The U.S. Air Force wants to retire the rest of its A-10s in 2026, which would be years ahead of its planned retirement, the service announced in its recent budget rollout. The venerable plane was used for decades in the Middle East, providing close air support for troops, but the service wants to get rid of its remaining Warthogs to fund next-gen tech, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports.
As before, however, congress has been hesitant to let go of the A-10s, pointing to the service’s dwindling fighter fleet. The service wants to retire 340 aircraft, 162 of which are A-10s, while only requesting to buy 45 fighter aircraft. Read more about the new request, here.
The Pentagon’s full budget request is heavily investing in AI and drones, but it will need to change the way it buys new tech, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Monday. Some industry execs are hopeful that the DOD is moving towards a new way of investing in tech, and will start to de-emphasize formal programs of record and requirements, Chris Brose, the president and chief strategy officer for Anduril, said at the Defense One Tech Summit Thursday.
“I think you can begin to create programs that look more like markets where the government is actually going out to industry more regularly, every two to three years, for example,” Brose said. Read more, here.
Also: The Space Development Agency launched its first satellite that will test tactical satellite communications, the agency’s head said at our Thursday Tech Summit. The satellites will test some of the capabilities for SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a constellation of hundreds of military satellites in low-Earth orbit. SDA, an innovation arm of the Space Force, uses spiral development to blow past typical DOD acquisition timelines.
It took the agency between 30 to 40 months from ordering Tranche 0 sats to putting them on orbit, SDA director Derek Tournear said, while comparable DOD acquisitions take closer to eight years. Read more, here.
New: The Senate confirmed new leaders for Europe and the Middle East. Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich will take the helm of U.S. European Command and lead NATO forces as Supreme Allied Commander. Grynkewich was serving as the Joint Staff’s director of operations, and before that led Air Forces Central. And, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper will head U.S. Central Command after serving as the deputy commander since February 2024. Cooper previously served as the commander of Naval Forces CENTCOM.
Developing: The Army might axe General Dynamics’ oversight of three new 155mm artillery round production lines, Breaking Defense reported. The Army has been trying to increase 155mm production since the war in Ukraine began and tasked General Dynamics to run a new government-owned facility in Texas. “That work, though, has not gone smoothly, and the service is now ‘considering terminating’ the GD deals for all three UPLA lines,” since the company has failed to meet “significant milestones,” the Army said. The report doesn’t bode well for the Army’s 155mm production goals. More, here.
And in some industry news: Boeing officially made its interim defense CEO Steve Parker permanent, the company announced Tuesday. Parker has been operating in an interim role since former defense CEO Ted Colbert was pushed out in September. Parker will lead the company’s massive defense arm as it tries to turn the bend on a number of stubborn fixed-price contracts and deliver the Air Force’s sixth-gen F-47 fighter jet. The announcement comes a day after the company said that Jay Malave, Lockheed’s former chief financial officer, will become Boeing’s new CFO.
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 Audrey Decker. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1867, Canada was declared a self-governing dominion of Great Britain in an event celebrated as Canada Day.
Trump 2.0
Today President Trump is visiting a detention center for migrants his administration is building in the Florida Everglades. Homeland Security officials have called it “Alligator Alcatraz” because it’s located at the edge of the state’s Big Cypress swamp, but critics counter that the facility could reasonably be referred to as a “concentration camp.”
The cruelty is the point: “Ahead of Trump’s Florida visit, the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday shared a digitally altered image of alligators wearing ICE caps,” the Washington Post reports. And “The Florida Republican Party is selling gator-themed clothing and beer koozies,” according to Reuters. “You know snakes are fast, but alligators,” Trump told reporters Monday, “we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, OK? If they escape prison, how to run away. Don’t run in a straight line,” he said. (WaPo notes that “Experts have debunked this advice and do recommend running away from alligators in a straight line.”)
Trump will be joined at Tuesday’s opening ceremony by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The facilities are located about 40 miles west of Miami at the formerly-abandoned Dade Collier Training and Transition Airport.
Why now? “The numbers in federal immigration detention have risen sharply to 56,000 by June 15, from 39,000 when Trump took office, government data show, and his administration has pushed to find more space,” Reuters reports. The new facility, however, is expected to hold 5,000 people at a cost of about $450 annually. At least some of that money is expected to come from FEMA funds, The Daily Beast reported last week.
“This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt boasted to reporters Monday. “There is only one road leading in” and “the only way out is a one-way flight,” she added. The Associated Press has more.
Update: Trump’s cuts to USAID could result in more than 14 million additional deaths worldwide in the next five years, according to new research published Monday in The Lancet medical journal. That includes a more than 80% reduction in USAID programs since Trump took office with plans to significantly reduce the size of the federal government.
Findings: From the years 2000 to 2021, “USAID funding was associated with a 65% reduction in mortality from HIV/AIDS (representing 25·5 million deaths), 51% from malaria (8·0 million deaths), and 50% from neglected tropical diseases (8·9 million deaths),” the researchers observed. Additional improvements were recorded for patients suffering from “tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal conditions.” Taken together, the data suggests the Trump administration’s “current steep funding cuts [to USAID] could result in more than 14,051,750 (uncertainty interval 8,475,990–19,662,191) additional all-age deaths, including 4,537,157 (3,124,796–5,910,791) in children younger than age 5 years, by 2030.”
Why it matters: “USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades,” the researchers write in Lancet. “Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.”
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Russia just jailed a former defense official for 13 years on corruption charges. His name is Timur Ivanov, 49, and he was a general and deputy defense minister who “oversaw property management, housing and medical support for the military, as well as construction projects,” AP reports. He’s accused of embezzling about $50 million and of taking a $15 million bribe, charges his lawyers said they would attempt to appeal.
Ivanov once managed construction at Russia’s Patriot Park, aka “military Disneyland.” “Another former deputy defense minister, Pavel Popov, also was arrested and accused of pilfering state funds allocated for the park in order to build himself a country estate,” AP adds.
Worth noting: “The arrest of Mr. Ivanov, and other defense officials after him, signaled a turning point in the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine,” the New York Times reports. “Coming at a moment of rising costs and increasing criticism from supporters of the war over the distribution of frontline resources, the moves were seen as an effort by Mr. Putin to put the war effort on more economically sustainable footing after more than two years of fighting.”
Russian drones are so dense now in Ukraine, that some town officials are stretching nets over the roads simply so ordinary people can travel from place to place in the hopes of some semblance of normalcy, the New York Times reports in a feature from eastern Ukrainian cities like Vuhledar.
Frontline POV: “To avoid detection by drones, soldiers on the front conceal their weapons under camouflage nets and dig trenches. Just before firing, they pull back the concealing tarps and camouflage nets. In this way the positions are visible only when weapons are fired.” Read more (gift link), here.
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