The Bunker: Special no-Trump edition!

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 Pentagon, with Ukraine’s help, is seeking a better way to fight future wars; the Army wants to reduce the load its soldiers carry into battle; a Marine who dishonors the corps; and more.

TRUMP-FREE ZONE

To help you retain your sanity

There’s no mention of President Donald Trump in The Bunker this week (beyond this public service announcement). You’re welcome.

ONE WAY IN

Building better U.S. drones with Ukraine’s help

The Pentagon is often rightly accused of wasting billions of dollars getting ready to fight the last war. But it has just declared it is preparing to fight future wars by gleaning lessons from Ukraine’s current conflict with Russia. That can only be good news for a military that for too long has been wedded to too costly and obsolete ways of combat.

The Defense Department’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) announced March 14 that it has awarded contracts to four companies for Project Artemis. Its goal: to develop one-way kamikaze drones, like those that Ukraine has built to hit strategic targets, including air bases and fuels depots, deep inside Russia. Two of the companies are U.S. software firms, paired with Ukrainian companies in hopes of bring some of Kyiv’s krafty kinetic kombat to the U.S. military. The Pentagon declined to release the amount of the contracts (although Congress has earmarked $35 million for such efforts), or the names of the Ukrainian companies involved (reportedly over safety concerns).

In speeds rarely seen around the Pentagon, DIU solicited and scrubbed 16 candidates over the past four months, from which it chose the four contract winners: U.S.-based drone makers AeroVironment and Dragoon, and software concerns Auterion and Swan, each teamed with a Ukrainian drone firm. Depending on their size and complexity, the drones could cost between $20,000 and $70,000 each. That’s a bargain for the Pentagon and would let it buy enough of them for “mass deployment” (which should come as no surprise, given their kamikaze mission).

Designed for use where GPS and other navigation aids are jammed, the unmanned aerial systems would carry a variety of payloads — including weapons and sensors — at low altitudes anywhere from 60 to 600 miles. DIU hopes to have prototypes ready for production by October 1.

But then the fun begins. As they say about the Pentagon, rice bowls have to be broken if the U.S. military is going to get back on track when it comes to innovation, lethality, and speed. DIU is a nine-year old Pentagon agency not rooted in any military service (it speaks volumes that the Pentagon’s top civilian found the services’ hidebound arms development efforts so lacking in innovation that he had to create a separate shop expressly designed to rush commercial technologies to the battlefield). The services, for all the normal stupid reasons — turf, bureaucratic pride, not-invented-here-syndrome — tend to frown upon such independent efforts.

“We have to prove we can do it, and if we can’t do it, then I don’t blame people for not signing up,” DIU program chief Trent Emeneker told Defense News. “But when we prove we can do it — I’m confident we will — we have to get that message out of, ‘Hey, this solution works today. It’s at the right price point, it is ready, it’s combat proven.’”

WEIGHT LOSS

It’s the kit — as well as the kids — that needs to slim down

The U.S. military is perpetually trying to become — select your favorite adjective (and add it as a Save/Get Key if you’re a contractor vying for Pentagon business) — lighter and faster. That’s not only true for tanks and trucks, but for the soldiers themselves. And it ain’t just rotund recruits. The Army says that earlier this month, one general told several hundred gear-supply companies that decades of “kitting and equipping” soldiers haphazardly “has resulted in redundancies, excessive weight, and cognitive overload.”

Traditionally, the Army has outfitted troops individually, when it should be outfitting up to 10-member squads as a whole (“Squad as a System”). That way, excessive gear carried by individual soldiers can be eliminated from their rucksacks. Today’s soldiers carry more than 80 items, along with redundant and incompatible batteries and cables. The Army’s chief of infantry wants to reduce a soldier’s “fighting load” to no more than 30% of their weight, or about 55 pounds (soldiers often carry between 90 and 140 pounds into combat).

“Presently, as each capability is developed individually, the process lacks an integration architecture,” the Army says. “And there’s no synchronizing function for information flow in and out of the squad.”

This sounds negligent to a rube like The Bunker. Then again, only the U.S. Army would confide such malfeasance to its contractors — and then issue a press release confirming it.

PURPLE HEART ATTACK

The very definition of “brazen”

Lies about heroic military service became so rampant awhile back that R.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley wrote a book about it. Although Stolen Valor focused on Vietnam, the scourge persists — and more than valor is being stolen. Marine vet Paul John “PJ” Herbert pleaded guilty March 11 to making false statements, obtaining $344,400 in veterans benefits based on false claims and submitting a fraudulent application for a Purple Heart.

The Massachusetts man claimed he was assigned to a British Royal Marines unit and was — get this — the lone survivor of an improvised explosive device attack in northern Iraq following 1991’s Persian Gulf War. Beyond the excess benefits from the VA, Herbert collected free dental care, local tax abatements worth $9,000-$19,000 annually from the state, reimbursed mileage to free mental-health care and neurological appointments, free insurance and veterinary care for the free service dog he received, and free lodging and food when he traveled to Long Island to train with the dog, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. He faces sentencing, which could include jail time and fines, in June.

“I just needed to feel important,” Herbert said. “I started feeling important and feeling good about myself and I didn’t know a way to get out.”

Well, at least he didn’t blame bone spurs.

WHAT WE’RE READING

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

→ Horsepower

Russia has been using horses and donkeys in its war with Ukraine to help its forces elude drone attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported March 9.

→ Membership has its privileges…

Last week in this space, we noted that U.S. Air Force B-52s had just dropped bombs for the first time during training in Finland, which joined NATO two years ago. On March 13, NATO announced B-52s had dropped bombs for the first time on targets in Sweden, which joined NATO a year ago this month.

→ Mything in action

There is no truth that the F-35s the Pentagon is selling to foreign buyers contain a hidden “kill switch” that would let the U.S. remotely disable the allied fighter jets, The Aviationist said March 10. Besides, given its lousy readiness rate, it would be redundant.

Thanks for not disabling The Bunker this week. Forward this on to friends so they can subscribe here.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.