The D Brief: Budget-proposal reveal; Yemen-strike stats; Army’s to-do list; Marines’ top goal; And a bit more.

Trump’s budget would amount to a 13% rise in defense spending, which his team hopes will be coupled with a 23% cut to civilian spending. 

A note on procedure: White House spending proposals traditionally kick off annual budget negotiations, though Congress often goes its own way on a variety of issues that may not align perfectly with policymakers’ or appropriators’ goals. This year, Republicans control both the House and the Senate, but it’s not clear yet how disagreeable those chambers will be. 

More to follow: Additional details are expected from today’s White House press call, slated for 11 a.m. ET. 

Update: Former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has been nominated to be the president’s United Nations ambassador, Trump announced online Thursday. Meantime, “Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Advisor, while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Thursday afternoon.  

Those changes mean Rubio is now doing four jobs: the president’s secretary of state, interim national security advisor, U.S. archivist, and chief of the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

Notable: Waltz is losing his job, but it was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who pasted the airstrike plans in the March Signal chat and then “shared it in another unsecure chat with his wife, brother, and personal friends,” Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson points out. 

New: Hegseth’s second Signal chat is now the subject of a widening investigation by the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. “The Pentagon inspector general is focused, in part, on who took information from a government system for highly-classified information and put it into Hegseth’s commercial Signal app…It is unclear when the investigation will be complete.” 

Developing: Trump wants to drop veterans from “Veterans Day” and rename it “Victory Day for World War I,” as part of a purported effort to celebrate U.S. military accomplishments, he announced on social media late Thursday evening. 

“I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I,” the president wrote. “We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything,” he said strangely, and added, “That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”

Note: May 8 is celebrated as Victory in Europe Day by several European countries; the U.S., of course, fought on until Japan’s formal surrender on September 2, 1945.

Trump also wants a military parade for his 79th birthday, so the Army is reportedly planning to call up 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands, and more to roll through the streets of Washington, D.C., on June 14, according to the Associated Press, citing draft Army planning documents. 

The plans “represent the Army’s most recent blueprint for its long-planned 250th anniversary festival on the National Mall,” AP’s Lita Baldor writes. “The Army anniversary just happens to coincide” with Trump’s birthday. 

Notable: “High costs halted Trump’s push for a parade in his first term, and the tanks and other heavy vehicles that are part of the Army’s latest plans have raised concerns from city officials about damage to roads.” More, here. 

Additional reading: 

• “Trump administration considering labeling some suspected cartel and gang members inside the US as ‘enemy combatants’,” CNN reported Friday after a federal judge in the southern district of Texas struck down Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify deporting Venezuelans from that district. 

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. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2011, Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. 

Around the Defense Department

ICYMI: The Army got a long list of marching orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week, with deadlines for fielding new weapons and technology, directives to unload old equipment, and orders to merge the service’s futures and doctrine organizations, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported Thursday. The memo includes a lot of items the service was already working on, or had considered but hadn’t been told to prioritize, a Defense official told Myers.

Weapons deadlines top the list. Long-range missiles that can hit moving land and sea targets, an apparent reference to the Precision Strike Missile now under testing, are to be fielded by 2027. Every division is to receive unnamed unmanned systems and “Ground/Air launched effects” by 2026. Counter-drone systems are to be sent to maneuver platoons by 2026 and maneuver companies by 2027.

Then there’s offloading outdated equipment and axing wasteful programs. The memo calls out the Humvee, which the service will begin to replace in brigade combat teams this year with its new infantry squad vehicle. The memo also orders a dozen moves to restructure, and in some cases shrink, the Army’s organizational structure. Details, here. 

Update: The Air Force has started ground-testing its prototype robot wingmen ahead of their first flight this summer, the service announced today. The tests of the collaborative combat aircraft will focus on “propulsion systems, avionics, autonomy integration, and ground control interfaces. These assessments will validate performance, inform future design decisions, and prepare the systems for flight testing later this year,” the service said. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has more.

Related reading: “Trump’s pick for Air Force No. 2 civilian defends past political comments,” Decker reported separately Thursday. 

Marines’ top goal: 3 amphibious ready groups at sea. The Marine Corps’ “north star” is getting three amphibious ready groups continuously deployed around the globe, the service’s top officer said Thursday, a standard they haven’t been able to meet due to the rough state of Navy ship maintenance in recent years, Meghann Myers reported Thursday for Defense One. 

The goal is one ARG, with an embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit, patrolling from the Mediterranean Sea down to the west coast of Africa; one in the western Pacific; and one in the Indo-Pacific, each spending roughly six months at sea, with another ARG-MEU ready to replace each group of ships when they head home. Continue reading, here. 

Lastly this week: The U.S. military has launched at least 973 airstrikes in Yemen since March 15, analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported Thursday with an accompanying map. 

By the way: The Brits joined recent U.S. strikes inside Yemen, the Defense Ministry announced Wednesday. “Careful intelligence analysis identified a cluster of buildings, used by the Houthis to manufacture drones of the type used to attack ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, located some fifteen miles south of Sanaa,” officials said in a statement. Typhoon FGR4s “engaged a number of these buildings using Paveway IV precision guided bombs” in a strike “conducted after dark, when the likelihood of any civilians being in the area was reduced.” A bit more, here. 

Additional reading: 

• “US strike kills dozens at Yemen migrant detention center, Yemeni officials say,” ABC News reported Monday from London; the BBC has similar reporting here; 
• “Hegseth backs Air Force three-star Grynkewich for top Europe job,” Defense News reported Thursday; 
• “Sex assault reports in the US military fell last year, fueled by a big drop in the Army,” the Associated Press reported Thursday; 
• “Soldier at a Colorado nightclub during an immigration raid charged with distributing cocaine,” AP reported separately Thursday.