The Bunker: Droning on and on and on

This week in The Bunker: the nation continues its tendency to over-react to potential threats; the Pentagon’s latest buzz phrase; the whittling down of the public’s right to know into the public’s right to no; and more.

FALLOUT SHELTERS 2.0

Here we go again…

Yesterday’s new threats — say nuclear missiles inbound from Russia — are also today’s old threats. Yet somehow we managed to stop digging fallout shelters in our backyards, like many Americans did in the 1950s. Today’s new threats — drones of every shape and size — are also going to be tomorrow’s old threats (just like, alas, Moscow’s danged missiles continue to be).

So what does a 21st century fallout shelter look like?

Overwrought concerns over domestic drone attacks now have the Air Force looking for private contractors to defend its bases, starting with two unspecified locations in the U.S. “Engagement must occur before threats cross the installation/defended perimeter,” the Air Force said in its October 13 “help wanted” ad. “Neutralization,” it adds, will be done via “kinetic and/or non-kinetic (e.g., RF jamming, cyber takeover, directed energy) effectors.”

Then there’s the push to defend the rest of us, too. “Potential foes, including nonstate actors equipped with drones, cyber, and/or missiles, can now readily strike the commercial heartbeat of our nation,” retired Air Force general Glen VanHerck and Ramon Marks, a veteran international lawyer, said in The National Interest October 16. “If a commercial facility detects an unauthorized drone hovering over a transformer yard or an offshore oil platform, it is legally prohibited from taking active measures to jam, disrupt, or disable that threat.” They urged Congress to “create a revolutionary new framework” so that the private sector can be deputized to deal with the drone danger. And on October 16, the Pentagon and two other federal agencies barred drone flights below 400 feet within a mile of the Mexican border.

All this, apparently, is above and beyond President Donald Trump’s fantastical Golden Dome aerial shield. After all, even a trillion-dollar trinket can’t defend everyone against everything from everywhere. Calibrating risk is challenging, but not impossible.

Like nuclear missiles (nothing scared the young Bunker as much as these signs in his elementary school) and UFOs, the scary drone threat needs to be kept in perspective. Maybe that’s why some Air Force wisenheimer set Halloween as the deadline for applications from companies interested in defending its bases.

“AT THE SPEED OF…”

A slothful Pentagon turns into a speedway

Remember the good ol’ days of military sloganeering? “Be all you can be,” the Army urged. “Aim high!” encouraged the Air Force. “It’s not just a job — it’s an adventure,” the Navy piped. “The few, the proud, the Marines,” the you-know-who said. Those retail recruiting pitches are now being lapped by pledges that the Pentagon is putting its foot on the gas. True, no one has ever accused the U.S. Department of Defense of moving with alacrity. But if words speak louder than actions — as they so often do in the national-security hype hothouse — you could be forgiven for thinking so:

“We’re able to iterate at the speed of relevancy,” Derrick Anderson, the assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, told an industry confab last week.

Army Colonel Tom Monaghan, an Army anti-drone buyer, said he’s working at “the speed of need.”

“Moving at the speed of relevance requires acquisition reform,” Pentagon drone buyer Army Colonel Tony Lindh, said.

Army Major Lucas Ziller wrote that the true test of the U.S. military is “whether a brigade can adapt its kill chain at the speed of the battlefield, a metric at which we are falling short.”

“We are rebuilding the military, but not at the speed of government, not at the speed of this town, or that town, wherever it is, but at the speed of business,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last month, just outside Washington.

The defense chief obviously has never had cable TV.

BLISSING IN ACTION

All’s well when you’re ignorant!

You’d think a Pentagon begging to spend $1.5 trillion on itself this year would be eager to show the taxpayers footing the bill how wisely they’re spending all that lucre. Yet despite its pledge to be the “most transparent” Defense Department in history, today’s Pentagon is far better at spending than it is at sharing. The gap between the two, once a crack, has grown into a chasm. U.S. military spending has soared while Pentagon-information sharing is shrinking down to a government-approved, rubber-stamped, vanishing point.

Regular Bunker readers know the details — barring reporters from the Pentagon press room; giving them no opportunity to embed with the U.S. units fitfully fighting Iran; rarely briefing the press on that war (Secretary Hegseth and Air Force General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the traditional DC duo of wartime combat briefers, last briefed the press on the Iran conflict on May 5, 169 days ago, as this edition of The Bunker goes live); and neutering the Defense Department’s proudly-independent Stars and Stripes newspaper.

But then there are the more insidious kinds of data losses.

Three years ago, for example, the Pentagon inspector general issued a report (PDF) detailing the poor shape of Army stockpiles of weapons and vehicles bound for Ukraine. One howitzer was so decrepit it “would have killed somebody [the operator]” if it had been fired, the IG found (PDF). The report was labeled “CUI” — which stands for “Controlled Unclassified Information” — at the top and bottom of each of its 24 pages. But that designation was slashed through, meaning the information in the 2023 report could be released. The Pentagon decided that this was the kind of information the public — you know, the financiers of this gloriously inefficient but vital global enterprise — deserved to know.

Not anymore.

On October 8, the IG released a similar “unclassified” report, assessing the condition of Pentagon gear stored in Poland. Its bottom line was short and not-so-sweet for U.S. taxpayers, and those who care about U.S. troops who might be sent into harm’s way. “Due to the extent of the controlled unclassified information contained in the audit results and recommendations,” it concluded (PDF), “we did not release them publicly.”

Take it from a reporter who has covered the U.S. military for nearly 50 years: The harsh light of public attention does more to clean up military messes than orders issued by the brass (more than 40 years ago, The Bunker triggered the grounding of 600 Army helicopters after reporting on a design defect that the service had ignored for more than a decade that had killed nearly 250 U.S. troops). In fact, the military often issues commands sparked by reporters peskily probing where the Pentagon prefers they not poke.

Good leaders brandish solid reporting to help make things better, instead of trying to banish it under the flimsy falsehood that it is a threat to national security.

WHAT WE’RE READING

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

Thanks for visiting The Bunker this week. Share this with friends and/or foes (preferably both) so they can subscribe here.

-30-