More than 60K defense civilians have left under Hegseth—but officials won’t discuss the effects. Nine months into the second Trump administration, the Defense Department has
shed more than 60,000 employees, or about 7.6 percent of the department’s civilian workforce, comfortably reaching the
5- to 8-percent goal Secretary Pete Hegseth set in March,
Defense One reported exclusively.
But officials declined to answer nearly every other question, leaving it hard to judge how the effort to cut payroll and redirect resources is going. Multiple officials refused to talk about various problems caused by the sweeping cuts and policy changes Hegseth ordered just weeks into his job. They also declined to comment on criticism by current and former employees who say the changes were ill-planned and have hurt productivity and morale among the country’s largest national-security workforce. Defense One’s Meghann Myers walks us through the various policy changes, and what we don’t know about their results, here.
China, China, Chi—wait, what? Air Force mulls next steps amid homeland focus. After years in which the “pacing threat” drove decisions on everything from weapons to force structure, Air Force leaders are working out how to adjust to the Trump administration’s focus on hemispheric and homeland defense.
SecAF: We’re already there. “Homeland defense pretty much captures all threats,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told reporters Monday at the AFA conference outside Washington, D.C. “Pretty much covers everything in the systems that we need to do.”
Experts and formers aren’t convinced. "All of the services, including the Air Force, are missing the clear strategic guidance needed to make essential prioritization decisions as they reach the end game of the budget process and try to chart an organizational path forward,” one former defense official said. Defense One’s Thomas Novelly has more, here.
Why is Hegseth gathering almost all of America’s generals and admirals in one place on Tuesday? The Washington Post first reported the meeting Thursday. Many other outlets later confirmed the order, which instructs U.S. military officials from around the world to convene at Quantico, Va., on the last day of the fiscal year—and mere hours ahead of a potential government shutdown. The order says one-stars and up must attend, “within operational constraints,” and exempts flag officers in staff jobs.
No one yet knows why so many top officials must convene at a single location when numerous secure alternatives exist. The online rumor mill is already active, and so are the jokes—e.g., from users on Reddit. American historian Tim Snyder offered up four possibilities for such a meeting, including a possible attempt to “stage a purge, perhaps involving a loyalty oath.”
“It's probably more mundane than people think,” one U.S. official told Reuters, and admitted, “the lack of clarity isn't helping.”
For what it’s worth: the SecDef hasn’t held a press conference in three months. And the last time he did, he berated reporters for having doubts about the impact of U.S. military strikes on Iran.
Hegseth and his press team “have held fewer than ten on-the-record briefings” compared to 34 during the first 100 days of President Biden’s tenure, according to The Hill and CBS News.
SecDef: “Transparency doesn't happen on its own, and this will be the most transparent administration ever,” Hegseth vowed in February on social media.
Related listening: “Without a press corps, who holds the Pentagon to account?” asks NPR’s new podcast Sources & Methods. Find that Thursday episode, here.
More after the jump…
Welcome to this Friday 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 1983, nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was narrowly averted thanks to the caution of Russian air force officer Stanislav Petrov.
Air Force’s AI ambitions require simplifying its network tangle. The service’s PEO for battle networks has teams working on ways to reduce “however many disparate systems are out there today into some rational number of end-to-end capabilities” within the next year. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports from AFA, here.
Trump’s intelligence chief has cancelled publication of a “global threats” report issued publicly every four years going back to 1997, the New York Times reported Friday—about a month after the associated office was quietly eliminated. “Past editions [of the report] warned of threats and shifts that came to pass, including climate change challenges, new immigration patterns and the risk of a pandemic.”
But the report has now “become politically inconvenient” for the Trump administration, former officials told the Times, which noted, “like so much in the Trump administration, what was once considered apolitical is now labeled political.” Part of a pattern: “The Trump administration has dismantled a number of national security groups looking at long-term trends,” the Times notes. That includes the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, “which had helped senior leaders think about the future of war, [but] was shut down in March.” More, here.
Additional reading:
Europe
New: European nations have reportedly told Moscow they’re prepared to shoot down Russian jets entering their airspace, officials told Bloomberg Thursday following a meeting this week between Russian, British, French and German envoys.
Mapped: Axios illustrated the eastern European nations whose airspace has been confirmed or suspected to have been violated by Russian aircraft this calendar year. According to analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, “Russia is deliberately gauging NATO’s capabilities and reactions to various air incursions.”
Kremlin reax: “I don’t even want to talk about this, because it’s a very irresponsible statement,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov reportedly said, according to state-run Tass news agency.
The view from Copenhagen: “We are at the beginning of a hybrid war against Europe,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in a national address Thursday. “There is primarily one country that poses a threat to Europe's security, and that is Russia,” she said.
“This means that the defense and police will be more present with anti-drone capabilities around critical infrastructure in the coming time,” Frederiksen promised.
“That is why we are expanding the European defense industry, and that is why we are building up the defense industry in Denmark,” the prime minister said, and stressed, “The events of recent days emphasize how important this is.”
For your ears only: Get a better handle on the European Union’s ambitious new goals for its defense industrial base and how U.S. companies could play a role following our podcast discussion Thursday with EU Ambassador to the U.S., Jovita Neliupšienė. She reviewed the EU’s “Readiness 2030” defense plans, and shared a few details from her own history growing up in Lithuania under the Soviet Union. Find that episode on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Related reading:
Revealed: Russia is training the Chinese military to air-drop armoured vehicles in preparation to seize Taiwan, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Jack Watling wrote Friday in a new report for the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
“According to contracts and correspondence obtained by the Black Moon hacktivist group, Russia agreed in 2023 to supply the PLA with a complete set of weapons and equipment to equip an airborne battalion, as well as other special equipment necessary for airborne infiltration of special forces, along with a full cycle of training for operators and technical personnel to use this equipment,” Danylyuk and Watling write.
Why it matters: Beaches in Taiwan that are “suitable for landing are limited, known, and dispersed. The runways and ports on the island could be invaluable for reinforcing the lodgement but denying these facilities would likely be a priority task for Taiwanese forces.” But “The capacity to airdrop armour vehicles on golf courses, or other areas of open and firm ground near Taiwan’s ports and airfields, would allow air assault troops to significantly increase their combat power and threaten seizure of these facilities to clear a path for the landing of follow-on forces.”
Also: “[A]n attempt to seize Taiwan would likely see fighting erupt throughout the South China Sea, creating a requirement for the PLA to project combat power further afield,” the authors warn. “In the initial phases of war air manoeuvre could allow the PLA to move airborne forces with organic firepower and mobility to critical terrain beyond Taiwan.” Read the rest of the report, here.
Middle East
Most officials and diplomats at the UN General Assembly walked out when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium Friday in New York. The walk-out reflected Israel’s growing isolation from the global community as it continues pressing its war on Gaza, which has reportedly killed more than 65,000 people and caused more than 200,000 casualties for Palestinians in the area, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and a former Israeli military commander.
Related reading:
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