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Trump rebrands Congressionally-approved troop housing subsidy as ‘warrior dividend’ holiday bonus. During a prime-time TV address, Trump said he was “proud to announce” that “1,450,000 military service members will receive a special, we call ‘warrior dividend,’ before Christmas.”
He added that to honor the nation’s founding, “we are sending every soldier $1,776. Think of that. And the checks are already on the way.”
Fine print: The checks will come from Congressionally-allocated reconciliation funds intended to subsidize housing allowances for service members, a senior administration official confirmed to Defense One’s Thomas Novelly following Trump’s televised remarks. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the Pentagon to “disburse $2.6 billion as a one-time basic allowance for housing supplement” to all eligible service members ranks 0-6 and below, the senior administration official said.
“Congress appropriated $2.9 billion” for the Defense Department “to supplement the Basic Allowance for Housing entitlement within The One Big Beautiful Bill,” the senior official explained. “Approximately 1.28 million active component military members and 174,000 Reserve component military members will receive this supplement.”
The forthcoming entitlement money comes as some service members have struggled amid rapid changes to the housing market, according to a January report from RAND researchers. “BAH is generally adequate for Army personnel, though not necessarily when the housing market is changing rapidly and dramatically, as it has in recent years,” the report said. “Furthermore, while our analysis of housing choices and expenditures among military personnel and of their locational amenities points to an overall positive picture with respect to BAH, a substantial, though minority, share of members report dissatisfaction with BAH.”
Related: Last week, the Defense Department announced 2026 BAH rates, which are set to increase by an average of 4.2 percent on Jan. 1, 2026.
The money comes as some lawmakers have been scrutinizing the Trump administration’s reallocation of military funding. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., issued a report last week highlighting $2 billion diverted away from the Defense Department and Homeland Security Department for border enforcement—including redirecting funds for barracks, maintenance hangers, and elementary schools. Continue reading, here.
American SOF troops want to expand drone and electronic warfare tests inside the U.S., officials told Defense One’s Patrick Tucker this week. The need is urgent, officials from the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, or SWCS, said, because as the war Ukraine illustrates, drones and electronic warfare are soaring in importance.
For a sense of the problem’s scale, U.S. troops say they must learn to operate amid jamming that is far more powerful and ubiquitous than just a few years ago. In Ukraine, this has led to drones controlled by fiber-optic cables or even their own autonomous systems. And some Russian drones use high-powered (and often illicitly acquired) chips to pick out targets based on things like shape and size, reducing their dependence on jammable communications or navigation systems.
However, it is difficult to train for this future on U.S. soil, where civil authorities heavily restrict the use of GPS jammers and other electronic warfare weapons, Tucker writes.
“If this is the future of warfare, then we need to collaboratively find a way to carve out airspace in order to employ these systems,” Lt. Col. Nicholas Caputo, commander of the 6th Battalion, 2nd Special Warfare Training Group, told Defense One. He said the center has submitted the paperwork to get the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, and other relevant agencies to increase the number of places where such training could occur, at least temporarily. He hopes to see some of those efforts come to fruition within a year. Read more, here.
Additional reading: “Government admits failures by Army and air traffic controllers in DCA crash,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
New: The Pentagon announced eight pending arms sales to Taiwan totalling around $11 billion on Wednesday. The deals involve Javelin, Harpoon and TOW missile systems, $4 billion in HIMARS weapons, another $4 billion in howitzers, more than a billion dollars for Anduril loitering munitions, and an assortment of helicopter services and network support, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced in a stream of releases Wednesday. Lawmakers could object to the arrangements, though that is unlikely.
Altogether, the sales amount to “the largest ever U.S. weapons package for the island which is under increasing military pressure from China,” Reuters reports. “The announcement followed an unannounced trip by Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung to the Washington area last week to meet U.S. officials,” the wire service adds.
In related developments for Taiwan, the Senate advanced the latest U.S. defense policy bill Wednesday, which includes $1 billion for Taiwan’s security in 2026. That bill already passed the House, and now heads to the White House for the president’s signature.
Drone cooperation coming soon: The National Defense Authorization Act also contains a provision to “enable fielding of uncrewed and anti-uncrewed systems capabilities” for Taiwan by March. George Mason University’s Taiwan Security Monitor has details, here; and Defense Scoop has a bit more, here.
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 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 1944, the Supreme Court upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1942 executive order to incarcerate about 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, in internment camps—despite a secret report from the Office of Naval Intelligence stating it had no evidence Americans with Japanese ancestry were spying for Japan. The 1944 decision was overruled 74 years later in 2018 when Chief Justice John Roberts said that it was “gravely wrong the day it was decided,” that it “has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—‘has no place in law under the Constitution.’”
Trump 2.0
Venezuela’s navy begins escorting tankers amid Trump’s partial blockade. On Tuesday, the U.S. president announced that U.S. forces would stop oil tankers that have been sanctioned for illegal international trade heading to or from Venezuelan ports. The following day, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro ordered the country’s navy to escort at least some tankers: “Several ships sailed from Venezuela toward Asia with a Venezuelan naval escort between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, said three people familiar with the transits. None of the commercial vessels are on the list of sanctioned tankers the United States is threatening to target,” the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Still, the move “increased the likelihood of a violent conflict,” the Times wrote, against the backdrop of Trump’s naval buildup in the Caribbean and the recent revelation by his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, that “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle.”
White House rhetoric on Venezuela echoes Bush officials’ pre-invasion talk. Writers at Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” compare clips of Bush officials talking ahead of the 2003 Iraq invasion with recent comments by White House officials, including President Trump, and Republican lawmakers such as Lindsey Graham. In several instances, the rhetoric is eerily similar. View the compilation on the show’s YouTube channel, here.
Additional reading:
Conflicts to watch in 2026: Venezuela jumped atop the list of the Council on Foreign Relations’ annual Preventive Priorities Survey, where hundreds of foreign policy experts rank which potential and ongoing topics are most likely to occur in the new year and how they affect U.S. interests. “By far the most prominent new addition is the possibility of direct U.S. military action against Venezuela, which was ranked as a high-likelihood, high-impact contingency,” CFR’s Paul Stares writes in the new report.
Israel is involved in two out of five of the highest-tier conflicts, representing a high likelihood of occurring as well as a high chance of impacting U.S. interests. Those concern probable clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians in the West Bank as well as fighting in the Gaza Strip and the war in Gaza. In addition to Venezuela, Russia’s war in Ukraine and “heightened political antagonism and domestic security deployments” inside the U.S. round out the most volatile and concerning sector in CFR’s survey matrix.
Panning out, “the number of armed conflicts is now at its highest since the end of World War II,” and “An increasing proportion of those, moreover, are interstate conflicts, reversing a post–Cold War trend,” Stares says.
But in a notable change, “For the first time, the possibility of widespread conflict in Afghanistan did not appear…though the risk of further cross-border clashes with Pakistan was included,” according to the rankings.
Stay tuned for more: We’ll be speaking with Stares for our final Defense One Radio episode of the year later this week. In the meantime, you can read the full report on CFR’s site, here.
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22 Comments
The $2.6 billion disbursement for a one-time basic allowance for housing supplement to all eligible service members ranks 0-6 and below is a significant move, but how will it affect the overall budget for the Defense Department?
It’s worth noting that the $2.9 billion allocated by Congress for this purpose is part of a larger bill, and we should consider the long-term implications of this expenditure.
The comparison to the war in Ukraine, where drones and electronic warfare have become increasingly important, underscores the need for the U.S. military to stay ahead of the curve in terms of technology and training.
The fact that the supplement is funded by Congressionally-allocated reconciliation funds intended to subsidize housing allowances for service members raises questions about the sustainability of this support in the long term.
I’m supportive of the effort to provide additional housing support to service members, but more needs to be done to address the root causes of the housing market challenges they face.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. John Garamendi’s report on the $2 billion diverted away from the Defense Department and Homeland Security Department for border enforcement raises important questions about the prioritization of military funding.
The fact that approximately 1.28 million active component military members and 174,000 Reserve component military members will receive this supplement is a significant development, but what about those above rank 0-6 – will they be left out?
According to the article, the supplement is specifically for ranks 0-6 and below, but it’s unclear why those above this rank are not included.
The $1,776 amount sent to every soldier is a symbolic gesture, referencing the nation’s founding, but what about the actual value of this amount in terms of supporting service members’ housing needs?
I’m concerned that the rebranding of the housing subsidy as a ‘warrior dividend’ may create unrealistic expectations among service members about future support – what are the potential consequences of this move?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s direction to disburse the $2.6 billion as a one-time basic allowance for housing supplement is a significant move, but how will it be implemented and what are the expected outcomes?
The expansion of drone and electronic warfare tests inside the U.S. is a crucial development, especially given the urgent need for SOF troops to operate effectively in environments with powerful and ubiquitous jamming.
I’m curious about the potential impact of the ‘warrior dividend’ on morale among service members – will it be seen as a genuine gesture of appreciation or a political stunt?
It’s likely that opinions will be divided, but the fact that the checks are already on the way may help to boost morale in the short term.
The senior administration official’s explanation that the $2.9 billion allocated by Congress is part of a larger bill provides some context, but more information is needed about the overall budget and how this expenditure fits into it.
The article mentions that some service members have struggled amid rapid changes to the housing market – what support systems are in place to help those who may not be adequately covered by the BAH supplement?
The 4.2 percent increase in 2026 BAH rates is a step in the right direction, but will it be enough to keep up with the rapidly changing housing market, especially for those serving in areas with high costs of living?
The RAND report’s finding that BAH is generally adequate for Army personnel, but not necessarily when the housing market is changing rapidly, highlights the need for more flexible and adaptive housing support systems.
The article raises important questions about the allocation of military funding and the prioritization of different initiatives – what are the potential consequences of diverting funds away from certain areas, such as border enforcement?
The need for American SOF troops to expand drone and electronic warfare tests inside the U.S. highlights the importance of investing in military technology and training to stay ahead of emerging threats.
The 1,450,000 military service members who will receive the ‘warrior dividend’ is a significant number, but what about the potential impact on the broader military community and the message it sends about the value of service?
I’m skeptical about the rebranding of the housing subsidy as a ‘warrior dividend’ holiday bonus, as it seems like a political move rather than a genuine attempt to support service members.