The D-briefing: Replicator departs; Xi’s journey through Europe; US freezes GPS bombs for Israel; Space Force pushback; And a little more.

US officials announce first purchases for Replicator, the Pentagon’s ambitious drone acquisition program. These include “non-propeller surface vehicles (USV), non-propeller aerial systems (UAS) and counter-propeller aerial systems (c-UAS) of various sizes and payloads from various traditional and non-traditional suppliers,” said Deputy Minister of Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said in a statement Monday.

There are more details in these latest developments, but many of those “remain classified,” especially those “in the maritime domain and some in the counter-UAS portfolio,” Hicks said.

Background: The Pentagon plans to spend about half a billion dollars on Replicator this fiscal year. including about $300 million authorized in this year’s Defense Appropriations Act, and the remainder from “existing authorities and Defense-wide sources,” Hicks said. The Defense Department has requested about $500 million more in its 2025 budget proposal. Defense One‘s Bradley Peniston and Sam Skove report.

Also new: Replicator will “speed up” handling of the Switchblade-600 loitering munitions Defense officials said this on Monday. That weapon – which is believed to have been used in Syria, Somalia and Iraq in addition to Ukraine – allows its operator to take out armored vehicles more than 40 kilometers away.

Update: The Dutch say they will send F-16 jets to Ukraine sometime this fall, Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said this on Monday during a trip to Lithuania. That’s just a few weeks behind the Danes, who have promised to send some F-16s to Ukraine by the end of the summer. Belgium also wants to supply Ukraine with some F-16s before the end of the summer.

By the way, Ukraine’s first fully trained F-16 pilots are expected to begin graduating this month. as Defense One‘, Audrey Decker reported in February.

The US will train twelve Ukrainian pilots in fiscal year 2024. and they will all graduate between May and August. But what the pilots do next depends on the broader Ukrainian F-16 effort and when the jets will actually arrive in Ukraine, U.S. officials said. And that partly helps explain some of the latest details shared by Ollongren from the Netherlands.

New: Ukrainian intelligence officials participation they foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and its top intelligence chief, Kyryll Budanov. The plan was reportedly based on two Ukrainian colonels who have since been arrested on suspicion of treason; they worked in an organization that resembled the US Secret Service: the State Security Administration, which provides protection to top officials.

“The enemy’s plan was as follows,” Officials stated this on Tuesday. “First, the recruited agent had to observe the movement of the person under surveillance and relay information to the enemy. According to the coordinates of the house where the official was said to be, a rocket attack was planned. They then started attacking the people who remained in the affected area with a drone. Afterwards, the Russians planned to target another missile, including to destroy traces of the use of the drone.”

Three Russian spies are said to have been in charge of the operation: Maxim Mishustin, Dmytro Perlin and Oleksiy Kornev, with Perlin acting as “curator” of the group, Ukrainian officials said. The Associated Press has more.

Development: Polish officials participation they found listening devices in a room that government officials were due to use on Tuesday in Katowice, southwest of Warsaw. Reuters has a little bit more.

Related reading: “Ukrainian artillery pinned down by Russian drones,” Reuters reported separately on Tuesday from the Ukrainian frontlines.

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson featuring Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations or feedback for the coming year here. And if you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do so here. In on this day 2000, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as President of Russia.

China’s Xi Jinping wraps up a two-day trip to Europe on Tuesday, where he has been pressured to criticize Beijing’s support for Moscow since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

‘Without security for Ukraine there can be no security for Europe’ French President Emmanuel Macron said this to Xi. European Union leader Ursula von der Leyen expressed similar sentiments when she called on China to “use all its influence over Russia to end its war of aggression against Ukraine.” She also mentioned China’s “supply of dual-use goods to Russia that find their way onto the battlefield.”

“Given the existential nature of the threats posed by this war to both Ukraine and Europe, this does affect relations between the EU and China,” Von der Leyen told the Chinese leader.

But Xi tried to reject negative associations with Russia, by saying, for example: “we are against the use of the crisis to shift responsibility to a third country, tarnish its image and fuel a new cold war,” said the New York Times. China, he said, was “not at the origin of this crisis, nor a party to it, nor a participant.”

Related Reading: America’s China Strategy Has a Credibility Problem, argues Emily Kilcrease of the Center for a New American Security Foreign AffairsIt rests on the threat of economic sanctions, which “Beijing currently has good reason to doubt… because the United States response has been muted in light of recent Chinese provocations, including Beijing’s attempts to stamp out democracy in Hong Kong of a spy balloon over the United States, and Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.” Read here.

Also: Russia and China win the propaganda war, writes Anne Applebaum The Atlantic Ocean– and join the MAGA Republicans in making common cause to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. Read that here.

and “Let’s all take a deep breath about China,” suggests Rory Truex, a Princeton professor whose research focuses on Chinese authoritarianism. “Almost everything the word ‘Chinese’ stands for now triggers a fear response in our political system,” she writes, which “has led the U.S. government and U.S. politicians to pursue policies based on repression and exclusion, reflecting of the authoritarian system. that they are trying to combat.” More here.

Today’s Exhibition A: “A new law in Florida bans many Chinese citizens from purchasing homes due to national security concerns. Critics say this has fueled discrimination and cooled the local real estate market,” the newspaper reports New York Times.

Additional information: “Xi Jinping: China will ‘never forget’ NATO bombing of its embassy in Serbia” Politics reported Tuesday.

Update: The US has frozen the transfer of more than 6,000 GPS-guided bomb packages to Israel worth $260 million. the Wall Street Journal reported Monday after Axios broke the development over the weekend.

There are also reportedly $1 billion in other arms sales to Israel that have been suspended since March. including “tank ammunition, military vehicles and mortar shells,” according to the logwhich noted, “It would take months or years for the sale to materialize.”

From the region: After months of shooting down Houthi naval drones off the coast of Yemen, Reuters reported on Monday that “drone warfare at sea has arrived” and that “the US is floundering.”

Air rangers and governors are piling on criticism of the plan to move guard units to Space Force. In the latest backlash against the Pentagon’s proposal to bypass governors and move space-focused units from the Air National Guard to the Space Force, guards are speaking out — saying they don’t want to join the fledgling service. D1’s Audrey Decker has more here.

Maritime logistics battalions will receive drones by 2028. Each unit will receive three to six small cargo drones, part of the Corps’ efforts to become lighter and more maneuverable. D1’s Sam Skove reports here.

The Navy involves information warfare chiefs in commando recruitment as part of an effort to recover from low numbers of sailors in crucial specialties. The service is also reworking training and guidance in the ratings and is already seeing better results, Admiral Kelly Aeschbach of the Naval Information Forces told D1’s Lauren C. Williams. Read here.

A militarized immigrant roundup won’t work as Trump says. The Republican Party leader has vowed to use the National Guard to forcibly deport undocumented workers. A Tufts University historian looks at how the Eisenhower administration did it, and what’s different now. Read that here.

And lastly, we’re less than a week away NATO Youth Summit, taking place on Monday, May 13 in both Miami, Florida and Stockholm, Sweden. Alliance leaders, military officials, diplomats, academics and more will speak at the event, which is aimed at “the next generation of NATO leaders,” according to top planners.

The Miami portion will be held at the Superblue art gallery in the city’s Allapattah district. The events in both cities will be streamed live. If you would like to attend in person, you can register until Wednesday, May 8, while online registration is possible up to and during the activities. Details, here.

Remember: NATO just turned 75 years old, and its celebratory summit will take place this year in Washington, DC. from Tuesday July 9 to Thursday July 11. Read more here.