The mood in the Pentagon remained calm Monday as news broke of the Boston Marathon bombing, but in a sign that even the Defense Department took the threat seriously, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey were regularly briefed by the Pentagon's emergency command center as the event unfolded.
 
“The secretary was informed shortly after the tragic events in Boston,” a senior defense official told FP National Security. “He asked for updates, including during an unrelated briefing to prepare him for upcoming congressional testimony. Chairman Dempsey and others in the meeting provided the latest update at the time.”
 
Dempsey received updates from the Joint Staff’s National Military Command Center (NMCC), according to his spokesman, Col. David Lapan. The NMCC “provided [Dempsey] and senior Joint Staff leaders with regular e-mail updates throughout the late afternoon and evening.”
 
Such updates are considered normal for major events, Lapan said.

President Obama addressed the nation in the afternoon but did not identify the bombing as terrorism. Later, according to the Boston Globe, a White House official said, “Any event with multiple explosive devices - as this appears to be - is clearly an act of terror, and will be approached as an act of terror."
 
Televisions in the Pentagon showing live footage from Boston stopped military officers and visitors in their tracks. But there was no official heightening of security in the building by late afternoon. Later, following reports that the White House had expelled tour groups and closed off portions of the West Wing, several Pentagon Force Protection Agency officers said they had received no orders for any change of status.
 
The NMCC, located inside the Pentagon, is run by the J-3, the operations directorate of the Joint Staff. The J3, commanded by Vice Adm. Kurt Tidd, is responsible for coordinating communications between the secretary of defense, the president, and the chain of command.

Combat pilots got nothing on Mad Men.

With Army fliers grounded and soldiers’ training on hold due to sequestration and Washington’s endless budget fight, the Army last week awarded $192 million to advertising giant McCann Worldgroup for another year’s worth of marketing designed to make the Army look good enough to join.

McCann is the ad firm that birthed the slogan “Army Strong.” On Tuesday, the Army made its third annual payment, the second of four option years, on a contract that has a five-year, $565 million cap. It comes as Pentagon officials have told Congress and the public that mandatory defense spending cuts have forced commanders to make tough choices that could sacrifice military readiness.

So what’s with spending almost $200 million for things like television commercials and online recruitment ad campaigns?

“It's obviously a very different environment that we’re operating in, but the reality is even in this fiscal environment we still need a quality, all-volunteer force,” said Ali Bettancourt, spokeswoman for Army Research and Marketing Group, in an interview. “And the challenge of recruiting that force doesn’t go away.”

The Army expects to fall short of its recruiting goal for the Army Reserves this year, Bettancourt said. It’s the only service branch in the military not meeting its recruiting goal for the current fiscal year. It also would be the first time the Army did not meet its recruitment goal for the Reserves since 2006, at the height of violence in the Iraq war. That year, the Army signed up 25,378 people, just short of its goal of 25,500. By comparison, in fiscal 2013 through February, the last month for which data is available, the Reserves had signed just 10,531 new recruits, or only 88 percent of its year-to-date goal.

Bettancourt said that the McCann contract was a must. If it did not make the payment, the Army would be left with a significant advertising and marketing services gap until it could reopen a new contract bid from scratch. Instead, the Army has agreed to approve the money, but that does not mean they have to spend it all, she said. McCann’s contract is a multiyear, firm fixed-price contract, which Bettancourt noted is designed to save taxpayer money by preventing cost inflation during the life of the agreement.

“The contract is for advertising services in support of recruiting and retention programs across the active and reserve force,” said Matthew Bourke, spokesman at Army headquarters in the Pentagon. “The value announced last week, $192,114,076, is the total maximum value of the option.”

According to AdWeek, the contract is expected to net McCann a profit of $15 million to $20 million, per year.

The Army, like the other military branches, has cancelled some of its most obvious pomp and circumstance to save money. The annual black-tie Birthday Ball planned for June was scrubbed for a $400,000 savings. Service bands have been absent from many public performances. And the Navy has cancelled its famous Fleet Week port call on New York City.

“We’ve been looking pretty hard at our programs and our advertising and looking at ways to be more efficient and innovative,” Bettancourt said. They have grounded the Golden Knights parachute team, one of the service’s marquis public relations tools, which falls under her office’s budget. They’ve also cut back on their own travel budget and halted the “Army Experience” tour, a mobile recruiting truck that visits high schools.

Ironically, Bettancourt’s own office is a product of the Army trying to become more efficient. It was created in August, along with several other smaller offices, after the larger U.S. Army Accessions Command was scrubbed.

The ethics problems that rocked the Pentagon’s senior officer corps last year and resulted in a number of investigations and ruined careers, is forcing the Defense Department to expand training, emphasize ethics in military education and require a new way to assess the character of officers by their peers – and their subordinates.

The Pentagon’s Joint Staff has just finished an ethics review that was put into high gear late last year after a series of problems among a number of senior officers that culminated with the removal of former four-star general David Petraeus from the CIA, and an investigation into the war commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen. The ethics review, conducted by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Marty Dempsey, didn’t find widespread wrongdoing or create a laundry list of specific actions to be mandated across the Defense Department. Instead, Dempsey seems to have refocused the officer corps on ethics issues by mandating a few initiatives department-wide and then requiring that the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines work to come up with solutions specific to their departments. Other issues, like the definition of what an official function is or how and when to use enlisted aides, will fall to the Office of the Secretary of Defense to determine and then standardize the rules across the military. In many ways, the review only begins a new effort to begin to inculcate the military with stronger ethical guidance.

The review, completed just recently and briefed to FP’s National Security on Friday, addresses some of the very issues that arose from specific cases in which general or flag officers found themselves in hot water: from pushing for more department-wide clarity and consistency on regulations that govern ethical behavior, to expanded support and training for aides who provide administrative support to senior officers. For example, the services and Joint Staff are developing ways to infuse military education with more focus on ethical conduct. It’s also creating a way to enforce compliance with ethics rules by having “assistance teams” visit commands and determine if the rules are being followed. Aides who provide administrative support – but can, in some cases, be the de facto decision makers on important matters, from what functions a commander attends to who goes on a trip – will get additional training.

The review also includes a mandate for the services to create a performance evaluation tool to assess leaders from all angles – a “360-degree” evaluation.

Despite an increasing number of investigations against senior officers, defense officials are quick to point out that only a small number of them are ever substantiated, and even those represent a small number of officers. Regardless, maintaining the public trust is the highest priority, said Lt. Gen. George Flynn, director of joint force development for the Joint Staff, in an interview in his office in the Pentagon.

“If one individual can impact how people view one thousand people on the issue of trust, you have to do everything you can,” said Flynn, who along with other senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff helped conduct the review. “When you are talking about trust it is probably the one area where you have to have zero defects.”

A number of high-profile ethics cases involving senior officers raised high-level attention to the issue of senior officer ethics last year. The problems ran the gamut, from the financial and ethical mismanagement of U.S. Africa Command by Gen. William “Kip” Ward to the abusive command climate Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly was investigated for at the Missile Defense Agency. Adm. James Stavridis, head of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, was investigated for different issues, among them travel and expenses, but was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.

Such cases pointed up the need for commanders’ aides to be better versed in the rules governing ethical behavior – as well as the necessity for senior officers to know the rules themselves. A push to elevate the issue of ethical behavior among senior officers was quietly underway but was accelerated after the sex scandal that felled Petraeus and jeopardized the career of Allen.

"We need to do a better job making sure our senior folks and especially their staffs are well aware of the rules and regulations,” said one senior officer who did not participate formally in the Joint Staff review. “Very, very few people are trying to do anything bad like have an affair, pass classified information, or abuse their people -- the vast majority are good leaders trying to comply with very complex regulations on travel, official gift exchanges, and support."

But another senior officer said he worries that the Pentagon could be seen as not taking the ethics issue seriously, and that could send the wrong message to Congress, society at large and even the rank-and-file of the uniformed military.

“I’m not worried about us overreacting too much,” the officer said. “I think the greater risk is conveying a message to [society, Congress and the enlisted corps] that we’re really OK, that, yeah, we had a couple of bad guys but the rest of us are just fine.”

The 360-degree assessment or performance evaluation is likely the most tangible takeaway from the review process. It will mean officers will be evaluated by their peers, superiors and subordinates. “A 360-degree assessment mechanism will provide our leaders with greater self-awareness, serve as an inherent check against destructive leadership and misconduct, and provide a more complete picture of emerging leaders for raters and selection boards,” according to a memo on the review signed by Dempsey. “We will establish both joint and service Senior Fellow programs to enhance the use of these assessments in professional development.” The Army uses such assessments now, but on a more limited basis.

Dempsey was personally involved with the review but designated subordinates like Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, director of the Joint Staff, and Flynn as action officers. Dempsey held several discussions with the service chiefs in the secure meeting room in the Pentagon’s E-Ring known as “the tank.”

The effort found a number of areas that needed strengthening or more clarity, but some of those issues will have to be addressed not within the Joint Staff, which has direction over training, for example, but the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which would determine travel regulations and the use of certain personnel on trips.

Flynn emphasized that the tone of the actions to be taken is less punitive and more positive reinforcement. For example, new “assistance visits” will be comprised of officials well-versed in military rules and regulations who will visit commands to ensure that senior officers and their aides and those who provide other administrative support are doing the right thing. The teams aren’t met to seem like a health inspector showing up at a restaurant to look for vermin, but more as a tool to help steer commands and commanders toward compliance.

“It’s designed to assure compliance, it’s not designed to be a punitive thing,” said Flynn.

Some aspects of the moves to be taken will be left to the services. Depending on the issue, Flynn said, it’s important not to dictate a certain way of doing things to the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines.

“General Dempsey is not going to tell [Marine Corps Commandant] General Amos what to do in the Marine Corps,” Flynn said. “He’s not going to get into service prerogatives or department prerogatives.”

But one senior officer said leaving too much to the services could dull the impact of the changes by leaving too much room for each initiative to be interpreted and implemented differently. “I recognize that there are service cultures at play here but I think there should be some degree of standardization, which I think we can do while still recognizing the historical and cultural service differences,” he said.

With North Korea threatening nuclear attack, U.S. and Japanese defense officials and diplomats met for three days at a U.S. Navy base this week where U.S. officials renewed their commitment to protect Japan with an American nuclear umbrella.

The talks were held Tuesday through Thursday at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, in Washington State, and visiting Japanese officials were taken for a show-and-tell to see an American nuclear attack submarine and Trident missiles, one of the three legs of the so-called nuclear triad.

Details of the meeting are outlined in a Pentagon statement obtained exclusively by the E-Ring before its public release, on Friday.

The meeting, known as the Extended Deterrence Dialogue, is the latest biannual occasion where U.S. officials explain the Pentagon’s nuclear capabilities to Japanese leaders, assuring them that as part of the alliance with the U.S., Japan does not need to have its own nuclear weapons.

As the talks wrapped on Thursday, a member of Congress sparked a firestorm when he revealed during a hearing with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that a Defense Intelligence Agency report from March assessed a "moderate probability" that North Korea was able to fit a nuclear weapon atop a ballistic missile. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper later pushed back on the report, saying it was not an intelligence community conclusion and cautioning that North Korea had not "demonstrated" such capability.

Without mentioning North Korea, China or any specific Asian country, the forthcoming Pentagon statement says the meeting “reinforces the critical role of the U.S.-Japan alliance in deterring and responding to strategic threats in the East Asia region. Through frank discussion, transparent information exchange and interaction with local Navy sailors, the EDD also makes clear to our allies that U.S. extended deterrence continues to be credible, capable and enduring.”

Japan currently is protected from missile threats in part by the Navy’s Aegis anti-missile system, constantly deployed aboard U.S. destroyers in the Western Pacific. The U.S. further explained its naval capabilities, at the base, according to the readout.

Representing the U.S. side from the State Department: Anita Friedt, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear and strategic policy, and James Zumwalt, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

From DOD: Elaine Bunn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, and Amy Searight, principal director for East Asia policy at OSD.  

“The Japanese delegation was led by Takeo Akiba, the deputy director general of the North American Affairs bureau, Ministry Of Foreign Affairs and Ro Manabe, the deputy director general of the Defense Policy Bureau, Ministry of Defense.”

You know President Obama's fiscal 2014 defense spending request is a cut. You know it doesn't include war costs. You know it'll be a slog to get any of it passed by Congress as requested. But here are seven things about it you may not know: 

1. It was finished four months ago. Defense Department planners finished most of the work on this budget request by December, like they do most years. The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) effectively has been sitting on it since February, as Congress and the administration have tried to wrangle a larger deal on federal spending levels. That means much of next year's budget is based on pricing, readiness needs, and threat assumptions that will be even more outdated than usual by the time Congress passes a fiscal 2014 defense spending bill. First they have to pass the fiscal 2013 spending bill, though.

2. Ignore the topline, missile defense going strong. Of all the times to announce a $550 million reduction in missile defense spending, the week that a new intelligence report leaks that North Korea has learned how to fit a nuclear warhead atop a ballistic missile may not be ideal. The Pentagon requested $9.16 billion for FY14 and already Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, is criticizing the decision. "Despite almost daily evidence of the increasing threat to the United States posed by rogue states with ballistic missiles, the president's budget cuts spending on missile defense," he said. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, a war veteran, argued the budget request leaves U.S. territories exposed. Of course, strategically speaking, everything depends on how the Pentagon spends its billions on missile defense. The Pentagon wants $1 billion over 10 years to expand the ground-based interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, specifically to counter the emerging North Korean threat, which is an FY14 increase of $100 million from last year. Spending on Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems like those aboard destroyers deployed in the Western Pacific against the North Korea threat also will increase by $100 million to $1.5 billion. Congress still wants to kill the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) but the Pentagon approved $380 million through the end of the fiscal year. Conservatives want more funds for East Coast missile defense against a possible future Iranian threat. Under the radar, however, the Army still likes missiles and is buying more Patriot missiles, as well as offensive Javelin, and TOW, or Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire command-link guided, missiles.

3. The network is the Army's top priority and they cut that too. No, not the Matrix, the network. As in, a network to electronically link soldiers and their equipment to everything. Here, let the Army's deputy budget director, Davis Welch, explain it: "The Army is building an agile, secure, standards-based, versatile network that connects soldiers and their equipment to vital information and our joint interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational partners." Clear? No? Five programs are dedicated to connecting every piece of soldier equipment: Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, the Army's 15-year effort to build its own network; Joint Battle Command-Platform, which is like giving every soldier an iPad to see maps, texts, and ID enemy fighters; Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS); Nett Warrior, affectionately called "glorified smart phones"; and Distributed Common Ground System-Army, which since 1998 has tried to figure out how to share intelligence data across agencies. But the Army says it's playing ball and in the name of fiscal responsibility cutting the total modernization budget containing these programs by 7 percent, or $1.7 billion.

4. Time for the reset: Army stretching its helicopter dollars. Helicopters have been put through hell in the last decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the budget crunch means that instead of buying all new birds, the Army is upgrading and rebuilding much of its fleet. The Army will upgrade the "D" model of the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, a small scout helicopter, to an "F" model, for example. That means upgrades to the cockpit and sensors. The Army did not find a new fuselage good enough for military use, so it's fixing up the Kiowa's from tip to tail, cutting weight with new heaters, composite materials, and displays. Helicopter bidders, don't get glum. The Army is still considering "the development and acquisition of a new armed aerial scout." The Army budget also includes funds to buy six new CH-47 Chinooks, but rebuild 22 of them, which the services says will save $810 million. The Army also is rebuilding 42 AH-46 Apache's, and buying none.

5. ...but the Air Force is ready to buy new. The U.S. Air Force is resurrecting its effort to replace its 112 or so HH-60 Pave Hawk combat search and rescue choppers under the program name -- ready for it? -- Combat Rescue Helicopter (CRH). The service tried for nearly a decade to do this under the failed CSAR-X program, which was eventually canned after several rounds of competition that were mired in controversy and protests by losing bidders. In 2010, then Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said the service would simply buy new HH-60s to replace its old ones. However, the 2014 budget request asks for $395 million to restart the Air Force's research for "plans to acquire a long-term replacement CRH platform through a full and open competition." In theory, this means that Boeing could once again offer a version of its H-47 Chinook and AgustaWestland could once again offer a version of its EH-101. However, those companies, along with several others, have announced that they don't intend to play this time, leaving the field open to a Sikorsky-Lockheed Martin team to build brand new HH-60s.

5. You want long-range missiles? We got long-range missiles. The Pentagon's next generation of stealthy cruise missiles will begin production in FY14. Known as the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile -- Extended Range, or JASSM ER, the missile fits very nicely within the Pentagon's plans for fighting in the Pacific. It's a stealthy, long-range, GPS-guided cruise missile designed to fly through an enemy's radars after being launched from B-1 bombers or F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from as far away as 575 miles. Needless to say, this is pretty far beyond the range of an enemy's air defenses. Click here to read about how the Navy is trying to turn JASSM into an anti-ship missile. The JASSM program is getting a total of $297.6 million in procurement and research cash in the 2014 budget request.

6. Three words: Floating combat bases. Then there's the $524 million included for the construction of an Afloat Staging Base (AFSB) -- likely a cargo ship design converted to be a floating base for troops around the world. "The ship may feature a large flight deck, space for troops, fuel storage, equipment storage and repair spaces," reads the president's budget request. "The AFSB will operate globally in support of patrol craft, auxiliary boats, helicopters, and special operations forces by providing a base of operations for multiple missions including counter-piracy/smuggling, maritime security, mine clearing, humanitarian aid and disaster relief." Sound familiar? That's because last year the Navy famously converted an old amphibious assault ship, the USS Ponce, into one of these before rushing it to the Persian Gulf. That move prompted a media blitz claiming the U.S. was sending a floating commando base to the Persian Gulf. It's also worth noting that the Navy announced this week that it's equipping the Ponce with lasers -- yes, lasers -- designed to defend the ship against small drones and swarms of fast-moving boats that could carry, say, suicide bombers.

7. The cyber budget is now openly paying for cyber combat teams. While DOD is chopping many expenses, cyber is set to grow, listed as a "key initiative" in this year's budget overview. To give you some sense of just how much cyber has increased in importance over the last year, the DOD's 2013 budget overview mentions "cyber" 47 times while the 2014 overview mentions it 153 times. The FY-14 budget request seeks to grow DOD's cyber cash to $4.7 billion, up from $3.9 billion in FY13, for an increase of about 20 percent. This increase will partly go toward funding the Pentagon's plan to field dozens of cyber-combat teams that will, among other things, protect the country from devastating cyber attack. Thirteen of these planned teams have been called "defend the nation" teams, and they will be prepared to perform offensive operations aimed at deterring cyber attacks. Twenty-seven teams will support battlefield commanders around the globe by giving them cyber-attack capabilities. The rest of the teams will focus on defending DOD's networks from cyber attack. Click here to read what else this cash will go toward.

After a slight delay, the Pentagon has named Lt. Gen. Daniel B. Allyn to succeed Gen. David Rodriguez as commander of U.S. Army Forces Command (FORSCOM). 

Allyn has been commander of Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, and the XVIIIth Airborne Division for less than a year, since last June. FORSCOM, the Army’s largest command, is responsible for training and mobilizing soldiers worldwide and is also headquartered at Bragg. Allyn previously was a commander of Afghansitan’s Regional Command-East.

Rodriguez commanded FORSCOM just one year before getting the seemingly inevitable call up to the majors to become a U.S. combatant commander.  In October, President Obama tapped Rodriguez to lead one of the Pentagon’s most important rising units, Africa Command (AFRICOM). “General Rod” is one of the most well-known generals in the military for his long service as the second-ranking officer in command of the Afghanistan war, where he ran day-to-day operations.

He was senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates before being tapped as the top war deputy to Gen. Stanley McChrystal and then Gen. David Petraeus. The Pentagon rewarded his service with a fourth-star and the command stateside at Bragg, starting in September 2011.

Rodriguez relinquished command of FORSCOM on March 19 with no successor yet named. FORSCOM’s deputy commander, Lt. Gen. William B. Garrett III, has served as acting commander ever since.

Rodriguez took command of AFRICOM from retiring Gen. Carter Ham on April 5.

The Navy and Marine Corps don’t have to furlough civilians to balance their budgets, potentially putting the services at odds with the rest of the Pentagon.

For months, the Defense Department and the services have been in lockstep on how they each must use furloughs to help balance their shrinking budgets. Under the proposal first floated by then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, as many as 800,000 DOD civilians would be forced on unpaid leave between now and October, saving hundreds of millions of dollars. But now, the Navy is trying to find a solution to get to zero furlough days, as first reported in the Situation Report.

Unlike the Army and the Air Force, the Navy says it has other ways to cut the roughly $300 million in expenditures it would save by furloughing its 201,000 civilian workers. But this isn’t all budgetary altruism on the Navy’s part: officials believe the cost of forcing unpaid leave on civilian workers, many of whom perform shipyard maintenance and other critical jobs, would be far greater over the long term than the savings they’d realize by sending them home. The Navy, an official said, has a math problem it can’t ignore.

“The Navy is prepared to follow OSD policy, which currently calls for 14 days of furlough beginning [in June], however, the Navy is pursuing an option to realize the $300 million in savings in other areas because the long-term costs of furlough is far more than the savings they’d realize in the short-term.”

The Navy official said the “dialogue” between the services and OSD continues. “All involved are working toward a solution that makes the most sense both in terms of fiscal realities and the toll this takes on personnel.”

Still, the revelation puts the Navy at odds with the Pentagon’s head shed, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which believes all the services, regardless of the budgetary circumstances in which they find themselves, must all pull together. Even if the Navy and Marine Corps could absorb budget cuts without furloughing their civilians, the Pentagon wants to spread the pain equally.

“There remains a desire for consistency across the department,” a defense official told the E-Ring. “One department, one DOD family... There has to be fairness on this and on other categories of the budget,” the official said.

The Pentagon’s original plan was to furlough as many as 800,000 employees for as many as 22 days. It announced recently that it could cut that down to 14 days. But the defense official said the whole furlough initiative is being examined, and those 14 days could be reduced. Time is running out, however, since furloughs would begin in June and those affected must be notified weeks in advance.

“The furlough policy remains very much under review,” the official said.

The likely next NATO supreme allied commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, told Congress he saw “no military value” in creating a no-fly zone inside of Northern Syria.

That position puts him directly at odds with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who have pressed the president for a no-fly zone, and the three men argued about military options in Syria during a hearing Thursday.

One problem Breedlove outlined is that of the six Patriot missile batteries deployed in Turkey to defend the border, only two are American. The other four come from NATO and Turkey, so the United States would require at least Turkey’s consent to establish a no-fly zone that reached into northern Syria.

“We could do that,” he said, tepidly. “The fact of the matter of being able to project power into Syria is physically possible. There is both good and bad at creating this impression into Syria.” Patriots would have to be re-positioned to defend the no-fly zone extending into Syria, instead of their current role of protecting populations along the Turkish border.

“A safe zone could create opportunity to engage with the opposition, but creating a safe zone in Northern Syria would be much more than -- would have to be much more than Patriots,” Breedlove cautioned. “It would probably require fixed-wing air and other capabilities that we would have to bring to the problem.”

Those aircraft would have to destroy Syrian air defenses.

“And I know that CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command) has thought through those issues, and their recommendation at this point is they don't see a military value in that,” Breedlove claimed of his colleagues in Central Command.

But Levin and McCain quickly pushed back.

SEN. LEVIN: Excuse me. CENTCOM has said they don't see a military value in taking down air defenses out of Syria --

GEN. BREEDLOVE: No --

SEN. LEVIN: I'm sorry.

“I'm sorry, Senator. Let me -- let me say that a different way,” Breedlove replied. “What they have said is they don't believe that there are good military options or outcomes by creating a no-fly zone over --“

But Levin asked where CENTCOM made the assertion. Breedlove said he thought Gen. James Mattis, the former CENTCOM commander, had said it in SASC testimony shortly before he retired. But McCain quickly read Mattis’ exact quote.

“'The United States and our allies could identify and destroy quite a fair amount of Assad's operational aircraft on the ground using precision strike and standoff weaponry,'" McCain said, quoting Mattis. “General, so your statement is in direct contradiction to what General Mattis has said in testimony and has told me.”

GEN. BREEDLOVE: Senator, I sit corrected.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey has said repeatedly that he does not support getting militarily involved in Syria, including with a no-fly zone.