DON’T COUNT AFGHAN MILITARY OUT: While acknowledging the outcome of the war between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government is uncertain, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said the Afghan military should not be counted out.
“It’s not a foregone conclusion, in my professional military estimate, that the Taliban automatically win and Kabul falls or any of those kinds of dire predictions,” Milley said, standing alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a Pentagon briefing yesterday. “There’s significant military capability in the Afghan government, and we have to see how this plays out.”
“I mean, there’s 300,000 plus Afghan army, Afghan police in their country, so they’ve been leading the fight for several years now, and we’ve been supporting them for sure — but they’ve been leading the fight,” Milley said, noting that the fledgling Afghan Air Force now conducts 80% to 90% of airstrikes in support of their troops. “We do some, but very few, relative to the Afghan Air Force. The key will be the Afghan Air Force and their ability to continue providing close air support.”
“It’s a bit early to tell what the outcome’s going to be,” Milley said. “There are some obviously bad outcomes that have been discussed, but none of that is preordained, none of that is absolutely inevitable.”
LLOYD AUSTIN ‘HOPEFUL’ AFGHAN GOVERNMENT WON’T FALL TO TALIBAN
TALIBAN ATTACKING, BUT NOT US FORCES: So far, the Taliban have not made good on their threat to resume attacks against U.S. and coalition troops now that the May 1 withdrawal deadline specified in the February 2020 agreement has passed. But they continue to mount a sustained offensive against the Afghan forces.
“There have been about 80 to 120 enemy-initiated attacks a day for the past year. And that has also been sustained since 1 May,” Milley said. “There have been no attacks against U.S. and coalition forces since the retrograde began on about 1 May. And that is also consistent for the past year.”
The U.S. has warned the Taliban that any attack against the U.S. or its allies as they pack up to leave will be met with a swift and punishing response. Six B-52 bombers, an aircraft carrier, and additional special operations troops have been moved into the region to back up the threat.
STILL DOTTING I’S AND CROSSING T’S: In addition to financial support, including paying the salaries of the Afghan military and police forces, the U.S. is pledging “over-the-horizon” training and logistics support, including crucial aircraft maintenance to keep the Afghan Air Force flying.
“I will tell you that the final crossing of Ts and dotting of Is of that plan is not yet settled. But maintaining logistic support to the Afghan Air Force is a key task,” Milley said. “We have to sort out doing it over the horizon but also in country. It could be done by contract … a lot of that’s going to be dependent on the conditions, the security conditions on the ground.”
Good Friday 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 Victor I. Nava. Email here with tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. Sign up or read current and back issues at DailyonDefense.com. 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.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP OR READ BACK ISSUES OF DAILY ON DEFENSE
Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine and get Washington Briefing: politics and policy stories that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
HAPPENING TODAY: It’s the Air Force and the Space Force’s turn to make their budget pitch before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, two days after Army leaders made their appearance before the panel
Testifying at 12 noon today will be acting Secretary of the Air Force John Roth, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. John Raymond.
At Wednesday’s hearing on the Army budget, ranking Republican Ken Calvert of California expressed frustration that the White House has yet to submit a budget request for fiscal year 2022, which makes it difficult for Congress to do its job.
“This is, after all, a budget hearing, but unfortunately … the Biden administration has been dragging their feet. So we don’t have a budget to review,” said Calvert. “This delay is very concerning to me. I know it is to the chair, and it increases the risk of a continuing resolution that nobody would like to have.”
At the hearing, Army leaders said they were warned that any cuts in their budget would risk reversing the gains made over the past year in modernization and readiness. “I think there is a lot of risk in the budget,” said acting Army Secretary John Whitley. “You know, we’ve rebuilt readiness. That was hard. We realized once it got down to the low level it got, how hard rebuilding it was … We know that readiness can turn on a dime.”
“The Army’s budget has actually been flat for the last two to three years,” Whitley said. “So our concern is to keep these efforts going. We need to have consistent, sustained, and predictable funding.”
A PEACE DIVIDEND? There’s been a lot of speculation that there could be significant funds freed up next year because of the end of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, which has been costing roughly $40 billion a year.
Some of that money will still be going to financial assistance to shore up the Afghan government, but at yesterday’s Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged money that had gone for the war could be used elsewhere. “Certainly, anytime you stop doing something that’s this important and this big, it creates opportunities,” Austin said. “And so, we’ll look at what the possibilities are going forward.”
BLINKEN PLEDGES SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE, WARNS RUSSIA: After his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv yesterday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged additional U.S. security assistance but made no specific announcement of what for that would take.
“We discussed in some detail the support that we’re providing, we’ll continue to provide to Ukraine to continue to strengthen its security, its defenses,” Blinken said in a joint appearance with Zelensky. “That’s something that we are working on very, very actively.”
Zelensky noted that of the tens of thousands of troops Russia has massed on Ukraine’s eastern border, only about 3,500 have been withdrawn.
“In terms of the threat, it remains,” Blinken said. “Russia has pulled back some forces, but significant forces remain at Ukraine’s border. It has pulled back some equipment, but significant equipment remains near Ukraine’s border. And so Russia has the capacity, on fairly short notice, to take aggressive action if it so chooses.”
Blinken praised Ukraine for not responding to the “provocations” by Russia. “I must tell you that I admire the restraint that Ukraine has shown in the face of these provocative actions, in the face of this aggression,” Blinken said. “Ukrainians continue to lose their lives on a regular basis, and yet the restraint is very, very real and very much appreciated.”
WHAT MADE MILLEY CHANGE HIS MIND: At yesterday’s briefing, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley explained why he has dropped his opposition to the idea of giving military prosecutors instead of commanders the authority to decide when serious crimes, such as sexual assault, should be referred to court martial.
“I did a lot of hard thought. We had to move the needle, that’s the bottom line,” Milley said. “According to some pretty solid data, we think, we estimate based on some surveys that there were probably 20,000 men and women who were sexually assaulted in the United States military last year. That’s 1% of the force. If we had 20,000 killed or wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq, those are casualties, that’s huge, that’s significant. And that number hasn’t significantly been reduced over time.”
“We can’t tolerate that. We can’t tolerate that level of divisiveness in our force. These are assaults. These are blue on blue assaults. It cannot stand. It has to be resolved,” Milley said. “So we need to make a change.”
‘WE HAVEN’T MOVED THE NEEDLE’: MILITARY SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIMS AWAIT COMMISSION
B-1s BACK IN THE AIR: The Air Force says after a two-week safety stand-down of B-1B Lancers prompted by “ground emergency” last month, the bombers have been cleared to resume operations.
“The precautionary safety stand-down and holistic inspection of the Augmenter Fuel Filter Housing on each aircraft was ordered after an April 8 ground emergency resulted in the discovery of a discrepancy with the system,” said a statement from the Air Force Global Strike Command.
The Air Force says the system in question was disassembled on the B-1Bs, inspected, and all units were determined to be free of defects.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Rundown
Washington Examiner: A tale of two Taliban captives
Washington Examiner: Lloyd Austin ‘hopeful’ Afghan government won’t fall to Taliban
Washington Examiner: EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Air Force secretary offers vision of future Afghanistan counterterrorism ops as Biden team mulls new plan
Washington Examiner: Thousands of veteran record requests languish in red tape
Washington Examiner: ‘We haven’t moved the needle’: Military sexual assault victims await commission
Washington Examiner: GOP warns DOJ not to provide ‘amnesty’ to researchers who didn’t disclose China funding
Washington Examiner: House Democrat fears looming space war: ‘We’ll all be dead’
Washington Examiner: Opinion: US intelligence grapples with nervous system attacks amid heavy Russia suspicions
Air Force Magazine: B-52 Demos Hypersonic Missile Kill Chain at Northern Edge Exercise
19fortyfive.com: The Air Force’s First ‘Skyborg’ Drone Could Be a Game Changer
USNI News: CNO Gilday: Pentagon Weighing Reducing Middle East Aircraft Carrier Presence After Afghan Withdrawal
Navy Times: Aircraft Carrier Gerald Ford Finishes Post-Delivery Tests And Trials
Bloomberg: China Fires Back After G-7 Shows United Front Toward Beijing
Reuters: China Suspends Economic Dialogue With Australia As Relations Curdle
USNI News: Marines Retooling Infantry Training for Complex Warfare in Pacific
New York Times: U.S. Says Nuclear Talks With Iran May Reach Accord ‘Within Weeks’
Defense Info: U.S. Bases in Central Asia: Where Will They Go?
19fortyfive.com: Opinion: Time for Cognitive Warfare Against China?
Calendar
FRIDAY | MAY 7
9:30 a.m. — Center for Strategic and International Studies webinar: “Reordering Priorities: Republic of Korea-U.S. Alliance in the Indo-Pacific Century,” with former South Korean Minister and Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn; Ji Seong-ho, member of the South Korean National Assembly; former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert, Korea chair at CSIS; and Victor Cha, senior vice president of CSIS. https://www.csis.org/events/reordering-priorities-rok-us
11:30 a.m. — Brookings Institution webinar: “The Future of Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Modernization,” with Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-future-of-strategic-deterrence
12 p.m. — House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing: “Fiscal Year 2022 United States Air Force and Space Force Budget,” with Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., chief of staff of the Air Force; Gen. John Raymond, chief of operations, U.S. Space Force; and John Roth, acting secretary of the Air Force. https://appropriations.house.gov/events/hearings
1 p.m. — Center for Strategic and International Studies webinar: “Project Overmatch,” the Navy’s Joint All Domain Command and Control implementation program, with Rear Adm. Douglas Small, commander of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command. https://www.csis.org/events/project-overmatch
1 p.m. — Space Force Association “Space Warfighter Talks,” with Derek Tournear, director, Space Development Agency. https://ussfa.org/event
3:30 p.m. — Woodrow Wilson Center Polar Institute webinar: “Understanding the New Dimensions of Trans-Atlantic Arctic Security,” with Capt. J.F. French, deputy commander of Joint Task Force North; Col. Petteri Seppala, defense attache at the Embassy of Finland; Col. David Hanson, commander of the 821st Air Base Group; retired Maj. Gen. Mats Engman, military fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy; and retired Rear Adm. Lars Saunes, professor at the U.S. Naval War College https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/arctic-security-dialogues
WEDNESDAY | MAY 12
11 a.m. 2118 Rayburn — House Armed Services Committee hearing: “An Update on Afghanistan, with David Helvey, acting assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs; and Brig. Gen. Matthew Trollinger, deputy director for politico-military affairs, Joint Staff, J-5. https://armedservices.house.gov/hearings
11 a.m. — Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies virtual Space Power Forum with Lt. Gen. J.T. Thompson, commander of the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center; and retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute. Video posted afterward at https://www.mitchellaerospacepower.org/
THURSDAY | MAY 13
9:15 a.m. — American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research web event “The Joint Expeditionary Force: A European asset,” with Elisabeth Braw, resident fellow, AEI; Nick Carter, chief of the defence staff, UK Ministry of Defence; James Heappey, minister for the armed forces, U.K. Ministry of Defence; Peter Hultqvist, Swedish Defense Minister; Artis Pabriks,, Latvian Defense Minister; and Rep. Mike Turner, ranking member, House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. https://www.aei.org/events/the-joint-expeditionary-force
5 p.m. — Institute for Corean-American Studies Spring Symposium Special: “Humanity, Liberty, Peace and Security, The Korean Peninsula Issues and US National Security,” with Former undersecretary of defense for policy Michele Flournoy, co-founder and managing partner, WestExec Advisors. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/icas-spring-symposium
FRIDAY | MAY 14
11 a.m. 2118 Rayburn — House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems hearing: “Operations in Cyberspace and building Cyber Capabilities Across the Department of Defense,” with Mieke Eoyang, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy; and Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander, U.S. Cyber Command, director, National Security Agency. https://armedservices.house.gov/hearings
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We, the chain of command, we the generals, the colonels, the captains, and so on, we have lost the trust and confidence of those subordinates in our ability to deal with sexual assault. So we need to make a change.”
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on why he is open to having military prosecutors, instead of commanders, decide who faces trial for serious crimes
