The D Brief: Cuts to DOT&E; Uncrewed F-35?; Qatari jet’s a mess; Border gets barracks funding; And a bit more.

Hegseth halves Pentagon testing office. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo directing cuts to the office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation. The DOT&E workforce will shrink from 94 employees to 30 civilians and 15 service members as the office sheds “redundant, nonessential, non-statutory functions within ODOT&E that do not support operational agility or resource efficiency,” the memo says. In an accompanying video, Hegseth said the moves would save $300 million a year, but offered no details. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker has more, here.

A second memo orders a review of DOD’s consulting contracts that “responsibly reduces the number of management consultants and contractors.” Hegseth said DepSecDef Steve Feinberg is to lead that effort, with help from the services and Elon Musk’s DOGE office. 

And a third Wednesday memo directs “reforms to the department's usage of executive assistants,” the XOs to many of the Pentagon’s civilian leaders. “Think about proper ratios,” Hegseth said in the video. (Check out this year-2000 handbook and telephone directory for DOD EAs.)

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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 1988, U.S. President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow for talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Eighteen months later, the Berlin Wall would fall, precipitating the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Around the Defense Department

Developing: Trump’s Air Force One deal with Qatar is not yet final, despite Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell’s statement last week, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. 

Sticking point: “Qatar is insisting that a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Doha specify that the aircraft’s transfer was initiated by the Trump administration and that Qatar is not responsible for any future transfers of the plane’s ownership,” officials familiar with the developments told the Post.

Worth noting: “The outstanding legal work is not expected to scuttle the plane deal,” but the process is already inviting “further scrutiny of the administration’s claims about how the deal originated.”

Junk plane? “After Trump toured the jet, Air Force officials reviewed the aircraft and found that it was ‘very poorly maintained’ and would require [$1.5 billion] just to bring it up to satisfactory maintenance conditions,” the Post reports. “To then remove the military gear and convert it for civilian use after Trump leaves office could cost an estimated $500 million, said two people familiar with the matter.” 

However, Trump can choose to waive certain safety and technical requirements in order to use the aircraft sooner. Full story, here. 

New: Lockheed pitches pilot-optional F-35. Lockheed Martin plans to develop a version of the F-35 that can fly without a pilot. It’s just one of many upgrades the company is pitching for the program after it lost the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance competition, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported Wednesday. 

Notable: The F-35 already includes some autonomous functions, which were displayed in 2023 when a jet flew for 11 minutes after the pilot ejected, but officials haven’t publicly discussed a fully autonomous F-35.

Other possible upgrades include improved stealth coatings, redesigned engine nozzles, outer mold line changes, new electronic-warfare capabilities, and autonomy, which could “make the F-35 pilot optional over a relatively modest timeframe, based on a lot of the development we've done for our NGAD offering,” Jim Taiclet said Wednesday during at Bernstein’s Annual Strategic Decisions Conference. Continue reading, here. 

ICYMI: The Defense Department still does not know how it wants to beef up missile defenses on Guam, the Government Accountability Office announced in an unclassified report published last week. 

The gist: “As of March 2025, the defense system in Guam included six missile launchers and one radar. DOD is planning to deploy additional systems. But it has yet to determine how many personnel are needed to operate the systems, when those personnel would be deployed, and more.” 

Why it matters: “As the threat from China continues to grow, DOD pledged to deliver a foundational capability to help stave off a potential attack directed at Guam by the end of 2024. That schedule is already slipping,” Jen Judson of Military Times writes.

Related reading: “GOP declares war on GAO,” Politico reported Tuesday.

The Navy recently fired its senior officer in charge of unmanned and small combatant platforms, Rear Adm. Kevin Smith, the service announced Tuesday. 

Reason given: “a loss of confidence based on a complaint substantiated by an Office of the Naval Inspector General investigation,” the Navy said, without elaborating. 

Background: Smith was the Navy’s program executive officer for unmanned and small combatants for nearly two years after serving as program manager for the Constellation-class frigate program,” the U.S. Naval Institute News reports. He’s now been temporarily assigned to Naval Sea Systems Command. 

Trump’s Pentagon recently diverted $1 billion for Army barracks maintenance to help pay for U.S.-Mexico border operations, Military-dot-com reported Wednesday. In case this sounds familiar, the move echoes an action taken during Trump’s first term as part of his ultimately-failed effort to build a border wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico line.  

To be clear, “The Pentagon has broad flexibility to move money between accounts, a move called ‘reprogramming,’ without an act of Congress,” Steve Beynon writes. 

However, “The Army has acknowledged that some barracks have been allowed to deteriorate due to funding shortfalls and shifting priorities.” Meanwhile, “Maintenance teams have struggled to keep pace with demand, and soldiers have reported lengthy wait times to fix basic issues like non-working air conditioning in the sweltering summer months.” More, here. 

Flagging Pete: SecDef Hegseth recently showed off a sport jacket with the American flag stitched into the lining. The jacket itself appears to have been made in Thailand; but more notably, there is a legal regulation—4 U.S. Code § 8—that would seem to bar the wearing of such apparel. 

Additional reading:

• “Pentagon Taps Navy SEAL for Top Enlisted Role,” USNI News reported Wednesday; 
• “Army issues policy to discharge, disqualify transgender troops,” Army Times reported Wednesday; 
• “US defence chief looks to woo allies in Asian security forum debut,” Reuters reported Thursday ahead of SecDef Hegseth’s trip to Singapore; 
• In video, the Wall Street Journal spent five minutes explaining, “What Trump’s $175 Billion Golden Dome Means for the Space Arms Race” on Thursday; 
• And don’t miss another U.S. shipbuilding industry explainer, “How America Lost Control of the Seas,” via Arnav Rao, a transportation policy analyst at the Open Markets Institute, writing Wednesday for The Atlantic.

Trump 2.0

Developing: Trump may pardon two men imprisoned for trying to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in August 2020, the president told reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office. 

About the charges: The two men, Adam Fox and Barry Croft, were convicted in 2022 of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. According to the Justice Department, “Fox and Croft intended to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage near Elk Rapids, Michigan, and use the destructive devices to facilitate their plot by harming and hindering the governor’s security detail and any responding law enforcement officers.”

Trump: “I did watch the trial. It looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job, I'll be honest with you…You know, they were drinking, and I think they said stupid things, but I’ll take a look at that,” he said Wednesday. 

Panning out: “Trump has used his pardon power extensively in his second term, drawing scrutiny for pardoning almost everybody convicted in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot,” CBS News reports. 

Additional reading: 

• “Afghans in Kentucky fear for future after Trump strips deportation protections,” Reuters reported Thursday from Bowling Green;
• “In riposte to Vance, Germany's Merz says Europe stands for freedom,” Reuters reported separately Thursday from Berlin; 
• “If Trump Walks Away From Ukraine Now, He Looks Weak, and Putin Wins,” the New York Times editorial board warned Thursday; 
• “Trump’s Tirades Aren’t Swaying Putin,” former Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic on Tuesday;
• And in commentary, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro explains “What’s missing from Trump’s nuclear diplomacy,” writing Wednesday in Defense One.

Elon Musk wants to improve his image as he steps away from the White House. The world’s richest defense contractor announced his departure from government on Wednesday, capping a role with the Trump administration where he began claiming he could help cut $2 trillion in spending—but later rolled that back to $150 billion after repeated errors in his team’s accounting were revealed by outlets including the New York Times. 

Recap: “The entrepreneur spent some $300 million to re-elect Trump to the White House and became a close adviser. Musk recently stepped down from his role at the Department of Government Efficiency task force to spend more time working on the five companies he runs, including Tesla,” the Wall Street Journal reports. 

About his DOGE ambitions: “The cuts he wanted to enact were far more difficult than he expected and his lack of interest in learning more about the bureaucracy he considered toxic impeded his efforts, particularly on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reports. “DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” he lamented in a recent interview with the Washington Post. 

He was also upset that his divisive role within the Trump administration seemed to coincide with a dramatic drop in Tesla’s stock price between December and March. “People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” he told the Post. Read on, here. 

Additional reading: 

• “There’s a Very Simple Pattern to Elon Musk’s Broken Promises,” WIRED reported Tuesday; 
• “VA-based DOGE associate gets ‘the boot’ after publicly discussing his work,” Nextgov reported Wednesday; 
• Florida-based Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy “Tuberville announces Alabama governor run,” Politico reported Tuesday. 

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