HOT SEAT: The Navy’s top two leaders head to Capitol Hill this morning to face tough questions after two high-profile destroyer collisions this summer laid bare widespread shortfalls in training and funding, as well as a “can do” attitude that means completing the mission at any cost.
Both witnesses — Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson — have ordered separate reviews following the collisions involving the destroyers USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain that killed a total of 17 sailors. And six Navy leaders, including two admirals, have been fired. Despite those moves, expect tough questions from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee over missed warning signs and all the ways the service needs to right itself in the weeks, months and years ahead. The hearing starts at 10, and also includes John Pendleton, whose Government Accountability Office has uncovered strikingly low levels of certification among ships that are forward-deployed in Japan, as well as extreme exhaustion among crews.
DRAWING A LINE: In a broader sense, the panel’s chairman, Sen. John McCain, has turned the collisions, along with other deadly training accidents involving the Army and Marine Corps, into Exhibit A for why Congress needs to end spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act. “More of our men and women in uniform are now being killed in totally avoidable training accidents and routine operations than by our enemies in combat,” he said on the Senate floor yesterday.
But just a few hours earlier, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis cast doubt on the connection between budget woes and the spike in non-combat troop deaths and injuries. “It’s hard to believe that we could reduce flying hours and not have less capable [forces]. There’s a reason why we think we need a certain number of hours, that is set on data,” he told reporters. “But I am not willing to say right now that there’s a direct line between sequestration and what has happened.” The services are now doing the right thing by investigating the causes and the wider circumstances of recent Navy collisions, aviation mishaps, and training range accidents, Mattis said.
NDAA CLEARS THE SENATE: Despite some tense negotiations, the National Defense Authorization Act easily cleared the Senate in a 89-8 vote Monday night, clearing the way for a conference with House Armed Services leaders on a final bill. The $700 billion defense policy bill for fiscal 2018 aims to bolster what McCain and other proponents say are depleted military forces by supplying more troops, aircraft and ships than requested by President Trump. “My friends, for too long our nation has asked our men and women in uniform to do too much with far too little,” McCain said. He argued the defense bill is needed to shore up a military in the midst of a readiness crisis, evidenced by mishaps over the past three months that have injured and killed more than 60 troops, and facing the greatest range of threats in decades.
The Senate bill includes $640 billion in base funding for the Defense Department and nuclear activities within the Department of Energy, as well as $60 billion for overseas combat operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The military would get more Navy ships, Lockheed Martin F-35 and Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, and troops than requested in Trump’s $639 billion Defense Department budget request for 2018. The NDAA also pumps $8.5 billion into missile defense to shield South Korea, including adding up to 28 new interceptors in Alaska.
SPACE CORPS SHOWDOWN: The NDAA also includes a measure sponsored by Sens. Bill Nelson and Tom Cotton that sets up a showdown with the House over the creation of a Space Corps. Their legislation prohibits the creation of any separate command to oversee space operations within the Air Force, which has also strongly opposed the idea and said it will create unneeded bureaucracy. But members of the House Armed Services Committee headed by subcommittee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers have been pushing hard for the Space Corps, saying the Air Force and Defense Department are fumbling work in an increasingly important military domain, and they were able to include creation of the command in the $696 billion NDAA passed by the chamber in July.
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TRUMP’S BIG SPEECH: After a Monday spent meeting in small groups with world leaders, Trump will address the United Nations on Tuesday with a call for its members to focus first and foremost on their own sovereignty, Sarah Westwood writes. He will argue that the U.S. should not shoulder the bulk of the burden when it comes to United Nations funding and global security, the White House said Monday.
Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly will mark the highest-profile foreign policy address of his presidency. Although he has given two other major foreign policy speeches — one in Saudi Arabia on May 21 and one in Poland on July 6 — the UNGA remarks will pull together and build upon the foreign policy themes he has previously laid out, a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call Monday.
“This speech represents the president’s vision and declaration to the country and the world about how America fits into the world, how America operates, what its values are and how it relates to other countries,” the senior administration official said. Trump speaks at 10:30 a.m.
FIXING THE U.N.: As he left the U.N. headquarters on Monday after hosting a major meeting there on U.N. reform, Trump told reporters he aimed to “make the United Nations great,” echoing his signature slogan, and clarified that he had intentionally omitted the word “again.”
A senior administration official said Monday that Trump’s speech would make the case for “sovereignty as the basis for mutual cooperation” in a speech that would elevate the original mission of the U.N. over more idealistic conceptions of the body as a global government of sorts.
“What the president is doing is explaining how the principle of ‘America First’ is not only consistent with the goal of international cooperation, but a rational basis for every country to engage in cooperation, because all countries that are sovereign put the needs of their own citizens first,” the official said. “The United Nations, as the president will explain, was conceived on the idea of independent nation states cooperating together. … It’s only a pretty recent development that some in the world have articulated, this vision of top-down governance. That’s certainly not the president’s vision.”
TRUMP’S PARADE IDEA: Yesterday, Trump praised French President Emmanuel Macron for the Bastille Day parade he attended at Macron’s invitation in July, vowing to hold his own major parade down Pennsylvania Avenue next summer. “We may do something like that on July 4th in Washington down Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trump said of the parade.
“We’re going to have to try and top it. … It was really a beautiful thing to see. It was really so well done. We’re actually thinking about 4th of July having a really great parade to show our military strength.”
It was widely reported that Trump’s team wanted heavy vehicles rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue on his inauguration (something that was done in the FDR-Eisenhower-Kennedy era), before officials decided to drop the idea. There was concern at the time that such a spectacle would look uncomfortably similar to displays more commonly seen in Red Square or Pyongyang, and that the heavy hardware would chew up the road.
NUKES AND CYBER WAR AT AFA: This week’s double whammy of trade shows rolls on this morning at 10:45 a.m., when Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, gives an update on the service as part of the second day of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference at National Harbor, Md. The day will also include a 1:15 p.m. panel on nuclear deterrence, a hot topic as North Korea races forward with its nuclear missile program, with Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, and Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Adm. Michael Rogers, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, and Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA, will talk cybersecurity in a 2:10 p.m. panel.
At the conference on Monday, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson warned that lawmakers’ inability to pass a fiscal 2018 budget for the military and their use of another stopgap budget measure has become the “greatest risk” to the service. A decade of continuing resolutions, including the most recent one passed this month, has hamstrung the service and allowed foreign adversaries to edge closer to challenging U.S. air dominance, according to the secretary. “Little by little, over 31 continuing resolutions, our adversaries outpace us,” Wilson said. The service “has to get larger to be ready” by adding airmen and pursuing modern aircraft such as the B-21 Raider heavy bomber by Northrop Grumman, KC-46 Pegasus tanker by Boeing, and the F-35A joint strike fighter by Lockheed Martin, she said.
MARINES EXPO: Farther south at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va, the Modern Day Marine expo opens today with remarks by Brig. Gen. Joseph Shrader, the head of Marine Corps Systems Command, and then has briefs to industry on Systems Command, PEO Land Systems Science and Technology, and the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. The Systems Command will hold a small business training session at 2 p.m. Exhibits open at 10 a.m. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller is set to speak at the expo on Wednesday morning.
NEW LEADER AT AIA: Eric Fanning, who served as Army secretary under former President Barack Obama and was the first openly gay service secretary, has been named president and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, the organization announced on Monday. Fanning will take over on Jan. 1, succeeding David Melcher, a retired Army three-star general who was CEO of Exelis Inc.
Last month, Fanning joined former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James in a request for a preliminary injunction of Trump’s ban on transgender military members. The request was filed Aug. 31 in a D.C. district court.
The former service secretaries said they were not aware of any harm to the military caused by the decision last year to allow open service following a study. “To the contrary, I am aware of commanders who believed that transgender service members under their command were capable and well-qualified to serve,” Fanning said. Expect Fanning, as head of AIA, to press for “stable budgets” and an end to spending caps.
FIGHTING WORDS ON BOEING: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday his government could stop doing business with Boeing if the U.S. company doesn’t drop a trade complaint against Canadian plane maker Bombardier, the AP reports. Trudeau said Canada “won’t do business with a company that’s busy trying to sue us and put our aerospace workers out of business.”
Canada had been in talks to purchase 18 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets from Boeing, but those have been on hold because of the Bombardier dispute. Boeing claims Bombardier’s new C Series passenger aircraft receives Canadian government subsidies that give it an advantage internationally. The complaint prompted a U.S. Commerce Department anti-dumping investigation that could result in penalties for Bombardier. A preliminary decision is expected next week and a final decision could include financial penalties.
Boeing spokesman Scott Day took issue with Trudeau, saying Boeing is not suing Canada. “This is a commercial dispute with Bombardier, which has sold its C Series airplane in the United States at absurdly low prices, in violation of U.S. and global trade laws. Bombardier has sold airplanes in the U.S. for millions of dollars less than it has sold them in Canada, and millions of dollars less than it costs Bombardier to build them,” Day said.
Canada has said it would look at buying the Super Hornets on an interim basis while it decides its next moves on the F-35 program.
MATTIS ON SHOOTING DOWN MISSILES: The defense secretary held one of his signature flash gaggles with reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, where he made the comments above about the readiness crisis, but also discussed why the U.S. military doesn’t simply shoot down North Korean missiles every time they’re fired.
“No. 1, those missiles are not directly threatening any of us,” Mattis said. “Obviously, Japan’s missile defenses are up and their radars are operating. Ours are.” The defense secretary also indicated North Korea seems to be running missile testing exercises that fall just short of warranting more aggressive responses from the U.S. North Korea is “intentionally doing provocations that seem to press against the envelope for just how far can they push without going over some kind of line in their minds that would make them vulnerable, so they aim for the middle of the Pacific Ocean,” he said.
SEOUL-LESS BATTLE PLAN: The defense secretary also dropped a tantalizing detail about plans for any conflict with North Korea. Mattis said the U.S. has military options that would not put Seoul, South Korea, at risk from the North’s aggression. “Yes, there are but I will not go into details,” he said. Military planners have long worried any outbreak of hostilities would immediately lead to the regime shelling the city of 25 million with its thousands of artillery pieces placed along the border.
TROOPS TO AFGHANISTAN: Mattis also confirmed that the U.S. plans to send just over 3,000 advisers to Afghanistan as part of the Trump’s tweaked plan for that country. “Frankly, I haven’t signed the last of the orders right now. As we look at specific, small elements that are going. So most of them are on their way or under orders now and I’d prefer not to give any more information that helps the enemy.”
DRONE STRIKES: The Trump administration is eyeing changes to its policy on drone strikes that would give the Central Intelligence Agency broader authority to conduct strikes in several countries. The possibility of additional policy changes comes after the White House gave the CIA more independence to decide when and if it should launch drone strikes, including in Yemen. There, the U.S. military oversees most airstrikes, four U.S. officials told NBC News.
Trump’s push to let the CIA have more autonomy on drone strikes began after the president visited the CIA’s headquarters in January. During the tour of the agency, Trump was shown the floor where officers direct drone strikes targeting those suspected of terrorism. Afterward, the president told CIA Director Mike Pompeo and other intelligence officers he wanted the CIA to be more aggressive in its drone strikes.
ROUHANI WARNS TRUMP: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned U.S. officials on Monday that there will be a “high cost” to pay if Trump fulfills his promise to undo the landmark nuclear deal reached in 2015. “Exiting such an agreement would carry a high cost for the United States of America, and I do not believe Americans would be willing to pay such a high cost for something that will be useless for them,” Rouhani told CNN at the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
The Iranian president said pulling out of the Obama-era agreement would “yield no results for the United States” and simultaneously “decrease and chip away at international trust placed in the United States of America.”
FLYNN FUND: Family members of former national security adviser Mike Flynn have set up a legal defense fund for the retired Army general as he remains a focus of federal investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. “Lori and I are very grateful to my brother Joe and sister Barbara for creating a fund to help pay my legal defense costs,” Flynn tweeted Monday. “We deeply appreciate the support of family and friends across the nation who have touched our lives.”
Flynn’s legal defense fund touts his military and private sector credentials, including his role as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as military honors. The Michael T. Flynn Legal Defense Fund states Flynn was under consideration to serve as Trump’s running mate, but he was ultimately selected to serve as national security adviser. “The costs of legal representation associated with responding to the multiple investigations that have arisen in the wake of the 2016 election place a great burden on Mike and his family,” the pitch to potential donors reads. “They are deeply grateful for considering a donation to help pay expenses relating to his legal representation.”
The website for his legal defense fund includes this kicker: “Only U.S. citizens and permanent residents may contribute. Any donations that are identified as originating with foreign nationals will be declined or refunded.”
RUSSIAN EXERCISE MISHAP: Reports out of Moscow this morning say Russian helicopters may have accidentally fired on bystanders observing the country’s major Zapad 2017 military exercises. The Moscow Times reports that two people were hospitalized with serious injuries. “The incident reportedly took place at the Luzhsky range near St. Petersburg either on Monday or Sunday. President Vladimir Putin visited the range on Monday,” the Times reported.
Video of the strike has been widely shared on social media.
THE RUNDOWN
Roll Call: Safety experts: Some F-35 ejections pose ‘serious’ death risk
Defense News: Saab pledges to open new facility in US for T-X, but questions remain
CNN: Trump to set sights on Iran, North Korea in major UN speech
Defense News: US breaks ground for new permanent base in Israel
Wall Street Journal: As ISIS falters, U.S. allies and Syrian regime maneuver for advantage
Task and Purpose: Veteran House hopeful releases most cringeworthy ‘Top Gun’ campaign ad ever
Foreign Policy: U.S. bombs falling in record numbers in three countries
Washington Post: Trump to lay out vision of U.S. role in the world, focusing on ‘outcomes, not ideology’
Defense News: As ‘annihilation’ of ISIS nears, Air Force looks ahead to its future role
USNI News: U.S. Navy research chief urges caution as British admirals begin dash for autonomy
New York Times: The United Nations explained: Its purpose, power and problems
War on the Rocks: Back on the playground: Returning to Iraq, eight years later
DefenseTech: Air Force tests new system to monitor for hypoxia problems
Calendar
TUESDAY | SEPT. 19
7 a.m. 201 Waterfront St. Air Space Cyber Conference with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. afa.org
8 a.m. 2401 M St. NW. Defense Writers Group breakfast with Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau. defensewriters.gwu.edu
8 a.m. Marine Corps Base Quantico. Modern Day Marine conference with Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh, head of Marine Corps combat development, and Brig. Gen. Joseph Shrader, head of Marine Corps systems command. marinemilitaryexpos.com
9:30 a.m. Dirksen G-50. Hearing on recent United States Navy incidents at sea with Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, and John Pendleton, director of defense force structure and readiness issues at the Government Accountability Office. armed-services.senate.gov
10 a.m. Dirksen 419. Consideration of the nomination of Jon M. Huntsman, Jr., to be the U.S. ambassador to Russia, and the Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act of 2017. foreign.senate.gov
2 p.m. 529 14th St. NW. Sasakawa USA media roundtable on North Korea and the U.S.-Japan alliance. press.org
2 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. U.S.-Canadian defense industrial cooperation with Frank Kendall, former under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and Martin Zablocki, CEO of Canadian Commercial Corporation. csis.org
3 p.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. The roller coaster of Turkey-Russia relations. brookings.edu
4:45 p.m. 171 Waterfront St. Cocktails and conversation with Brig. Gen. Thomas K. Wark, operations director at the National Guard Bureau, and Brig. Gen. George Degnon, acting adjutant general of the District of Columbia National Guard. defenseone.com
WEDNESDAY | SEPT. 20
6:30 a.m. 1800 Jefferson Davis Hwy. Special topic breakfast with Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall, director of Navy surface warfare. navyleague.org
7 a.m. 201 Waterfront St. Air Space Cyber Conference with a keynote speech by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. afa.org
8 a.m. Marine Corps Base Quantico. Modern Day Marine conference with Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller. marinemilitaryexpos.com
4:45 p.m. 1777 F St. NW. A conversation with Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, prime minister of Pakistan. cfr.org
THURSDAY | SEPT. 21
8 a.m. Marine Corps Base Quantico. Modern Day Marine conference. marinemilitaryexpos.com
10 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Lessons from developing Afghanistan’s security forces with John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. csis.org
3:30 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Book talk on “Melting the Ice Curtain: The Extraordinary Story of Citizen Diplomacy on the Russia-Alaska Frontier” with author David Ramseur. wilsoncenter.org
FRIDAY | SEPT. 22
10 a.m. 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW. Meeting U.S. deterrence requirements with Madelyn R. Creedon, former principal deputy administrator at the National Nuclear Security Administration, and Walter Slocombe, former undersecretary of defense for policy. brookings.edu
10 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. A debate on whether the U.S. should arm Ukraine. atlanticcouncil.org
3:30 p.m. 1777 F St. NW. A perspective from the League of Arab States on restoring stability in a turbulent Middle East with Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Arab League secretary general. cfr.org
MONDAY | SEPT. 25
10 a.m. 1000 Massachusetts Ave. NW. National security oversight: Congressional case studies and reform prospects. cato.org
12 p.m. 1030 15th St. NW. How Europe and Iran’s neighbors view the nuclear deal future with French ambassador Gérard Araud, British ambassador Sir Kim Darroch, European Union ambassador David O’Sullivan, and German ambassador Peter Wittig. atlanticcouncil.org
3:30 p.m. 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Consequences of the German election for the European Union and trans-Atlantic relations. wilsoncenter.org
TUESDAY | SEPT. 26
9 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. Transatlantic forum on strategic communications and digital disinformation with Sen. Ron Johnson, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Andrea Thompson, national security adviser to the vice president, and Ambassador Tacan Ildem, assistant secretary general at NATO. atlanticcouncil.org
