The White House’s pick to lead the Pentagon’s weapons testing wants “automation everywhere.” That’s because the complexity of new weapons is mostly in software, Amy Henninger said at her Thursday confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The systems to be tested “are software-enabled and software-defined and there’s only five to 10 percent that is only hardware,” she said. “I would suggest that using more software to automate software testing is where we need to go.”
But it won’t replace live testing, Henninger vowed. “It makes sense to model or simulate the things that we know and live test the things that we don’t know. And with that as a baseline heuristic, I don’t ever foresee a day where we will have no live testing.” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here.
With deep cuts ordered by SecDef Pete Hegseth, some Senators wondered whether testing in general will suffer. “Unfortunately, in May, the Secretary of Defense announced his plan to significantly reduce the DOT&E office, including slashing its workforce budget and resources,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. “With drastically reduced resources, DOT&E may be unable to provide adequate oversight for critical military programs, risking operational awareness and taxpayer dollars.” Breaking Defense has more on that angle, here.
At the hearing, senators also grilled the nominee for Pentagon comptroller, particularly about the prospects of a clean audit for the Defense Department within three years, as required by the 2024 defense policy act. Michael Powers said he expected to have a checklist of technical tasks by January—and a plan to get and keep senior leaders on board. Read, here.
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Developing: Two senators want answers from the Navy about the death of U.S. Navy Seaman Angelina Resendiz, whose body was discovered behind an elementary school in Norfolk, Va., almost two weeks after she was reported missing on May 29. Her body was found on June 9, and an unnamed sailor assigned to the same ship as Resendiz was taken into custody on June 10.
Virginia Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine sent a letter (PDF) to Navy Secretary John Phelan on Wednesday requesting “significantly greater detail about the circumstances of Seaman Resendiz’s disappearance and death, including a more fulsome accounting of the Navy’s engagement with Seaman Resendiz’s loved ones and fellow sailors who had raised concerns about her well-being.”
According to the victim’s mother, when she first saw her daughter’s body, “she was covered, just infested with maggots, with bugs and decaying. And they didn’t preserve her body or prepare her to come home.” In response, Warner and Kaine told Phelan, “We have serious questions as to what policies and procedures govern dignified transfer of remains after an investigation, and whether those were followed in this instance.”
The two lawmakers gave Phelan until August 14 to arrange a “briefing from relevant Navy and installation leadership” regarding Resendiz’s death, including “from the initial reports of Seaman Resendiz’s missing status, up to and including the return of her remains to Texas.”
Notable: “The case is drawing parallels to the 2020 death of Vanessa Guillen, the 20-year-old private first class who was last seen in the parking lot of her barracks, and was later found in a shallow grave near Fort Cavazos in Texas,” CNN reported in June.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston and Audrey Decker. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2023, a grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted Donald Trump on four charges for his actions after the 2020 presidential election and through the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The charges included conspiracy to defraud the U.S.; obstructing an official proceeding; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Procedural delays dragged on through the 2024 election, and after Trump’s victory, prosecutors dropped the charges, citing Justice Department policy to not prosecute a sitting president.
Ukraine
An overnight Russian missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s capital city killed 31 people, including five children, President Volodymir Zelenskyy said Friday on social media. More than 150 others were wounded in the strikes, including 16 children, AP reports from Kyiv, calling it “the highest number of children killed and injured in a single attack on Kyiv since aerial attacks on the city began in October 2022.”
Russia’s invasion troops, meanwhile, claim to have taken control of the strategically located city of Chasiv Yar, Reuters reports. However, “available geolocated footage does not support claims that Russian forces have yet advanced to the western administrative boundary of the town,” analysts for the Institute for the Study of War wrote Thursday.
Trendspotting: After six months in office—and 193 days since the president promised to end the war in Ukraine—Trump and congressional Republicans are changing their tune on U.S. support for Ukraine, the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reported this week. From the Post: The Senate’s Appropriations Committee “on Thursday approved an $852 billion defense budget framework that includes $800 million in long-term military support for Ukraine…That shift has emboldened the GOP’s pro-Ukraine contingent, including members of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense spending, to push for tightening the screws on Russia’s economy and sending more weapons to the government in Kyiv.”
At the same time, GOP Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Idaho’s Jim Risch “laid out a plan Wednesday to allow allies to finance donations of U.S. weapons and military equipment to Ukraine, following through on a proposal pushed by President Trump to raise billions of dollars a year for the war effort,” the Journal reported Thursday. “Their bill would create a fund at the U.S. Treasury to accept money from allies. The defense secretary could then use the fund to pay contractors to replenish U.S. stockpiles so the Pentagon can continue sending weapons packages to Ukraine without undermining America’s own military readiness.”
For your radar: “The plan is to pass it later this year as part of the annual defense policy bill produced by Wicker’s committee.” Read more, here.
Related reading: “Microsoft catches Russian hackers targeting foreign embassies,” Ars Technica reported Thursday; review the Microsoft alert issued Thursday, here.
Trump 2.0
Vermont’s Republican governor has declined the Pentagon’s request to use the state’s National Guard at ICE facilities, Vermont Public media reported Wednesday.
“We just don’t see this as a good use of the Guard,” Gov. Phil Scott said this week.
Reminder: The National Guard can be federalized without the consent of governors, as the Trump administration learned when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the administration’s favor in the case of California on June 19. As Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote the day after that ruling, “The administration claims that the troops are merely protecting federal personnel, property, and functions, not quelling civil unrest or enforcing the law. However, that assertion is dubious given the fact that troops are accompanying ICE on their raids, detaining civilians, and physically confronting protesters.” And as such, “A nationwide preemptive deployment to address any protests against any federal activities is wholly unprecedented in U.S. history” and “poses a grave threat to the First Amendment right to engage in peaceful protest.”
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See also: Half a dozen Washington Post journalists spoke to 16 former detainees of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center to “offer the most complete view yet of conditions at the notorious prison” where the Trump administration has deported people from the U.S. Read that, here.
Speaking of El Salvador, the country just changed its constitution to end term limits, which allows President Nayib Bukele to “seek reelection indefinitely,” the New York Times reported Friday.
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