President Trump has proposed a 10% increase in the defense budget. I gather this means he will request supplementary spending of $30 billion for FY2017 (this year) and a full $54 billion for FY2017. This will put the defense budget at $603 billion and non-defense discretionary spending at $462 billion for FY2018. Of course, this has to go through congress, as the House of Representatives only can initiate spending bills, and they somehow or the other have to pay for this (which is going to be an issue). No specifics on what the money will be spent on, although they mentioned planes and ships.
The cuts will be a challenge. According to one article: “Two officials familiar with Trump’s proposal said the planned defense spending increase would be financed partly by cuts to the State Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other non-defense programs.”
The State Department and U.S. AID budgets are around 50 billion. Around $26 billion goes to foreign aide. The top four recipients for aid are Israel (3.0 billion), Egypt (1.3 billion), Afghanistan (1.3 billion) and Pakistan (700 million). I can’t envision we would cut any of these four aid programs, so savings from these budgets may be limited.
The EPA budget is 8 billion. They are talking about a 25% cut there, so $2 billion.
The rest of the money will have to come from other non-defense discretionary programs (vice Social Security, Medicare, paying interest on the debt, etc.) or we will have to increase the deficit. Right now, I suspect it will be the later. The last two major defense build-ups were funded by deficit spending.
Army: Robert Speer (acting). No one new nominated yet.
Navy: Sean Stackley (acting). No one new nominated yet.
Air Force: Lisa Disbrow (acting): Heather Wilson nominated.
All the acting secretaries are hold-over undersecretaries and assistance secretaries from the previous administration. I gather that the various deputy, undersecretary and assistant secretary slots are also mostly not filled.
I don’t think Iraqi casualties in the Mosul operations have been published. This article has a report that the fight to take the eastern half of Mosul cost Iraqi forces 500 dead, with another 3,000 wounded in three months of fighting (6-to-1 wounded to killed ratio). On Saturday, Iraq had four soldiers killed and 53 wounded in the fight for western Mosul: U.S. Forces Push Artillery, Rockets and Helicopters Closer to the Fight in Mosul
The source of the estimate was General Joseph Votel, head of the U.S. Central Command. Suspect they have more precise figures. Not sure if the figures include Kurdish forces or Iraqi Shiite militia. Also see: iraqi-army-ahead-of-schedule-in-fight-for-west-mosul
Last year the U.S. government sent almost $10 billion worth of vehicles and arms to other countries. In the past five years, more than 100 nations have purchased from us. Thirteen countries accounted for almost 70% of our 2016 arms exports. The list is:
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Blanton, center, a trainer with Company A, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, Task Force Strike, assists Iraqi army ranger students during a room-clearing drill at Camp Taji, Iraq, July 18, 2016. The new Security Force Assistance Brigades will assume these types of missions in the future. (Photo Credit: 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson)
With much of the focus of the defense and national security communities shifting to peer and near-peer challenges, the Department of the Army’s recent announcement that the first Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) will begin standing up in October 2017 comes as an interesting bit of news. The Army will also establish a new Military Advisor Training Academy at Ft. Benning, Georgia to train officers and non-commissioned officers to staff what are projected to a total of six SFABs with 500 personnel each.
The Strategic Role of Security Force Assistance
Security Force Assistance (SFA) is the umbrella term for U.S. whole-of-government support provided to develop the capability and capacity of foreign security forces and institutions. SFA is intended to help defend host nations from external and internal threats, and encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and stability operations.
The use of military aid to bolster allies is a time-old strategic expedient; it was one of the primary weapons with which the U.S.waged the Cold War. SFA has assumed a similar role in U.S. policy for countering global terrorism, as a cost-effective alternative to direct involvement in destroying or deterring the development of terrorist sanctuaries. The efficacy of this approach is a hot topic for debate in foreign policy and national security circles these days.
Organizing, training, equipping, building, advising, and assisting foreign security forces is a time and resource-intensive task and the best way of doing it has been long debated. One of the Army’s justifications for creating the SFAB’s was the need to free line units from SFA taskings to focus on preparing for combat operations. The Army is also highlighting the SFABs dual capability as cadres upon which combat-ready U.S. Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) can be quickly created in a national emergency with the addition of junior personnel.
Advise and Assist: SOF vs. General Purpose Forces?
The Army believes that dedicated SFABs will be more effective at providing SFA than has been the case with recent efforts. This is an important consideration in light of the decidedly mixed combat performance of U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan and Iraqi security forces. The dramatic collapse of Iraqi Army units defending Mosul in 2014 that had been trained by conventional U.S. forces contrasts with the current dependence on U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF)-trained Iraqi Counterrorism Service (CTS) forces to lead the effort to retake the city.
This apparent disparity in success between the SOF advise and assist model and the more generic conventional force SFA template is causing some angst in the U.S. Army Special Forces (ARSOF) community, some of whom see training foreign security forces as its traditional institutional role. Part of the reason conventional forces are assigned SFA tasks is because there will never be enough ARSOF to meet the massive demand, and ARSOF units are needed for other specialized taskings as well. But the ultimate success of the SFABs will likely be gauged against the historical accomplishments of their SOF colleagues.
We try to stay away from politics in this blog, which is hard to do when discussing national security policy. Still, there are enough political and opinion piece websites and blogs out there, that we do not wish to add to the noise! This article by Major Danny Sjursen borders on the edge of being overtly political but I found it very interesting regardless: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/165261
I have not read his book Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge but I did invest parts of two chapters in my book, America’s Modern Wars, discussing the surge in Iraq and its later adaptation to Afghanistan. His book will also be added to my growing reading list (right now I am struggling with getting the final edits to War by Numbers completed on time…and should not be blogging at all).
Anyhow, I do like his theme that U.S. involvement and policies in the Middle East fundamentally started shifted with the events on 1979. I think it is a useful timeline.
Apparently North Korea used a VX Nerve Agent to assassinate the leader of North Korea’s older half-brother in the airport in Malaysia: kim-jong-nam-nerve-agent
Nerve agents are outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 and the United States has not manufactured any since 1969 and banned its production. We destroyed our last VX inventory in 2008. There is at least 124 tons of VX that was dumped in the Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of New York, New Jersey and Florida. I gather Russia has not completed its elimination of all its nerve agents: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/world/europe/27russia.html?ref=world and new-chemical-weapons-destruction-facility-opens-at-kizner
Anyhow, it does clearly indicate that North Korea has VX Nerve Agents.
Lt. General H. R. McMaster is now the National Security Advisor: H._R._McMaster
He has been a particularly successful combat commander, from leading the a troop of an armored cavalry regiment in the Battle of 73 Easting, to commanding the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, to later service in Afghanistan; he has served very successfully in three of our wars. Yet he was passed over twice for promotion to Brigadier General. His career has mostly been related to combat, combat arms and further development of our combat capabilities.
Probably one of the more interesting aspects of his career is that while he was a major he published a book in 1997 called Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam. It was originally his PhD thesis for his degree in history. Sad to say, I have not read it (yet).
He is still on active duty, which is not the first time this has happened (Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell).
