Developing: The bodies of three U.S. soldiers were recovered Monday after their sunken M88A2 Hercules vehicle was finally retrieved from a swampy bog in eastern Lithuania, just a half-dozen miles from the border with Belarus.
“We will not rest until the fourth and final soldier is found and brought home,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said in a statement Monday. He also thanked “our dedicated allies in Lithuania and Poland” for their assistance in the recovery operation, which stretched across nearly seven consecutive days.
The soldiers were assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team. Their 63-ton vehicle had been submerged “around four meters below the water’s surface and [was] encased in about two meters of mud,” service officials said over the weekend. “Operations continue to recover the fourth and final missing U.S. soldier,” officials at Army Europe said in a statement Tuesday.
The recovery teams have added “recovery dogs and two specialized drone systems—including one equipped with ground-penetrating radar…and overnight Estonia also joined the efforts” and brought two dogs “able to search the water,” Army Europe said. “Handlers have positioned the dogs in a U.S. Navy Rigid Inflatable Boat to locate any trace scents below the surface,” officials added.
For the record, “The names of the deceased are withheld pending confirmation of next of kin,” Army Europe said Tuesday.
New: Finland says it’s withdrawing from a 1997 treaty against the use of land mines, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo announced Tuesday in Helsinki. “Withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention will give us the possibility to prepare for the changes in the security environment in a more versatile way,” he told reporters, according to Reuters.
Just last month, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania each announced they, too, were exiting the treaty because “Military threats to NATO member states bordering Russia and Belarus have significantly increased,” the four Baltic states said in a joint statement. “In light of this unstable security environment marked by Russia’s aggression and its ongoing threat to the Euro-Atlantic community, it is essential to evaluate all measures to strengthen our deterrence and defense capabilities,” the four nations’ defense ministers said.
Fine print: “Leaving the treaty will require approval by the Finnish parliament but is expected to pass given widespread support among government and opposition parties,” Reuters notes. “More than 160 countries and territories are party to the Ottawa Treaty, including Ukraine. Neither the United States nor Russia are signatories,” Agence France-Presse adds.
By the way, “Norway is restoring [two of] its Cold War military bunkers,” the BBC reported Sunday. “At the peak of the Cold War, the sparsely populated, mountainous country had around 3,000 underground facilities where its armed forces and allies could hide and make life difficult for any invader.”
The two that are re-opening are the Bardufoss Air Station and the naval base at Olavsvern. “Carved out of a mountain side, protected by around 900ft (275m) of tough gabbro rock, the Olasvern base is particularly evocative with its 3,000ft-long (909m) exit tunnel complete with massive blast door,” the BBC reports. The facility at Bardufoss offers excellent protection from drone attacks targeting military aircraft, as Russia’s Ukraine invasion has highlighted.
“The reason for the reactivation of these bases is simple: Russia,” the BBC writes. Read on, here.
Related reading: “Latvians Prepare as the ‘Long Peace’ Ends,” historian and former Latvian parliamentarian Marija Golubeva wrote Monday for the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis.
New: Russia says it will conscript 160,000 more troops for its ongoing Ukraine invasion, Politico reported Monday citing state-run media Interfax. “This conscription campaign may also indicate that, despite official statements about peace, Russia actually seeks to prolong the war,” Ukraine’s State Center for Countering Disinformation said in a statement.
By the way: A positive outcome of ceasefire talks “won’t happen this year, or maybe at the end of the year,” said Russian negotiator Grigori Karasin.
“This is a drawn-out process because of the difficulty of its substance,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday in a conference call with reporters.
Meanwhile, the invasion continues: “Russia continues to pursue logistics infrastructure projects in occupied Ukraine in order to maximize economic control over occupied territories,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in an “occupation update” published Monday. “Russian occupation authorities also continue efforts to incentivize Russian citizens to relocate to occupied Ukraine from Russia in a clear violation of international law,” ISW added.
“Russia is playing games and not really wanting peace,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Monday. The Associated Press has a bit more.
Additional reading: “Trump Wants NATO to Spend More. Europe Pitches Redefining Defense to Get There,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday from Brussels.
Welcome to this Tuesday 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 1945, the U.S. military invaded the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Around the Defense Department
Today on Capitol Hill: John Caine, the retired Air Force three-star who is Trump’s pick for chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is taking questions from senators during his confirmation hearing. A decorated command pilot with decades of service, Caine will still “need multiple waivers to step into the leadership role, since he is currently not in the service and does not meet statutory qualifications to step into the post,” Military Times reminds us.
“As an F-16 pilot with thousands of flight hours and multiple combat deployments, you have served with distinction in the Air Force and the Air National Guard,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said in his opening statement Tuesday. “Frankly, I am concerned about the health of civilian-military relations in our country,” said Reed. “Over the past several months, the military has been dragged into dangerous political fights. Public trust in the military is eroding, and I fear that the military’s trust in civilian leadership has been shaken.”
“If confirmed, you will be responsible for identifying new joint capabilities and performing net assessments to ensure each of the services are procuring the right capabilities needed for the joint force,” the committee’s ranking member continued. “The Chairman must review capabilities holistically across the total force, which can conflict with the priorities of individual services. The committee would be interested to learn how you plan to manage this dynamic.” Watch what remains of the hearing’s livestream, here.
Also on the Hill today: Robert Salesses, Gen. Greg Guillot, & Adm. Alvin Holsey testify to the HASC on U.S. military posture and national security challenges in North and South America
The Trump administration is escalating its war against the Houthis in Yemen by sending at least 300 airmen and “multiple” A-10s to the region, Task & Purpose reported Monday.
“The troops and aircraft, flown by members of the 190th Fighter Squadron, left Idaho on Saturday, March 29. The exact number of A-10s was not disclosed, beyond ‘several’ being deployed. The Idaho State Journal reports that the troops are on a 180-day deployment.”
The U.S. Navy reportedly helped apprehend 13 people along with the Coast Guard and agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection at an unspecified location, officials at Northern Command announced over the weekend on social media. “No further information was immediately available about what type of alleged illicit activity the 13 people apprehended by CBP agents are accused of doing,” Task & Purpose notes.
The U.S. military also helped El Salvador troops on an unspecified “counterterrorism mission” over the weekend, Department of Defense Chief of Staff Joe Kasper said in a statement Monday.
Full statement: “The Department of Defense completed a successful counterterrorism mission this weekend, in partnership with El Salvador. We commend the actions of our military personnel to degrade Foreign Terrorist Organizations under the leadership of President Trump.”
Fine print: That “successful counterterrorism mission,” according to Reuters, “appeared to refer to the deportation of alleged criminals.” The State Department said in a separate statement Monday that the U.S. “military transferred a group of 17 violent criminals from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 organizations, including murderers and rapists” on Sunday evening. More, here.
Related reading:
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth wants to create new and different military fitness standards “to distinguish combat arms occupations from non-combat arms occupations,” he announced Monday in a memo (PDF).
“For certain combat arms roles, it is essential to identify which positions require heightened entry-level and sustained physical fitness,” Hegseth said in the memo. “These roles, which are critical to our military’s mission success, demand exceptional physical capabilities, and the standards for them must reflect that rigor,” said the former Army major who has posted numerous photographs of himself exercising with troops on social media.
“Different physical standards for men and women in the U.S. military have existed for a long time,” Hegseth said on social media Monday. “BUT, there were also combat roles that were male-only,” he added. “Then, under [President Barack] Obama, all combat roles were opened to men AND women. BUT, different physical fitness standards for men and women remained,” Hegseth complained.
“All combat roles are open to men and women BUT they must all meet the same, high standard,” Hegseth said Monday. “No standards will be lowered AND all combat roles will only have sex-neutral standards.”
Rewind: “After years of internal deliberation over new annual fitness tests, the Army eased the grading standards for women and older service members in 2022,” the New York Times reports. “A study by the RAND research corporation published that year found that women and older troops were failing the new test at significantly higher rates than men and younger troops.”
Worth noting: Gender-neutral fitness standards could pose new challenges for recruiting in the military, where females make up about 16% of the force. Females have been cited as lacking comparable upper body muscle mass compared to their male counterparts; this discrepancy has at times made pull-ups more difficult for women in uniform.
Another consideration: “Each service may define combat arms differently,” a defense official told Task & Purpose.
Related reading: “Ranger School scrapping traditional pushups and situps for functional fitness test,” Stars and Stripes reported last week.
Signalgate, cont.
White House: “Case has been closed.” No one will be held accountable for senior Trump administration officials’ exposure of details of upcoming airstrikes in Yemen, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can, obviously, not happen again,” Leavitt said, declining to say what those might be.
Lawmakers, who oversee the executive branch, aren’t all playing along. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a decorated Marine veteran, told an interviewer that been hearing from a lot of his military contacts. “They’re disgusted,” he said. “And the ones who are still on active duty, I think, are honestly wondering, how are they expected to lead their troops?” Moulton said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should resign. CBS News reports, here.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., says that would be “overkill” but told CNN that the Defense Department inspector general should launch an investigation—not into Hegseth’s pasting of attack details but into National Security Advisor Michael Waltz’s addition of a journalist into the Signal group chat. Via The Hill, here.
DOD, DOJ, DHS look into chat-archiving services. Whiterock Technologies has fielded inquiries from all three agencies about preserving chats conducted over encrypted messaging apps on work devices, fueled by a lawsuit filed last week and a consequent judicial order that directed messages from the Signalgate chat to be preserved, according to people familiar with the discussions, reports Nextgov’s David DiMolfetta.
Commentary: “The Message Pete Hegseth Sends the Troops,” from veteran war reporter-turned-columnist Bill Hennigan: “Mr. Hegseth must, at the very least, own up to his mistake. He’s already seen his first trip as secretary through the Asia-Pacific region overshadowed by calls for accountability. He now risks losing the trust of the military responsible for life-and-death missions every day — the very troops Mr. Hegseth affectionately calls his “fellow soldiers.’” Read, here.
ICYMI: SNL parodied Trump’s Pentagon chief in its cold open sketch. (via YouTube).
China
Beijing’s military is exercising around Taiwan again after China’s Eastern Theatre Command called Taiwan’s president a “parasite” on Tuesday. “Taiwan’s defence ministry said it had not detected any live fire by the Chinese military, but that at least 71 Chinese military aircraft and 13 navy ships were involved,” Reuters reports. Among them were the ships of the Shandong aircraft carrier group, which entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.
A military spokesman said the exercise is meant as a “severe warning and forceful containment against Taiwan independence.”
Retorted Taiwan’s Defense Minister Wellington Koo: “I want to say these actions amply reflect [China’s] destruction of regional peace and stability.” The Associated Press has more.
Related reading: “’Friends forever, never enemies’, Chinese foreign minister tells Russia,” Reuters reported Monday.
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