DECISION TODAY ON IRAN: The world will be watching the White House at 2 p.m. when President Trump steps before the cameras in the Diplomatic Room to announce his decision on the Iran nuclear deal. His announcement comes after months of international anxiety and speculation on the future of the Obama administration agreement. Supporters say it has delayed Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, but critics say it gives Tehran free rein to develop ballistic missiles and fund terrorism.

HAPPENING TODAY — NIGER BRIEFING: Pentagon officials will brief the Senate Armed Services Committee at 10 a.m. on the results of a months-long investigation into the ambush killing of four U.S. soldiers in Niger last year. The 6,300-page report found the mission to kill a high-value terror target was not properly approved and families of the soldiers were recently briefed on the findings. The secret Senate briefing will include Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of U.S. Africa Command.

MATTIS HOSTS MINISTERS: This afternoon Defense Secretary Jim Mattis holds an honor cordon for Finland Defense Minister Jussi Niinisto and Sweden Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist.

F-35s ROLLING AGAIN: The Pentagon has lifted a block on deliveries of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters after resolving a dispute over repairs with manufacturer Lockheed Martin. It had stopped accepting the fighter in late March after discovering that Lockheed had failed to apply a corrosion-preventing primer to fastener holes on the aircraft, which is the most expensive defense acquisition program in history. The Joint Program Office that oversees the program, the military and overseas allies have settled on a corrective-action plan to make necessary repairs and most of the modifications will be completed within two years, the Pentagon said in a statement.

ROCKET CONTRACT: Lockheed Martin has been awarded an $828 million contract to build guided multiple launch rocket systems for the Army. “The GMLRS round continues to perform exceptionally well for our customers,” Gaylia Campbell, vice president of Precision Fires and Combat Maneuver Systems, said in a Monday statement. GMLRS is an all-weather rocket designed for fast deployment that delivers precision strike beyond the reach of most conventional weapons, according to Lockheed.

KIM VISIT TO CHINA? A North Korean airliner visit to the Chinese port city of Dalian on Tuesday sparked media speculation that regime leader Kim Jong Un may have paid a second visit to China, the AP has reported. Kim visited China for the first time in March amid an apparent thaw in relations and plans for a historic summit with Trump about its nuclear weapons program. China has close ties with Pyongyang and is seen as a key player in negotiations with the North.

HASC GETS TOUGH ON RUSSIA: The House Armed Services Committee says it’s not going easy on Russia. The Republican-controlled committee ticked off the ways it is confronting an aggressive Moscow on Monday when it released the full text of the 723-page Chairman’s Mark version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. “Russia’s military and political strength grew to their present and increasingly threatening state during the eight years of the Obama administration, which scoffed at the idea of Russia as a geopolitical threat,” it said. Here are some of the initiatives in the bill:

• Allows Mattis to increase military-to-military operations in the Western Balkans.
• Authorizes $250 million for security assistance and intelligence support to Ukraine, including lethal defensive weapons.
• Modifies Russia sanctions to allow countries that break from Moscow to buy weapons from the U.S.
• Calls for new sanctions on the Russian arms industry and on those who do business with it.

AVIATION COMMISSION: Meanwhile, members of the House Armed Services Committee will likely be filing dozens of proposed amendments when they debate the NDAA on Wednesday. Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the committee, said Monday he will float an amendment that creates a national commission on deadly military aviation mishaps. “It is essential for our aviators and their families — as well as for our military’s ability to recruit, retain, and perform its mission — that Congress have an authoritative, objective, apolitical look at the causes of this problem so that we can figure out what is going wrong and what actions need to be taken,” Smith said.

The new commission would review crashes over the past five years and make safety recommendations to Congress, he said. The Pentagon denies there is any crisis and said Mattis is not considering any department-wide review and is instead leaving investigations of individual incidents up to the services.

NUCLEAR FUNDING: The House Appropriations Committee is also moving ahead with its defense spending bills for 2019. It released its fiscal 2019 energy and water spending bill Sunday that includes sizable increases for national defense nuclear weapons activities, the Army Corps of Engineers’ infrastructure priorities, and the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The bill provides a $1.5 billion increase over fiscal 2018 levels, and an $8 billion increase in Trump’s fiscal 2019 request.

RUSSIANS THREATENED U.S. ARMY WIVES: An Associated Press investigation has found that Russian hackers who meddled in the 2016 presidential race also posed as Islamic State operatives and made death threats to military wives. “We know everything about you, your husband and your children,” said one message that claimed that the ISIS hackers had penetrated a Colorado spouse’s computer and her phone. “We’re much closer than you can even imagine.” The hackers, who said they were part of the CyberCaliphate, were actually closely associated with the Russian hacking outfit nicknamed Fancy Bear or APT28.

IG REPORT ON IRAQ: The Pentagon inspector general’s quarterly report on Iraq operations is out and it points to continuing shortcomings with the country’s U.S.-backed security forces. The military has started shifting troops and equipment to Afghanistan after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over the Islamic State group in December. But “Iraqi forces continued to suffer from systemic problems and were not yet able to conduct operations against ISIS without coalition support, especially in the areas of air support, surveillance, and intelligence,” the inspector general found. You can read the full report here.

REAPER DOWN: It was a $10.3 million mistake, according to an Air Force accident investigation released Monday. A reconnaissance squadron lost contact with an MQ-9A Reaper drone that was returning from a combat mission somewhere in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. But as it was coming in for a landing another Reaper already on the ground was transmitting on high power and broke communications with the airborne drone. The returning Reaper never made it home and flew until it ran out of fuel. The Air Force said it never recovered any wreckage.

HERITAGE SUBPOENAED IN TRANSGENDER SUIT: The Heritage Foundation and two other conservative groups are fighting subpoenas to turn over any emails or other communications they exchanged with the White House about Trump’s new transgender military service policy. The subpoenas came from active-duty transgender plaintiffs and rights groups who are suing Trump over the policy in federal court. They hope to force Heritage, as well as the Family Research Council and the Center for Military Readiness, to disclose whether they influenced Trump’s decision to roll back open transgender service in July. “We want to understand the process and what drove it, and who had input,” Shannon Minter, a lead attorney for plaintiffs in lawsuits in D.C. and California.

WILL TRUMP VISIT A WAR ZONE? In this week’s Washington Examiner magazine, we look at whether Trump will follow recent precedent and visit U.S. troops in the war zone. After 15 months in office, the question remains when or if the president will make a trip to visit the roughly 13,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan, the country’s longest war, and the thousands of troops fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. “I think he’s missing a big political opportunity because, you know, this is an important part of his presidential brand is support of the military and his belief in a strong America and you see it in his tweets and his oral statements a lot,” said Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College and author. “You would think he would want to back that up by supporting troops in their fields of combat personally but he has not done that.”

THE RUNDOWN

Newsweek: The Navy SEALs allegedly left a man behind in Afghanistan. Did they also try to block his Medal of Honor?

Navy Times: Navy SEAL to receive Medal of Honor for 2002’s Operation Anaconda

Daily Beast: The Ukraine War in the Time of Trump

Military Times: Congressman wants answers on extremist activity in the military

Associated Press: Military eyes child sex-assault solution without Congress

Military.com: With Older F-35s ‘On Life Support,’ Wing Struggles to Train Pilots

USNI News: HASC’s 2019 Bill Boosts Navy Spending, With Focus on Readiness and Pacific Operations

Navy Times: Fitzgerald’s officer of the deck faces court-martial Tuesday for fatal collision