Iraqi troops mount ‘surprisingly good’ attack; White House details its war-powers theory; Defining ‘readiness’ in the era of hybrid war; F-35 spices up a slow day at Farnborough; and a bit more.
Separate drives by Iraqi troops converged Tuesday along the Tigris river near the Qayara airfield seized over the weekend, marking a significant merger of Baghdad’s forces for Mosul shaping operations, Reuters reports. “Forces from the 9th Armoured Division and the counter-terrorism service liberated Ajhala village north of Qayara base,” Defence Minister Khalid al-Obeidi announced on Twitter on Tuesday. “Our heroes arrived at the riverbank and made contact with Nineveh Liberation Operation units,” he added, referring to troops who had set out from Makhmour, 25 km east of the Tigris, in March.
“Surprisingly—and I say surprisingly because they are not the best fighters—the Iraqi Security Forces did a pretty good job of taking [western Qayara] and are doing a great job of taking Qayara as they link up with their home-boys from across the east side of the river,” one U.S. official in Irbil tells The D Brief this morning. “I am not impressed, but I am at least a little surprised. The Peshmerga are doing great, continuing their training and holding the front lines, keeping pressure on ISIS from the north, the east and the west. They are the horse that we have to pull back on the reins.”
Meanwhile, ISIS is still getting its blows in where it can north of Baghdad, killing seven and wounding 11 others. Wednesday’s attack follows another one on Tuesday that killed nine. U.S. officials said these attacks showed that ISIS continues to take it on the chin in Iraq, where the loss of Tikrit, Ramadi and Fallujah have drastically weakened its position.
“Even as it launches waves of terrorist attacks around the globe, the Islamic State is quietly preparing its followers for the eventual collapse of the caliphate,” the Washington Post reports. “A remarkable editorial last month in al-Naba, the Islamic State’s weekly Arabic newsletter, offered a gloomy assessment of the caliphate’s prospects, acknowledging the possibility that all its territorial holdings could ultimately be lost...The editorial, titled, ‘The Crusaders’ Illusions in the Age of the Caliphate,’ sought to rally the group’s followers by insisting that the Islamic State would continue to survive, even if all its cities fell to the advancing ‘crusaders’ — the separate Western- and Russian-backed forces arrayed against them.”
Perhaps the most telling evidence can be seen “in an otherwise upbeat sermon by the Islamic State’s official spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, marking the start of Ramadan observances,” the Post reports. “Adnani’s missive attracted international attention because of its call for a global terrorism campaign during the Muslim holy month. But Adnani also appeared to be preparing his followers for heavy losses. At one point he evoked one of the darkest chapters in the Islamic State’s history, when the group — then known as the Islamic State of Iraq — was all but destroyed in 2008 by a combination of forces, including the U.S. troop surge and the ‘Anbar Awakening,’ a revolt against the Islamists by Sunni Arab tribes.” Much more to dig into, here.
Former British journalist and long-time ISIS hostage John Cantlie just appeared in a new ISIS video filmed in Mosul. And Cantlie looks markedly worse — thinner and with much longer hair — than in previous releases: “In the three-minute video, Cantlie stands in front of the near-pulverized remains of Mosul University, which the U.S. military bombed in March on intelligence that it was being used as headquarters by the Islamic State...In the last of the three scenes in the video, all of which were shot recently in Mosul, Cantlie stands in a central business district while people go about shopping for Eid al-Fitr, the festival at the end of the holy month of Ramadan. If that timing is to be believed, then the video would have been shot in the past week.” More here.
How is ISIS trying to recoup its losses in the recruiting realm? By pleading to mopey millennials, Vocativ reports in this look at their “first attempt at scripted drama.”
Remember that ISIS war powers lawsuit brought forward by a U.S. Army officer deployed to the Middle East? The White House has responded at last, The New York Times’ Charlie Savage reports. “In a 45-page legal brief filed in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the administration offered its most extensive public explanation yet of its war powers theory,” Savage writes.
Their take: “While Mr. Obama has not received new and explicit authorization from lawmakers for the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the brief said that ‘the president has determined that he has the authority to take military action’ against the group, and that ‘Congress has ratified that determination by appropriating billions of dollars in support of the military operation.’” Read his report in full, here.
In Syria, a siege is coming to the rebels in Aleppo as rebels are stockpiling “months of supplies” in anticipation of a drawn-out fight with the Assad regime and its allies, NPR and Reuters report. Reuters: “Government forces backed by allies including Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Russian air force advanced last week to within a few hundred meters (yards) of the only road into the rebel-held part of Aleppo, making it impassable for the several hundred thousand people living there.”
So what’s the prospect for getting aid to besieged residents of Aleppo—and Daraa, and Damascus and...the list goes on? Pretty damn poor, NPR’s Alice Fordham reports over here.
From Defense One
It’s getting harder to define military readiness. Here’s what to do about it, say RAND’s Colin P. Clarke and Chad C. Serena: planners and evaluators must try to anticipate how threats and operating environments will change during a deployment. Read on, here.
It’s time for America to distance itself from Saudi actions in Yemen. Riyadh is killing civilians with American help, and it’s jeopardizing the international credibility of the United States, says Wikistrat’s Daniel DePetris. Read his argument, here.
Slumping U.S. helicopter market forces Sikorsky to look overseas. Eight months after buying Sikorsky in an “excess capacity” market, Lockheed is signing partnerships with non-U.S. companies. Global Business Editor Marcus Weisgerber reports, here.
The Army is testing genetically engineered spider silk for body armor. Inserting spider DNA into silkworms yields a tough fabric that's far more flexible than Kevlar. From Tech Editor Patrick Tucker, here.
Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson, Bradley Peniston, and Marcus Weisgerber. On this day in 2008, the Taliban launched the Battle of Wanat against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
F-35 hovers over Farnborough Air Show. The weather at Farnborough on Tuesday might have summed up the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. At least that’s what advocates for the $400 billion project hope. The day began chilly, cloudy and rainy, grounding all flight demonstrations at the air show. But late in the day, the skies cleared just enough for one F-35C jet to fly by, first quickly, then slowly, and then finally stopping in mid-air and spinning 360 degrees. Having captured the air show’s full attention, it rotated its engine horizontally and flew off into fluffy white clouds.
The F-35 was supposed to first come to this British air show six years ago. The debut was eventually pushed to 2014 after a host of development problems and delays. Then just weeks before its debut, an engine fire grounded the fleet. Even though some still say the plane could have safely flown across the Atlantic then, the wait was worth it because it wouldn’t have been able to fly the same types of maneuvers. Now, project officials hope they can continue with much of the positive momentum that the project has experienced of late. More here.
No big defense deals. Aside from the $5 billion Boeing deal with the U.K. for new Apache attack helicopter and P-8 sub-hunting planes, the show has been quiet from a defense perspective. Commercial sales are also expected to fall short of the record number of deals inked in 2014, according to the BBC. More here.
The day after the South China Sea ruling looks quite a bit like seven days before the South China Sea ruling. That is to say, “China vowed to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty over the South China Sea and said it had the right to set up an air defense zone,” Reuters writes after Tuesday’s ruling from an arbitration court at The Hague.
“‘China will take all necessary measures to protect its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests,’ the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said in a front page commentary on Wednesday.’”
China’s vice foreign minister called the region now a “cradle of war,” AFP reports.
But the most helpful question at this juncture concerns what enforcement of the ruling is going to look like, and Stars and Stripes looks into that (less than the headline would suggest, however) over here.
By the way: China’s millennials don’t care about the ruling, if this viral video sweeping the mainland is to be believed.
Before we leave the region, the Pentagon’s THAAD anti-missile system to possibly shoot down North Korean rockets gets a home. And it’s headed to the mountains southeast of Seoul, Stripes reports.
A cease-fire appears to be holding in South Sudan, NYTs reports. Not that that is keeping Germany or Italy from evacuating foreigners from the country.
Nor is it doing anything to halt the 40 or so U.S. troops AFRICOM just dispatched to the U.S. embassy in Juba.
Playing catch-up on the crisis in South Sudan? AFP has this video explainer to bring you up to speed.
And while we’re in Africa, American special operators have their hands in some 20 nations on the continent, The Intercept reported Monday. But perhaps the most telling aspect of that report centered on a map from the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies with a robust accounting of extremist groups threatened the region.
Finally this morning: candy-shooting drones have arrived, The Guardian reports from the endangered species front—in this case, ferrets in Montana. “The vaccines will be targeted at the prairie dog population at the UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge in north-eastern Montana. Black footed ferrets – North America’s only native ferret – are completely dependent upon prairie dogs, which are a type of burrowing rodent, for their food and shelter. Both black-footed ferrets and prairie dogs are susceptible to the sylvatic plague, a flea-borne disease spread from rats that were introduced from ships arriving in California in the 1800s. While individual ferrets can be vaccinated by an injection, wildlife officials have found it difficult to protect prairie dogs over large areas.” Hence the candies. More on what the authors call the “M&M drone plan,” over here.