The Bunker: Anything Happen While we Were Away?

The Bunker, delivered to our subscribers Wednesdays at 7 a.m., is a newsletter from the desk of National Security Analyst Mark Thompson. Sign up here to receive it first thing, or check back Wednesday afternoon for the online version.

This week in The Bunker: The changes now underway at the Pentagon and in the broader national-security arena risk politicizing what for 250 years has been an ironclad commitment to a military impervious to partisan machinations; what happens when shiny hardware distracts the military from doing simple things right, and more.

THERE’S SOMETHING HAPPENING HERE…

But what it is ain’t exactly clear

So, anything happen while The Bunker was away? Is the country and its military still intact (not, alas, a rhetorical question)? Skimming the news over the past month brought repeated references to the centrifugal forces slowly pulling the country apart. The Department of Defense has long been viewed more as a bulwark of democracy and less of a playpen for politicians. But that tank has left the station, and it’s picking up speed.

We’ve been through such troubles before. The Bunker thinks back to the Cold War’s domestic disinformation, and the struggle for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. But this time is different: There is a calculated strategy to break the U.S. military’s allegiance to nonpartisanship and make it an arm of presidential power. Troops who The Bunker knows don’t want to go down that road. They reflect the majority view of U.S. citizens. But even a minority, when armed, and led by civilians armed with certitude, can send this nation down a perilous path.

What’s happening is an invidious and insidious slow-motion avalanche to autocracy. It’s gob-smacking to survey some of what took place in the national security lost-in-space during The Bunker’s month away:

• The Air Force’s top general was cashiered.
• The general running the Defense Intelligence Agency was fired.
• The Navy’s top SEAL was removed from his post.
• The CIA’s top Russia expert was terminated.

These follow earlier, wholesale national security cannings by the Trump administration. What’s especially unsettling about them is the dearth of information about why these senior officials were let go.

And it’s not only unexplained job losses:

• Future four-star generals and admirals now have to meet with Trump before being nominated. Think of it as the Pledge of Allegiance 2.0.
• Armed National Guard troops have been deployed to the nation’s capital. Reinforcements are coming from six Republican-run states. Other cities may be next.
• Trump has ordered the Pentagon to create “a standing National Guard quick reaction force” for “nationwide deployment” to quell civic unrest.
• The FBI raided the home of John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser during his first term but who has since turned on the president.
• The Trump administration is thinking about buying major chunks of U.S. defense contractors. “Lockheed Martin makes 97% of their revenue from the U.S. government,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said. Apparently the notion of diversifying the defense-industrial base to reduce the Pentagon’s reliance on corporations like Lockheed, or breaking such defense giants into separate companies, is beyond the administration’s ken.
• The Defense Department will spend $10 million to return a monument honoring the Confederacy to Arlington National Cemetery.
• The Pentagon has offered military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran killed as she and others tried to invade the House Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Bunker reflects on other months that have seen such national-security temblors in nearly 50 years on the beat: the Iranian revolution of 1979, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Pakistan’s first nuclear-weapons test in 1998, the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006 all come to mind.

But none of those was self-inflicted.

Our nation is becoming the boiling pot. We have met the frog, and, with apologies to the other POGO, it is us.

MIDAIR COLLUSION

You can’t make this stuff up

Okay, enough sturm und drang about the sad state of command and control of the U.S. military. Let’s shift our attention to The Bunker’s bread and butter: just what the U.S. military is buying, and whether or not it makes sense for U.S. troops and taxpayers. Take the Air Force’s recently released probe (PDF) into the January crash of an F-35 jet fighter in Alaska. The F-35 — the crown jewel of the aforementioned Lockheed — is the Pentagon’s preeminent fighter plane. You’re slated to spend more than $2 trillion — yes, trillion — to buy it and keep it flying until 2088.

Let’s start at the beginning:

• The F-35’s hydraulic fluid was heavily polluted with water and dirt January 28.
• It left its heated Alaska hangar and sat on the runway for 40 minutes while waiting for five other F-35s to troubleshoot problems once their engines had fired up.
• The zero-degree Fahrenheit temperature began freezing the water in the F-35’s hydraulic lines as the plane sat on the runway.
• When the plane finally took off, the icy buildup in one hydraulic line kept its nose landing gear from fully retracting into the F-35’s fuselage, which could trigger an unsafe landing.
• The pilot radioed his supervisor in the flight-control tower, who set up a conference call with five Lockheed engineers to try to figure out what was wrong.
• The F-35 made the first of two touch-and-go landings roughly 50 minutes after takeoff to see if that might solve the problem.

• But by the time of the second touch-and-go, the main landing gear’s hydraulics had also iced up so much that its wheels had frozen, too.

• The F-35’s computer, designed to detect when the aircraft’s weight is on its wheels, mistakenly concluded that the airplane was on the ground because all three wheel sensors were in agreement.

• Based on that misreading, the F-35’s software automatically shifted the plane’s computerized controls from airborne flight to on-the-ground ops, even as it was flying at more than 250 miles an hour.
• The F-35 experienced “severe oscillations” and ignored the pilot’s efforts to control the plane. He safely ejected 372 feet above the runway. The jet flew up to 3,205 feet before losing lift and plunging to the ground, beating the pilot and his parachute back to Earth (watch it here).

Investigators couldn’t determine how the hydraulic fluid became tainted, beyond noting that record-keeping was poor and that the maintenance crew was short-handed. Typical: buy the shiny and costly hardware, and then skimp on what it takes to keep it humming.

Heck, when you spend $2 trillion on a program (including $196.5 million for this plane), you’ve got to expect some corner-cutting.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Missing Inaction

Politico’s Michael Hirsh explored why the Pentagon is so far behind when it comes to drone warfare August 27.

→ Incomplete tests

The Pentagon’s official testing shop has slashed its oversight of the number of weapons it is monitoring from 251 to 152 — a 39% decrease, Greg Williams, director of the Center for Defense Information, reported August 28.

→ Gas pains

The Air Force KC-46 tanker’s still-troubled refueling boom has become stuck in three warplanes causing three accidents, Audrey Decker at Defense One reported August 26.

Thanks for refueling with The Bunker this week. Kindly consider forwarding this on to pals so they can subscribe here.