The D Brief: Expect an $833B topline, CR; Right-wing dupes assist Russian election-meddling; Space Force’s next sensors; Obesity up in DOD; And a bit more.
Developing: U.S. lawmakers will likely settle on a $833 billion defense spending topline for fiscal 2025…but it won’t be on time, and so lawmakers are already preparing for a budget extension, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday.
That means the budget won’t be passed before the start of the new fiscal year, which is Oct. 1, so Congress will temporarily fund the Defense Department at 2024 levels for an as-yet-undetermined time. And since this is an election year, lawmakers could decide to delay their final decisions on 2025 spending until a new Congress has taken office in January, Wittman said at a Defense News event.
“It looks like there’s going to be another continuing resolution that will come up next week, probably the middle of next week. The debate has been: how long should that CR go?” Wittman said. Military officials regularly bemoan the costs of a continuing resolution, a relic of GOP-led sequestration of the Obama era. Continuing resolutions wind up costing the military billions in buying power, often preventing the services from starting new initiatives.
Despite many differences, and whether it happens in the 118th Congress or 119th, Wittman said lawmakers will settle on $833 billion for the topline, which falls in line with the requirements of last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act. The Pentagon “should be able to do most of the things that it needs to do with that number. I think that’s the number you’re actually going to have to live with,” said Wittman. But he also said lawmakers might consider adding more funding later in fiscal 2025. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has more, here.
With the U.S. election just two months away, a bipartisan congressional delegation just returned from a trip to eastern Europe. Reps. Adam Smith of Washington and Mike Rogers from Alabama, the top Democrat and Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, joined Reps. Dale Strong of Alabama and New York’s Ritchie Torres as well as Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and North Carolina’s Ted Budd on the journey, which took them to NATO members Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
“As we continue to support Ukraine in its fight for freedom, we must also ensure that our Baltic allies remain well-equipped and ready to meet any challenge,” Kelly said in a statement.
“The timing of this delegation was critical to have candid exchanges with our NATO allies and learn what more we can and should do together with our partners and allies in the months ahead to enhance security and stability in the region,” Smith said.
“These nations have demonstrated their firm commitment to bolstering their own defenses as well as helping Ukraine win,” said Rogers in his own statement. “Helping Ukraine win is crucial to deter Putin, XI, and our adversaries from future aggression,” added Rogers, who sought to overturn U.S. election results in 2021. “To that end, the Biden-Harris administration must remove the remaining restrictions on the use of U.S.-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russia and immediately submit the delayed congressionally-mandated strategy for U.S. support to Ukraine.” More, here.
Related reading: “Netherlands hikes defence spending to face new threats,” Reuters reports from Amsterdam.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2007, the Israeli military carried out an airstrike on an undeclared nuclear reactor in eastern Syria. Eleven years would pass before the Israelis confirmed their role in the covert operation.
In about five years or so, America’s Space Force says it will deploy satellites that can track aerial and ground targets, which is currently done using the Air Force’s E-3 Sentry and the aging E-8 JSTARS fleet, respectively.
“I would say you’re looking at probably early [20]30s for some of that capability to start coming online,” said Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, during a Defense News conference in Washington on Wednesday.
The future tracking mission will be layered and involve sensors from both satellites and aircraft to increase survivability. However, Guetlein also warned that the service is dealing with scarce resources and a flat budget in the years ahead. “We are having those conversations” about investments “in some of these emerging areas,” he said Wednesday. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has more, here.
Additional reading:
A Navy gunnery exercise fire is suspected as the origin of a recent California wildfire. In late July, a wildfire swept over San Clemente Island, scorching about a third of the 58-square-mile island off the coast of Orange County, California. Several of the U.S. Navy’s buildings there are expected to be without power for a year. A Navy spokesman told the Los Angeles Times that the blaze might have been caused by naval forces practicing gunnery on the country’s last ship-to-shore bombardment range. Read, here.
New: Obesity rates are rising among the U.S. military, and the compounding impacts are costing the Pentagon an estimated $1.3 billion annually, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Security Project think tank.
Why bring it up? “Service branches continue to focus their efforts on unproven weight loss programs and body composition policies that negatively impact personnel health and readiness,” the study’s author, Courtney Manning, writes.
One interesting observation (emphasis added): “Non-clinical, ‘lifestyle coach’ sessions popular across the Department of Defense are statistically ineffective and can have detrimental effects on these populations, with two-year follow-up studies demonstrating significant weight regain in participants,” according to the report. Instead, “An individualized combination of methods known as comprehensive lifestyle interventions, or CLI, results in better post-treatment outcomes, and interventions with a licensed dietician are significantly more effective in reducing average waist circumference, percent of body fat, and BMI in soldiers than other methods.”
Read over the entire report (PDF) here.
Developing: An American sailor was detained last Friday in Venezuela, CNN reported Wednesday. According to a U.S. defense official, “the service member was not on official travel or approved leave when he traveled to the country” for reportedly unclear reasons.
New: Six right-wing influencers appear to have been witting dupes for Russian propaganda, helping them funnel $9.7 million “to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday after unsealing a series of federal charges Wednesday.
How it worked: “Over at least the past year, RT and its employees…deployed nearly $10 million to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company,” the Justice Department announced. That company is reportedly Tenet Media, according to The Tennessean, the Associated Press, and others like Will Sommer of the Washington Post. The company then “published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube,” including “nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone,” according to the charges.
The alleged dupes include well-known conservative influencers Tim Pool and Benny Johnson, as well as BlazeTV host and Turning Point USA contributor Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan.
The last name of one of their Russian contacts: Kalashnikov, as in Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, who is an employee of RT. He and Elena Afanasyeva, also of RT, were charged Wednesday with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering going back to at least October 2023.
About that money: The $9.7 million Tenet Media accepted from RT, while knowing their contacts were from Russia, “represents nearly 90%” of the money deposited in Tenet’s bank accounts “from all sources combined,” according to the Justice Department.
U.S. authorities also seized 32 internet domains “that the Russian government and Russian government-sponsored actors have used to engage in a covert campaign to interfere in and influence the outcome of our country’s elections,” Attorney General Garland announced separately Wednesday. Those sites “were filled with Russian government propaganda that had been created by the Kremlin to reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies and interests, and influence voters in the United States and other countries,” Garland said.
Notable: The Russian operation mimicked actual news websites to confuse Americans. The technique is known as “cybersquatting,” and included for example “registering washingtonpost.pm to mimic washingtonpost.com” in order “to publish Russian government messaging falsely presented as content from legitimate news media organizations,” the Justice Department explained. Read more at Nextgov/FCW, here.
How Telegram became the “center of gravity” for a new breed of domestic terrorists. From attempting to incite racially motivated violence to encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, the alleged crimes planned and advertised by extremists on Telegram go far beyond the charges facing its CEO, reports ProPublica in a joint investigation with PBS’ Frontline.
The “proliferation of extremist content” on Telegram “cannot be overstated,” says David Skiffington, a former British counterterrorism specialist for London’s Metropolitan Police. Though other social media platforms such as Steam, Discord, and Gab also host extremist-related content, Skiffington said, “Telegram is by far the most widely used and accessible.” Read their report, here.
And lastly today, some commentary: How the U.S. used arms sales to allegedly shift Saudi behavior. Weapons exports are a fickle tool, so why did they work this time? asks Elizabeth Dent and Grant Rumley of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, writing Wednesday in Defense One. They argue that blocking the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia worked because it was targeted at altering a specific behavior—in this case, ending the war in Yemen and preventing further civilian casualties. But they warn that the U.S. will likely find that in the future its ability to leverage arms transfers will be limited when these conditions are not replicated. Read on, here.
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