The D Brief: More loose lips; Troops get detention powers; State’s coming cuts; Primes’ aircraft plans; And a bit more.

The information Hegseth shared on Signal originated from Central Command’s Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who “was doing exactly what he was supposed to: providing Hegseth, his superior, with information he needed to know and using a system specifically designed to safely transmit sensitive and classified information,” Kube and Lubold write. “Less than 10 minutes elapsed between Kurilla’s giving Hegseth the information and Hegseth’s sending it to the two group chats.”

Why it matters: “The sequence of events…could raise new questions about Hegseth’s handling of the information, which he and the government have denied was classified,” according to NBC. 

Said Hegseth Tuesday on Fox: “What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination, other things.” 

As for the president, “Pete’s doing a great job; everybody’s happy with him,” Trump told reporters Monday. Continue reading at NBC, here. 

Behind the scenes at the Pentagon, “Hegseth surrounded himself with advisers who quickly turned into vicious rivals for power—whose bitter brawl has now unraveled into revenge power plays, surprise firings, accusations of leaking and embarrassing headlines that are blowing up the Pentagon, distracting from Trump’s agenda and possibly jeopardizing Hegseth’s job,” four reporters from Politico reported Tuesday.  

And Hegseth’s soon-to-be-departing chief of staff Joe Kasper “ran into trouble at DOD by berating officials in meetings, calling military officials by a lower rank on purpose, and even graphically describing his bowel movements in high-level meetings,” Jack Detsch of Politico writes. Read more, here. 

Update: The U.S. military can now search and detain anyone in a “60-foot-wide zone of New Mexico land that runs along the U.S. border with Mexico [that] has been deemed part of Fort Huachuca, Ariz.,” Stars and Stripes reported Monday. 

It’s being called “the New Mexico National Defense Area,” previously known as the Roosevelt Reservation, and about 170 square miles of it was transferred to the U.S. military last week by the Interior Department.

“Through these enhanced authorities, U.S. Northern Command will ensure those who illegally trespass in the New Mexico National Defense Area are handed over to Customs and Border Protection or our other law enforcement partners,” said Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, NORTHCOM commander. More, here. 

FWIW: Trump is losing support from voters on his strongest issue, immigration, according to new polling from Reuters published Tuesday. “On a range of issues, from inflation and immigration to taxation and rule of law, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Americans who disapproved of Trump's performance outnumbered those who approved on every issue in the poll. On immigration, his strongest area of support, 45% of respondents approved of Trump's performance but 46% disapproved.” More, here. 

New: Trump’s new Navy secretary said he’s “rescind[ed] the Biden Administration’s Navy Climate Action 2030 program,” which was released (PDF) three years ago. “Our focus needs to be on lethality and our warfighters,” SecNav John Phelan announced in a video posted to social media. 

Phelan also just appointed former reporter Kristina Wong as the Navy’s chief spokeswoman. Like Phelan, Wong has no military experience. But she worked at Washington media outlet The Hill before moving to Breitbart and curating a reliably pro-Trump social media feed that includes an image of rioters “peeking into the Capitol building” during the violent January 6 effort to overturn the 2020 U.S. election.

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 1941, the Greeks evacuated Athens in the face of an invading Nazi military. King George II along with more than 50,000 allied British, Australian, New Zealand and Polish troops fled to Crete while an estimated 15,000 Greek soldiers and 3,700 Allied troops perished in the battle for Greece.

Industry

After NGAD loss, Lockheed says it will ‘supercharge’ F-35. After losing out on the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance contract, Lockheed Martin plans to funnel the technology into its F-35 program, CEO Jim Taiclet said on Tuesday’s earning call. “I challenged the team to deliver 80% of sixth-gen capability at 50% of the cost,” Taiclet said. Audrey Decker has a bit more, here. 

Northrop takes $477M loss on B-21 to speed up production, cover materials costs. At the company’s Tuesday earnings call, CEO Kathy Warden said Northrop Grumman and the Air Force “jointly” made the decision to invest in ways to make the stealth bomber more quickly than the Pentagon has so far required. She also said that materials costs had risen more than anticipated. The new loss brings projected losses on the first five production lots past $2 billion. Decker reports, here.

Trump 2.0

Staff cuts coming to Foggy Bottom: The State Department will eliminate 15 percent of its domestic staff as part of a reorganization that will close one-sixth of its 734 offices and bureaus, officials said Tuesday. Of the remaining 602 offices and bureaus, 137 are expected to be moved around within the department, Government Executive’s Eric Katz reports. 

For now, the changes will only affect domestic offices. Department officials told employees they had made no decisions on embassy, consulate, or overseas post closures. 

Update: Amid reports of his departure from Trump’s White House, Elon Musk said he wants to keep the job even if it’s just one or two days per week, he told investors on a conference call Tuesday. Reuters has more.

Additional reading: “Veterans affairs agency orders staff to report each other for ‘anti-Christian bias’,” the Guardian reported Tuesday. 

Ukraine

Trump Tower Moscow? Russian negotiators are reportedly trying to “bait” Trump into a “grand bargain” over the future of Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion. That alleged effort includes extending the U.S. president an offer of “rare earths deals and geopolitical leverage in Iran and North Korea [as well as] a long-dreamed-of Trump Tower in Moscow,” the Moscow Times reported Monday, citing “Five current Russian government officials, including two diplomats, three sources close to the Kremlin and employees of three major state-owned companies.”

Occupation watch: “The scale on which Russian authorities are seizing Ukrainian property is staggering,” writes Karolina Hird at the Institute for the Study of War, citing, among other things, a BBC investigation into Russian appropriations in the occupied city of Mariupol. More, here.

Related reading:

• “Russia Welcomes U.S. Proposal to Deny NATO Membership to Ukraine,” the Wall Street Journal reports, noting that Moscow continues to slow-walk actual progress toward the ceasefire the White House says it wants;
• And the “Trump administration unwinds efforts to investigate Russian war crimes.” The Washington Post reports that the U.S. has “moved to withdraw from an international group led by the European Union that was created to punish Moscow for violating international law in its invasion of Ukraine” and “reduced the work of the Justice Department’s War Crimes Accountability Team and dismantled a program to seize assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs.”

Etc.

And lastly: Europe is realigning—but can leaders keep citizens on board? In a Defense One commentary, Michaela Millender and Clara Broekaert of The Soufan Center applaud European leaders’ galvanized efforts to build up the continent’s defenses, but warn about the difficulties of persuading their populaces to stay the expensive course. Read that, here. ]]>