Pow-wow in the Gulf; B-52s head back to war; China’s Xi dons a uniform; More Russian subs go to sea; and a bit more.
Obama’s meeting with the Gulf Cooperation Council kicked off this morning in Riyadh, with three sessions on the agenda: “One is aimed at fostering regional stability and another at counterterrorism efforts including efforts to defeat al-Qaida and Islamic State militants,” the Associated Press reports. “A third session will focus on Iran, which Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states see as a destabilizing rival in the region.”
In attendance: Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and CIA Director John Brennan.
But hold your horses: “White House officials said there would be no major announcements coming out of the summit meeting,” The New York Times adds, “although they hinted that the leaders were expected to commit to new cooperation on counterterrorism activities, to bolstering the region’s ballistic missile defense system, and to American help to combat cyberthreats.”
On Wednesday, Obama met with Saudi King Salman and “Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the powerful crown prince of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates,” AP writes. “U.S. military aircraft are based in the Emirates, the second largest Arab economy after Saudi Arabia, and its Jebel Ali port in Dubai frequently hosts visiting Navy warships.”
France’s Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian shared his cautiously optimistic take on developments in the counter-ISIS fight in a chat with French radio this morning. Find his (quite brief) comments, here.
Reason for pessimism: “Russia has been moving artillery units to areas of northern Syria where government forces have massed, raising U.S. concern the two allies may be preparing for a return to full-scale fighting as the current cease-fire falters,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
First indications: “About two weeks ago, U.S. intelligence agencies began to detect the redeployment of artillery units to areas near the northern city of Aleppo, the opposition stronghold, and inside Latakia province, near where government forces have been gathering, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The Russian artillery movements have increased in recent days, raising U.S. alarm about Moscow’s intentions.”
And the possible targets: “U.S. intelligence agencies have indications that some of the newly-redeployed artillery pieces have been used in recent days in support of government forces, particularly in clashes with the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.” Read the rest, here.
Syria’s foreign minister is pissed that people keep arming rebels with gear—like these newly-circulating images of FN-6 MANPADS in rebel hands. Meanwhile, Assad’s troops steal medical supplies from UN aid packages intended for besieged citizens.
Another war, another B-52 strike: BUFFs dropped their first bombs on ISIS on Monday just south of Mosul. The aircraft, “flying out of the al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, replace B-1 Lancer bombers [which departed for maintenance] in the Air Force inventory for precision-guided bomb attacks against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and for close-air support missions for local forces.” More here.
Beijing’s defense ministry “appears to confirm” a ballistic missile test over the South China Sea, AP reports this morning. The Washington Free Beacon called the missile, a road-mobile DF-41 (aka CSS-X-20), China’s “newest and longest-range” ICBM. “A three-sentence statement posted on the ministry's website posed the question of whether China had fired an ICBM in the area of the South China Sea,” writes AP. “In its response, the ministry said China maintains that ‘technological research experiments conducted according to plan within China’s boundaries are normal and are not aimed at any specific nations or targets.’ Media reports about the location of the test were ‘purely speculation,’ it said.”
For a scare-your-pants-off take on the launch, The Diplomat has you covered.
China’s Xi Jinping put on a military uniform while announcing moves to consolidate his control of the military with his new title of “commander in chief of its Joint Operations Command Center,” AP reports.
Little is known about this new JOCC, which is “reportedly located underground in the western outskirts of Beijing,” but it was Xi’s uniform that appeared to have been the main message in the announcement.
“The combat uniform is not only to show he is in charge of the military, but also shows that China is ready for a fight amid a tense external situation. It is a bit like telling China’s opponents that he is ready for a combat,” said Ni Lexiong, a military affairs expert at Shanghai's University of Political Science and Law. More here.
From Defense One
Announcing the first-ever Defense One Tech Summit, on June 10. Join Defense Secretary Ash Carter and some of the brightest minds in military and consumer technology to discuss the future of innovation and national security at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Reserve your early seat, here.
America can’t do much about ISIS, write The Atlantic’s Stephen Biddle and Jacob Shapiro. That leaves patience, containment, and humanitarian aid as the least-bad policies while waiting for this awful war to play itself out. Read their reasoning, here.
This week’s summit is Obama’s last chance to change the Saudi Arabia playbook. The U.S. can’t be the sole guardian of the Gulf forever, says the Atlantic Council’s Bilal Y. Saab. It’s time to bring in some more friends. Read his proposal, here.
It’s time to disrupt ISIS’ online campaign in Africa. As Internet access expands in Africa, so does the Islamic State's network-facilitated extremism. The Council on Foreign Relations’ David Fidler says this has gotten short shrift in Western planning. Read, here.
Welcome to the Thursday edition of The D Brief, by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1898, President William McKinley ordered a naval blockade of Cuba, launching the Spanish-American War. Shoot your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
From Scandinavia to Scotland, the Med to the North Atlantic—Russian attack submarines are prowling the coastlines in greater numbers than at any point in two decades, NYTs reports this morning. The trend accelerated over the past 12 or so months, and “analysts say that tempo has not changed since then.”
So why sound the alarm bells now? “[W]hatever the threat, the Pentagon is also using the stepped-up Russian patrols as another argument for bigger budgets for submarines and anti-submarine warfare,” the Times writes as committees across Capitol Hill hammer out their mark-ups for this year’s defense authorization bill.
More on that angle: “American naval officials say that in the short term, the growing number of Russian submarines, with their ability to shadow Western vessels and European coastlines, will require more ships, planes and subs to monitor them. In the long term, the Defense Department has proposed $8.1 billion over the next five years for ‘undersea capabilities,’ including nine new Virginia-class attack submarines that can carry up to 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles, more than triple the capacity now.”
Let’s count some ships: “To be sure, there is hardly parity between the Russian and American submarine fleets,” the Times writes. “Russia has about 45 attack submarines — about two dozen are nuclear-powered and 20 are diesel — which are designed to sink other submarines or ships, collect intelligence and conduct patrols. But Western naval analysts say that only about half of those are able to deploy at any given time.”
By contrast: “The United States has 53 attack submarines, all nuclear-powered, as well as four other nuclear-powered submarines that carry cruise missiles and Special Operations forces. At any given time, roughly a third of America’s attack submarines are at sea, either on patrols or training, with the others undergoing maintenance.”
In Putin’s eyes: submarines are “the crown jewels for naval combat power,” said Magnus Nordenman, director of the Atlantic Council’s trans-Atlantic security initiative in Washington. “The U.S. and NATO haven’t focused on anti-submarine operations lately, and they’ve let that skill deteriorate.” Read the rest, here.
And in case you missed it: Here’s Nordenman, writing in Defense One in early March, about Russia’s rising submarine challenge around the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland and U.K.) Gap—the line that Soviet naval forces had to cross in order to reach the Atlantic and stop U.S. forces heading across the sea to reinforce America’s European allies.
Over the past year, more U.S. drones than jets carried out airstrikes in Afghanistan for the first time in the country’s 15 years of fighting, Reuters reported Wednesday. “[S]trikes by unmanned aircraft accounted for 56 percent of weapons deployed by the Air Force in Afghanistan in 2015, up dramatically from 5 percent in 2011. In 2015, drones released around 530 bombs and missiles in Afghanistan, half the number in 2014 when weapons dropped by unmanned aircraft peaked. The 2015 total is, however, almost double the number of bombs and missiles released by drones at the height of the ‘surge’, when the NATO mission expanded to well over 100,000 troops after 2009, mainly Americans.”
Lots of bad guys out there: “The demand is insatiable,” said Lt. Col. Michael Navicky, commander of the Air Force's 62nd Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, speaking from his base in Kandahar.
Up north in the capital, it’s worth asking after this week’s deadly bombing that killed more than 60 and wounded another 300: Just how good is Kabul security? The answer: Pretty eff-ing bad, Afghan news agency Tolo reports after traveling 7 kilometers through Kabul in the same model truck that detonated on Tuesday. The truck was never searched as it passed through five checkpoints. That, here.
Bring Back Our Girls (when it’s safe to do so). The Chibok girls of Nigeria—clusters of which have been located through drone footage and local intel—have not been abandoned, the U.S. says. But they also, of course, have not been recovered “because of fears that any ensuing battle with Boko Haram fighters would put the captives at risk, or incite retaliation against hostages still being held in other areas,” the NYTs reports.
And speaking of children, see Syria through the eyes of four little ones from Aleppo in this documentary that aired on PBS’ Frontline Wednesday evening. It comes from the same producer who brought us “Children of Aleppo” and the upcoming “Watani - My Homeland.”
And don’t miss this new five-part series from the BBC on the near-impossibility of dissent in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria.
“The 173rd Airborne Brigade forgot how to Airborne” is how the Facebook page U.S. Army WTF Moments describes this video of three Humvees gracefully air-dropping from C-130s, and then, to the audible glee of awestruck soldiers, cratering into the hard ground of the U.S. Army’s Joint Multinational Readiness Center at Hohenfels, Germany. Watch it, via Foxtrot Alpha, here.