Breaking: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just “ordered hundreds of the U.S. military’s generals and admirals to gather on short notice” next Tuesday at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
No reason was given for the rare and urgent meeting, which is scheduled “as a government shutdown looms,” the Post reminds readers ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline, which is Tuesday.
The order “applies to all senior officers with the rank of brigadier general or above, or their Navy equivalent, serving in command positions and their top enlisted advisers,” five Post journalists report. Officers with those ranks in staff positions are exempted.
The meeting appears to be unprecedented. “All of it is weird,” one U.S. official said, and asked, “Are we taking every general and flag officer out of the Pacific right now?” Read the rest (gift link), here.
Air Force special operators are preparing for missions in the Caribbean, the leader of Air Force Special Operations Command said Wednesday. While Lt. Gen. Michael Conley declined to specifically disclose if they are supporting operations related to Venezuela—off whose coast the U.S. military has sunk alleged drugrunning boats in recent weeks—he told reporters that his airmen have strike, surveillance, and mobility assets that “any combatant commander would love.”
“We are doing things that you’d expect out of special operations, just in the sense that we need to be ready to go,” Conley said during a media roundtable at the Air & Space Force Association’s Air, Space, and Cyber Conference. Defense One’s Tom Novelly reports, here.
Update: The Navy’s guided-missile destroyer USS Stockdale is now in the Caribbean Sea to support President Trump’s war on drug cartels, Military Times reported Wednesday. U.S. Naval Institute News first reported the apparent development Monday, after Stockdale made a port stop in Panama this weekend.
The ship joins seven other Navy vessels in the region: the USS Jason Dunham, USS Gravely, USS Iwo Jima, USS Fort Lauderdale, USS San Antonio, USS Lake Erie and USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul. One nuclear-powered attack submarine is also reportedly in the vicinity, according to the New York Times.
Four Russian military aircraft flew inside the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone before they were intercepted by a U.S. entourage Wednesday, officials at North American Aerospace Defense Command announced shortly afterward.
Involved: Two Tu-95s and two Su-35s, which were met by an E-3, four F-16s, and four KC-135 tankers during the intercept.
To be clear, “The Russian military aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace,” NORAD said, and noted, “This Russian activity in the Alaskan ADIZ occurs regularly and is not seen as a threat.”
Update on Kirk-related suspensions across the military: More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have now been suspended as investigations into troops’ social media posts about the death of far-right activist Charlie Kirk proceed, Carla Babb reported Wednesday for Military Times.
“These numbers are subject to change as commands review social media activity and take appropriate action,” an Army spokeswoman said. The Marines and Coast Guard have also relieved or identified a service member for allegedly inappropriate social media posting.
Related reading: “Black church leaders reject Charlie Kirk martyrdom and point to his race rhetoric,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
For your ears only: We unpacked highlights from this week’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference hosted annually by the Air and Space Forces Association. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams and Tom Novelly shared their findings as well as insight into their reporting this week from conference grounds at the National Harbor in Maryland. Catch that on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with 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 1906, Spanish engineer and early robotics pioneer Leonardo Torres Quevedo demonstrated how to maneuver a boat more than a mile off the shore using remote control. He later sought to apply his findings to the new field of torpedoes, but was denied by the Spanish government.
Around Europe
Inside NATO’s response to Russia’s violation of Estonian air space. “Just minutes after NATO radars detected three Russian MiG-31 aircraft with transponders turned off heading toward the Estonian border on Friday, alarms sounded at this wooded air base about 40 minutes outside Tallinn. Italian airmen scrambled to their F-35s to intercept the Russian jets, taking over for Finnish aircraft that were already aloft. Twelve minutes later, the Italians escorted the MiGs out of Estonian airspace toward Kaliningrad,” reports Defense One’s Patrick Tucker from Ämari Aiur Base in Estonia.
Col. Gaetano Farina, commander of Italy’s Air 32nd Wing, told reporters Wednesday that the incident was more significant than his unit’s similar interception in August, but he described the scene as orderly. “There is training that we do almost every day,” he said, calling the response “very professional.” The Russian pilots, too, seemed unperturbed and even waved at the Italians from their cockpits, he said.
But the violation raised alarm well beyond the Baltics, and Tucker wraps up the ongoing fallout, here.
New: Drones closed Danish airports and disrupted operations at military bases earlier today, officials said. Danish authorities decided not to shoot at the drones for safety reasons, so their origins remain unproven.
But Russia is the main suspect. “It certainly does not look like a coincidence. It looks systematic. This is what I would define as a hybrid attack,” Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told reporters.
Reuters: “Denmark has not yet decided whether to invoke NATO’s Article 4, which allows members to request consultations over any security concerns, Poulsen said. Poland invoked the article after downing the drones, as did Estonia after Russian military jets violated its airspace for 12 minutes on September 19.” More, here.
China is helping a sanctioned Russian dronemaker, Reuters reports, citing two European security officials and documents. “Chinese drone experts have flown to Russia to conduct technical development work on military drones at a state-owned weapons manufacturer that is under Western sanctions,” the wire service reports, here.
Related: “Every Nation Wants to Copy Iran’s Deadly Shahed Drone,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New: Russia is using AI-enabled drones in Ukraine. Former Ukrainian Command-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi said in an interview this week that Russian drones with artificial intelligence is presenting a new threat for Ukraine, whose “forces cannot suppress such drones because these drones do not rely on radio frequencies,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War write in their latest battlefield assessment.
Status check: “Putin remains uninterested in good faith negotiations that require compromises and is instead making the same demands of Ukraine and the West as he did in late 2021 and February 2022,” ISW analysts warned in a big-picture consideration.
Related reading: “Europe is at war with Russia, whether it likes it or not,” Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, writes in an op-ed for Politico Thursday.
And lastly: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is visiting the White House today in part to discuss potential F-35 sales, Reuters reports. It’s Erdogan’s first visit in nearly six years, after the U.S. sanctioned Turkey after it bought Russian S-400 missile defense systems. That purchase shut off Ankara from its desired acquisition of the F-35, which is an aircraft that had used some parts made in Turkey.
Erdogan is also looking to buy 40 F-16 jets from the U.S., in addition to 40 Eurofighter Typhoons, which is a joint production from Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo.
Additional reading: “Russia Delivers MiG-29 Jets to Iran Air Force,” Newsweek reported Wednesday.
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