Escalation in Yemen; Trump seeks to gut climate-change regs; Russia making gun-launched swarmbots; SOCOM wants holograms for its HQ; and just a bit more….
Escalation in Yemen. Al-Qaeda killed nearly a dozen people in a suicide attack Monday in southern Yemen on Monday. Meanwhile, President Trump has stepped up the Pentagon’s “intelligence and logistical support for the militaries of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates” in their war against the Iranian-aligned Houthi militia in western Yemen, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The acceleration came at the request of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who earlier this month sent a memo to national security adviser H.R. McMaster saying “limited support” to the two countries’ militaries, “including a planned Emirati offensive to retake a key Red Sea port”—more on that below—would help counter a “common threat.” That’s from the Washington Post, which reported Sunday: “Approval of the request would mark a significant policy shift. U.S. military activity in Yemen until now has been confined mainly to counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda’s affiliate there, with limited indirect backing for gulf state efforts in a two-year-old war that has yielded significant civilian casualties. It would also be a clear signal of the administration’s intention to move more aggressively against Iran...The administration is in the midst of a larger review of overall Yemen policy that is not expected to be completed until next month.”
The substance of the change: “The enhanced assistance has included a larger U.S. role in operational planning, aircraft refueling, intelligence sharing and providing American drones for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” the Journal writes. “In coming weeks, the U.S.-U.A.E. partnership is likely to grow deeper as the U.S. pledges more support and as defense officials learn more about how to target militants with AQAP.”
About that Red Sea port assault plan: It’s a “a proposed UAE-led operation to push the Houthis from the port of Hodeida, through which humanitarian aid and rebel supplies pass,” the Post reported. “A similar Emirati proposal for help in attacking Hodeida was rejected late last year by the Obama administration, on the grounds that Emirati ships and warplanes, U.S. Special Operations forces and Yemeni government troops were unlikely to succeed in dislodging the entrenched, well-armed rebels and could worsen the humanitarian situation. The effort was seen as sure to escalate a war that the United States and the United Nations have been trying to stop.”
Adds Al-Arabiya, on that plan: “[S]ome UAE forces would land at the port while the United States assists with Special Forces, air and sea backup and surveillance. The biggest challenge will be to maintain the liberated lands from counter-attacks by the Houthis and their allies...The hope is that a counter-attack would prevent the militias from threatening navy and commercial ships on international waters in the Red Sea and from receiving weapons supplies from Iran or members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.”
But al-Arabiya says there’s another plan in the works, too, from CENTCOM’s Gen. Joseph Votel. But there’s little detail in the way of that one. Read on, here.
The view from Yemen: More than 100,000 Yemenis protested on Sunday in the capital of Sanaa, marking the second anniversary of the Saudi-led war, Reuters reported this weekend.
What have two years of war yielded? More than 4,700 civilians killed and another 8,000 wounded. Here’s the UN’s humanitarian snapshot of Yemen, which includes 10.8 million in “acute need.”
Who controls what in Yemen? Find that answer in a map from the European Council on Foreign Relations, here.
While we’re on Africa, AFRICOM chief, Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, wants more ISR and “his own Special Purpose Marine Air-Group Task Force (SPMAFT) like the SPMAFTF-Crisis Response that he shares with U.S. European Command. Elements of the MAGTF, located in southern Europe, conducted an embassy reinforcement and evacuation of U.S. personnel from civil war-crippled Southern Sudan, using the long reach of its MV-22 Ospreys and KC-130 aerial refuelers,” SeaPower reported Monday. More where that came from, here.
From Defense One
Russia Joins US in Race to Field Gun-Launched Swarmbots // Patrick Tucker: A pair of Russian programs hastens the day that drone swarms may meet each other over the battlefield.
The Marine Photo Scandal and the Cost of Indifference // Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Americans may finally be ready to confront the dehumanizing horrors facing women service members.
Get “Foreign Military Sales Under the Trump Administration,” a new ebook from Defense One. During the eight years of the Obama administration, the defense industry’s requests to export weapons were approved at a record clip. Now companies are waiting to see how Donald Trump will do business. Download the ebook, here.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. #OTD1854, Britain and France declared war on Russia in the Crimean War. Need our subscribe link? Find that here. Got a tip? Let us know by clicking this link to email us: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
President Trump set to gut climate-change efforts. WaPo: On Tuesday, Trump is expected to sign an order “instructing federal regulators to rewrite key rules curbing U.S. carbon emissions. The sweeping executive order also seeks to lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing and remove the requirement that federal officials consider the impact of climate change when making decisions.” Read on, here.
The world continues to warm, despite Trump’s denials, and U.S. national-security officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, continue to call climate change a threat. Here’s retired Brig. Gen. Gerald Galloway, a former dean at West Point and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, talking to NPR last week: “We see there are problems in the seas. The storms are more intense. We'll have more frequent storms — all of the sorts of things that make uncertainty reality on the battlefield.”
Related: multiple famines loom in Africa. “For the first time since anyone can remember, there is a very real possibility of four famines — in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen — breaking out at once, endangering more than 20 million lives,” writes the New York Times. “The famines are coming as a drought sweeps across Africa and several different wars seal off extremely needy areas. United Nations officials say they need a huge infusion of cash to respond. So far, they are not just millions of dollars short, but billions. At the same time, President Trump is urging Congress to cut foreign aid and assistance to the United Nations, which aid officials fear could multiply the deaths. The United States traditionally provides more disaster relief than anyone else.” Read on, here.
Civilian casualty investigations aren’t stopping the Iraqi security forces or their American advisers and air controllers as the Mosul offensive marches on, Reuters reports from Iraq.
“Iraqi forces fighting around the Old City tried to storm the al-Midan and Suq al Sha'areen districts, where Islamic State ran its religious police who carried out brutal punishments, such as crucifixion and public floggings, federal police commander Lt. Gen. Raed Shakir Jawdat told state al-Sabah newspaper. Helicopters were strafing Islamic State targets around Al Nuri mosque...Thousands of civilians are fleeing the fighting, shelling and air strikes, but as many as half a million people may be trapped inside the city.”
Worth noting: “Fleeing residents say they have been used as human shields by militants who shelter in their homes,” Reuters reported as ISIS clutches to whatever brutal means it can to survive its last days and weeks in Mosul.
About the U.S. military staying the course in Mosul: Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command (Centcom), “is not looking into changing the way we operate, other than to say our processes are good and we want to make sure we live by those processes,” CENTCOM spox Col. John Thomas told the Washington Post.
SecDef Mattis had a line to offer Monday on the CIVCAS reports, too: “We go out of our way to always do everything humanly possible to reduce the loss of life or injury among innocent people,” he said at the Pentagon. “The same cannot be said for our adversaries and that is up to you to sort out.” More from WaPo, here.
Inside Mosul: Coalition strikes hit 19 sniper positions in the city since March 1, we noticed while looking over airstrike releases since October 17, the start of the offensive. Sniper targeting occurred just 13 times in 134 days prior.
Trump effect? March has also now surpassed November as heaviest airstrikes per day with 6.4 (Nov. was 6.2). February is still tops at 6.5.
Food for thought: Here are five possibilities for the rise in CIVCAS allegations in Mosul, according to former Defense Department Special Counsel, Oona Hathaway: random bad luck; a change in context; there are now more U.S. troops on the ground; there’s been a policy shift; or a personnel change has played a role.
"At the moment, we don’t know which of these explanations is the right one—or if the right answer is some combination of the five,” Hathaway writes. “But it is important for the media, NGOs, and Congress to demand answers so that we can ensure that such horrific loss of innocent life does not become the new normal." Read on, here.
Beyond Mosul (just a few KMs to the southeast), to Badush, Iraq—where the ISF have taken weeks to secure the area, Reuters reports in what could be a prelude to what comes after the fall of Mosul, which is to say lots of rigged-to-blow houses and cars the group left behind all around Mosul.
ICYMI: SOCOM wants holograms for its nearly $6 million 3,500-square-foot wargame center at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, Tampa Bay Times’ Howard Altman reported. “SOCom is reaching out to the private industry to help update the center with the latest technology. In a request last month, the command said it's looking for a projector system with 3-D and other advanced technologies and the ability to display 4,000-plus quality images on a 32-by-20-foot screen...The command will hold an industry day at the Wargame Center on April 20.” More here.
Happening today: Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is scheduled to speak publicly this evening for the first time since leaving the Pentagon. He’ll focus on “the need to continue to build relationships between technologists and policy makers to help our nation seize opportunities for the future and meet challenges not just in national security but all areas of public policy,” The D Brief has learned.
That gets under way at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics (IOP) Forum. Catch the livestream at 5:30 p.m. EDT, here.
The U.K., France and the U.S. will boost their sub and carrier cooperation, the U.S. Naval Institute News reported Monday. “While the details included in the one-page public agreement are thin, the bulk of the effort will be put toward developing a coordinated strategic picture, aircraft carrier cooperation and anti-submarine warfare operations...Additionally, the U.K. and France have agreed to cooperate in carrier operations until the first of two Royal Navy carriers enter the U.K. fleet. The first, Queen Elizabeth (R08) is set to commission later this year, and the Prince of Wales (R09) carrier is set to join the fleet in 2019.” A few more details, here.
China will reportedly build a drone factory in Saudi Arabia, The South China Morning Post reported this weekend. The deal concerns “China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), which makes China’s CH-4 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), a model with similar capabilities to the American Air Force’s MQ-1 Predator.” Read on, here—or check the original story from IHS, here.
Lastly today: “Gummy bears = 400 new US jobs,” says the EU’s Ambassador to the U.S., David O'Sullivan. He was responding to news that German candy-maker HARIBO will open its first American factory in Wisconsin. Our guess is you’d be hard-pressed to find an American soldier who has deployed overseas without eating at least one Haribo gummy bear. One of your D Brief-ers stocked up at Rammstein before heading back to the ‘Stan in 2010—only after learning gummy bears really shouldn’t be shipped by mail to desert war zones like Kandahar. (Your gummy bears become one big gummy ball.)