The D Brief: COCOM consolidations?; DOD rehiring fired civs; Militarized border zone mulled; Defining cognitive warfare; And a bit more.

Ideas include halting an expansion of US Forces Japan, and combining several combatant commands—Northern and Southern Command into one, as well as combining European and Africa Commands to one location in Germany. “Consolidating [those cocoms] could save the Pentagon about $330 million over five years,” according to a memo of the plans obtained by CNN.

That would return the COCOM setup to a pre-2011 configuration, notes conservative blogger Cdr. Salamander, who cheered the idea.

Personnel reductions could hit the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, too, including “​​firing nearly 400 civilians working in Joint Staff’s future operations cell, cyber, and training; and moving hundreds of Joint Staff employees to a base in Suffolk, Virginia,” CNN reports. 

The fiscal bottom line: “These cuts could result in savings of around $1 billion over five years,” the memo says.

White House officials are also considering giving up the job of NATO's top military officer, known as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, which has been a U.S.-held position going back to the 1950s. “The timeline for the SACEUR move, if it does happen, is as yet undetermined,” officials told NBC. In the meantime, the current SACEUR, Army Gen. Chris Cavoli, will end his three-year term later this summer.

Reax from former SACEUR Navy Adm. Jim Stavridis: “We would lose an enormous amount of influence within NATO, and this would be seen, correctly, as probably the first step toward leaving the Alliance altogether.” And former U.S. Army Europe commander retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges asked, “What strategic analysis led them to want to do this? This has happened so early that this clearly smells [more] like a cost-cutting thing than a strategic analysis.” Read more, here. 

Related reading: “The EU wants to break its security dependency on the US and buy more European weapons,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday; read the 23-page white paper that report is based upon (PDF) here. 

The Pentagon is giving fired probationary employees their jobs back. On Friday, a federal judge ordered the Defense Department to reverse them and report back. On Wednesday, the department’s interim deputy personnel director said that 364 people had been fired since Feb. 13 and that about 65 had been reinstated or had their termination notices rescinded. 

“The remainder are pending notification, declined to accept the officer of reinstatement, or requested additional time to consider the offer,” Tim Dill wrote in his March 19 declaration to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. 

The filing also says that the probationary employees were fired “in light of recent OPM guidance,” contradicting Dill’s boss, who declared in a March 3 memo that the department had independently decided to terminate them. Defense One’s Meghann Myers has more, here.

Also: SecDef’s software memo is causing ‘angst,’ but that just shows how much the buy-it-faster directive was needed, the Pentagon's acting weapons chief said Tuesday. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here.

Welcome to this Thursday 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 Xxx,  Zzz.

Trump 2.0

Militarization of the border: Trump officials are drawing up plans for the military to temporarily hold migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Washington Post reported Wednesday citing five U.S. officials.  

The idea is to militarily occupy a 60-foot-deep “buffer zone” from El Paso to San Diego that the Pentagon would be responsible for, officials said. Why? At least partly because the plan would allow “a greater portion of the Defense Department’s mammoth budget to pay for President Donald Trump’s border crackdown while creating new legal jeopardy for those caught trying to slip into the country from Mexico,” the Post’s Dan Lamothe reports. 

One problem: “[A]ny move to militarize the southern border’s buffer zone is certain to raise questions about whether employing the military in this way runs afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits active-duty troops from most law enforcement missions,” Lamothe writes. 

Expert reax: “Turning over the Roosevelt Reservation to the military and then detaining people for ‘trespassing on military property’ seems like a pretty outrageous effort to get around the Posse Comitatus Act,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council. Read more at WaPo (gift link), here. 

Related: The U.S. Navy says it’s sending a second destroyer to watch the southern border, and it could arrive as soon as the end of the week, Military-dot-com reported Wednesday. 

Project 2025 update: Trump and his team have completed at least six of the 13 goals for the U.S. military drawn up by far-right activists coordinated by the Heritage Foundation and released publicly ahead of last year’s election. Trump attempted to distance himself from the project during his campaign, but his White House’s efforts during its first 60 days strongly suggest his denials were insincere. 

Completed goals so far include ending travel funds for abortions, halting medical treatment for gender dysphoria, cutting diversity programs, reinstating troops separated for COVID-19 vaccine refusal, sending active duty troops to the border, and instructing the Defense Department to help build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In progress: convincing European allies to spend more on their militaries. Trump and SecDef Hegseth are also trying to expel transgender service members, but so far that’s been blocked by the courts. 

Other outstanding goals: preventing Cyber Command from helping with election-integrity efforts, reducing U.S. troop levels in Europe, ending congressional review of U.S. arms transfers; removing CYBERCOM from the National Security Agency’s oversight; and requiring all schools that receive federal funding to give students the military entrance test.

Panning out: Out of 300 goals on the activists’ overall list, 100 have been completed and 46 others are in progress. Read more at the Project 2025 Tracker, here. 

Related reading: “‘Beyond My Wildest Dreams’: The Architect of Project 2025 Is Ready for His Victory Lap,” Politico reported Sunday. 

Industry

Trump’s tariffs could upend the U.S. aerospace industry, potentially causing immense harm to Boeing in particular, the New York Times reported Wednesday. 

Why it matters: The sector “is expected to export about $125 billion this year…second only to oil and gas.”

“In all, the tariffs could raise costs for the aerospace industry by about $5 billion annually,” and “A vast majority of that would come from the tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico,” one analyst warned. “And the threat of a trade war would only compound the consequences,” the Times writes.

Additional reading: 

• “The $7 Billion Defense Contractor Who Became One of America’s Biggest Alleged Tax Cheats,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday on the story of Douglas Edelman; 
• And Attorney General Pam “Bondi Calls Tesla Vandalism ‘Domestic Terrorism,’ Promising Steep Consequences,” the New York Times reported Tuesday, while clarifying “there is no stand-alone federal domestic terrorism law that includes penalties.” 

A new domain of war?

China is waging cognitive warfare. Fighting back starts by defining it. “War has shifted far beyond the realm of traditional kinetic operations. We now face an era defined by what experts call cognitive warfare, an insidious form of conflict aimed at influencing how people think and act, destabilizing the very bedrock of democratic institutions and national security,” writes Jake Bebber, a U.S. Navy officer writing as an Andrew W. Marshall Foundation Scholar. “Developing a framework to counter this threat is not just essential; it is urgent.” Read on, here. ]]>