NEW SECRECY SURROUNDS WAR: The latest report from the Pentagon’s independent watchdog is sharply critical of the military’s increasing secrecy about key metrics for measuring success in the 16-year-old Afghanistan war. The latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction decries the “instruction” from DoD to withhold unclassified data that was previously public, such as how many districts the Taliban controls in Afghanistan and the fighting effectiveness and casualty rates of the Afghan military.
“This development is troubling for a number of reasons, not least of which is that this is the first time SIGAR has been specifically instructed not to release information marked ‘unclassified’ to the American taxpayer,” wrote Special Inspector General John Sopko, in the preface to the report released this morning. “Aside from that, the number of districts controlled or influenced by the Afghan government had been one of the last remaining publicly available indicators for members of Congress — many of whose staff do not have access to the classified annexes to SIGAR reports — and for the American public of how the 16-yearlong U.S. effort to secure Afghanistan is faring,” Sopko said.
SIGAR has been releasing data about district-control data since January 2016, but the Pentagon, under the direction of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, has told it to stop releasing information that could be of use to the enemy. “I think the enemy knows which districts it controls,” Sopko told NPR in an interview this morning.
It also represents a further clampdown of information after an October report said SIGAR could no longer publish information on Afghanistan’s military forces.
“In a significant development this quarter, U.S. Forces-Afghanistan classified or otherwise restricted information SIGAR has until now publicly reported,” the October report stated. “These include important measures of [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] performance such as casualties, personnel strength, attrition, capability assessments, and operational readiness of equipment.”
NO TALKS WITH TALIBAN: The new order for secrecy comes as a series of deadly attacks has rocked Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul, raising doubts about the linchpin of President Trump’s strategy, namely inflicting painful military defeats on the Taliban in order to motivate them to negotiate for peace. Trump, who reluctantly approved the plan to stiffen the resolve of Afghan forces with frontline combat advisers and overhead close-air support, yesterday lashed out at the Taliban, ruling out any negotiations while hundreds of innocent Afghans are slaughtered.
“I don’t see any talking taking place. I don’t think we’re prepared to talk right now. It’s a whole different fight over there. They’re killing people left and right. Innocent people are being killed left and right. Bombing in the middle of children, in the middle of families — bombing, killing all over Afghanistan,” the president said during a White House lunch with U.N. Security Council members yesterday.
More than 130 people have been killed over the past 10 days in attacks on a luxury hotel, a children’s charity, an iconic military academy, and in the supposedly secure city center of Kabul, where an ambulance packed with explosives was able to breach a security checkpoint. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hotel and ambulance attacks, while the Islamic State took credit for the other two, raising the possibility the two groups, thought to be fighting each other, have joined forces. In Afghanistan, ISIS affiliation is now claimed by some groups that have split with the main Taliban hierarchy, including some fighters who were part of the Haqqani network.
THE 2-YEAR PLAN: Trump’s national security team has warned him to be patient, that the strategy he approved just last summer will take at least two years to show results. Until then, there will be setbacks and some bad days, they said. Unlike in Iraq and Syria, the Afghanistan plan is not to capture or kill every last Taliban fighter, but rather to demonstrate by the application of decisive military force that they cannot survive through terror and intimidation.
“The conditions-based approach is to ensure the Taliban know, you will never win a battlefield victory, and the way forward is going to be by engaging in a reconciliation process and ultimately joining a government in Afghanistan,” said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a speech at the Atlantic Council last month, while warning the U.S. commitment to back the Afghan government is not a blank check. “The government of Afghanistan needs to understand they must continue their reform journey and they must continue to create conditions that will be inclusive to all ethnic groups within Afghanistan, including a place for the Taliban to participate in a legitimate government when the Taliban is ready to renounce terrorism, renounce the fight, and come to the table.”
But yesterday, Trump was clear that there would be no peace talks with the Taliban while the carnage continues. “We don’t want to talk with the Taliban. There may be a time, but it’s going to be a long time.” But Trump also did not waver about sticking with his plan, at least for now. “We’re all out,” he said. “We’re going to finish what we have to finish. What nobody else has been able to finish, we’re going to be able to do it.
Good Tuesday 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.
EARNINGS WATCH: On Monday, Lockheed Martin released its fourth quarter earnings and things are looking good for the defense giant. Its revenue beat Wall Street estimates and quarterly sales in its aeronautics business rose nearly 12 percent, bolstered by the growing success of its F-35, Reuters reported. Lockheed’s smaller Missiles and Fire Control business had the strongest growth and was up 30.5 percent, while its Rotary and Mission Systems revenue was up 14.2 percent, according to U.S. News & World Report. Meanwhile, fellow defense contractor Boeing is slated to release its earnings report on Wednesday.
HAPPENING TODAY — BUDGET BILL AND THE SOTU: The House is set to pass a $659 billion defense appropriations bill today, but it is unlikely to change the budget outlook. The planned vote will largely be a symbolic gesture, and at least partly for the president’s benefit. Trump is set to step in front a joint session of Congress tonight at 9 to deliver his first State of the Union. The speech will be heavy on domestic priorities such as rebuilding U.S. infrastructure and immigration reform, but the president is also expected to renew his call to rebuild the military. His efforts so far remain tied up on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers have yet to send an annual military appropriations bill to Trump’s desk since he was sworn in a year ago, leaving the military to run on continuing resolutions and leaving any spending hike in question. GOP leadership has teed up another vote on the defense bill — it was passed by the chamber twice last year — to drive home the message that Congress needs to act if Trump’s buildup plans are ever to become reality. Because the Republican-controlled House can pass bills with a simple majority, it continues to approve legislation that can’t garner the 60 votes needed in the Senate. Until both parties can work out a deal to lift budget caps, the prospects for passage of this year’s budget remain dim as we head into the fifth month of fiscal 2018.
ARMED SERVICES HEARINGS: Both the House and Senate armed services committees will convene expert panels this morning to delve into big-ticket threats and strategic issues facing the military. On the House side, lawmakers will be looking at the future of warfare at 10, something that chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry has said is a top priority for the committee this year. He will bring in experts from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Center for a New American Security and Telemus Group, a defense forecasting firm.
Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee will hear about the situation with North Korea and the U.S. strategy in a region that stretches from Africa to the Pacific Ocean. The 10 a.m. hearing will likely proceed with Sen. Jim Inhofe doing chairman duties as Sen. John McCain battles brain cancer in Arizona. It will include expert witnesses from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Center for American Progress.
FITNESS TRACKER UPDATE: The Pentagon says it does not believe any sensitive or classified information has been compromised by the revelation a private GPS data company has published an interactive map that shows the movements of subscribers to its fitness service. “Not to my knowledge,” said Col. Rob Manning, a Pentagon spokesman yesterday. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has ordered a review of current policy on the use of personal fitness trackers and wearable electronics, and reminded U.S troops that they need make sure they are not oversharing personal data. “DoD personnel are advised to emplace strict privacy settings on wireless technologies and applications, and such technologies are forbidden at specific DoD sites and during specific activities,” Manning said.
The review is in response to the discovery that the GPS tracking company Strava posted what it called a “Global Heat Map” that shows jogging routes and other movements over a two-year period between 2015 and 2017. While most of the routes, which show up as bright lines on the maps, are innocuous, there is some concern that U.S. troops may have shared data while exercising at U.S. bases in Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. “We take these matters seriously, and are reviewing the situation to determine whether additional training or guidance is required, and if any additional policy must be developed to ensure the safety of DoD personnel, at home and abroad,” Manning said.
HARTZLER Q&A: In this week’s magazine, we sit down for a Q&A with Rep. Vicky Hartzler, who is among the rising defense hawk voices in the House. She laid out why the U.S. military is stretched dangerously thin and also warned us that it is “going to take a long time to recover.” Hartzler also talked funding, North Korea and her thoughts on Trump’s attempted ban on transgender troops, which she enthusiastically supported.
MILITARY BASES REPORT CLIMATE EXTREMES: About half of U.S. military facilities around the world have experienced climate extremes and threatening weather, according to a new Pentagon survey obtained and published by the Center for Climate & Security. The survey, which is the first of its kind and was shared with Congress, reached out to 3,500 military sites in 2015 to gage climate-related security risks and vulnerabilities from weather-related incidents such as storm surge, wildfires and droughts. It provides a wealth of data and begins to paint a preliminary “picture of assets currently affected by severe weather events … as well as an indication of assets that may be affected by sea level rise in the future,” the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics wrote in the survey report.
The results do not point to specific effects of climate change but do identify particular bases where extreme weather is already reported as a problem, said John Conger, a senior policy adviser with the Center for Climate & Security, who helped kick off the survey effort during his time as an assistant secretary of defense. “If there are increases in climate change, this sort of points them in the right direction,” he said. The Pentagon could also use the data as it compiles a new study ordered up by Congress in December on its 10 facilities most vulnerable to climate change, as well as its plans and the costs of protecting them, Conger said.
PENTAGON RESPONDS TO ‘DUMB SHITS’ RANT: The Pentagon’s director of outreach, Amber Smith, found a teachable moment in a California high school teacher’s viral rant calling U.S. troops “a bunch of dumb shits” who are the “lowest of the low.” Smith, who served as an Army Kiowa helicopter pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan before being appointed by Trump last year, called the comments by Gregory Salcido “very uninformed” when asked by reporters. “I think that’s an excellent example of who we would like to connect with, and inform them with an accurate image of those who are serving and why they serve,” she said. It just so happened that Smith was briefing reporters on a new Pentagon initiative called “This is Your Military,” which aims to introduce the public to the less than 1 percent of Americans who serve in the military, and to correct common misconceptions.
Salcido, who is also a city councilman in Pico Rivera, Calif., can be heard in a video posted on social media repeatedly warning his students not to join the military, which he says has been unable to win wars in Iraq or Afghanistan because of the poor quality of its troops. “We all have night-vision goggles, all that kind of stuff, and we can’t freakin’ control these dudes wearing freakin’ robes and chanclas [flip-flops] because we have a bunch of dumb shits over there,” Salcido said. “Think about the people you know who are over there, your freakin’ stupid uncle Louie, or whatever, they’re dumb shits. They’re not like high level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people. They’re the freakin’ lowest of the low.”
“I don’t understand why we let the freakin’ military guys come over here and recruit you at school. We don’t have pimps come into school. Anyone interested in being a ho [whore]? And they’re going to freakin’ lie to you,” Salcido told the students. At one point, he addresses a student who is wearing a Marine Corps shirt. “Why are you wearing that Marines shirt? I thought you were going to college,” he asked the student. The student replied, “I am, I just had the shirt.” But Salcido warns him not to wear it to school. “Why would you wear something that you can’t freakin’ support? Don’t ever wear that again, don’t ever wear it here,” Salcido said.
UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED: A Russian military jet flew within five feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 Aries II spy plane while passing through international airspace over the Black Sea on Monday, according to Department of Defense officials.
The U.S. plane was forced to end its mission ahead of schedule due to the interference, CNN reported. The incident is just the latest in a series close encounters in which Russia appears to be intentionally trying to intimidate U.S. pilots. The Kremlin insists the intercept was carried out in accordance with international rules.
NO NEW SANCTIONS: Russian defense industry sales are already suffering from sanctions recently mandated by federal law, the State Department told Congress yesterday after the administration missed a deadline to impose new sanctions. “Today, we have informed Congress that this legislation and its implementation are deterring Russian defense sales,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement last night. “Since the enactment of the [Russia sanction] legislation, we estimate that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions.” That briefing was meant to avert congressional criticism, even though the administration formally missed a deadline to implement sanctions targeting Russian defense and intelligence industries.
The law also called for the creation of a list of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest and wealthiest associates, which was released last night, just meeting the Jan. 29 deadline. The list contains the names of 114 Russian politicians and 96 “oligarchs” according to The Associated Press. The list includes Russia’s entire presidential administration and Cabinet, as listed on the Kremlin website, while the oligarchs list mirrors the top of Forbes magazine’s Russian billionaires’ list.
“Yet the administration paired that move with a surprising announcement that it had decided not to punish anybody — for now — under new sanctions retaliating for the election-meddling,” the AP report noted. “Some U.S. lawmakers accused President Donald Trump of giving Russia a free pass, fueling further questions about whether the president is unwilling to confront Moscow.”
NORTH KOREA SCALES BACK: The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that North Korea appears to have dialed back its annual winter military exercises since December, and has been carrying out less extensive tests this season. The regime’s military readiness actions have typically taken place from December through March, but started up at a slower pace this season, the Journal reported.
The decreased testing may be the result of global sanctions on the country’s trade, which allow fewer shipments of oil and refined petroleum products to the country. Both are necessary for these types of tests.
THE RUNDOWN
Defense One: US General to Turkey: We’re Not Pulling Back
War on the Rocks: Has a Trumpian Grand Strategy Finally Stepped into the Light?
USA Today: Spate of deadly attacks in Kabul highlights resiliency of Afghanistan’s insurgency
Defense News: South Korea defense chief: North’s nuclear strike rhetoric just ‘propaganda’
Defense One: The War in Yemen and the Making of a Chaos State
Military Times: Military members among prominent White House guests for State of the Union address
USNI News: Navy Monitoring Results of Australian EA-18G Growler Fire Investigation
New York Times: North Korea Cancels Pre-Olympic Event, Blaming South Korean Media
Defense News: Congressional hawks want straight talk on military readiness problems
Foreign Policy: America’s Military Is Choking on Old Technology
Military.com: Marine Corps Wants Reaper Drone to Provide Overwatch for Helmand
AP: AP WAS THERE: The Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive
Roll Call: Podcast: Hoping to Avoid Another Shutdown
Fox News: CIA boss expects Russia will try meddling in US midterm elections
Calendar
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
11 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Ave NE. The Navy the Nation Needs with Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations. heritage.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
TUESDAY | FEB. 6
9 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Russia’s Cyber Operations in Ukraine and Beyond with Rep. Will Hurd. atlanticcouncil.org
9:30 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Russia’s Post-Authoritarian Future: A Conversation with Ksenia Sobchak. csis.org
10 a.m. House Visitor Center 210. Ensuring Effective and Reliable Alerts and Warnings. homeland.house.gov
