Department of Defense

Two weeks ago, six US lawmakers, all military or intelligence veterans, released a cryptic YouTube video where they spoke directly to American service members. They were Senators Mark Kelly (Arizona) and Elissa Slotkin (Michigan), and Representatives Jason Crow (Colorado), Chris Deluzio (Pennsylvania), Chrissy Houlahan (Pennsylvania) and Maggie Goodlander (New Hampshire) “Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” one of them said. “Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” said another. “You must refuse illegal orders,” said a third. “No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.

In the pantheon of American bureaucracies, none have guarded their prerogatives more jealously – or become more allergic to reform – than the State Department. And so, predictably, when the Trump administration moved in recent weeks to cut the agency’s workforce by 15 percent, Washington’s political and media class protested in unison. But strip away the histrionics, and something else emerges: a much-needed effort to realign the State Department with the America it’s supposed to represent. No one celebrates the pain of sudden job loss. Many of the terminated employees were sincere public servants (some of whom I count as personal acquaintances).

President Trump and his administration are advancing plans for their version of a homeland missile defense system, dubbed the “Golden Dome.” Proponents of the Golden Dome, such as Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin, claim that it is required to protect the US homeland. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised the project, arguing it is “a generational investment in the security of America and Americans,” and that the Golden Dome would be capable of intercepting “cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, drones, whether they’re conventional or nuclear.” While this all sounds good, there are reasons to worry about the genesis of the idea, its cost, its feasibility and its risks.

Back in 2010, there was no more respected warfighter and general beloved by his men than Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan. Bob Gates once called him "the finest warrior and leader of men in combat I ever met." He was also a man of the people, uncomfortable around the fat and happy elites of the foreign policy and national security world. As the late reporter Michael Hastings wrote in his profile for Rolling Stone, McChrystal's favorite beer is Bud Light Lime, his favorite movie Talladega Nights, and dismissed fancy restaurants with candles on the table as "too Gucci". It was that notorious article that proved to be McChrystal's undoing and led directly to him offering his resignation to President Barack Obama.

The Washington firing squad is out for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. His department has seen the dramatic departure of three top aides who were placed on leave and escorted from the Pentagon, before ultimately being fired on Friday. Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick have for their part maintained they were wrongly slandered by others in the building as leakers – and a fourth former spokesperson, John Ullyot, took the rare step of taking to the pages of Politico to publicly denounce the current Pentagon direction as a chaotic "Month from Hell.

The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) has set its sights on the Pentagon. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth told Axios that he will welcome “the keen eye of DoGE” to scrutinize Department of Defense (DoD) spending “very soon.”Hegseth also said he’s already talked to DoGE head honcho Elon Musk about ways to make the Defense Department run more efficiently. Though in Hegseth’s view “efficiency” does not equate to funding cuts (he wants DoD spending to increase), one quick and easy way to curb waste right out the gate would be to abandon the F-35 fighter jet, fire every senior person involved in its commission and put in place systems to ensure that such horrors never happen again.

With a 51-49 vote, the debate on Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be defense secretary ended Thursday afternoon. The vote mostly fell on party lines, with the exception of two Republican senators: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.  "After thorough evaluation, I must conclude that I cannot in good conscience support his nomination for secretary of defense," Murkowski said in a post on X. "I did not make this decision lightly; I take my constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent with the utmost seriousness." “Although he has recently revised his statements on women in combat since being nominated, I remain concerned about the message that confirming Mr. Hegseth sends to women currently serving and those aspiring to join,” Murkowski followed.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, military veteran and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, had his first hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. In his opening remarks, the author of The War on Warriors admitted that he is an unorthodox pick. “It is true that I don’t have a similar biography to defense secretaries of the last thirty years. But, as President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly ‘the right credentials’  — whether they are retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives — and where has it gotten us?” his opening statement read. “It’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.

President Joe Biden delighted Kyiv officials and war hawks — and infuriated the incoming Trump administration (and, separately, the Kremlin) — on Sunday by authorizing Ukraine to send long-range missiles into Russia. Ukraine had been begging for approval to conduct strikes deep into Russia with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMs) for years, only to receive the go-ahead in the final months of Biden’s lame-duck presidency. The decision is being reported as a response to Russia importing 10,000 North Korean troops a few weeks ago, but the timing feels curious.

The disappearance of defense secretary Lloyd Austin for a few days without notifying the White House, or even the second in command at the Pentagon, is more than a one- or two-day story.  It’s a much larger problem. It’s a problem politically for the White House, an opportunity for Republicans, a dilemma for congressional Democrats and a problem for the most powerful military in the world. And, of course, it’s a major problem for Secretary Austin’s future in the position. Let’s start with the problem for the military. It is absolutely essential that the military have a clear chain of command that is clearly specified and operational at all times. Within the military, that chain of command goes up to the senior-most officer in each service branch.

This week we heard a lot about AUKUS, a trilateral initiative between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia that will revamp the Australian naval fleet with nuclear-powered submarines over the next two decades. President Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a show of it in sunny San Diego on March 13, where they officially inaugurated the defense agreement and gave speeches about defending sea lanes and the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific. But there was another story here: the Pentagon released a torrent of charts and bureaucratic documents on what it would like to see in the coming year’s defense budget.

What happens when a government thinks it can distribute a consumer product more efficiently than normal retail channels? Boondoggle and failure come to mind. Two months ago, President Biden announced plans to buy 500 million at-home Covid test kits and mail them to anyone who wanted one. The Department of Defense put in orders for $1.275 billion of tests from iHealth, $340 million from Roche and $306 million from Abbott. How many tests those eye-popping figures bought from each company has never been disclosed, but Abbott, the largest test manufacturer, has a reported production capacity of 50 to 70 million tests. It is safe to assume that the quantities involved commanded an enormous portion of total manufacturing capacity.

The Biden administration has twice extended the deadline for federal employees to volunteer for months-long deployments at the US-Mexico border, undermining the White House's attempts to downplay the recent severity of the migrant crisis. In a Department of Defense bulletin sent Friday and obtained exclusively by The Spectator, staff were informed that the deadline to apply to the Health and Human Services (HHS) volunteer program to assist with the influx of unaccompanied migrant children had been extended from May 7 to May 21. The deadline had previously extended from April 26 to May 7.

Donald Trump dispensed with the services of his acting Defense chief Patrick Shanahan on Tuesday, amid scathing media coverage and ongoing tensions with Iran. Shanahan had filled the post on an interim basis since the sudden protest resignation of James Mattis in December. Trump had demurred for months on formally giving Shanahan the job, drawing out the interregnum long enough to raise questions of legality. Trump formally endorsed Shanahan in the spring, but soon after began second-guessing his own choice, reportedly asking several people on his June junket to Europe what they thought of his new Defense pick.