Braxton Taylor
Find things to cut, lawmakers tell DOD ahead of budget season. House Armed Services Committee leaders have asked the services to list “obsolete programs that don’t enhance our deterrence,” according to letters sent Friday to the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Space Force.
The goal: “We are committed to eliminating waste, reforming our acquisition processes, and ensuring each dollar within the defense budget is spent wisely,” Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Alabama) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Washington) wrote in their five letters.
The gist: “We ask that you work within your service to identify infrastructure, programs, or processes which are no longer relevant to National Defense Strategy or are not producing the intended effects,” Rogers and Smith said. That includes “infrastructure, weapon systems, programs, or processes that are no longer a priority…and could be divested, right sized, or made more efficient.”
And the initial lists must be submitted by March 1, which is not a lot of time—but it leaves plenty to talk about as the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act is drafted by lawmakers in both the House and the Senate.
Developing: 8% cuts on offer? According to Bloomberg, “A memo is being drafted for [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] that would direct the service branches — the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Space Force — as well as civilian agencies, to propose 8% cuts to their spending estimates for fiscal year 2026 and several years after,” Tony Capaccio reported Friday. The idea would be to “shift those dollars toward still-undefined Pentagon priorities favored by the Trump administration.” More behind the paywall, here.
DOGE at DOD? “Great kickoff with @DeptofDefense,” the White House’s headcount-slashing office tweeted on Friday.
Some Pentagon insiders and observers said DOGE’s hasty and invasive methods “could expose critical national-security data, endanger personnel, and create unprecedented conflicts of interest,” Defense One’s Patrick Tucker wrote on Friday. Earlier in the week, Hegseth said he looked forward to “welcoming” the DOGE team to the Pentagon “very soon.” The SecDef said the outside team may be able to help the Pentagon streamline “the way we acquire weapon systems.” But he suggested that he would limit their cuts: “We’re not going to do things that are to the detriment of American operational or tactical capabilities.” More, here.
Speaking of Hegseth, he wrote on social media Monday that he apparently owes more than $33,000 in back taxes. Trump’s Pentagon chief seemed to blame “the outgoing Biden IRS” for what he said was a “total sham” of an audit.
And speaking of social media, the U.S. Army is tweeting to get the president and Elon Musk’s attention, even though Musk is nowhere in the chain of command.
Related reading:
Welcome to this Tuesday 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 and Meghann Myers. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1930, Elm Farm Ollie, aka “Nellie Jay,” became the first cow to fly in an airplane.
U.S. Marines have finally begun leaving Japan, “two decades behind the original schedule,” the New York Times reported Tuesday from Okinawa. The bit-by-bit departure began shortly before Christmas, with “a contingent of 105 U.S. Marines who would have been sent to Okinawa [but] were redirected to a new base on the United States territory of Guam instead.”
About 20,000 Marines are based on the island, which hosts 11 U.S. military bases or training sites. Four of those, in southern Okinawa, are to be handed over to the Japanese eventually.
This move is “the result of negotiations and renegotiations going back to 1995, when three U.S. servicemen raped an Okinawan schoolgirl,” the Times reminds readers. Officials from both countries finally reached an agreement on the matter 12 years ago; that’s how long it’s taken to get the first contingent of Marines out.
The big problem, of course: China’s increasingly aggressive navy in and around the Pacific. That’s a big part of why “Japan is not rushing to complete the relocation,” the Times reports. Meanwhile, “the Marines have made no secret of their reluctance to reduce their forces, and decline to provide a timetable.”
After all, should they leave and a war in the region breaks out, U.S. “infantry in Guam would likely have to fight their way back to Japan against a foe who can challenge American air and sea superiority,” a retired three-star Marine general explained. Read on, here.
The U.S. flew two B-52s to the Middle East from their bases in the UK, U.S. defense officials at Central Command announced Tuesday. Missions of this sort are often viewed at least partially as a message to Iran. This time, the B-52s carried out “aerial refueling and live munitions drops at ranges in several partner nations,” CENTCOM said.
U.S. forces say they killed a top al-Qaeda official with an airstrike in northwestern Syria on Saturday. The alleged terrorist was not named in the Sunday press release; but CENTCOM referred to them as “a senior finance and logistics official in the terrorist organization Hurras al-Din (HaD), an Al-Qaeda affiliate.”
And U.S.-partnered Iraqi forces killed five suspected ISIS fighters in an airstrike last Wednesday near the west-central town of Rawa, Iraq. “An initial post-strike clearance confirmed the dead ISIS operatives, various medium and small caliber weapons, grenades, suicide explosive belts, and ammunition,” CENTCOM said in a statement Saturday. More, here.
Developing: Syrian forces allegedly captured a senior ISIS commander in a raid assisted by U.S. intelligence late last week. The commander is named Abu al-Harith al-Iraqi, and he’s plotted several attacks including one in Damascus last month that was allegedly thwarted thanks to U.S. intelligence, Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute wrote on social media Saturday.
Worth noting: “ISIS ops in Syria have plunged to all-time lows since Assad fell [in early December], as much of the group’s manpower was shifted to Iraq,” Lister wrote. “Why? The advantageous vacuum & recruitment dynamic under Assad vanished on Dec 8 & ISIS always accused HTS of working with the US.”
Lister said Syria’s HTS-led transition in Damascus is in constant contact with the U.S. military in northeast Syria. “I was told communication occurs ‘daily’, as they deconflict & coordinate” the ongoing regional campaign against ISIS, Lister added.
New: The C.I.A. is flying drones to spy on possible drug cartel activity inside Mexico, the New York Times and CNN reported Tuesday. The agency is reportedly looking for fentanyl labs, which “emit chemicals that make them easy to find from the air.”
The U.S. military’s Northern Command is conducting surveillance flights along the U.S.-Mexico border, too. And that activity includes U-2s, RC-135 Rivet Joints, P-8s and drones, officials said. “But the U.S. military, unlike the spy agency, is not entering Mexican airspace,” the Times reports.
And in case you were curious: “Conducting an airstrike on fentanyl labs would probably cause catastrophic fatalities, as they are often inside homes in urban areas,” someone familiar with the U.S. program said. Read on, here.
Additional reading: “Former Fort Carson Iraq war veteran gives up the fight to stay in the US,” the Denver Gazette reported last week.
Around the world
U.S., Russia warm relations in Riyadh meeting. A four-hour meeting on Tuesday— “the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in more than three years”—produced an agreement to establish teams to work on a Ukraine agreement and to set terms for a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the New York Times reports.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio pronounced himself excited to explore “the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians,” geopolitically and economically.
NYT: “The meeting was the latest striking swerve by the Trump administration in abandoning Western efforts to isolate Russia. Since Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States and its Western allies had moved vigorously to punish Russia for causing Europe’s most destructive war in generations. Instead, the talks on Tuesday showed that Mr. Trump was eager to work with Russia to end the war — an approach that would most likely fulfill many of Mr. Putin’s demands — and that he was prepared to cast aside the worries of American allies in Europe.”
Those worries were not soothed by U.S. speeches at the recent Munich Security Conference, where Vice President JD Vance accused European governments of being bigger threats to their own populaces than Russia, citing the annulment of the first round of the 2024 Romanian presidential election in response to Russian influence campaigns. Watch the speech or read a transcript, here.
A fact check of Vance’s speech by Germany’s Deutsche Welle noted three “misleading” assertions.
WaPo’s David Ignatius: “Vice President JD Vance bizarrely used the gathering to harangue Europe and insult his German hosts. His remarks offended even some of his fellow Republicans, and Germany Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was heard saying during the speech, ‘This is unacceptable.’”
And don’t miss: “China says US has ‘gravely backpedaled’ on Taiwan,” the Associated Press reported Monday from Beijing.
Trump-Musk reform, cont.
Nuclear-stockpile workers fired, some rehired. The Trump administration spent the long weekend scrambling to rehire National Nuclear Safety Administration employees that they fired, apparently unaware that the agency oversees the country’s nuclear-weapons stockpile, CNN reports. On Friday, NNSA sources told several media outlets that 300 to 350 employees were being fired as part of the Trump administration’s hasty—the Washington Post calls it “messy”—effort to reduce federal headcount. An NNSA spokesperson later disputed this, saying just 50 people had been fired.
All but 25 employees have been rehired, agency sources told CNN on Monday, though it is unclear how many will report to work this week. More, here.
And lastly: Raytheon’s Stinger missile replacement system hits development milestone. One of two developers of the Army’s next-generation short-range interceptor program has completed 10 subsystem demonstrations on a replacement for the Stinger surface-to-air missile. Raytheon tested the command launch assembly, the missile warhead assembly and other components, according to a Monday release. The Army expects to finish development in 2028.
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