Marines’ tragedy in Nepal; China selling drones to Jordan?; Rapid response force for the Gulf?; Gitmo in limbo; And a bit more.

There were no survivors from the helicopter with six Marines and two Nepalese soldiers on board that had gone missing in the mountains of Nepal while on recovery operations Tuesday, U.S. military officials said this morning. The helicopter was found on a steep mountain slope at an altitude of more than 11,000 feet, Reuters reports. The joint task force “currently has a team of four pararescuemen and one combat rescue officer on the ground,” a defense official said Friday.

Not officially a defense treaty, but definitely a green light for Obama’s negotiations with Iran. President Barack Obama’s meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council officials at Camp David, Md., yesterday yielded two substantive breakthroughs in U.S.-Arab relations: GCC officials got their wish of Washington’s “unequivocal” promise to confront any future Iranian aggression, and Obama earned the approval of the six-nation council to negotiate a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program, as The Washington Post’s David Ignatius writes in summary.
And on Syria’s future: “A joint statement issued by the group took an anti-Assad line, but without the emphatic ‘Assad must go’ tone used by Obama three years ago. This time, the communique ‘reaffirmed that Assad has no legitimacy and has no role in Syria’s future.’ How this change will be accomplished wasn’t explained, and probably hasn’t yet been agreed.”
On U.S. arms to the Middle East: “[T]he leaders said they would commit to develop region-wide ballistic missile defense capability, military exercises and training, arms transfer and maritime security measures,” McClatchy’s Anita Kumar writes.
And one potentially very key, if somewhat buried takeaway (via the White House’s annex to the groups’ joint statement): “The United States and GCC member states also decided to set up a senior working group to pursue the development of rapid response capabilities, taking into account the Arab League’s concept of a ‘unified Arab force,’ to mount or contribute in a coordinated way to counter-terrorism, peacekeeping and stabilization operations in the region.”

Is China selling armed drones to Jordan? Chinese officials are in Jordan now discussing operations, logistics and maintenance of these unmanned aircraft, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., charges in a letter sent to President Obama yesterday, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker and Marcus Weisgerber report. The congressman urges the president to give “serious consideration to allowing Jordan to immediately utilize existing MQ-1 [Predator UAV] or alternate assets as their requests for specific military assistance are further weighed. I am confident that we can curtail Jordan’s interest in Chinese assets by taking immediate action.”
A congressional staffer familiar with the matter said Hunter learned about the Chinese visit from “very high placed” sources in Jordan. Hunter has previously urged the Obama administration to sell Predator drones, which are made by General Atomics, to Jordan. It’s worth noting that General Atomics happens to be Hunter’s largest overall campaign contributor.

Obama’s drive to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay gains momentum; though it remains anything but a done deal, Defense One’s Molly O’Toole reports. The Senate Armed Services Committee passed their draft defense authorization bill on Thursday with a 22-to-4 vote that included a surprise amendment from Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., that finally opens a path for the president to close Gitmo, provided Congress agrees to his “comprehensive plans.” The draft bill from the House includes no such language on the detention facility, and the measure may not even survive the full Senate’s vote.

From Defense One

The U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State group is finding fewer large targets available as it adapts to a dissolving insurgency. Kedar Pavgi illustrates the changing trends in these three data-packed charts.

Will the U.S. name a hostage czar? After last year’s high-profile beheadings of Americans by ISIS, and complaints from families feeling their own hands were tied by U.S. policy and interagency secrecy, the House appears likely to pass an amendment to the defense authorization bill requiring the president to appoint a federal “Interagency Hostage Recovery Coordinator.” The individual would direct efforts to release U.S. citizens “who are hostages of hostile groups or state sponsors of terrorism,” according to the language from Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., the Iraq War veteran pushing for hostage policy reforms. Politics Reporter Molly O’Toole explains.

How did one woman earn the right to work alongside U.S. Special Operations troops in Afghanistan? Defense One contributor Gayle Tzemach Lemmon tells the story of “Amber” in this exclusive excerpt from her book, “Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs can’t fire its bad employees fast enough. In fact, it can hardly fire any of them at all thanks to a robust appeals system, as Government Executive’s Eric Katz writes after a House hearing on Wednesday.

Pakistan’s aggressive war on terror is forcing militants to shift their efforts to targeting the country’s most vulnerable and defenseless—ordinary civilians simply going to work. Pakistan-based journalist Saim Saeed has more.

The NSA’s bulk metadata collection program is headed for a tense showdown in the Senate next week as Kentucky Republican and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing to renew the program despite the House’s overwhelming vote this week against such a renewal. National Journal’s Kaveh Waddell and Brendan Sasso explain.

The Defense Department held a science fair yesterday featuring solar-powered drones, microchips that could make radar more powerful and even pizza meals ready to eat, or MREs. Frank Kendall, the Defense Department’s top weapons buyer, was on hand hoping the top brass catch a glimpse of what's possible in future weapons systems. We'll have more on the scene and the tech on display later today right here.

Welcome to Friday's edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Defense One. If you'd like to subscribe to The D Brief, click here or drop us a line at the-d-brief@defenseone.com. If you want to view it in your browser, you can do that, here.

The GOP-controlled Congress isn’t impressed with Obama’s “no show” meeting with Arab officials, so the House—with a whopping 400 to 25 vote—passed legislation that allows them to review any deal the White House reaches with Tehran over their nuclear program. More from AFP here.
And Iran’s navy for the second time in two weeks fired on a cargo vessel moving through international waters. This time it was a Singaporean freighter and the reason Tehran gave was similar as before: collecting on an alleged debt, as The Wall Street Journal’s Dion Nissenbaum and Asa Fitch report.

Meanwhile in Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition warned Houthis the fragile ceasefire is about to officially end early if rebels do not stop shelling Saudi troops and civilian homes on the border, AFP reports from Sana’a.

ISIS released an audio message yesterday allegedly featuring leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s voice telling followers to either join his group in Iraq and Syria or launch attacks in their home countries, The New York Times’ reported. Presumably the message—a rambling 34 minutes long—was intended to dash any hopes the leader isn’t completely incapacitated from a coalition airstrike in Iraq.

And after recent additional allegations of chemical weapons use emerged from Syria, Obama said yesterday that if confirmed, the U.S. would work with the international community to put a stop to their further use. The development could change how U.S.-trained rebels fight in Syria, which Pentagon officials had said would focus on ISIS, rather than Assad. More from Reuters.
Sidenote: Pursuing Syria for war crimes is not likely since “the International Criminal Court, which judges the world's most serious crimes, has no jurisdiction in Syria as it is not a member and ally Russia is expected to block the UN Security Council from authorising an ICC investigation,” AFP reports from The Hague.

In Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, security forces are in the middle of a “massive military action against the Taliban militants and their allies in the Shawal mountains,” a government official told Reuters this morning.

In the central African nation of Burundi, three generals who allegedly led an attempted coup on the president have been arrested and will face a military trial, the president’s spokesman said this morning. More from WSJ’s Heidi Vogt.

For your ears only. Christian Science Monitor’s “Passcode” team of Sara Sorcher and New America’s Peter Singer talk Stuxnet and the immense difficulties attributing cyber attacks over here on SoundCloud.

Two weekend kickers for you to end our Friday D Brief: A nudist colony just south of Topeka, Kan., is waiving its admission fees for anyone who shows a valid military identification or proof of military service. Military Times’ Chuck Vinch can fill you in on the sexy (if more likely very disgusting) details.
And NATO’s foreign ministers and European officials wrapped a meeting in Antalya, Turkey, yesterday with a partial chorus rendition of the schmaltzy 1985 charity song “We Are the World.” Former White House National Security Spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden offered possibly the best review of the performance right here.