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31 Jan 25. Investigators seek to salvage aircraft after deadly Washington crash. Investigators plan to push forward on Friday with efforts to retrieve the two aircraft involved in a crash in Washington that killed 67 people and raised questions about air safety in the U.S. capital.
Fresh from recovering the so-called black boxes from the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Potomac River after colliding with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on Wednesday, divers aim to “salvage the aircraft” and find additional components on Friday, Washington’s fire department said.
“Overnight, boats will remain on scene for security and surface searches from local, state, and federal regional partners,” it said. (Source: Reuters)
28 Jan 25. In Trump’s Pentagon, a growing skepticism about US military power. To understand how the second Trump administration may use the U.S. military, the best clues aren’t written in the pages of Foreign Affairs or sussed out during panel discussions at Washington think tanks.
Instead, they’re found in the chatter on X, formerly Twitter, where a handful of officials now entering top positions in the Pentagon have posted their takes on defense policy for years.
This group is highly confident, highly online and scornful of Washington’s foreign policy consensus. It thinks America’s military is overstretched in wasteful areas of the world, like Europe and the Middle East. And rather than call for a bigger defense budget alone, its members argue the United States should do less — or reprioritize its scarce resources.
“Our self-righteous establishment has led us to the brink of World War III, a weakened and overstretched military and deindustrialization. We desperately need a change,” tweeted Elbridge Colby, one of the group’s leaders, now nominated to lead Pentagon policy.
Call it the rise of the anti-Vulcans, a clique of similarly assured foreign policy wonks in the George W. Bush administration.
The new group refers to itself as “restrainers” or the slightly different school of “prioritizers” and often uses the Bush administration as a foil. Now helping lead Pentagon affairs from Asia to the Middle East, the officials signify a break in Republican foreign policy, from a party that called for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to one far more skeptical of using the military abroad.
Concentrating so many of these officials in the Pentagon will almost certainly set up fights with more hawkish members of the administration at the State Department and National Security Council. Which group wins, analysts and administration officials said, could spell radical change for how the U.S. uses its military power, and where.
“We’re clearly seeing a struggle for the heart and soul of the Republican party,” said Brad Bowman, who studies defense policy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank.
In many ways, the rise of the Pentagon’s new group of leaders traces the arc of America’s foreign policy over the last 30 years. Many are relatively young, in their 30s and 40s, much like Pete Hegseth, the Fox News personality and former Army officer sworn in Saturday as secretary of defense.
Rather than watch America triumph over the Soviet Union in the 1990s, they came of age during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Several of them, such as Hegseth or Vice President JD Vance, even served in those wars.) The result, for some, has been a pressing sense of American decline, especially relative to a more powerful, more assertive China.
“If you grew up with Apollo missions, you believe we can ‘do anything.’ But for those shaped by Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘08 [financial] crisis the view’s a bit more jaded,” posted Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican adviser and presidential candidate, after debating Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Colby pointed to this exchange while discussing his own views in a podcast late last year, where he critiqued more establishment figures like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who wasn’t invited back into the Trump administration.
Instead, Colby and two of his proteges — Austin Dahmer and Alex Velez-Green, both now temporarily helming top policy roles in the Pentagon — cast the U.S. as a strained, distracted superpower. To avoid losing a conflict with China, they argue, America needs to redirect its military resources from supporting Ukraine and the Middle East and let its allies in both regions shoulder a heavier load.
This is a sharp pivot from traditional Republican policy, especially in Congress. Lawmakers like Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, agree the military is too weak to accomplish its expansive goals. But they argue the best remedy is higher defense spending — close to the 5% of GDP that Trump has said European allies should budget.
A separate but related group of “restrainers” argues that, in today’s world, the U.S. military should do less abroad regardless of its strength.
In a 2023 essay, Dan Caldwell, an adviser to the Trump Pentagon’s transition team, wrote the U.S. should dramatically reduce its military presence in Europe and withdraw nearly all its forces from Iraq and Syria.
Michael DiMino, a former colleague of Caldwell at Defense Priorities — a think tank that advocates restraint — now runs the Pentagon’s Middle East policy.
Critics of this group argue it exaggerates America’s constraints and has too narrow a view of the country’s interests abroad.
“It’s alarming that people can clear vetting after claiming U.S. interests in the Middle East are ‘minimal to nonexistent,’” Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense, told Jewish Insider for a story on DiMino.
Regardless of their presence in the Defense Department — already famous for its inertia — the restrainers can’t reshape American national security policy without the White House’s lead.
“The Pentagon’s not a solitary actor,” said Richard Fontaine, head of the Center for a New American Security think tank, and a former colleague of Colby.
Meanwhile, the top two officials at the department, Hegseth and Stephen Feinberg, a bnaire investor nominated to be the Pentagon’s deputy secretary, are unknown quantities when it comes to implementing national security policy. Officials across Washington are now trying to shape their views.
Evidence of this ambiguity can be found in the president’s preferred national security slogan: “peace through strength.” Ronald Reagan used the same line to justify a massive defense buildup in the 1980s. Now, officials across the Republican party are saying it can mean everything from higher defense spending to an American military more involved in immigration enforcement.
For Colby, Caldwell and the officials who share their arguments, defining the slogan on their terms will take more than convincing other parts of the U.S. government. It will also take a sustained effort in the face of a chaotic, dangerous world. Even more peaceful times have upended the priorities of past administrations pledging drastic change.
On the campaign trail in 2000, George W. Bush argued the U.S. shouldn’t entangle itself in foreign wars that were far from the country’s best interests.
“I believe we’re overextended in too many places,” Bush said of the military while debating Vice President Al Gore.
(Source: glstrade.com/Defense News)
30 Jan 25. DoD Issues Statement Clarifying Defense Contractor. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has issued the following statement regarding OMB Memorandum, “Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance,” dated January 27, 2025:
“The Department is currently reviewing the OMB Memorandum, “Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance,” dated January 27, 2025. As directed by the memorandum, the Department will expeditiously analyze its financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders. In the interim, and as directed by OMB, the Department will temporarily pause activities related to the obligation or disbursement of financial assistance, to the extent permissible under applicable law. The scope of the OMB M-25-13 memo on financial assistance instruments does not include contracts. Contrary to certain media accounts, the Department of Defense has not paused contract awards. The Department continues to award new contracts to fulfill validated mission needs. While we are not aware of any specific contracts or other activities affected, it is possible that activities may be paused if they are determined to fall within the bounds of the guidance. We look forward to providing more details regarding this matter as they develop and become available.” (Source: glstrade.com)
29 Jan 25. Defense Secretary Affirms Commitment to Border Security, Plan to House Migrants at Guantanamo Bay. During a media interview today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth affirmed the Defense Department’s commitment to working with other federal agencies to bolster security at the southern border.
“You saw on Day 1 from executive orders, the military’s … commitment to protecting the territorial sovereignty of the southern border, which is a shift,” Hegseth said.
After emphasizing some of the steps DOD has taken to increase border security — including partnering with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, sending National Guardsmen and active-duty Marines and soldiers to the border and strengthening the border with additional physical barriers — Hegseth spoke about detaining criminal migrants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Earlier in the day, the president announced his intention to sign an executive order instructing DOD and DHS to prepare Guantanamo Bay for the detention of 30,000 criminal migrants.
“President Trump has been very clear with that if aren’t willing to take criminals back … then we will hold you accountable,” Hegseth said.
Noting that he served as an officer at Guantanamo Bay while on an active-duty National Guard deployment from 2004 to 2005, Hegseth said Guantanamo Bay is the “perfect place” to safely detain the migrants. He made clear that detaining migrants wouldn’t necessarily require the high level of security used to detain suspected terrorists during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“Americans think of ‘Gitmo’ as the images you see on your screen: the detention facilities with folks from the Taliban and al-Qaida … That’s one part of Guantanamo Bay,” Hegseth explained.
Hegseth said that the other part of the installation is a U.S. naval station that has provided migrant and refugee resettlement for several decades.
According to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay’s official website, the base has been used for “migrant operations, regional humanitarian relief and disaster assistance,” among many other activities during the installation’s history.
“This is not the camps,” Hegseth reiterated. “This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where we can plus-up thousands — and tens of thousands, if necessary — to humanely move illegals out of our country where they do not belong back to the countries where they came from in proper process.”
Calling the Guantanamo operation a “plan in movement,” Hegseth also said that DOD is “ramping up” to expand the scope of deportations.
“President Trump is dead serious about getting illegal criminals out of our country,” Hegseth said. “And the DOD is not only willing to — it’s proud to — partner with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission.” (Source: US DoD)
29 Jan 25. Defense Secretary Directs Creation of Task Force to Restore America’s Fighting Force. In a memorandum sent to leaders across the U.S. military today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a task force to oversee the strengthening of a military based entirely on merit.
“The Department of Defense has an obligation to the American public to ensure their sons and daughters serve under the best leadership we can provide them,” said Hegseth. “Doing so is a national security imperative. A foundational tenet of the DOD must always be that the most qualified individuals are placed in positions of responsibility in accordance with merit-based, color-blind policies.”
The “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” Task Force, the secretary said, will be established by the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness and is charged with overseeing department efforts to eliminate organizations, offices and policies that perpetrate non-merit factors such as sex, race or ethnicity over factors such as lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards or readiness.
“To ensure DOD focuses on its core mission of providing the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security, the department will ensure all decisions related to hiring, promotion and selection of personnel for assignments are based on merit, the needs of the department, and lastly, the individual’s desires,” Hegseth said in the memorandum.
As part of its mission, the task force will oversee the standing down of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices across the department and military services along with the cessation of actions initiated by those offices which promote, among other things, ideologies related to systemic racism or gender fluidity.
The secretary has set a March 1 deadline for an initial report from the task force regarding its activities and June 1 as the deadline for a final report.
As part of the memorandum, Hegseth spelled out clearly an array of ideas the Defense Department will adhere to going forward, and which the task force will in part help it achieve.
Among those is that DOD will no longer regard an individual’s sex, race, or ethnicity when considering that person for promotion, command or special duty. At the same time, the department will eliminate sex, race or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admission and career fields.
When it comes to training the force, including within military service academies, the secretary said the department would no longer provide instruction on concepts such as Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or gender ideology.
Finally, advisory boards, councils, and working groups related to gender ideology, DEI and CRT will stand down.
On Monday, President Donald J. Trump released an executive order titled “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” which prohibits any preference or disadvantage for an individual or a group within the armed forces on the basis of sex, race or ethnicity. The task force will ensure the department meets the goals set out by the president.
“The DOD mission is to win the nation’s wars,” Hegseth said. “To do this, we must have a lethal fighting force that rewards individual initiative, excellence and hard work based on merit.” (Source: US DoD)
29 Jan 25. Pentagon suspends funding, throwing Ukraine aid into question. Most spending activities are under review, including, it seems, Foreign Military Sales and Security Assistance packages.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) will “temporarily pause” financial assistance to determine what programs, projects, and activities may be implicated by President Donald Trump’s flurry of Executive Orders upon entering the White House.
Notably, the suspension does not extend to defence contract awards. At present, this remains the only exclusion from the department’s bottlenecked finances. All other spending activites appear to be under review, including, it seems, Foreign Military Sales and Security Assistance packages.
This decision, which the Pentagon said it will conduct “expeditiously,” was taken on 28 January 2025.
In the hours after his inauguration, Trump’s numerous presidential orders called on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to re-evaluate the “economic and social costs” of measures such as DEIA, and others, enacted by his progressive predecessor, Joe Biden.
On 26 January, the Department of State, led by Marco Rubio, announced that the government will similarly ‘revaluate and realign’ the United States’ foreign aid to adhere to the America First doctrine.
The Pentagon pause has already started to pressure Ukraine, whose head of state, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, expressed concern that American contributions will soon run dry:
“I instructed [Ukraine’s] government officials to provide a report on those American support programmes that are currently suspended,” which Zelenskyy suggested were largely humanitarian programmes.
“There are many projects,” he emphasised. “We will determine which ones are critical and need immediate solutions. We can provide part of this funding through our state finances, and we will discuss some of them with Europeans and Americans.”
Military assistance to Ukraine is uncertain
Details of the US suspension have yet to be ironed out, with the DoD suggesting that they will be “providing more details regarding this matter as they develop and become available.”
While day-to-day contracts will continue to flow within the bounds of the Pentagon’s budget, which is more than $800bn according to GlobalData intelligence, the department has not made clear the impact the pause will have on military assistance to foreign nations such as Ukraine.
In a call with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, three days ago, the Pentagon’s financial pause did not stop the new Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, from pledging the US would “ensure that Israel has the capabilities it needs to defend itself.”
Whereas, the Trump administration’s position on Ukraine continues to hang in the balance. At most, Rubio welcomed the EU’s extension of sanctions against Russia in a call with its foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, on the 28 January.
Some indication of the government’s position on Ukraine may be taken from Hegseth’s address to the armed forces several days ago, wherein he reiterated his commitment to Trump’s “priority to end wars responsibly and reorient to key threats.” (Source: army-technology.com)
28 Jan 25. Trump signs order to revise Pentagon’s policy on transgender troops. President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender troops, likely setting in motion a future ban on their military service. He also on Monday ordered troops to be reinstated who had left voluntarily or been booted for refusing COVID-19 vaccines, outlined new rollbacks in diversity programs and provided for the deployment of a space-based missile defense shield for the U.S. — all on Hegseth ‘s first day.
Trump and Hegseth had described parts of the anticipated orders throughout the day, but the exact language did not drop until late Monday.
Transgender order
A transgender ban had been widely expected, and Trump’s order largely sets the stage for a future ban — but directs Hegseth to come up with how that would be implemented in policy.
In his order, Trump claimed that service by troops who identify as a gender other than their biological one “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness, requiring a revised policy to address the matter.
Trump had tried to ban transgender troops during his first term, but it was tangled up in the courts for years before being overturned by then-President Joe Biden shortly after he took office.
Two groups, Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign, which represented transgender troops the first time, vowed to fight again.
“We have been here before and seven years ago were able to successfully block the earlier administration’s effort,” Lambda Legal attorney Sasha Buchert said. “Not only is such a move cruel, it compromises the safety and security of our country and is particularly dangerous and wrong. As we promised then, so do we now: we will sue.”
Space-based missile defense
During his first presidency, Trump established U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Space Force, which just marked its fifth birthday. Space continues to be a priority for the president, who has now directed the Pentagon to begin to develop the capability to shoot down missiles from space.
For years, the U.S. has cautioned that China, Russia and others were weaponizing space. It has at times declassified information about both countries’ efforts to create offensive weapons to disable critical U.S. satellites, including the capability to move satellites from orbit, temporarily blind them or potentially even destroy them.
The Space Force is building a low-orbit ring of redundant satellites that can more quickly track and detect potential missile launches.
But establishing a way to shoot missiles down from space is something the U.S. has not pursued since President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative — “Star Wars” as it was commonly known — in the 1980s. The system was never developed due to cost and technological limitations.
In his order called “an Iron Dome for America,” Trump called for a multilayer missile defense system capable of countering an array of threats to the U.S., to include development and deployment of space-based interceptors.
COVID-19 vaccination
At least 8,200 troops were forced out of the military in 2021 for refusing to obey a lawful order when they declined to get the vaccine. Notices advising them they could return were sent out in 2023, but just 113 have reenlisted.
The reinstatement process for any who now want to return requires that they meet military entry standards. Trump and Hegseth have persistently stated that the military must not reduce standards.
″We will offer full reinstatement to any service member who was expelled from the armed forces due to the COVID vaccine mandate,” Trump told a Republican crowd at the Trump National Doral Miami, a resort he owns. “And we will restore them to their former rank with full pay. ″
In addition to troops forced out for refusing the shot, the order extends the same offer to anyone who signs a sworn statement saying they left the service voluntarily to avoid the vaccine.
The order isn’t expected to have a major impact on the number of service members returning. But it could take a bite out of the budget if more do now, since it requires back pay.
To return, all would have to meet weight, fitness, medical and other requirements, and they could be refused if they now have a criminal record or other disqualifying factor. Officers would have to get recommissioned, which is a simple appointment process.
According to the services, 3,748 Marines were discharged, and 25 have opted to re-enlist; 1,903 Army soldiers were discharged, and 73 returned; 1,878 sailors were discharged and two returned; 671 airmen were discharged and 13 returned.
The Pentagon made the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory in August 2021 for all service members, including the National Guard and Reserve. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said getting the vaccine was critical to maintaining a healthy, ready force that could be prepared to defend the nation.
The Pentagon formally dropped the mandate in January 2023.
Defense officials said then that many troops appeared to use the vaccine mandate as a way to quickly and easily to get out of their service obligations.
DEI initiatives
Trump also, as expected, issued a sweeping order to abolish all programs, initiatives and mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion across the Defense Department and the Coast Guard, which is governed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The order looks to scrub “any vestiges” of such initiatives that seek to “promote a race-based preferences system that subverts meritocracy, perpetuates unconstitutional discrimination, and promotes divisive concepts or gender ideology.”
It prohibits the departments from promoting or following “un-American” theories that suggest that America’s founding documents are racist or sexist; that discuss gender ideology; and that promote “divisive concepts” such as “race or sex stereotyping.”
The order says the defense and homeland security secretaries must issue guidance to implement the order in 30 days. It calls for a review to find any instances of actions taken in pursuit of DEI, which will be due to the defense secretary in 90 days.
The secretaries must submit a report to the White House in six months outlining their progress.
The Pentagon had already been taking steps to comply with Trump’s initial action ending DEI programs across the U.S. government, and it has had far-reaching consequences. Without clearer direction, agencies were taking a broad approach to removing any content that seemed to run afoul of Trump’s ban.
That temporarily included videos of the storied Tuskegee Airmen and World War II Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, which were part of DEI training courses for the Air Force’s basic military training. Videos on both the Tuskegee Airmen and WASPs were removed as the courses were taken down last week, causing an uproar.
WASPs were vital in ferrying warplanes for the military. The Tuskegee Airmen were the nation’s first Black military pilots, serving in a segregated WWII unit, and their all-Black 332nd Fighter Group had one of the lowest loss records of all the bomber escorts in the war.
On Sunday, the Air Force clarified that the DEI courses had been removed to be edited but that the Tuskegee Airmen and WASP content would continue to be taught. (Source: Army Times)
28 Jan 25. Department of Defense Statement Clarifying Defense Contracting.
“The Department is currently reviewing the OMB Memorandum, “Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance,” dated January 27, 2025. As directed by the memorandum, the Department will expeditiously analyze its financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders. In the interim, and as directed by OMB, the Department will temporarily pause activities related to the obligation or disbursement of financial assistance, to the extent permissible under applicable law. The scope of the OMB M-25-13 memo on financial assistance instruments does not include contracts. Contrary to certain media accounts, the Department of Defense has not paused contract awards. The Department continues to award new contracts to fulfill validated mission needs. While we are not aware of any specific contracts or other activities affected, it is possible that activities may be paused if they are determined to fall within the bounds of the guidance. We look forward to providing more details regarding this matter as they develop and become available.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
27 Jan 25. Hegseth Arrives at Pentagon, Says Warfighters Are ‘Ready to Go’. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon today and said improving lethality, warfighting and readiness are the main lines of effort he will pursue while in office.
Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, greeted Hegseth as he arrived at the Pentagon. The defense secretary spoke to about 30 members of the press before entering the building.
“It’s an honor to serve on behalf of the president and serve on behalf of the country,” Hegseth said. “In talking to the chairman and so many other folks here, we’re in capable hands. The warfighters are ready to go.”
President Donald J. Trump declared a national emergency on the southern border. Hegseth said the “protection of the sovereign territory of the United States is the job of the Defense Department.” He said he was pleased the Pentagon “snapped to” last week, providing troops to strengthen the border barrier and transportation “for the mass deportation effort.”
“Whatever is needed at the border will be provided,” Hegseth said. “Whether that is through state active duty, Title 32 or Title 10. This is a shift: This is not the way it was done in the past. The Defense Department will support the defense of the territorial integrity of the United States of America’s southern border, including reservists, National Guardsmen and active-duty in compliance with the Constitution and the laws of our land, and the directives of the commander in chief.”
Other areas the secretary will study include reinstating troops that were pushed out because of COVID-19 vaccination mandates and developing an Iron Dome anti-missile system for the United States.
Hegseth said he is focused on the men and women in uniform.
“Our job is lethality and readiness and warfighting. [The United States] will be no better friend to our allies and no stronger adversary to those who want to test us and try us,” he said. “I look forward to serving the troops, the warriors of this department. It’s the honor of a lifetime, and we’re going to get to work. God bless you all.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
27 Jan 25. New SASC chair sets sight on $200bn defense boost, major acquisition reform push.
“I hope and believe that President Trump’s pledge to restore peace through strength so that we can avoid conflict is going to be followed through with adequate funding,” Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Roger Wicker told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview.
The new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has two goals as he takes the gavel in 2025: boost defense funding by about $200 bn in the Republican’s reconciliation package and pass a sweeping acquisition reform proposal in the next defense policy bill, he told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview.
If successful in getting a plus-up for defense, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., suggested the money could be used to help fund an Iron Dome-like missile shield over the United States — one of President Donald Trump’s stated defense priorities — as well as to make key investments in areas such as shipbuilding, submarines and the Air Force’s next-generation fighter.
“I hope and believe that President Trump’s pledge to restore peace through strength so that we can avoid conflict is going to be followed through with adequate funding,” Wicker said in a Jan. 23 interview. “At the same time, it is a magnificent opportunity to make the Defense Department and defense procurement more efficient and modern.”
Wicker’s office confirmed to Breaking Defense that the SASC chairman is pursuing a parallel strategy to enact his two priorities. The first goal is getting buy-in from Trump and GOP leadership on a substantial funding increase for defense in the reconciliation bill currently under negotiation. The second involves using the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act as a vehicle to pass Wicker’s acquisition reform vision, laid out in December as the Fostering Reform and Government Efficiency in Defense (FORGED) Act.
The budget reconciliation bill, which uses a special procedure that allows bills to avoid filibuster and pass with a simple majority, could include funding for Trump priorities like tax cuts and border security and is targeted to go to the president’s desk in April. (House Republicans are expected to discuss the reconciliation bill during their annual meeting in Miami early this week.)
Wicker — who has argued that US defense spending should grow to 5 percent of GDP — and House Armed Services Committee chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., are hoping to make the case to GOP leadership that additional money for defense should be included as part of the legislation.
“It would not be outside the realm of possibility to make it $100 bn a year [for defense] for the next two years,” Wicker said. “That would start to get us where we want to go.”
A plus-up of that size — over a 10 percent increase from what Wicker’s committee marked up for the FY25 NDAA — could be used to accelerate the construction of warships, amphibious ships and submarines, he said, as well as to start development of an American Iron Dome missile defense shield, an investment that Wicker acknowledged will be a technical challenge as well as a costly expenditure.
“Israel is a small state about the size of New Jersey, so Iron Dome for Israel is much different from Iron Dome for America,” Wicker said. “But a missile defense shield with a large satellite, a space-based component, that’s going to be expensive, but it’s a must, and it happens that the president feels some urgency in getting that done.”
It could also help fund continued development of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, which faces an uncertain future due to budget constraints as the service balances other expensive modernization projects such as the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile system and the B-21 Raider bomber. As Breaking Defense first reported, the service recently concluded a study that validated the requirement for a manned sixth-gen fighter, but has left the incoming Trump administration to make the final decision on whether to continue or cancel the program.
In 2024, “we agreed reluctantly to do a bit of a pause to let the experts take another look at whether NGAD should be manned. And the answer came back after the election with the vengeance, absolutely yes,” Wicker said.
Boosting ‘the Elon Musks of the Future’
Wicker’s defense acquisition plan largely sailed under the radar when it was released in late December, as Congress was racing to pass a last-minute government funding extension. But if enacted, it could radically reshape the Pentagon’s contracting apparatus by injecting new policies meant to ramp up competition, make the acquisition process more agile and responsive to changes in threat, and untether nontraditional defense firms and commercial companies from some of the most onerous Pentagon contracting procedures.
“I haven’t gotten a lot of pushback from the big guys. The folks that would like to innovate and participate as startups are wild about it,” Wicker said. “I think [the primes] would agree that there are too many steps along the way that could be eliminated. But then the little guys — the guys with a new idea, the Elon Musks of the future — see this valley of death, and it’s real to them.”
One of the FORGED Act’s biggest shifts would make commercial procurement processes the default contracting method for the Pentagon, making defense-specific contracting procedures used by bespoke weapon systems like fighter jets and aircraft carriers the exception rather than the rule. The hope is to make it easier for companies that manufacture consumer products to do business with the Pentagon without having to go through the onerous process of proving they meet government standards for commercial goods.
In a potentially even more radical change, the bill proposes making all nontraditional defense firms subject to commercial procurement rules, even if they are selling defense-specific products like missiles or drones. Because nontraditional defense firms have largely funneled their own research and development dollars into bringing a product to the market, unlike most defense products that are developed primarily with government funding, the report accompanying the FORGED Act argues that nontraditional companies should be exempt from rules that would force them to “stand up federal units with separate infrastructure” — a cost burden that might prevent them from continuing to invest their own capital into R&D in the future.
The legislation would also require the Pentagon to transition from a structure where program executive officers manage a given weapons program, into one where a “portfolio acquisition executive” or PAE has oversight over a group of related capabilities and can make tradeoffs among those weapon systems as funding, requirements and schedule evolves.
Under that construct, the services would push some of their requirements and programming staff into the PAE offices, as well as designating representatives from the operational community who would offer insight from the perspective of the troops would use the new weapon in the field.
In what could be another controversial move, it directs the Chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) and Director of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) to co-chair a Joint Requirements & Programming Board, which would “provide analysis, set agendas, and lead debate” on defense acquisition policy measures but be purely advisory in nature, according to the report. The legislation would strip the JROC of its responsibility to validate joint requirements, with the organization instead tasked with “reviewing” requirements.
So far, industry organizations have yet to weigh in on the specifics of Wicker’s plan. In December, Aerospace Industries Association President Eric Fanning said the organization was reviewing the proposal and looked forward to working with Wicker moving forward.
“As the voice of the American aerospace and defense industry, we welcome Senator Wicker’s continued focus on strengthening the defense industrial base and reforming defense acquisition,” Fanning said then. “Senator Wicker’s proposal, along with the Department of Government Efficiency, offers a real opportunity to unleash innovation and get new weapons and equipment to the warfighter faster.”
While Wicker’s office is still early in the process of determining the legislative strategy for the reform proposal, senate aides said some of the FORGED Act will likely appear in the Wicker’s chairman’s mark of the FY26 NDAA, while more contentious changes will have to be dealt with in the committee’s markup process, where they will be offered as amendments to the policy bill and voted on after debate.
“This is not a Wicker-only effort,” one GOP aide said, adding that both Republicans and Democrats have historically been invested in acquisition reform. “So ideally, we are going to have a full team effort on the committee here.”
25 Jan 25. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Begins ‘Most Important Deployment of My Life.’ Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was sworn into his new role leading America’s 3.5m service members and civilians by Vice President JD Vance this morning, following Hegseth’s Friday evening Senate confirmation.
“When President Trump chose me for this position, the primary charge he gave me was to bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense,” Hegseth said during his Jan. 14 confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“He, like me, wants a Pentagon laser-focused on lethality, meritocracy, warfighting, accountability and readiness.”
Hegseth listed restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military and reestablishing deterrence as the ingredients needed to bring back warfighting.
Calling himself a change agent, Hegseth outlined a vision of a culture of accountability, high standards, performance, readiness, rapid innovation and merit across the Defense Department.
“We share the same goals,” he told the committee. “A ready, lethal military; the health and well-being of our troops; and a strong and secure America.”
He also said he would trim the bureaucracy and reallocate resources to the warfighter.
“We won World War II with seven four-star generals,” he said. “Today we have 44. … There is an inverse relationship between the size of staffs and victory on the battlefield. We do not need more bureaucracy at the top. We need more warfighters empowered at the bottom. So, it is going to be my job … to identify those places where fat can be cut, so it can go toward lethality.”
A former Army National Guard officer, Hegseth, 44, served as an infantryman leading troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and guarding detainees at Guantanamo Bay. His military awards include two Bronze Star Medals, the Joint Commendation Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Expert Infantryman Badge.
Hegseth said his role as the 29th secretary of defense is “the most important deployment of my life.”
Hailing from Minnesota, Hegseth graduated from Princeton University in 2003 and earned a master’s degree from Harvard University in 2013. He has led organizations advocating for veterans, served as a Fox News host and published several books.
Hegseth and his wife, Jennifer, have seven children. (Source: U.S. DoD)
24 Jan 25. Secretary Hegseth’s Message to the Force. It is the privilege of a lifetime to lead the warriors of the Department of Defense, under the leadership of our Commander in Chief Donald J. Trump. We will put America First, and we will never back down.
The President gave us a clear mission: achieve Peace through Strength. We will do this in three ways — by restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and reestablishing deterrence.
o We will revive the warrior ethos and restore trust in our military. We are American warriors. We will defend our country. Our standards will be high, uncompromising, and clear. The strength of our military is our unity and our shared purpose.
o We will rebuild our military by matching threats to capabilities. This means reviving our defense industrial base, reforming our acquisition process, passing a financial audit, and rapidly fielding emerging technologies. We will remain the strongest and most lethal force in the world.
o We will reestablish deterrence by defending our homeland — on the ground and in the sky. We will work with allies and partners to deter aggression in the Indo-Pacific by Communist China, as well as supporting the President’s priority to end wars responsibly and reorient to key threats. We will stand by our allies — and our enemies are on notice.
All of this will be done with a focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.
I have committed my life to warfighters and their families. Just as my fellow soldiers had my back on the battlefield, know that I will always have your back. We serve together at a dangerous time. Our enemies will neither rest nor relent. And neither will we. We will stand shoulder to shoulder to meet the urgency of this moment.
Like each of you, I love my country and swore an oath to defend the Constitution. We will do that each and every day, as one team. Together we will accomplish the President’s mission to deter war, and if necessary, defeat and destroy our enemies. Godspeed! (Source: U.S. DoD)
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