiates the Corps from the Army. Without this capability, there is not much reason to maintain a Marine Corps,” Woods writes.
The Corps’ high operational tempo has taken and continues to take a damaging toll on its people and equipment, creating pressures that make retention of skilled Marines more challenging and rapidly age basic equipment, primary platforms, and major weapons. Unfortunately, very few of its operational commitments have anything to do with ships, conducting amphibious operations, or contributing to a naval campaign.
“This is where the Corps currently finds itself: very good at land-based crisis response, making important contributions to America’s special operations community, conducting sustained land operations in support of U.S. partners in various theaters, and supporting regional combatant command requirements to work with partner nations to improve mutual capabilities but lacking meaningful experience within the current force at doing the one thing that it is supposed to do and no other force can do: amphibious operations.”
GRAVE NEW WORLD: Over at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, senior fellow Samuel Brannen has updated his commentary “Five Risks to Watch in 2019” as we head into the second quarter of the year. He warns about growing uncertainty, fractured alliances, fragmented supply chains, threats to capitalism, and designer babies.
Here’s what he said about North Korea. For the rest of the doom and gloom, check here.
“The zero-outcome Hanoi summit has pushed Pyongyang back to its old tricks of provocation. While it likely redoubles global criminal activities from illegal fishing to bitcoin theft and ransomware to keep itself solvent, it’s also dusting off its rocket testing program. North Korea made clear at the summit that it is eager for sanctions relief, but it isn’t willing to give enough to get that. A worsening situation would be a real problem for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has tied himself to the process and is due for reelection next year with a faltering economy in tow.”
US FUNDING CHINA’S MILITARY?: At yesterday’s CSIS space forum, Rep. Jim Cooper also suggested that indirectly the United States is picking up the cost of China’s military expansion. “We are probably funding the entire Chinese defense budget because they have bought so many of our bonds, $1 trillion plus,” Cooper said. “Just the interest on those bonds can pay for their entire defense budget.”
Then he paused and uttered a drawn out “Whoa.”
“We appreciate their investment in our debt, but this is not a good situation, but it shows overall how many of our fiscal policies have been woefully mismanaged,” he said.
TRUMP’S LATEST ATTACK ON McCAIN: In his speech at the Joint Manufacturing Facility in Lima yesterday, Trump accused the late Sen. John McCain of failing veterans. “McCain didn’t get the job done for our great vets in the VA, and they knew it. That is why when I had my dispute with him, I had such incredible support from the vets and from the military,” Trump said.
“The vets were on my side because I got the job done. I got choice and I got accountability,” Trump said, referring to a bill he signed last June to replace the troubled Veterans Choice Program and expand private health care options.
“For many decades they couldn’t get it done, it was never done. I got it, five months ago. I got it done, choice.”
During his Senate career, McCain was a tireless advocate for veterans and played a key role in extending funding for the original Veterans Choice Program, when the Obama-era program was set to expire in 2017. At the time, McCain called the situation an “emergency.”
“If it’s not an emergency that we’ve neglected these brave men and women who have protected our country, then I don’t know what is,” he said. McCain was absent from the Senate for all of 2018 as he battled brain cancer. He died Aug. 25, 2018.
“I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve,” said Trump yesterday. “I don’t care about this. I didn’t get ‘Thank you.’ That’s OK. We sent him on the way. But I wasn’t a fan of John McCain.”
The Rundown
AP: U.S.-Backed Syrian Fighters Search Tunnels In Last ISIS Pocket
USNI News: Shanahan: Space Force Won’t Take Over Navy, Army Space Assets
New York Times: Taiwan’s President Heads To South Pacific In Effort To Counteract China
Wall Street Journal: China, Russia Stand to Gain From Kazakhstan’s Political Transition
Military Times: France: A European Army Would Help — Not Threaten — U.S. Troops
Stars and Stripes: Navy enacts almost all changes recommended after fatal USS Fitzgerald, USS McCain collisions
Defense News: With An Eye To China And Russia, The U.S. Navy Plans A Lethal Upgrade To Its Destroyers
USNI News: Navy Ready To ‘Burn The Boats’ With 2021 Laser Installation On A Destroyer
Al-Monitor: Pentagon fails to deliver US strategy on Yemen
Washington Post: Secrecy surrounds talk of successor to Iran’s Khamenei
Reuters: U.S. Remains Concerned About India-Pakistan Tensions: Official
Breaking Defense: Lasers, Hypersonics, & AI: Mike Griffin’s Killer Combo
Talk Media News: Military option for Venezuela takedown: ‘a starfish on an oyster,’ planners say
Calendar
THURSDAY | MARCH 21
8 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave N.W. Under Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy and Rep. Anthony Brown, D-Md., speak at the Center for Strategic and International Studies event on “Army Modernization: Priorities to get to the Army of 2028.” www.csis.org.
10:30 a.m. 1030 15th Street N.W., 12th Floor. “US Military Strategy and Great Power Competition with Gen. Joseph Dunford.” www.atlanticcouncil.org
11:45 a.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Ave N.W. Hudson Institute forum “Securing the Peace in Oceania and the Pacific Islands.” Speakers: Hideshi Tokuchi, Former Japanese Vice Minister of Defense for International Affairs; James Clad, senior fellow, American Foreign Policy Council, and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia Pacific Security Affairs; John Lee, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute; Anna Powles, Massey University, Prof. Noriyuki Segawa, Kindai University; and Eric Brown, senior fellow, Hudson Institute. www.hudson.org/events
5:30 p.m. 2425 Wilson Blvd. Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare Lyman L. Lemnitzer Lecture series. Retired Col. Joseph Celeski speaks about his book The Green Berets in the Land of a Million Elephants: U.S. Army Special Warfare and the Secret War in Laos 1959-74. www.ausa.org
FRIDAY | MARCH 22
10 a.m. 1775 Massachusetts Avenue N.W. “The end of an era? The INF Treaty, New START, and the future of strategic stability.” www.brookings.edu
MONDAY | MARCH 25
1 p.m. 1775 Massachusetts Avenue N.W. “Securing maritime commerce: The U.S. strategic outlook.” www.brookings.edu
TUESDAY | MARCH 26
8:30 a.m. 2301 Constitution Avenue N.W. “Overcoming War Legacies: The Road to Reconciliation and Future Cooperation Between the United States and Vietnam.” www.usip.org
10 a.m. 2118 Rayburn. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford testify before the House Armed Services Committee on the Fiscal 2020 DoD budget. armedservices.house.gov/hearings
2 p.m. 2212 Rayburn House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces Hearing: Department of the Navy Fiscal Year 2020 budget request. Witnesses: James Guerts, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research development and acquisition; Vice Adm. William Merz, deputy chief of naval operations; and Lt. Gen. David Berger, deputy commandant for combat development and integration. armedservices.house.gov/hearings
WEDNESDAY | MARCH 27
9:30 a.m. SD-G50, Dirksen. Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army, and Gen. Mark Milley, chief of staff of the Army, testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. www.armed-services.senate.gov
10 a.m. 2118 Rayburn. House Armed Services Committee hearing on “National Security Challenges and U.S. Military Activities in the Indo-Pacific.” Witnesses: U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Adm. Philip Davidson, U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Robert Abrams; Randall Schriver, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs. armedservices.house.gov/hearings
10 a.m. SR-232A, Russell. James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, and acquisition; Vice Adm. William R. Merz, deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems; Lt. Gen. David H. Berger, commanding general, Marine Corps Combat Development Command testify before the Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee. www.armed-services.senate.gov
2:30 p.m. SR-222, Russell. Kenneth Rapuano, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security; Gen. John W. Raymond, commander, Air Force Space Command; Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, commander, Space And Missile Systems Center, Air Force Space Command; and Cristina T. Chaplain, director, Acquisition And Sourcing Management, Government Accountability Office, testify before the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. www.armed-services.senate.gov
4 p.m. 2118 Rayburn. House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee hearing on “Reserve Component Duty Status Reform.” Witnesses: Jeri Bucsh, director, DoD’s Military Compensation Policy Department, Maj. Gen. Mike Taheri, National Guard Bureau director of staff; Patrick Barrett, deputy chief, Navy Reserve; Lt. Gen. Richard Scobee, chief, Air Force Reserve, and Maj. Gen. Bradley James, chief, Marine Corps Reserve. armedservices.house.gov/hearings
THURSDAY | MARCH 28
10 a.m. 2212 Rayburn. House Armed Services Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee hearing on Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Request for Department of Defense Science and Technology Programs. Witnesses: Michael Griffin, under secretary of defense for research and engineering; Bruce Jette, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology; James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, and acquisition; and William Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics. armedservices.house.gov/hearings
10 a.m. 2118 Rayburn. House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing on Fiscal Year 2020 priorities for DoD nuclear activities. Witnesses: David Trachtenberg, deputy under secretary of defense for policy; U.S. Strategic Commander Gen. John Hyten, Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, director, Strategic Systems Programs, and Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, deputy chief of staff, strategic deterrence and nuclear integration. armedservices.house.gov/hearings
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We’re also glad that our naming convention is balanced between the Star Wars and Star Trek universes. Hopefully the gods of nerdom will smile on our new software motto, ‘May our force live long and prosper.’”
Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisitions, technology and logistics, speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum on space policy.
