UKRAINE AID COULD TOTAL $1 BILLION: By a wide bipartisan margin, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $851.9 billion defense spending bill for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, including $800 million in direct military aid for Ukraine.
The 26-3 vote in committee sends the bill to the Senate floor, where, if passed, it will have to be reconciled with a House bill that currently includes no aid for Ukraine. The bill also provides for another $200 million for the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which are expected to use the money for additional assistance to Ukraine, bringing the aid total to $1 billion, according to Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), the top Democrat on the committee.
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“Today’s successful markup shows a strong, bipartisan commitment to funding a military that stands with Ukraine and our allies, that deters Chinese and Russian aggression, that modernizes our defense based on lessons we’re learning in Ukraine,” Coons said in a statement.
The Senate bill adds $21 billion to the $831.5 billion funding level passed by the House two weeks ago.
“Our topline allocation of $852.5 billion – which sits higher than either the President’s budget request or the House’s mark – underscores that we cannot seriously address these challenges while artificially constraining our resources,” said Committee Chairman Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in his statement following the vote.
McConnell again criticized the extra $150 billion for defense included in this year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” as an inadequate stopgap. “Let’s not kid ourselves – it was not the additive defense spending some of us had hoped for.”
“The process seems to have also allowed important programs to slip through the cracks,” McConnell said, noting that senior Pentagon officials report they are “still billions of dollars short on programs that we were told reconciliation would address.”
“We can’t build a Golden Dome, or restock our munitions magazines, or bring back American shipbuilding without sustained, increasing investments in our national defense,” McConnell said. “There is no substitute for robust, full-year defense appropriations.”
TRUMP: ‘I DON’T KNOW THAT SANCTIONS BOTHER HIM’: With President Donald Trump’s deadline to impose secondary sanctions on Russia just one week away, Trump continues to express doubt that efforts to ramp up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to begin serious peace negotiations will do any good.
“We’re going to put sanctions. I don’t know that sanctions bother him,” Trump said at a signing ceremony for an executive order yesterday. I don’t know if that has any effect, but we’re going to do it.”
The so-called secondary sanctions aim to hit Russia’s primary source of income, oil and gas revenue, by levying sanctions on countries that buy Russia’s cut-rate energy.
“Russia is a one-commodity economy, essentially oil and gas,” said retired Gen. Jack Keane, the Institute for the Study of War chairman, and a Fox News contributor.
“The revenue they’re getting, they’re gonna have close to 2% growth in GDP for a country that is at war and supposedly struggling economically,” Keane said on Fox yesterday. “But we take that money away from them, that has dramatic impact. It begins to have an almost immediate impact on what they’re doing, which is trying to sustain their defense industrial base so they can stay in this war.”
However, Keane argues that in the short term, Trump is probably right, and Putin will likely shrug off the sanctions. “I don’t think Putin is going to make any concessions in the week that’s coming,” Keane said on Fox. “Putin has always been able to work around sanctions to a certain degree, he’s not intimidated by that. What happens on the battlefield really matters to him.”
ZELENSKY: ‘OUR UNITS ARE HOLDING ALL THEIR POSITIONS’: Ukraine’s capital Kyiv was hit by another devastating attack overnight, with a high-rise apartment building left in shambles, while several other regions of Ukraine were also hit by more than 300 drones and at least eight missiles.
“The capital was the primary target of the massive attack,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X. “In one of the residential districts, an entire section of an apartment block has been destroyed.” So far, 28 civilians were reportedly killed in the attack, including two children.
In his nightly video address, Zelensky denied what he called “fake Russian reports” that the city of Chasiv Yar fell to Russian forces. “This is Russian disinformation. Ukrainian units are holding our positions, and every Russian attempt to advance in the Donetsk, Sumy, and Kharkiv regions is ultimately being repelled by us.”
It should have been clear that Putin would never sign on to a diplomatic process while he thinks he can still win the war, Keane said on Fox. “Putin was not going to cooperate,” he said. As we know, the Ukrainians there immediately went to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, put that on the table, and Putin stiffed at all this time and, as a matter of fact, escalated the war principally against the people of Ukraine. There’s over 13,000 dead in Ukraine, and people don’t focus on that at all. I mean, it is a reality that’s out there.”
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Good Friday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Christopher Tremoglie. Email here with tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. Sign up or read current and back issues at DailyonDefense.com. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow me on Threads and/or on X @jamiejmcintyre
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HAPPENING TODAY: The National Transportation Safety Board wraps up three days of hearings into the Jan. 29 mid-air collision between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a civilian jetliner over the Potomac River that killed 67 people.
In two days of testimony so far, witnesses have detailed a series of cascading problems, including faulty altitude equipment on the helicopter and a failure to notify the jetliner of the helicopter’s approach. The overall picture that is emerging is of an overworked airport tower and an overcrowded airspace for helicopters to share with commercial planes landing at the busy Reagan National Airport.
“I was really disheartened to learn that Army pilots thought it was OK to fly underneath jets that were on short flight onto Reagan. This is not something that we would have done when I was flying those routes. We knew better,” Tim Lilley, the father of American Airlines pilot Sam Lilley, and a former Army Black Hawk pilot himself, told CNN.
“Somewhere along the line, that knowledge and experience had been lost there. And so the culture there was like teenagers teaching other teenagers how to drive. They just didn’t know better, and nobody stopped to relook at what they were doing.”
Testimony earlier this week revealed that altimeters that rely on measurements of barometric pressure to determine altitude were giving the helicopter crew an inaccurate reading, indicating they were 100 feet lower than they actually were.
“These hearings are excruciating. It’s been six months since we lost a branch of our family tree. And to see the repeated systemic failures coming to light is very, very painful, but very necessary, we think,” said Rachel Feres, who lost four family members in the crash.”
“Just understand, what the FAA was allowing to happen was helicopters to cut through the area around DCA on the approach and departure ends of the runway and let the pilots visually look out and try to stay away from the airplanes. That should not have happened in this very complex, very busy airspace,” Justin Green, an aviation accident attorney representing the families told CNN. “Sixty-seven people are dead and they didn’t have to die. The risks were known.”
On Wednesday, the first day of the hearings, National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy’s frustration boiled over. “I don’t get it. Every sign was there that there was a safety risk, and the tower was telling you that what you did is you transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in the FAA in the tower was saying there was a problem. Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead. How do you explain that? Fix it. Do better.”
ARMY KNEW OF BLACK HAWK ALTITUDE ERRORS YEARS BEFORE DCA CRASH, NTSB FINDS
MOVE TO BLOCK TRUMP FROM KEEPING HIS AF1 PLANE FAILS: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) thought he had a perfectly reasonable amendment to the defense appropriations bill the House Appropriations Committee advanced yesterday. If the taxpayers were going to invest up to $1 billion to convert a Qatari luxury 747 for use as a “temporary” Air Force One, the Air Force should be able to keep the plane once the president leaves office.
“To most Americans, that’s a lot of their money to be spent on a plane that is not going to be in the service of the United States military, in the United States Air Force, for perhaps any longer than a few months, because the president has, in fact, stated his intention to take this plane with him when he leaves office,” Murphy argued during committee deliberations.
However, his amendment, which would have prohibited the Qatari jet that was gifted to Trump from being transferred to him personally, went nowhere with Republicans who are loath to do anything that might upset President Trump.
“I offered the amendment. Not to refuse acceptance of the Qatari jet; just to prohibit Trump from taking it with him when he leaves office – after the taxpayers spend $1 billion to retrofit it,” Murphy posted on X last night. “Failed 14-15. Every single Republican voted to allow Trump to take the jet.”
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THE RUNDOWN:
Washington Examiner: Israel and Hamas pressed by all comers to come to agreement
Washington Examiner: Huckabee and Witkoff to inspect Gaza food centers amid starvation reports
Washington Examiner: Israeli defense and justice ministers push for full annexation of West Bank
Washington Examiner: Army secretary orders West Point to terminate job offer for former Biden official
Washington Examiner: Trump bolsters military’s nuclear readiness to deter Russia
Washington Examiner: House Democrats sue ICE and DHS for ‘blocking’ entry into immigrant detention sites
Washington Examiner: ICE offers $50,000 bonus and student loan payoff for new hires
Washington Examiner: Trump says Senate ‘must’ stay in session to confirm all nominees: ‘No recess’
Washington Examiner: Senate Republicans eye bipartisan deal to speed up Trump nominee votes
Washington Post: Tower failed to warn plane of Black Hawk’s path before D.C. crash, FAA says
The Hill: Record number of Senate Democrats vote to block weapon sales for Israel
Reuters: Ukraine Arrests Air Force Officer for Spying on Western-Supplied Fighter Jets
Defense News: Drug Cartel Operatives Snuck into Ukraine for Drone Training: Report
DefenseScoop: California Lawmaker Looks to Curb Agencies from Using Military Drones to Surveil Protesters
AP: Why not enough food is reaching people in Gaza even after Israel eased its blockade
AP: El Salvador approves indefinite presidential reelection and extends terms to 6 years
The Cipher Brief: Deepfakes and the War on Trust
Air & Space Forces Magazine: Lawmakers Seek Extra Scrutiny of Air Force Missile Community Cancer Concerns
Air & Space Forces Magazine: Space Force Looks to Commercial Tech for New Tactical SATCOM Solution
Aviation Week: Pentagon Ready to Go Commercial for GSSAP Mission
Air & Space Forces Magazine: Multi-Orbit SATCOM Is More Resilient—But Not Without Challenges, Officials Say
Soldier of Fortune: SIG Knew P320 Could Fire Without Trigger Pull, Lawyer Says
Task & Purpose: Sig Sauer Pushes Back on Criticisms over Safety of M17 and M18 Pistols
Breaking Defense: Northrop Grumman Unveils First Phase of Tech Partners for Beacon Autonomy Program
Air & Space Forces Magazine: ‘No Aircraft Is Beyond Saving’: C-130 Flies Again 5 Years After Hard Landing
Defense One: US Government Will Ingest All Federal Data into AI Models, WH Tech Director Says
Breaking Defense: Opinion: It’s More Than Fuel: Why the Space Force Needs In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing
THE CALENDAR:
FRIDAY | AUGUST 1
9 a.m. — Final day of the National Transportation Safety Board three-day investigative hearing on the Jan. 29 mid-air collision between a PSA Airlines CRJ700 regional jetliner and a U.S. Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport https://www.youtube.com/user/NTSBgov
10 a.m. — National Institute for Deterrence Studies virtual seminar: “No New Start: Renewing the U.S.-Russian Deal Won’t Solve today’s Nuclear Dilemmas,” with Rick Edelman, counselor, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; and Frank Miller, principal at the Scowcroft Group https://thinkdeterrence.com/events/no-new-start