The D Brief: RIP, 5-things email; German-Ukrainian missile plan; Russia’s latest demands; P&W strike ends; And a bit more.

RIP, “5 things” email across DOD. After this week, Defense Department civilians will no longer have to submit an email list of five things they accomplished over the previous week, according to a Friday email that ends a requirement the Pentagon put in place back in March, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported Tuesday.

However, the last of these emails, which is due today, must include one idea that will “improve the Department’s efficiency or root out waste,” according to the message from Jules Hurst. That idea/suggestion shouldn’t include anything classified or sensitive, he noted.

Rewind: The “5 bullet points” exercise first came down from the Office of Personnel Management in February, an initiative by the Elon Musk-driven Department of Government Efficiency. For DOD staff, it was one more requirement on top of existing internal weekly reviews, Myers reports.

Notable: Hurst’s email mentions no monetary reward, or indeed any incentive, for ideas that wind up saving money. In this, it is unlike the Navy’s decades-old Beneficial Suggestions program, which has saved tens of millions of dollars over the years. Read on, here.

Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be traveling to Singapore this week for the annual Shangri-La Dialogue with regional defense chiefs. That begins Friday. 

ICYMI: Hegseth’s aides announced new restrictions on reporters who work at or visit the Pentagon in a five-point memo (PDF) posted online just before the Memorial Day weekend began. E.g., journalists will soon be required to wear new badges more clearly marked “PRESS,” and many unclassified hallways will soon be off-limits.

The Pentagon Press Association reacted with alarm. The new restrictions appear to be “a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing,” the PPA said in a Friday statement. The statement noted that the press corps “has had access to non-secured, unclassified spaces in the Pentagon for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations” and that the restrictions will reduce reporters’ access to press officers who have been “specifically hired to respond to press queries.” The PPA also notes that although Hegseth claims to desire transparency, he has yet to appear before reporters in the Pentagon briefing room.

The rules are intended to prevent unauthorized disclosures, says the memo, which neglects the most famous disclosure of Hegseth’s young tenure: his own disclosure of details about an upcoming attack on Yemen in an insecure group chat in mid-March.

By the way: Hegseth’s team tried to ban CNN journalist Haley Britzky from serving as a pool reporter for this weekend’s trip to Singapore, media critic Oliver Darcy reported Monday. However, “Pentagon officials—apparently irked by some of [Britzky’s] tweets, despite their innocuous nature—relayed to CNN brass that she was not welcome,” Darcy writes, calling it “a plain act of retribution, a targeted attempt by the Pentagon to sideline a journalist for doing her job in a way that it did not like.” 

“It triggered immediate backlash,” Darcy reports. And soon, other outlets let it be known “that if Britzky was excluded, they too would pull out of the trip—effectively denying Hegseth the press coverage he relies on for visibility.” Hegseth’s team then caved and reportedly lifted their objections to Britzky as pooler for the Shangri-La trip. 

Panning out: “The actions contribute to a disturbing strategy: limit scrutiny by shrinking access and working to intimidate the press,” Darcy writes. “In public, the Pentagon is rolling back decades of open-press access after evicting several prominent news organizations from their permanent workspaces inside the building. Now, in private, it’s trying to handpick who gets to report on official travel.” 

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Welcome to this Wednesday 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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1998, Pakistan tested five nuclear weapons in a demonstration aimed largely at India. 

Status check: The Trump administration wants to fold the military’s Africa Command into its European Command, as initially reported nearly two months ago. Reuters has the latest on the matter, reporting Tuesday after U.S. Marine Gen. Michael Langley, head of Africa Command, spoke to reporters. 

Dispatch from Northern Europe: “During a three-week exercise, U.S. and U.K. forces joined Nordic and Baltic troops to practice potential war scenarios including live-fire drills, blood resupplies by drone and airborne jumps above the Arctic circle in Norway,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday from the Swedish island of Gotland. 

Update: In exchange for some kind of peace in Ukraine, Russia wants NATO to agree to never accept Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova or any other former Soviet republic into the alliance, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing Russian sources.

But that’s not all. As previously stated, Russian leader Vladimir Putin wants to keep all currently-occupied territory inside Ukraine, as well as remaining unoccupied regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. He also wants “Ukraine to be neutral, some Western sanctions lifted, a resolution of the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West, and protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine.”

Russia also relayed a threat to Europe and Ukraine: “peace tomorrow will be even more painful,” the sources said. Continue reading, here. 

New: Germany will soon jointly produce long-range missiles with Ukraine, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced Wednesday in Berlin. “We will not speak about details publicly but will intensify cooperation,” Merz told reporters during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy. 

Worth noting: Reuters reports Merz’s government recently said “it would no longer publicly detail what arms it is sending Ukraine, preferring a stance of ‘strategic ambiguity.’”

Happening later: “German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul was set to meet in Washington with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later Wednesday,” the Associated Press reports. 

A second opinion: By waffling with his support for Ukraine, President Trump risks destabilizing U.S. deterrence around the world, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal warned Tuesday. “But walking away won’t insulate America from the consequences…As important, Mr. Trump will send a message to Chinese President Xi Jinping that the U.S. can’t sustain support for an ally under siege.”

“The message will be that if China moves on Taiwan, Mr. Trump is unlikely to respond with more than verbal protests or toothless sanctions,” they argue. “Instead of restoring U.S. deterrence, Mr. Trump would further undermine it.” Read the rest (gift link), here. 

Additional reading: 

Industry

Pratt & Whitney strike ends. Aircraft engine-maker Pratt & Whitney agreed to a 6% wage increase, followed by smaller increases over the next three years, effectively ending a nearly four-week strike that began in early May, NBC Connecticut reported following a union vote on Tuesday. “The contract also includes increases in pension payments and company contributions to employee savings plans.” The Hartford Courant has more.

New: The Missile Defense Agency will kick off the acquisition of the Golden Dome missile shield with a 10-year, $151 billion multiple-award contract, according to agency documents posted last week, Nick Wakeman of Washington Technology reported Tuesday. 

By Friday, the agency expects to release a draft solicitation for the contract vehicle, which is formally named Scalable Homeland Enterprise Layered Defense, or SHIELD. SHIELD is set up to allow for multiple contract types and will cover a variety of NAICS codes to give MDA, and the entire military, flexibility in the development of Golden Dome.

The notice says the system must counter ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks across all flight phases, Wakeman writes. Read more, here. 

Additional reading: 

Defense One