Pentagon to brief Capitol Hill on wall funding plan Presented by Northrop Grumman

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— A Pentagon official will brief Hill staff today on the plan to pay for President Donald Trump’s border wall using military construction funds.


— Three House committee chairmen are demanding answers from the White House on the administration's plans ahead of Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un in Vietnam next week.

— A peacekeeping force of 200 U.S. troops will remain in Syria, the White House announced Thursday, in a reversal from an initial plan to pull all troops from that country by the end of April.

HAPPY FRIDAY AND WELCOME TO MORNING DEFENSE, where we're always on the lookout for tips, pitches and feedback. Email us at [email protected], and follow on Twitter @dave_brown24, @morningdefense and @politicopro.

PENTAGON BRIEFS CAPITOL HILL: DoD official Robert Salesses heads to Capitol Hill today to brief staff on the plan to use military construction funding to build the border wall, specifically “on the way forward and to give people a sense of not just the activities we are going to undertake but the timing,” Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan told reporters Thursday.

The visit comes after the Defense Department asked the Department of Homeland Security for a list of locations along the southern border where wall construction would be most effective, Shanahan said, confirming a Military Times report.

“We’ve asked DHS for input facts, data, priorities. We are waiting to receive those, when we do we will then process that,” he said.

NOW THE SENATE GETS INVOLVED: “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that Senate Democrats will introduce a resolution to block President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration. The Senate Democrats' resolution of disapproval comes as House Democrats plan to introduce a similar resolution disapproving of Trump's emergency declaration on Friday,” POLITICO’s Marianne LeVine writes.

Odds of passing: “The House resolution is expected to pass easily, with Democrats in control. But it's unclear whether the resolution will pass the Senate. Several Republican senators have voiced concern about Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall.”

But wait: “More than one-third of the money President Donald Trump wants to redirect from other federal programs to build a border barrier is likely to be unavailable from the sources he has identified,” per Roll Call.

“The Defense Department has told lawmakers that only $85 million remains unspent in the counterdrug account, a House Appropriations spokesman said Thursday.” Trump wants to pull $2.5 billion from that account.

200 TROOPS WILL STAY: “The Trump administration, which abruptly announced in December that it was pulling out of Syria, said Thursday that it will keep 200 U.S. troops in the country for now,” reports The Associated Press.

“A small peace keeping group of about 200 will remain in Syria for period of time,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chief critic of the plan to pull all troops from Syria, hailed the news.

“With this decision, President Trump has decided to follow sound military advice,” he said in a statement. “This decision will ensure that we will not repeat the mistakes of Iraq, in Syria.”

IN THE DARK: “Just a week before President Donald Trump is set to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, key Democratic House chairmen accused the president on Thursday of withholding information about his administration's negotiations with North Korea,” writes POLITICO’s Andrew Desiderio.

"’Our ability to conduct oversight of U.S. policy toward North Korea on behalf of the American people has been inappropriately curtailed by your administration's unwillingness to share information with Congress,’ Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) — who chair the foreign affairs, armed services and intelligence panels, respectively — wrote in a letter to the president.”

Also on Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said sanctions on North Korea won’t be removed until the regime has “substantially reduced” its nuclear threat, AP reports.

Some worry that the military alliance between the U.S. and South Korea could take a hit after the summit, per AP.

“Substance, not style”: The Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner is out with a report laying out priorities for Washington ahead of the summit.

PUTIN FLOATS CUBA 2.0: “Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the United States wanted one and threatened to place hypersonic nuclear missiles on ships or submarines near U.S. territorial waters,” Reuters reports.

“[We’re talking about] naval delivery vehicles: submarines or surface ships. And we can put them, given the speed and range [of our missiles] ... in neutral waters. Plus they are not stationary, they move and they will have to find them,” Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript from comments made late Wednesday.

OPEN SKIES FLIGHT: “An Air Force OC-135B is conducting Open Skies Treaty observation flights over Russia over the next few days, the first time the specially equipped aircraft has flown in that country in almost a year and a half because of an ‘impasse’ between the U.S. and Russia,” Air Force Magazine writes.

PENCE TRUMPETS TRUMPISM ABROAD: “Vice President Mike Pence has slowly become one of the president’s most visible overseas surrogates — sent to deliver Trump’s ‘America First’ demands,” reports POLITICO’s Gabby Orr.

“On Monday, Pence will make his third speech on foreign soil in the last two weeks when he travels to Bogota, Columbia, to call on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to step aside, a high-profile address that will come as the world watches to see whether Maduro relents on a blockade that has kept humanitarian aid packages from Venezuelans facing food and medicine shortages.”

THUMBS UP FOR THE ACV: “The Marine Corps has put the Amphibious Combat Vehicle through its paces in the eight months since the service selected BAE Systems to build the new wheeled vehicles, using the original 16 ACVs to conduct high surf testing and cold weather/cold water testing around the country,” via USNI News.

MISSILE DEFENSE: “Raytheon will participate in a missile defense radar ‘sense-off’ to test designs that could be included in the U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense system under development,” Defense News writes.

FIRST IN MORNING D: A bipartisan group of seven senators sent a letter to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson on Wednesday stressing the importance of sticking with the Light Attack program, which the service put on hold last month.

The letter from Sens. John Boozman, Jerry Moran, Cory Gardner, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Michael Bennet and Martin Heinrich asks for an update on the program, and follows a similar letter from 12 House lawmakers sent to Shanahan last week.

“We believe you should aggressively pursue a light-attack capability that can execute combatant commander requirements and task orders while maintaining and preserving F-35 for a near-peer fight,” the senators write.

REPAIRS, ON THE DOUBLE: “If the Navy ever hopes to reach its goal of a 355-ship fleet … [the service will] have to extend the lives of dozens of ships already long in the tooth — and do so at a time when shipyard space is already stretched and less than half of its ships are able to complete scheduled maintenance on time,” per Breaking Defense.

Bad stat: “Only about 30 percent of destroyers are able to leave the docks on time.”

ANOTHER NAME FLOATED: “U.S. Ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft rose on Thursday as a serious contender to become President Donald Trump’s next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations based on a recommendation by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,” Reuters writes.

Richard Fontaine, who is president at the Center for a New American Security, has been named CEO.

— Iran starts Gulf war games, to test submarine-launched missiles: Reuters

— Trump claims border wall is under construction 'right now' using fence repair footage from 5 months ago: Task & Purpose

— Trump stays silent on media-hating Coast Guard officer: POLITICO

— After carrier Ford's elevators failed, the Navy is building a new test site: Military.com

— Social media posts reveal NATO soldiers’ activities, report says: The New York Times

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