The resignations are one of three methods the Pentagon is using reach that goal, which could ultimately cut between 50,000 to 70,000 employees.

The entire U.S. government sent out an email earlier this year offering to pay workers their salary through September if they offered to resign — a move billionaire Elon Musk, who is leading these cuts from the White House through his controversial advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency, called a “fork in the road.” The 21,000 number is the Pentagon’s total thus far.

Alongside this effort, the Defense Department imposed a hiring freeze in late February and is also firing some of its new hires, which have fewer protections than long-term employees.

The hiring freeze is expected to stall around 6,000 hires per month, while the number of firings remains unclear. Hegseth pledged to lay off 5,400 such employees, or around one-tenth of the total probationary workers, starting in late February. A court has since ordered the government overall, including the Pentagon, to halt the firings and begin reinstating the workers.

“The department is committed to fully complying with every applicable court order regarding the process,” the defense official told reporters Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity per call’s terms.

The official wouldn’t say how many, if any, employees have been reinstated, referring questions to the Justice Department. They also wouldn’t comment on whether any of the 50,000 other probationary employees might also be fired.

Reducing the workforce so quickly and in such numbers has created widespread confusion across the military. Some employees have been caught in limbo while changing jobs, waiting for leadership to approve exceptions during military moves. Others have volunteered to resign without actually being approved to do so.

The defense official wouldn’t say how many employees have volunteered to resign in total, rather than the number whose resignations have been accepted.

Hegseth has pledged the cuts will make the military more efficient without compromising its readiness to fight. Many Democrats in Washington doubt that promise, criticizing the decision during Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg’s confirmation hearing in February.

The Senate passed a six-month continuing resolution, or temporary spending bill Friday, after Congress failed to reach a budget deal before a midnight deadline. The bill includes an extra $6 billion for the military, but otherwise freezes spending at the last fiscal year’s levels, or around $825 billion.

Considering Congress didn’t pass a supplemental defense bill, as it has in recent years for Ukraine, that amounts to a 10.6% drop in military spending, according to data provided by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The massive cut comes at a bizarre moment for Pentagon spending, which is being pushed in multiple directions by multiple parts of the government.

On one side are those pushing to cut, or at least reallocate, parts of that budget. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said he plans to fire 5% to 8% of the civilian workforce and also shift around $50 billion in future funding requests toward his priorities. Add to that the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s attempt to slash the federal government, which is already identifying cuts to defense spending.

On the other end are officials calling for massive increases to the defense budget. Senate Republicans, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi, want to add $150 billion to the military starting in fiscal 2026 and are in negotiations to do so. The White House, meanwhile, has pledged to surge America’s sluggish shipbuilding industry and build a “golden dome” missile defense system so ambitious that a general last week likened its goals to the Manhattan Project.

“It’s pushing on the gas with one foot and the brakes with two feet,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, an expert on defense spending at the American Enterprise Institute.

Temporary spending bills, such as the one passed Friday, usually stunt the military’s growth, halting new programs and production lines. This one is different. In order to limit the damage to the military, the bill allows such flexibility for weapons programs included in the House and Senate’s proposed defense spending bills, which are now otherwise obsolete.

Congressional aides said these exceptions will help the Pentagon avoid the whiplash involved in these short-term spending bills, which have become a chronic issue as Congress fails to pass budgets on time.

Military leaders were less sanguine.

“We are seeing an enormous amount of threats emerging every single year, and it is very hard to get after those threats when you have to wait two to four years to get the budget,” said Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, in a Senate hearing last week.

Appearing alongside him, the vice chief of naval operations argued that the lack of a full budget will further delay maintenance for America’s warships, one-fifth of which are on track to miss their schedules.

“It’ll certainly be a setback,” said Adm. James Kilby.

The Trump administration has promised a reindustrialization of America, and in response started slapping tariffs on countries from China to Canada to members of the European Union. Those last two include 25% levies on steel and aluminum, which will likely increase costs for American arms makers and, by extension, the Pentagon.

That said, analysts who study defense spending said it was still too early to tell how much those costs will grow.

“It’s unmeasurable” at this point, said Mark Montgomery, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

A massive surge in the military’s budget, like Wicker is calling for, could help limit the issues caused by the continuing resolution’s sudden drop in spending, Montgomery argued. But military leaders would need to know how much money is coming and how it will be divided among the services.

Those factors haven’t yet been decided in Congress, and without answers, the Pentagon is planning its future budgets without knowing how much money it will have or what programs it might need to sacrifice.

“It’s pretty devastating,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the Air Force’s acting head of space acquisition and integration.

The drop in funding is one problem, Purdy said, speaking with reporters last week. But a much bigger one is the stiff rules about how the military can spend its money, forced by temporary spending bills like this one.

The continuing resolution allots more authority than usual to the Pentagon, including the ability to carry over more money from the previous fiscal year without letting it expire. It also allows more flexibility for the administration to move around funds without Congress’ approval.

But the extent to which that freedom will help is not yet clear, leaving officials like Purdy confused and discouraged.

“If we’re not allowed to move money where we need to move with congressional approvals … we’re basically just going to run off a cliff on many programs, and we’re going to be all-stop across the board,” he said. “It’s going to be kind of a disaster.”

It marks a rapid turnaround in a short period dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and comes a decade after NATO allies agreed to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense with 20% of that going to major equipment purchases.

Still, some allies on Europe’s eastern flank and Republicans in the U.S. say that’s not enough. They’re pushing to increase the alliance’s defense spending targets beyond 2%, given the war in Ukraine and the risk of an American conflict with China.

None of that stopped President Joe Biden from lauding Washington’s progress in getting its NATO allies to shoulder a greater share of the defense burden, a longstanding gripe of U.S. presidents from both parties.

“In the year 2020, the year I was elected president, only nine NATO allies were spending 2% of their GDP on defense,” Biden said in his opening remarks to kick off the summit on Tuesday. “This year, 23 will spend at least 2 percent. And some will spend more than that.”

Still, some in the alliance consider that an almost hollow victory. The Wales Summit was 10 years ago, well before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“We reaffirm that, in many cases, expenditure beyond 2% of GDP will be needed in order to remedy existing shortfalls and meet the requirements across all domains arising from a more contested security order,” the allies wrote in a joint communique on Wednesday.

The Baltic states in particular are pushing their allies to go beyond the mandatory 2% floor for defense spending as Russia shows no signs of backing down after more than two years of war in Ukraine.

“We’ll start to talk at least about 2.5% as a floor,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas told Defense News, pointing to NATO’s “capability gaps.”

“When we analyze what the countries need to develop in the near-future, for a decade maybe, it’s not even 2.5%. It’s not even 3%. It should be more if you want more air defense systems, if you want more long-range strike capabilities.”

Tuuli Duneton, Estonia’s Undersecretary for Defense Policy, praised the 23 countries who now meet the 2% spending target but added “we should start already the discussions on putting the target for defense spending even higher.”

“We would support to have the discussion to set in the new target for the next NATO summit in the Hague to either 2.5% or 3% of GDP,” Duneton told reporters.

The U.S. spends roughly 3% of GDP on defense, but the Congressional Budget Office projects that will fall to 2.5% by 2034.

Republicans in the U.S. are also starting to join the Baltic countries’ call to move the defense spending floor beyond 2% of GDP.

“Given these dangerous times, the alliance must do more,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said in a Tuesday statement. “We must start working toward a greater defense spending commitment than the current 2% of GDP defense spending benchmark that better reflects this new era of authoritarian aggression we find ourselves in.”

Trump said this year that should he return to the White House, he would allow Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies who do not meet the minimum defense spending benchmark.

The former president’s allies are calling on NATO allies to replace the U.S. as Ukraine’s primary security guarantor – a task made all the more complicated by years of Europe’s chronic underinvestment in weapons production lines.

“The things that Europeans most need are not necessarily guys with guns, as important as they are, but lift, logistics, C4ISR, long-range munitions, air defense, but those are exactly the things that are most needed in the Pacific and are most difficult to reconstitute,” Bridge Colby, Trump’s former assistant secretary of defense for strategy, said Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.

“The best way to manage the situation is to be practical and candid with our European allies and say ‘here’s what we can provide.’ And this is what I’ve said to the Europeans is ‘we’re going to have to withhold some of these key capabilities.”

Collin Meisel, the associate director of geopolitical analysis at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, cautioned “it’s going to take years for the European countries to make up that shortfall and be able to provide adequate support for Ukraine.”

“If the U.S. pulls back its materiel support of Ukraine, then Ukraine is going to be in pretty rough shape.”

He also noted that when Ukraine military aid is framed as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. ranks far below multiple European countries, including countries like the Netherlands that have not met NATO’s 2% of GDP benchmark for overall defense spending.

And the spending targets themselves don’t guarantee a ready military.

“Greece is the poster child for this,” said John Deni, a former political adviser to U.S. military leaders in Europe.

Athens has long spent more than 2% on defense, he noted, but much of it goes to areas that don’t create a strong force, such as personnel and pensions.

“It’s a jobs program,” Deni said.

The 2% and 20% thresholds are the only public thresholds — affirmed as a floor, rather than a ceiling in the 2022 communique in Vilnius, Lithuania.

NATO has 11 private metrics to measure burden sharing, which help assess the readiness of each force, Deni said. It’s also working to finalize regional defense and deterrence plans that will in part guide procurement decisions for member states. Proponents of increasing the 2% benchmark hope these regional plans will also grow military spending.

“It’s not only the percentage itself that matters, but taking into account that NATO military authorities have been assessing based on the regional plans: all military requirements for defense forces and capabilities” said Estonia’s Duneton. “The increased defense spending is most of all necessary for us to be able to deliver on those critical capabilities.”

This story was updated on Wednesday at 4:48 PM to include a statement from the NATO summit communique.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, upset that his country wouldn’t get a timeline for membership, scolded the alliance online.

“Ukraine also deserves respect,” he wrote.

In order to avoid a repeat of last year, the 2024 summit in Washington has been much more closely coordinated. Multiple European officials told Defense News that planning began months earlier than usual. And many delegations are using the same slogan: “Managing expectations.”

Now that the summit has arrived, the events around it are proving difficult to manage.

French President Emmanuel Macron, a persnickety but dogged NATO advocate in Europe, is facing political gridlock after parliamentary elections left the National Assembly, the lower house, fractured from the extreme left to the extreme right.

And while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week, he went on to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow shortly thereafter. Orban, who has previously slow-walked European aid to Ukraine, framed his visits as a peace mission but his suggestion that Ukraine order a truce before peace negotiations drew a frosty response from Kyiv.

Even more concerning for NATO is the state of its main backer. U.S. President Joe Biden is trying to contain a crisis at home after a catastrophic debate two weeks ago. Supporting the alliance has been one of Biden’s signature issues. Now, many in his own party say he shouldn’t even be the nominee — making the return of a NATO-skeptic Donald Trump to the presidency more likely.

The upshot is a split 75th birthday for NATO. By some measures, like membership and spending, the alliance is stronger than ever. And yet, many members are searching for ways to “Trump proof” its support for Kyiv while trying to protect their own security. Despite a more unified message this year, and a large package for Ukraine, European officials acknowledge the political situation is a major distraction.

“Right now the policy is support Ukraine,” said Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official focusing on European security. “Could it change? Sure. But right now, the big affirmation is going to be NATO at 75 years and look what we’re doing to help Ukraine.”

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters on Friday that allies “will reaffirm that Ukraine’s future is in NATO, will make significant new announcements about how we’re increasing NATO’s military, political and financial support for Ukraine.”

“The Washington summit will send a strong signal to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that if he thinks he can outlast the coalition of countries supporting Ukraine, he’s dead wrong.”

Three-part package

As has been the case since Russia’s full-scale invasion over two years ago, the biggest part of this NATO summit will be backing Ukraine.

Heading into the meetings, officials and analysts outlined a three-part package.

The first piece will be equipment, likely including urgently needed air defense batteries and interceptors for Kyiv.

NATO will also take a larger role in the process. To this point in the war, the U.S. has led the effort, with a monthly meeting convened by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. This Ukraine Defense Contact Group has helped raise and direct around $100 billion in aid.

The alliance is now taking on some of those tasks. In June, NATO announced a command of 700 personnel in Germany that would also help steer aid to Ukraine moving forward. Speaking with reporters on the condition of anonymity before the summit, a European official predicted this group would take on more authority over time.

“We are crossing that line,” the official said. “We are giving NATO greater role in terms of assistance to Ukraine.”

Biden will host an event at the summit with Zelenskyy and nearly two dozen allies and partners who have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine.

A final part of the package is what the final communique will say about membership for Ukraine. The delegations are still haggling over how to word it — a “bridge,” an “irreversible” path or some combination of the two. Whatever the language, the same European official said it needs to be firmer than the conditional phrasing of the Vilnius communique.

To many in Ukraine, though, this back and forth misses the point.

“We know we will probably not get an invitation to joint NATO,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Committee on Foreign Policy Committee in Ukraine’s parliament. “The question is what we will get instead.”

Parsing the words in the communique when Ukraine has known membership isn’t on the table ignores more important questions: like the alliance’s readiness and Russia’s threat beyond Ukraine, argued Maksym Skrypchenko, who leads the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a think tank in Kyiv.

“People [in Ukraine] are very frustrated with NATO,” he said. “They feel like NATO isn’t working and Russia can invade the Baltic states and nothing will happen.”

‘Done this before’

Despite that mood, there are signs that the Washington summit is more unified than last year’s.

In a post last week, Zelenskyy predicted “there are good things to come” on air defense, membership and security agreements.

NATO will also have a clutch of good news to celebrate. It’s hit a record number of members spending at least 2% of GDP on defense — expected to hit 23 this year compared to only three a decade ago. It has a new member, with Sweden ending a long accession process in March. And there’s a new secretary general coming, now that former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earned enough support in June.

That said, the political malaise surrounding the summit will make the work harder, multiple analysts and officials said. Asked whether the optics of a weakened American and French president would distract from the real policy discussions, another European official was terse.

“Yes,” the official said.

Hence, despite the carefully coordinated messaging, many members of the alliance will arrive in Washington looking for reassurance, or even trying to hedge against the whiplash of a second Trump term by meeting with his campaign or conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.

Others are skeptical such an approach could work.

“I find this notion of future-proofing or even Trump-proofing the alliance, to be frank, a little bit laughable,” John Deni, a former adviser to American military leaders in Europe, said on a press call hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Deni’s argument was two-fold.

One, there is no country in NATO with the ability to replace a more distant United States, economically or militarily.

And two, NATO has been through these political transitions in the past, including with American leaders thought to be insufficiently committed to Europe.

Every expert on the call with Deni argued that second point: An alliance doesn’t last 75 years without learning how to survive.

“What I say to Europeans all the time is stop freaking out about Trump,” said Rachel Rizzo, an expert at the Atlantic Council. “You’ve done this before.”

Austin announced the decision in a statement Monday morning, calling Chollet “one of the most distinguished, far-sighted, and skillful national-security practitioners of his generation.”

The decision comes nearly two weeks after Austin’s longtime Chief of Staff Kelly Magsamen said she would leave her post in late June, after three and a half years in the role. It also puts to rest the long saga of Chollet’s nomination to lead the Pentagon’s policy shop, afflicted by personnel turnover since its former leader Colin Kahl left last summer.

Shortly after Kahl left, the White House submitted Chollet’s name to fill the role. But the confirmation stalled in the Senate, in large part due to Republican objections over his role in the Afghanistan pullout in 2021.

Those frustrations crescendoed last September in a contentious hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Since then there has been no progress in actually confirming Chollet. The decision to move him to the chief of staff role may also have to do with the calendar. There’s only seven months until January, when there could be a turnover in administrations depending on November’s election

Amanda Dory, a longtime Pentagon hand, is now serving as undersecretary of defense for policy on an acting basis.

Magsamen’s deputy, Caroline Zier, was initially set to take over the chief of staff role. Chollet, who has served in senior positions within the Pentagon before, will start in July.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced the reshuffle in a briefing today, calling it “difficult but necessary.” In the short-term, he said, Patriot and NASAM interceptors that had been slated for other countries will now go to Ukraine.

“As a result, deliveries for these missiles to other countries that are currently in the queue will have to be delayed,” Kirby said.

The White House expects Ukraine will receive these air defense weapons by the end of the summer. Kirby said the number will be in the hundreds, and that the decision should give Ukraine what it needs for the next 16 months. At that point, the countries who currently have air defense missiles on order can expect to start seeing theirs delivered.

“To be clear, those countries will still receive the missiles they have ordered,” Kirby said. “It’s just that the delivery will take a little longer.”

He did not say which countries would be affected by the delays, but noted that the decision will not impact Taiwan or Israel.

Lockheed Martin is fully funded by the U.S. Army to build 550 PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) missiles a year at its Camden, Arkansas, production line and hit a rate of 500 per year in December 2023.

While the Army has yet to fund another missile production increase, Lockheed has invested internally to build 650 interceptors a year.

In 2023, Lockheed signed six letters of approval with international customers.

There are 19 countries with the Raytheon-made Patriot and that customer base is growing. Switzerland purchased five batteries and 75 missiles in November 2022 and Romania plans to buy additional fire units. At least two other European countries are close to announcing plans to buy Patriot, according to Raytheon this spring.

Slovakia has recently expressed interest in purchasing Patriot, and Germany has said it intends to grow its Patriot force.

The decision is one of the most extraordinary measures America has taken to protect Ukraine since the full-scale war with Russia began two years ago. For months, Pentagon leaders have said that air defense is at the top of the agenda for the countries supporting Kyiv. And they’ve taken recent steps to prove it.

“Air defense has been at the top of my agenda for a long time,” said U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a June press conference.

Austin spoke at NATO headquarters in Brussels, shortly after a meeting of countries that gather each month to coordinate support for Ukraine. Just before the summit, multiple outlets reported that the U.S. was sending another Patriot system to Ukraine — though neither Austin nor Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown would confirm the news.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said in June his country needs seven Patriot systems, one of the most advanced air defense systems in the world. Germany announced earlier this year that it would send one to Ukraine. The Netherlands similarly committed to assembling and sending another system.

Other countries have committed different air defense systems altogether, such as NASAMS.

“It’s not just Patriots,” Austin said at the June presser, listing out other systems. “It’s a number of capabilities that Ukraine needs, and they need the interceptors to complement the platforms.”

Short supply

Despite their importance, both air defense batteries and the interceptors they fire are in short supply. The U.S. and its allies have spent much of the war sourcing whatever extra weapons are available — especially as Ukraine faced drone and missile barrages on its cities and critical infrastructure. The decision this week reflects how tight the supply chain for these systems is. Rather than expanding capacity, the U.S. has reordered it.

“It’s a reminder of the importance of expanding inventory,” said Tom Karako, an expert on air defense at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, of the decision.

Karako said that the money meant to expand that capacity included in the April national security supplemental — a massive refresh of security aid to Ukraine and other countries — hasn’t been spent yet. Though there is around $48 billion for military aid to Ukraine in the package, the amount marked for air defense isn’t specified, he said.

“You don’t just turn on a dime and start spitting out Patriots like a Xerox machine,” Karako said.

The White House didn’t specify what countries will be affected by the reshuffle, though Karako said that the likely candidates will be in Europe and the Middle East.

Kirby said that Washington would do what it could to shorten any delays.

Still, he said, “each country is going to have a different set of circumstances that apply to that based on what they’ve ordered and what their own self-defense needs are.”

The Government Accountability Office unveiled its annual report on the Defense Department’s buying practices, covering many of the largest items in the military’s shopping cart, from aircraft carriers to intercontinental ballistic missiles.

GAO studied more than 30 of the most expensive items on order, costing a little more than $1 trillion. The total cost of those fell by about $1.7 billion since the year before, due to changes in inflation and a drop in purchases.

Still, several of these big-ticket items are running above the contracted price. The estimated total may rise, the report warned, plus there are issues with speed.

For the largest weapons programs still awaiting delivery, it’s taking 10 years for the Pentagon to place an order and then receive the system. That’s longer than the average noted last year.

But for programs that have started delivering, the delays are even longer. The average time, the authors found, rose from 8 years to 11 years.

Alongside these major programs, GAO also studied some meant to be smaller and more nimble. These “middle-tier acquisitions,” or MTA, work like a toll road alongside a highway — a quicker route for weapons that the Pentagon needs more urgently.

The trouble is that the speed limit isn’t much faster, the report found.

“Although the MTA pathway was designed for speed, GAO found most MTA programs do not plan to implement leading practices to facilitate that speed,” it said.

These programs are meant to reach the field within five years, according to the Pentagon’s own guidance. However, GAO found some middle-tier programs are still following a “linear” process: five years for prototyping and another five for development.

“While the MTA pathway offers flexibilities to create efficiencies in the acquisition process, the warfighter may continue to wait years — if not more than a decade — for a solution that may ultimately no longer be relevant,” according to the report.

One of the core problems the Pentagon faces as it tries to buy weapons moving forward is purchasing software. Weapons, like technology more broadly, depend more on the lines of code that make them work. To avoid going obsolete, that software must stay up to date.

But the DOD struggles to buy this evergreen technology, and one of the reasons listed in the report is employees. The department doesn’t have enough people who understand software, the report argued. Instead, many of the most software-intense programs in the Pentagon require the expertise of contractors.

“DOD has taken initial steps to establish a cadre of personnel with software expertise, but its efforts are in early stages,” the report said. “While DOD expects to request more funding, as of March 2024, the cadre consisted of one federal employee with limited assistance.”

GAO offered three main recommendations: strategies to make MTA programs move faster, clearer guidance on the Pentagon’s software workforce, and the funding and goals needed for that workforce.

The top deputy for Pentagon acquisition and sustainment, who has since moved to a policy role, partially agreed with the recommendations and said some may be included in the DOD’s next update to its buying practices, expected this month.

According to a Pentagon readout of the meeting, Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Adm. Dong Jun discussed Chinese military activities around Taiwan, U.S. operations in the region, North Korea, and China’s stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Senior U.S. defense officials, briefing reporters after the conversation, said Austin also discussed China’s “strategic capabilities” in regard to space and cyberspace as well as nuclear weapons. In the last several years, Beijing has grown its nuclear arsenal, more than doubling the number of warheads since the start of the decade, according to the Pentagon’s analysis.

Top American officials have been warning China for months that continued support for Russia’s defense industry — one of the main reasons Moscow has been able to quickly reconstitute its military — is unacceptable to Washington.

That message appeared again in this meeting, one of the American officials said.

“He [Austin] said quite clearly that if China’s support for Russia’s defense sector continues, then the United States with our allies will have to take further measures,” according to the official, who didn’t explain what those consequences would be.

Austin and Dong spoke on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, a defense summit in Singapore that draws officials from across Asia. Austin has attended the event each year in his current role — except for a yearlong pause during the coronavirus pandemic — while the U.S. tries to work with more countries in the region, and do so more closely.

The Pentagon’s approach to the Indo-Pacific under the Biden administration has been defined by this kind of team building. The department has expanded defense agreements with Australia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and India, among other nations. It has also been able to convince existing allies, in particular Japan and South Korea, to improve their cooperation.

China’s military activities in the region are partly driving these efforts.

China has repeatedly harassed Philippine vessels trying to resupply an outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal — a reef in the South China Sea that China claims ownership over, despite a 2016 United Nations ruling stating otherwise. China and the Philippines are among several nations asserting sovereignty over local geographic features.

China has also grown more aggressive around Taiwan, running a large military exercise around the island weeks before the conference here. China’s government considers Taiwan a rogue province and has threatened to take it back by force.

Until late last year, China’s military was conducting what the Pentagon called a series of “unsafe and unprofessional” intercepts of U.S. and allied forces. That stopped late last year after President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in California.

Will Austin’s meeting make a difference?

Austin’s meeting with Dong is meant to help improve what some in the region consider an overly tense relationship. Beijing severed military communication with the United States after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taiwan in 2022. Since Biden and Xi spoke, the two countries have restarted such talks.

Austin and Dong spoke over the phone in April — the first time they talked. Dong is China’s third defense minister in as many years amid a purge of top military officials due to corruption in the People’s Liberation Army.

Last year at the same conference, China’s former defense minister declined an offer to meet with Austin, leading to a short handshake between the two. Even though communications have restarted, the lack of agreement between America and China overall often leaves little to talk about.

“I expect that very little will come out of it,” Bonnie Glaser, an expert on Sino-U.S. relations at the German Marshall Fund, said of the Austin-Dong summit. “I think it will be an exchange of talking points.”

Still, Glaser noted it’s good the two sides are engaging each other, a point echoed by the American officials traveling with Austin.

Per the readout, Austin and Dong discussed restarting communication between their two countries’ top military officers in the region — the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and China’s eastern and southern theater commanders.

The conversation also included mention of a Sino-U.S. “crisis-communications working group” that would convene by the end of the year.

A separate issue is candor, a second American official said, referencing China’s space, nuclear and cyber capabilities.

“It’s continuously been a challenge to engage on those issues,” the official noted.

Both Austin and Dong will speak at the conference over the weekend, a symbol of the relationship defining Indo-Pacific security. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, the think tank that hosts the Shangri-La Dialogue, released its annual report on the region ahead of the event. In it, experts warned of a “draining decade” marked by competition between the two superpowers that is spilling out beyond issues of security.

To that end, conversations only have so much value, the first American official noted. China “remains the Department of Defense’s pacing challenge, and no meeting will change that.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council — whose members include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait — hosts a yearly set of defense working groups with the U.S. They met last year in February and promised to share more intelligence and better sync their air and missile defense networks.

But that was before Oct. 7.

Since the terrorist group Hamas launched its attack on Israel — killing 1,200 civilians and soldiers — the region has been in crisis. In the eight months since, militia groups backed by Tehran have attacked U.S. forces in the region more than 175 times. And the Houthis, a militia group in Yemen, have launched 90 attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea — leading to a U.S.-led group called Prosperity Guardian that’s trying to defend such vessels.

“These conversations are really more important than ever,” said a senior U.S. defense official, briefing reporters ahead of the talks on the condition of anonymity.

Pentagon head of Middle East Policy Dan Shaprio will co-chair the talks and join a larger group of American defense officials in attendance.

The official wouldn’t predict specific results but said to expect the talks to build upon progress last year. In those meetings, the group largely discussed the threats posed by Iran and its proxies in the region. The events since Oct. 7 have confirmed the value of those goals, the official said.

In particular, the official said, Iran’s missile attack against Israel in April is an object lesson. Tehran, responding to an Israeli strike on its military leaders visiting Syria, launched a massive but largely failed salvo last month. The U.S., Israel and a coalition of partners helped shoot many of the drones and missiles down.

“Ironically April 13, which was really a proof of concept of integrated air and missile defense, was ultimately successful in sparking deeper cooperation among our partners,” the official said, while declining to offer specifics other than that the air and missile defense working group would focus on better early warning systems.

Prosperity Guardian

Similarly, the maritime working group will largely discuss threats posed by the Houthis.

In December, the U.S. and a group of partners began Operation Prosperity Guardian, a joint effort to protect shipping from such attacks. That coalition includes the regional partner of Bahrain, though the official noted that other countries are contributing but prefer not to be named.

“The solution there [in the Red Sea] is not a military solution,” said Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Christopher Grady, speaking an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in early May.

The Houthi’s attacks have continued despite the coalition’s effort. They struck an oil ship in mid-May and keep targeting American military vessels in the region.

“It is true they continue,” the defense official said. “It is also true that we feel through our coalition strikes we’ve degraded their capability.”

Despite these crises beginning after last fall, the official said Israel’s war isn’t on the docket to discuss. Instead, the U.S. is speaking with Arab states separately on how to send more aid into Gaza. A $300-million-dollar pier America constructed to provide more assistance started operating this month.

But civilians on the strip haven’t received anything yet, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder told reporters this week. The U.S. maintains that there’s no substitute for more aid arriving by land, which Israel has so far restricted.

“Gaza is not a particular focus of this meeting,” the official said.

The two countries announced their decision in a joint statement on Sunday, after almost a week of military talks. The deadline is September 15.

America has relied on the West African country as a counter-terrorism hub for more than a decade. Until recently, more than 1,000 U.S. personnel have operated there, most working from an airbase near Agadez, which cost more than $100 million and sits in the country’s center.

“This is not a good outcome,” said a senior defense official, briefing reporters Sunday on the condition of anonymity. “We’re leaving Niger after a significant investment and a lot of time invested in the partnership.”

Those ties began to fray last summer after a coup swapped the ruling government with a military junta known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, or CNSP. The U.S. didn’t label the revolt a coup — a legal title that limits how much support America can offer — until October 2023. By then, the new government had already asked French forces also stationed in the country to depart.

This March, shortly after an earlier round of talks, a spokesman for the CNSP announced that America’s military could no longer keep operating there. The video surprised U.S. officials, who also weren’t at first sure whether it was official Nigerien policy or bluster.

But in the months that followed the decision became clear: the U.S. would be leaving; it only needed to negotiate how.

Developing a plan to do so was the purpose of the talks this month, led by the two militaries.

Niger agreed to protect American forces while they withdrew and help hasten some of the logistics.

The U.S., meanwhile, will remove all military personnel from the country. About 100, non-essential personnel have already left, said a senior military official who also joined the briefing.

“It is already underway,” said the defense official.

With them will come stores of equipment to be largely spread around other sites belonging to U.S. Africa Command. America will remove all sensitive and lethal kit, the officials said, but will leave anything that’s fixed — such as a barracks or hangar — or that costs more to move than it’s worth. The departure is mainly taking place over the air, rather than on the ground, making everything more expensive to transport.

The two officials doubted that, for now, any of the remaining equipment would end up in a foreign government’s hands. This month, the Pentagon confirmed reports that Russian soldiers were stationed near U.S. forces near the capital, which added to concern that Moscow was replacing Washington in the country.

”There’s definitely an interest right now in the [Nigerien] military to not upset things,” the U.S. military official said. “I don’t think in the short term we’ll see them turn this equipment over to others.”

Instead, the official expected the Nigeriens to use it for their own counter-terrorism fight, which has grown more acute in recent years as violent extremism rises in the region. America’s presence in the country was focused on that mission, conducting operations itself an training the Nigerien military to do so as well.

And while U.S. operations have paused in recent months, the military official said, the Nigerien forces it trained have continued their own counter-terrorism work.

As it withdraws, America will also turn to the future of its relationship with the country. The two officials briefing reporters colored it in warm hues, saying their military ties — aside from some in Niger’s military who are leading the government — are still strong.

“There’s a generation of the Nigerien military … that have grown up with U.S. training, U.S. equipment, U.S. education,” the defense official said. “That’s something that we would expect that they will continue to desire.”

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell will likely travel to Niger in the coming months to discuss the two countries’ future.

“They thought it was important to emphasize that they did not see this as the closing of the relationship,” the military official said.