MORE KOREAN ‘WAR GAMES’ COULD BE CANCELED: After the cancellation of Ulchi Freedom Guardian and the upcoming Valiant Ace, Mattis and South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said they will decide by December whether to cancel next year’s major joint military exercises on the peninsula amid negotiations with the North over its nuclear weapons. Analysts say prolonged cancellation of the major U.S.-Korea exercises could eventually erode the two countries’ readiness for war, and avoiding that will mean focusing on smaller-scale exercises.

Mattis denied the cancellations have had much of an effect so far, but also indicated the Pentagon has workarounds. “We are not right now concerned with a loss of combat capability. Clearly, as we go forward, we'll have to make adaptations to ensure we don't lose that capability,” Mattis said. “This is not a total suspension of all collaboration and military exercises. Certainly, large ones were put on hold, suspended temporarily in order to give the diplomats the best possible effort because we were making a good-faith effort on the military side.”

“I would first like to point out that these combined exercises occur year-round and out of these exercises only a part of these has been suspended at the moment,” said Jeong through a translator. “We'll continue to seek ways in which we can continue to maintain our current level of combined defense posture as well as our military readiness and for our future extra major large-scale exercises.”

TEMPERATURE LOWERED: Mattis also indicated Trump’s policy of engagement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is paying off, at least in the short term. “Clearly the threat from North Korea at least as expressed by Chairman Kim has been significantly reduced,” Mattis said. But he also pointed out that the North’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike the U.S., is still a concern.

“The capability still exists and that is why the minister and I talked on every detail about our collaboration,” Mattis said. “Our goal here is to ensure that our diplomats speak from a position of strength and we continue to protect the people of the Republic of Korea from any threat from the North.”

TAKING THE FIGHT TO THE TALIBAN: A more aggressive approach toward combating the Taliban is being carried out to respond to massive casualties among Afghan Security Forces, according to Gen. Scott Miller, commander of NATO-led Resolute Support Mission and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.

“We are more in an offensive mindset and don’t wait for the Taliban to come and hit [us],” Miller said in an interview with NBC News in Kabul. “So that was an adjustment that we made early on. We needed to because of the amount of casualties that were being absorbed.”

Mattis revealed Monday night that Afghan Security Forces suffered 1,000 casualties in August and September, a number that is usually withheld at the request of the Afghan government.

Miller told NBC he is a realist on the issue of possible reconciliation with the Taliban. "I don't want to be Pollyannaish about this," he said. “I see paths, some of them are risk-filled. So rather than optimistic, I say pragmatic."

HOW ARE ADVISERS DOING? HARD TO SAY: While U.S. commanders and top Pentagon officials continue to portray the strategy in Afghanistan as making slow but steady progress in its goal of forcing the Taliban to reconcile, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has issued another scathing report. John Sopko has been a constant thorn in the side of the Pentagon, consistently issuing audits debunking the upbeat messaging from the military.

The latest report concludes Pentagon, Congress and U.S. taxpayers lack the information necessary to assess the impact the advising effort has made in building the capacity of the Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of the Interior (MOI) or the effectiveness of its $421 million advising contracts.

“Although the advising effort at the MOD and the MOI is one of DOD’s primary missions in Afghanistan, SIGAR found that DOD has not fully evaluated these efforts, and does not know whether the advisors assigned to MOD and MOI are meeting goals and milestones because it has not assessed, monitored or evaluated the advising efforts as required by its own guidance.”

The independent audit also found U.S. military personnel and defense contractors are often deployed without adequate training on how to advise the Afghans despite the high cost and importance of these operations. In an anonymous survey conducted by SIGAR, nine out of 20 deployed U.S. military personnel serving in advising roles indicated that they did not receive any adviser training before deploying. Furthermore, according to officials interviewed, the uniformed advisers tend to have the least specific training.

INHOFE TO CALL FLEET HEARING: When the Senate returns after the midterm elections, Sen. Jim Inhofe said he will call an Armed Services Committee hearing on Trump’s pledge to grow the Navy to 355 ships after being pressed by conservative radio pundit Hugh Hewitt. The president’s promise on multiple occasions to greatly increase the fleet has “fallen behind a little bit” because senators have been busy filling readiness holes caused by former President Barack Obama, Inhofe, who is the committee chairman, told Hewitt during the radio interview.

“Now, I don’t criticize Obama for this because he is an in-the-heart liberal who really, you know where their priorities are, and it’s not in defending America,” Inhofe told Hewitt. “But what we inherited from him, we were in our Army brigade combat units, as an example, we were down to only 33 percent of those could be deployed.”

The hearing will be scheduled in consultation with Sen. Roger Wicker. Inhofe, who ascended to Armed Services chairman after the death of John McCain, also disclosed that Wicker will stay on as seapower subcommittee chairman in the new session of Congress. Wicker helped formalize the Navy’s plan to reach 355 ships in the coming decades.

THANKS, OBAMA: It’s no secret the chairman is no fan of Obama, who is one of his favorite targets for criticism. During the Hewitt interview, Inhofe also blamed the former president for migrants and the deployment of more than 7,000 active-duty and National Guard troops at the Mexico border.

“These people who are asylum-seekers, they are coming up here at the invitation of Obama. He invited people from Guatemala and Honduras and Nicaragua and all those places to come up, and obviously if I were down there and the president of the United States said, ‘The doors are open, come up here and seek asylum, and you’ll be happy,’” Inhofe told Hewitt.

THE RUNDOWN

CNN: Key US allies 'temporarily' halt campaign against ISIS in Syria following clashes with Turkey

Military Times: Deployed border troops are preparing for militias stealing their gear, protester violence, documents show

Foreign Policy: Pentagon’s NATO Policy Chief Steps Down

Reuters: Rare NATO-Russia Talks Address Military Drills, 1987 Missile Treaty

New York Times: ‘Cold War’ Takes New Meaning For American Marines At A NATO Exercise

Wall Street Journal: Pompeo To Meet North Korean Counterpart On Denuclearization

Air Force Magazine: Final F-22s Get Ready to Take Off from Tyndall as Base Continues Recovery from Catastrophic Hurricane

New York Times: On a Tiny Finnish Island, a Helipad, 9 Piers — and the Russian Military?

Stars and Stripes: Air Force fires three Laughlin AFB commanders over 'chronic leadership failures'

Task and Purpose: Advice For US Troops Sent To The Mexican Border In An Age Of Terrible Leaders

Bloomberg: Textron's Landing Hovercraft Cut 20% in U.S. Navy Five-Year Plan

Nextgov.com: Pentagon Doesn’t Want Real Artificial Intelligence In War, Former Official Says