Just 34% support the attacks, while another 18% said they were unsure. “There have been at least 22 strikes that have killed 87 people since September 2,” Reuters reminds readers. The U.S. has killed those aboard the boats without due process and in a manner that critics have argued may violate the laws of war. 

• Also in that survey: 64% said they don’t support Trump’s recent pardon of convicted cocaine trafficker former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, whom Trump last week ordered to be released amid a 45-year prison sentence in the U.S. Read more, here. 

New: Two U.S. Navy F/A-18s were tracked flying over the Gulf of Venezuela on Tuesday, according to open-source monitor Flightradar24, which noted afterward the fighter jets were the most tracked flights on the live radar website.

When asked about the jets, a U.S. official told Defense One’s Thomas Novelly Tuesday evening that the Defense Department “conducts routine, lawful operations in international airspace, including over the Gulf of Venezuela,” adding: “We will continue to fly safely, professionally, and in accordance with international law to protect the homeland, monitor illicit activity, and support stability across the Americas.” 

Their flight path marks the latest escalation of U.S. military force near Venezuela, which has included repeated military strikes on alleged drug runners in the Caribbean Sea in addition to regional B-1 and B-52 bomber flights amid the largest U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean since the Cuban missile crisis.

Could the U.S. really invade right now? The force “lacks support or logistics for Venezuela ground invasion,” which “leaves airstrikes as Trump’s most feasible and immediate option—despite his warnings of stronger action,” Politico reported Tuesday after a podcast interview with the president.

Expert input: “The United States does not have the ground forces needed for an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and co-author of a recent CSIS analysis. “The Venezuelan ground forces number some 90,000 including the army, marines and National Guard. The United States has only 2,200 Marines [nearby], and there’s no movement to reinforce them.” Read on, here.

During classified briefings about the Pentagon’s boat strikes Tuesday on Capitol Hill, “We got some clarity on the chain of command and who made decisions at what point, but on the legality of it we didn’t get a lot of clarity,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said afterward, according to the New York Times. Smith also said it was “pretty clear” that the second strike on Sept. 2 to kill two survivors was the commander at the time “Admiral [Frank] Bradley’s call, based on the rules of engagement given to him by Hegseth.”

Developing: Smith’s counterpart on the Armed Services Committee said he plans to quash a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 2 strikes, Politico reported Tuesday. “It’s done,” said HASC Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., to reporters. “I’ve got all the answers I needed,” he said. Meantime, “It’s still an open question whether the video will be made public, as some lawmakers have urged,” Politico’s Connor O'Brien reports. 

Hegseth told lawmakers Tuesday he wants more time to weigh the merits of releasing the footage publicly, the New York Times reported. Lawmakers could still “hear from the commander who ordered the strike and see the unedited video of the incident in the coming days,” according to Politico.

A new window into the boat-strikes: In September and October, the Pentagon’s lawyers raced “to ensure survivors did not end up in the U.S. judicial system, where court cases could force the administration to show evidence justifying President Trump’s military campaign in the region,” the New York Times reported Tuesday (gift link).

Also notable: U.S. “military officials referred to [the survivors] by specific terms that included ‘distressed mariners.’ That phrase is usually used in a peacetime and civilian context,” a trio of Times reporters write. Read the rest, here. 

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson, Thomas Novelly and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1954, U.S. Air Force Col. John Stapp took 19 Gs as his rocket sled accelerated to 632 mph in five seconds—then 40 Gs as it slammed to a halt. The test helped prove the feasibility of rocket-powered ejection seats.

SecDef Hegseth’s AI rollout stumbles immediately out of the gate. “The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled A-I,” SecDef Hegseth said in a video announcement Tuesday—linking to the program at GenAi.Mil. 

The idea is to allow service members to “conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed,” Hegseth said. However, “the platform can’t actually be accessed from external networks,” and so readers of Hegseth’s social media post were left with internet errors, the New Republic reports. According to Reddit users, active duty troops “received surprise invitations to use the new platform on their work computer.” But since the announcement emerged for some with little warning, at least one user said the invite looked “really suspicious.”

Related: View some of the new AI program promotional posters “plastered” throughout the Pentagon and also shared on Reddit, here.

And ICYMI: Research and engineering chief Emil Michael talked about the department’s AI efforts on Monday. 

Update: Congress is committing to only a fraction of the funding given to the Navy’s F/A-XX program last year.  But the latest version of the defense policy bill fully backs the development of the Air Force’s F-47 fighter, Defense One’s Tom Novelly reported Tuesday. 

The numbers appear to reflect a White House and Pentagon victory over lawmakers who pushed to get the long-proposed replacement for the F/A-18 Super Hornet and F/A-18 electronic-warfare jet onto the drawing board this year. As things stand, the F/A-XX will receive less than 1 percent of the $38 billion that the NDAA would authorize to develop, buy, and upgrade military aircraft, according to the House majority’s summary of the bill. 

Caveat: The 2026 appropriations bill has yet to emerge, the reconciliation bill might add funds, and the program might also, as it has in the past, receive funds through classified accounts, Novelly writes. Read more, here. 

Additional reading: 

• Developing: “US judge blocks Trump's National Guard deployment in Los Angeles,” Reuters reported Wednesday morning from New York; 
• “South Korea’s Hanwha, US defense startup Vatn to build underwater drones,” the wire service reported Wednesday as well; 
• “Australian MQ-28 CCA Downs Drone in Milestone Air-to-Air Test,” Air and Space Forces Magazine reported Tuesday; 
• And Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale says he “wants to bring back public executions,” Newsweek and multiple other outlets reported this week. 

Trump vs. Europe

A longer, unpublished version of the National Security Strategy proposes new vehicles for leadership on the world stage and a different way to put its thumb on the scales of Europe’s future—through its cultural values. Defense One’s Meghann Myers, who reviewed the document, reveals some takeaways, here.

Trump himself espoused his desire to reshape a “weak” Europe in a Monday interview with Politico, which wrote on Tuesday that he “denounced Europe as a ‘decaying’ group of nations led by ‘weak’ people,…belittling the traditional U.S. allies for failing to control migration and end the Russia-Ukraine war, and signaling that he would endorse European political candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent.

“The broadside attack against European political leadership represents the president’s most virulent denunciation to date of these Western democracies, threatening a decisive rupture with countries like France and Germany that already have deeply strained relations with the Trump administration.” Read on, here. The New York Times added its own coverage of the interview as well.

Meanwhile, in Europe, leaders are accelerating plans to “confront the unthinkable: a future in which America is no longer their primary security guarantor and Europe has to organize its own defense far sooner than anyone imagined.” Politico, here.

By the way: Just last year, Russia reportedly plotted to plant bombs on U.S.-bound flights, according to the Financial Times. That update extends from the previously-reported instances from July 2024 when “DHL parcels exploded in logistics centres in the UK, Poland and Germany,” FT’s Sam Jones writes. 

“Security services would eventually trace the plot back to a group of Russian-directed saboteurs who had a further 6kg of explosive material in their possession. That was enough to give them the capability for what security officials told the Financial Times was the next stage of the plan: to attack flights to the US, and cause more disruption to the airline industry than any act of terror since the World Trade Center attacks.” More, here. 

Additional reading: 

• Ukrainian President “Zelenskyy reaffirms his refusal to cede land to Russia as he rallies European support,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday; 
• And ICYMI, here’s “What the US wants from Ukraine: Leave Donbas, one way or another,” Politico reported Monday.