The Bunker: Itchy solo trigger finger?

This week in The Bunker: the sad state of deciding to go to war in the U.S. today; the autonomous-weapons revolution continues to erode the Pentagon’s military edge; dire prospects for Trump’s $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget proposal; Hegseth’s purge surge continues; and more.

KINETIC KABUKI KONFUSION

About those rumbles of renewed U.S. strikes on Iran

“We will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd,” President Trump said October 8.

Strange timing, barring a renewed U.S. offensive before the midterms (minus a few unannounced defensive strikes the day before). It violates smart military strategy, and reeks of politics.

But today is November 4.

The war clock is once again ticking.

Yet at least this time, unlike the first go-round back in February, we have been warned:

“U.S. and Israel Draw Up Plans for Renewed Strikes on Iran After Elections,” the New York Times reported on its front page October 23.

“Iran war fever is rising again,” the Washington Post’s nat-sec guru David Ignatius wrote October 23.

“U.S. Warns Gulf of Possible Short, Intense Renewal of Iran War After Midterms,” the Wall Street Journal chimed in October 28.

These head fakes and feints are as old as war itself. They are fueled by authorized leaks (Washington wants Tehran to think it is eager to start bombing again) as well as Pentagon hallway gossip (don’t ask The Bunker how he knows). Reporters are always eager for scoops, which often leads to them being played like a violin. Or, just as often, like an orchestra.

This should come as no surprise. After all, it’s the Pentagon’s raison d’être to plan for future wars. If we can plan to invade Canada (a government-approved, official U.S. ally, more or less, since its creation in 1867), U.S. generals and admirals should have a stockpile of options for attacking Iran (which has been shouting “Death to America!” for nearly 50 years).

On the plus side of the ledger, the Trump administration is calculating such warmongering will push Iran toward the negotiating table. While the evidence that such pressure works may be slim, the thinking goes, it’s worth a, um, shot. The downside is that such threats become bluster if they are empty.

On the negative side of the balance sheet is where we now find ourselves: being led by a president who on February 28 launched a war willy-nilly. That also means he can stop — or restart — a conflict today. The nation’s founders would be dumbfounded at how much war-making power has been delegated to one trigger finger. They’d be even more stunned that the rest of us have let it happen.

THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF WAR

Leveling the slaying field

The U.S. war on Iran has brought into focus a key change that does not favor the U.S. or its military might: It has turned forward-deployed U.S. weapons into targets, enabled by the growing capabilities of autonomous and highly accurate drones.

During the industrial age, the ability to churn out hundreds of warships, warplanes, and tanks gave those who owned them undisputed battlefield superiority. But that advantage is evaporating in the information age, when persistent surveillance allied with cheap uncrewed aircraft can destroy military hardware in a matter of minutes. That threat pushed the Pentagon to pull a dozen of its B-1 bombers from an English base last month.

The U.S.’s post-World War II geostrategic posture of “forward defense” can also be described as “armed aloofness” or “strategic standoffishness.” But the Iran war has rendered that notion quaint. “The Pentagon needs to undertake a top-to-bottom review of all its bases for protection against unmanned technologies: aerial drones in particular, but also surface, tunneling and maritime platforms,” James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and ex-NATO military chief, said. “This should start with bases in countries closest to Russia, Iran and North Korea.”

Satellite imagery shows Iranian attacks inflicted up to $15 billion in damage to hundreds of buildings at 24 installations spread across the region, the Wall Street Journal reported October 30. The targeted bases are in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Israel, the only nation to join the U.S. in attacking Iran.

Wars, like elections, have consequences. Tehran damaged five Air Force KC-135 tankers based in Saudi Arabia. Last week, a conservative think tank advocated spending $3 billion to build 60 hardened shelters for large U.S. refueling aircraft around the world. Failure to beef up such passive tanker defenses could “heavily contribute to U.S. defeat in a war against the People’s Republic of China,” the Hudson Institute paper said.

Bull in a China shop, indeed.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Pentagon budget hike imperiled

For nearly 50 years, The Bunker watched the Pentagon first use the Soviet Union, and then Russia, as a crowbar to pry more money from U.S. taxpayers. If you’re old enough, you remember the drill: The “evil empire,” those 10-foot tall Red soldiers, “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” that 1966 movie that presciently poked fun at the U.S. inflation of the threat posed by Moscow.

But now, in a striking reversal of fortune, members of Trump’s own party are threatening to scale back his 2027 Pentagon budget request because of his growing chumminess with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s 2027 request comes in two pieces — the $1.15 trillion base budget (think of it as the cake) and a $350 billion bonus (think of it as the frosting). Using an arcane process known as reconciliation, that $350 billion could be approved by Republicans alone. But Trump has so irritated some GOP members of Congress that the $350 billion add-on appears doomed.

Karma, as they say, is a bitch.

FIRING WHEN READY

Express checkouts will continue until morale improves…

A much-younger Bunker recalls ex-Texas Senator John Tower, a one-time sailor who went on to serve as chairman of the armed services committee, watch his former colleagues scuttle his 1989 nomination to serve as defense secretary. They voted 53-47 against his bid because of reports he drank too much and abused women. Here we are, nearly 40 years later, when those same allegations weren’t enough to torpedo Trump’s pick of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to serve in the same job. The ripples of Hegseth’s 51-50 confirmation vote continue to swamp military careers.

The Bunker, which has been covering the Defense Department since the Carter administration, is no rote backer of the Pentagon hierarchy, as regular readers know. But too often Hegseth’s firings appear equal parts whimsy and flimsy. There is real fear inside the Pentagon about being willing to stand up to the boss. This leads nowhere good.

Last week, Hegseth fired Army Lieutenant General Brett Sylvia, the Pentagon’s top uniformed war planner, reportedly for leaking classified information. That’s a charge Sylvia has denied. The Bunker spent decades talking to senior U.S. military officers. He rarely got classified stuff, but rather gleaned information that allowed for better reporting on the U.S. military. This sort of back-and-forth bantering benefited both the U.S. public and the U.S. military.

But Hegseth’s blinders keep him from seeing the value of such exchanges. The reporting on the Iran war, if anything, has been more pro-Pentagon than warranted. But instead of pocketing that win, Hegseth seems to think of himself as the Army sniper he never was. He seems intent on picking off, one by one, the military officers who may be unwilling to offer anything but unalloyed praise for him and the U.S. war he has championed. This was a war the president estimated would last four to five weeks, eight months ago. Anyone with a calendar, or a gas tank, knows the war has come a cropper.

The Pentagon scrambled to explain Sylvia’s ouster in several statements (his predecessor, Army Lieutenant General Joseph McGee, left the post a year ago after friction with Hegseth). The first simply thanked Sylvia for his service; a second said it was “withdrawing” its earlier good wishes. A third statement from chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department has “zero tolerance for the intentional, unauthorized disclosure of classified information.” Bizarrely, it didn’t mention Sylvia, although the statement said “this matter” has been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

Hegseth has apparently failed in his efforts to get Parnell nominated to serve as the Army’s civilian secretary. That post has only had an acting secretary since Hegseth foe Dan Driscoll resigned more than two months ago. The service also lacks a chief of staff, its top officer, since Hegseth sacked General Randy George in April. Senators are cool to Parnell’s track record, which includes findings of domestic abuse.

Somewhere, John Tower — who died in a 1991 plane crash — is no doubt ruing that he was born too soon.

You know — back when character counted.

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