Another boat attack. The U.S. military killed two more people in an alleged drug-trafficking boat in an unspecified location off the Pacific coast of Latin America, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday with an 18-second video posted to Twitter.
“No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike, and two male narco-terrorists—who were aboard the vessel—were killed,” Hegseth said.
To date, at least 66 people have been killed in 16 strikes on 17 typically small boats. That includes nine vessels attacked in the Caribbean Sea and eight others on the Pacific side of Latin America.
Hegseth claims those in the boats are associated with a “Designated Terrorist Organization,” and that “NO cartel terrorist stands a chance against the American military,” he wrote online Tuesday. However, neither the White House nor the Defense Department has provided public evidence supporting their claims for any of the boat strikes, which the White House last week claimed are exempt from congressional oversight under the 1973 War Powers Resolution.
Panning out: “For Trump, the entire Western hemisphere is America’s,” former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder wrote Tuesday for Politico. “For him, the biggest threats to America today are the immigrants flooding across the country’s borders and the drugs killing tens of thousands from overdoses. And to that end, his real goal is to dominate the entire Western hemisphere — from the North Pole to the South Pole — using America’s superior military and economic power to defeat all ‘enemies,’ both foreign and domestic,” Daalder explained.
Why it matters: “Overall, Trump’s focus on dominating the Western hemisphere represents a profound shift from nearly a century’s-long focus on warding off overseas threats to protect Americans at home,” the former NATO ambassador said. “And like it or not, for Trump, security in the second quarter of the 21st century lies in concepts and ideas first developed in the last quarter of the 19th century.” More, here.
Out in Hawaii, a former Trump acting SecDef said this myopia is degrading America’s ability to deter China. Chris Miller, who ran the Pentagon in the lame-duck months of the first Trump administration, says he expected more from the second, not less. “Where’s the leadership? We spend a trillion dollars a year on national security. We can do more than one thing,” Miller said during a panel at last week’s AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference. He shared the stage with Sean Berg, a former deputy commander of Special Operations Command Pacific, who said China “is already in phase three” of a war while “we still think of ourselves in phase zero: shaping.” Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad has more, here.
Related reading: “One Caribbean Leader Is Going All-Out for Trump Against Venezuela,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday regarding Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Update: SecDef Hegseth’s Friday speech to defense industry leaders at the National War College in Washington is scheduled for 2 p.m. ET.
Admin note: “All media covering the event must be on the credentialed list,” the Pentagon announced in a message to reporters Wednesday. Read more about the Pentagon’s credentialed media list below the fold.
New: Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach was sworn in as the Air Force Chief of Staff this week. The service’s new top uniformed leader had previously led Air Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces.
He told airmen in a brief letter made public on Tuesday that their mission was simple: “to fly and fix so we are ready to fight.” That message mirrors concerns echoed by Congress last month who urged the then-nominee to reverse the decline in aircraft readiness.
Wilsbach also said the Air Force will “advocate relentlessly for programs like the F-47, Collaborative Combat Aircraft as well as nuclear force recapitalization through the Sentinel program and the B-21,” according to the letter. Notably, he did not promise to follow lawmakers’ direction on spending the $150 billion allocated in the reconciliation bill last summer.
Related: “Air Force adopts new grooming standards to align with Hegseth’s vision,” Military Times reported Tuesday.
Coverage continues after the jump…
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson, Thomas Novelly and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2006, and almost three years after his capture, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity committed during his time in office, including the 1982 massacre of 148 people.
National Guard soldiers ordered to Washington, D.C., have had their deployments extended to at least February, CNN reported last Wednesday as a court case over the matter continues to play out pitting the White House against Washington’s attorney general.
Recap: Trump ordered the troops to the nation’s capital in early August, offering false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify the Guard deployment and his takeover of the D.C. police. The deployments—totalling more than 2,300 troops so far, including soldiers from DC, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama—were initially slated to end in November. However, there were indications online suggesting U.S. officials were planning for a longer Guard presence in Washington, as Task & Purpose reported in mid-September. Meanwhile, “Soldiers, who largely have patrolled federal parks and Metro subway stations, have been spotted over recent weeks picking up trash in Washington or being heckled by city residents, including some who have played the ‘Imperial March’ from ‘Star Wars’ at them,” Task & Purpose reported Sunday.
ICYMI: “Trump’s National Guard deployments aren’t random. They were planned years ago,” NPR reported Monday.
AM dispatch from Washington: “National Guard troops patrolling DC made themselves useful this morning: Pushed a dead BMW out of traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue,” former State Department official Brian Finacune wrote on social media Wednesday. He added, “Not obvious to me however that this needed to be a military function.”
After booting nearly all of its professional journalists from the building, Trump’s Pentagon credentialed far-right activist Laura Loomer as a reporter—and she quickly began appealing for tips, which is prohibited according to the Pentagon policy she says she’d signed to obtain the credentials, Phil Stewart of Reuters pointed out in response to Loomer’s announcement on social media Tuesday.
About that updated Pentagon policy: It reads, “An advertisement or social media post by an individual journalist or media outlet that directly targets [Defense Department] personnel to disclose non-public information without proper authorization would constitute a solicitation that could lead to revocation” of press credentials, Stewart flagged.
Perspective: The Pentagon’s policy shop is a “Pigpen-like mess,” Arkansas GOP Sen. Cotton said during a routine nomination hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
Background: Austin Dahmer was ostensibly before the committee to answer questions about how he would tackle the job of assistant secretary for strategy, plans, and forces—a job whose title and responsibilities have changed in ways that the committee was only told about on Sunday night, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports. But because Dahmer has already been performing the duties of another high-level Pentagon official—and because SecDef Hegseth has restricted communication between the department and Congress, requiring every interaction be cleared through legislative affairs—a bipartisan group of senators took the opportunity to grill Dahmer on a host of recent department moves.
Sen. Cotton listed several concerns, including:
- A pause in Ukrainian security assistance;
- The uncoordinated review of the AUKUS agreement;
- Opposition to deploying more U.S. troops to the Middle East during the Iran-Israel war in June;
- The cancellation of a meeting among top Japanese and U.S. officials;
- And the recent cancellation of a rotational Army brigade deployment to Romania.
“I understand that media reports can be wrong, believe me, but it just seems like there’s this Pigpen-like mess coming out of the policy shop that you don’t see from, say, intel and security and acquisition and sustainment,” Cotton said. Asked why the policy undersecretary’s office, led by Elbridge Colby, has been at the center of so many controversies, Dahmer blamed “fake news” and “inaccurate reporting” while claiming ignorance of details. Read the rest, here.
Update: Saudi Arabia moved one step closer to buying 48 F-35 jets after Riyadh’s request recently advanced in the Pentagon’s review process, progressing from the policy shop and now to the secretary level, Reuters reported Tuesday.
Caveat: “[N]o final decision has been made and several more steps are needed before the ultimate nod, including further approvals at the Cabinet level, sign-off from Trump and notification of Congress,” Mike Stone of Reuters writes.
Reminder: The Saudis are Washington’s biggest arms buyer, and have been seeking to purchase F-35s for several years. More, here.
Additional industry reading: “Palantir’s Market Value Skyrocketed. See How Its Revenue Is Still Catching Up,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Trump 2.0
Developing: The ongoing U.S. government shutdown is now the longest in history, passing the prior record set during Trump’s first term. (AP, Axios)
Status report: Lawmakers signal some progress in bipartisan talks to end shutdown, Eric Katz of Government Executive reported Tuesday.
Related reading:
- “Army charity offers grants to soldiers missing SNAP payments,” Task & Purpose reports from Army Emergency Relief, the service’s official nonprofit.
- “Department of Transportation might be forced to shut down some airspace next week: Duffy,” ABC News reports, adding: “Last month, Secretary Sean Duffy said last month that air traffic controllers could be let go if they didn’t show up for work.”
- “Massive fireball erupts as UPS plane crashes at Kentucky airport, leaving at least 9 dead and others missing,” AP reports on Tuesday’s disaster.
- “Threats against public servants increased over 35 times what they were a decade ago, according to new research,” from Nextgov.
- “FBI fires more agents who investigated Trump, then reverses course, sources say,” Reuters reported Monday.
Read the full article here