Iran warships turn back from Yemen; Russia hacked Pentagon network; Drone debate heats up; And a bit more.
The drone debate returned in a big way after President Barack Obama’s announcement from the White House yesterday that two hostages, one American and one Italian, were mistakenly killed during U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan back in January. The declaration revives the debate over the accuracy of the intelligence feeding “signature strikes,” or the U.S. targeted killing program. After nearly three months of intelligence officials piecing together what happened, Obama took full responsibility and promised a review of drone strike rules.
That review could finally accelerate Obama’s intent to shift the program from the CIA to Pentagon control, not that the mechanism for intelligence gathering would be significantly different, as the Wall Street Journal’s Carol Lee and Dion Nissenbaum report.
California Republican and Iraq war veteran Rep. Duncan Hunter came out swinging at the Obama administration for its failure to recover the American al-Qaeda hostage Warren Weinstein, held since 2011. Hunter also dropped the name of the “only government organization seriously developing options to recover Weinstein and others in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region,” Jason Amerine inside the Pentagon. That here and here.
Who were the other two Americans killed in the strike that were working for al-Qaeda? The Washington Post, here.
And what does every known U.S. drone strike since 2004 look like? AFP has an in-depth graphic for that, here.
Iranian warships believed to have been escorting arms shipments for Houthi rebels in Yemen turned back yesterday in a significant de-escalation of U.S. and Iran naval forces in the Gulf of Aden. The U.S. sent the USS Theodore Roosevelt to the Gulf, joining a deterrence package of some dozen U.S. vessels, on Tuesday—though officials said it’s too soon to tell if a broader crisis has been averted. More from the WSJ here.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter confirmed yesterday Russian hackers accessed one of the Pentagon’s unclassified networks earlier this year (CNN), and the venue for this revelation—Silicon Valley—was hardly a coincidence (Vice News). Carter is trying to shore up trust and broaden the Pentagon’s foothold in the tech sector. More on Carter and the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy below.
From Defense One
Serious questions about due process in the targeted killing of U.S. citizens abroad are suddenly more prescient than ever on the heels of yesterday’s announcement from the White House, and David Medine and Eliza Sweren-Becker of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board offer up this new model for oversight and transparency.
The Senate confirmed Loretta Lynch as the new attorney general just hours after the president announced he ordered a full review of the U.S. drone program, and politics editor Molly O’Toole digs into the implications of Lynch’s delayed confirmation for America’s growing list of national security concerns here.
State Department’s Brett McGuirk, the civilian counterpart to retired Gen. John Allen’s mission to save Iraq, sat down with National Journal’s James Kitfield to discuss Iran in Iraq, the contested city of Ramadi and Baghdad’s effort to salvage hope for national unity. Catch up all that here.
The House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee approved a reform package yesterday to automatically enroll troops in thrift savings plans, and GovExec’s Eric Katz breaks down exactly how the measure would work.
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How’s this for timely: Today the Stimson Center talks international standards and norms guiding drone warfare at 10 a.m. Panelists include legal experts Rosa Brooks of New America, Stephen Vladeck and Elke Schwarz. RSVP for that here.
The U.S. is considering training Iraqi troops to call in airstrikes for coalition warplanes in a decision that further keeps American troops away from the more dangerous areas on the battlefield. The idea, which is still just an idea at this point, follows Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s complaints in Washington last week that the U.S. reduce the lag time in requests for air support assisting Iraqi ground troops routing ISIS from key cities like Ramadi and Mosul. More from Los Angeles Times’ Paul Richter.
An A-10 “Warthog” suffered a catastrophic, “non-combat” engine failure over the skies of Iraq, The Hill’s Kristina Wong reported yesterday. Earlier yesterday, Wong also wrote about the deployment of an additional dozen A-10s for the ISIS fight in Iraq and Syria. Read more here and here, respectively.
The Pentagon rolled out its new cyber strategy yesterday as SecDef Carter took the podium to address students at California’s Stanford University. The updated approach calls for a Pentagon-led national response (leveraging U.S. Cyber Command) to only about 2 percent of attacks on U.S. networks, and leaves open the door for pre-emptive attacks on Washington’s military adversaries, NYT’s David Sanger writes.
Carter also revealed some details on the Pentagon’s new Silicon Valley outpost, “Defense Innovation Unit X,” led by a civilian with a military deputy over an advanced team of troops and civilians. More on that from Military Times’ Andrew Tilghman.
Eight female soldiers just completed what’s often seen as the largest hurdle to finishing Fort Benning’s Army Ranger school. “Army officials said 381 men and 19 women started on Day 1, meaning 48.3 percent of men and 42.1 percent of women made it through RAP Week. Both are within historic norms for Ranger School,” WaPo’s Dan Lamothe reports.
And coming up Monday, the Truman Project and the Center for National Policy will discuss the role of women in combat with a stacked panel of guests—including Defense One’s Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and Reps. Loretta Sanchez and Martha McSally —from noon to 5 p.m. More on that here, or RSVP right here.
Monday evening, Defense One Live hosts an intimate author’s conversation with Gayle and Executive Editor Kevin Baron about women in combat and her new book, Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield. To register, email the-d-brief@defenseone.com and we’ll get you squared you away.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus was handed a $100,000 fine and two years probation for leaking classified information in a “black book” to his biographer, a federal court in Charlotte determined yesterday. The fine is $60,000 more than prosecutors were expecting. More from Charlotte’s WCNC-TV, via Military Times.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon rebutted Russian comments Thursday from Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov who said U.S. troops were not only in eastern Ukraine, but also in the strategic port city of Mariupol. “This is a ridiculous attempt to shift the focus away from what is actually happening in eastern Ukraine,” the Pentagon’s Eileen Lainez told The D Brief. “We have been transparent about our soldiers—they are in Yavoriv, far from the east (close to the Polish border)... [while] Russia continues to supply lethal weapons, training and command and control support for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, in blatant violation of Moscow's Minsk commitments and Ukraine's sovereignty.”
Your Friday #LongRead: Buzzfeed’s Gregory Johnsen files this whopper of a profile (clocking in at more than 8,000 words) on current CIA Director John Brennan.