The Army may need to delay the rollout of the new technology, scale it down, or both.

“This is not going to be helpful over on the Hill,” one former congressional staffer said of SDA’s $11 billion, five-year draft budget. “In fact, it could put the final nails in SDA’s coffin.”

“The last few years have been quite good for the association’s annual meeting and for the Army,” the AUSA president told us, but “I’m very, very worried” about the 2020 budget.

Norway suspended new applications for military export licenses to Turkey today. Norway is also reviewing all current licenses for Turkey for military and multi-use military export licenses.

The Navy faces huge hurdles in trying to get to 355 ships – but a new shipbuilding plan due in coming weeks could change the whole calculus.

The Pentagon and State Department spent much of Monday scrambling to respond to the White House’s Sunday night announcement. Three days earlier Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters he and the Turkish Defense Minister had reached an agreement on joint US/Turkish patrols in northern Syria.

There’s not a lot of confidence out there about the prospects for a 2020 budget agreement. “A stripped down mini-NDAA may be all that could pass this year for defense,” says one long-time budget watcher.

General Counsel Paul Nay directed DoD officials to “preserve all documents, records, and writings, and any associated attachments, in any format,” that relate to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

If you count next year’s budget, the president will be actually selling himself short. But his other superlatives are not justified.

The Texas Republican, who supported Pentagon reform, bigger budgets, and Trump’s border wall, is joining several other conservatives is walking away from Capitol Hill.