Today's D Brief: Afghanistan pullout questions; Army’s investigations reform; Ponytails, approved; Iran nuke-talks ‘intensify’; And a bit more.
By Ben Watson
May 7, 2021 10:42 AM ET
The D Brief
In a rare press briefing Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley listened to several questions about the U.S. military’s Afghanistan retrograde (its term for the drawdown), but neither Austin nor Milley provided that many answers to reporters’ questions.
In brief: So far, everything is proceeding “according to plan,” Austin said. Milley, for his part, said that he’s “confident in our ability to meet the objective,” though he declined to give precise dates or timelines.
U.S. military planners are still “crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s,” according to Milley. And that means the Defense Department doesn’t yet know, for example, how it will train future Afghan forces, when it will withhold air support, or what will happen to contractors in the region. Both Austin and Milley said many answers hinge on input from Afghan security forces and the top U.S. officer in the country, Army Gen. Scott Miller. “There’s a reason he’s a four-star commander,” Austin said when asked about an eventual end to U.S. air support. (The New York Times has a bit more on the air support question, here.)
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/05/the-d-brief-may-07-2021/173880/
