Anti-ISIS war turns two; AI spots network security holes; China adds hangars to fake islands; Singapore delays F-35 buy; and a bit more.
The war against ISIS has hit the two-year anniversary today. And what is there to show for it? A 50 percent reduction in ISIS-held territory across Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, for starters. But hundreds of thousands are still living under siege in Syria; the U.S. is relying heavily on contractors (surprise); the war has expanded to Libya—and there’s no end in sight for any of it.
That last line is the start point for this retrospective from Agence France-Presse, which writes that the war “was supposed to have been a swift and narrow campaign that would help local forces deal a ‘lasting defeat’ to IS jihadists. But billions of dollars and more than 14,000 air strikes later, such assertions are buckling, and the campaign highlights the limits of fighting a war mainly from the skies.”
What should we expect from here? “I think we are looking at decades of effort,” said Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “We are fighting a losing battle if we expect to completely destroy (IS) altogether.”
The war, in numbers: The U.S. has carried out more than 14,000 airstrikes (9,000 in Iraq); more than 26,000 targets have been hit; the U.S. says it has lost three troops to combat (and another 17 to “non-hostile” incidents); America has spent nearly $8.5 billion; and the U.S. believes it has reduced Islamic State ranks from a high of 31,000 in 2014 to between 19,000 and 25,000 as of June. All that and more over at ABC News, here.
But here’s a pleasant photographic reminder that at least life in Baghdad isn’t all hell.
Now, bring on the contractors! “On July 27, buried in [a U.S. military] daily email was an eye-catching detail: military contractors would be working inside Syria alongside the roughly 300 U.S. troops already deployed there,” Kate Brannen writes in The Daily Beast today. “This appears to be the first time the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged that private contractors are also playing a role in the fight against the so-called Islamic State inside Syria, and it’s one more signal that the U.S. military is deepening its involvement in the fate of the country.”
So who is this latest group and what are they up to? “The contract announcement said Six3 Intelligence Solutions—a private intelligence company recently acquired by CACI International—won a $10 million no-bid Army contract to provide ‘intelligence analysis services’... Six3, which gets the bulk of its work from the intelligence agencies, specializes in biometrics and identity intelligence—figuring out who people really are—as well as cyber and reconnaissance.” But due to the nature of their work, not a great deal more is known.
But here are some more numbers on U.S. contractors in Iraq: “Since last summer, the number of contractors working for the Defense Department had just about doubled from 1,300 to 2,500.” Read more about America’s “spies-for-hire,” here.
And the BBC got a look at British special operators in Syria, thanks to Quentin Sommerville’s reporting from Amman, Jordan—where coalition trainers are working with the New Syrian Army, or rebels culled from Syria’s Deir ez-Zour region, and not always with great success, as their failed effort in Abu Kamal revealed in late June. More from the BBC, here.
Also in Syria, “According to UN, 592,000 people living under siege across the country—now says 2 million at risk of new siege in Aleppo alone,” AFP’s Maya Gebeily writes this morning. More on that front from Reuters, here.
Wondering who broke the Aleppo siege? It was al-Qaeda-linked rebels, The Daily Beast wrote Monday, reminding readers of that “new” group formerly known Jabhat al-Nusra (informally known as al-Qaeda in Syria) and that now calls itself Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham.
Meanwhile, Libya is heating up, too. ISIS fighters in the stronghold of Sirte are now saving their movements until late at night to avoid the American airstrikes that began August 1. More here.
Donald Trump brushed off another wave of hostile GOPers on Monday after 50 “of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump ‘lacks the character, values and experience’ to be president and ‘would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being,’” The New York Times reported Monday. Monday’s letter makes now the second from GOP national security officials, many refusing the sign the first letter—posted over at War on the Rocks in March—but said Trump’s recent comments about Russian hackers and NATO sent them over the edge.
For what it’s worth: “There have been four secretaries of homeland security — two Democrats, two Republicans. All are now opposing Trump,” wrote Politico’s Theodoric Meyer.
Trump’s team hit back quickly on Monday, calling out the letter’s authors as “the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto power.” He also dinged them as responsible for plunging America into the war in Iraq, for allowing “Americans to die in Benghazi,” and even blamed them for the rise of ISIS. The Trump team said the candidate’s vision is one “that stands up to foreign dictators instead of taking money from them, seeks peace over war, rebuilds our military and makes other countries pay their fair share for their protection.”
From Defense One
NATO, stop expanding eastward. The alliance’s growth is doing more harm than good, says The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Tayler, who offers several more principles that might guide a Détente 2.0. Read, here.
Artificial intelligence just changed the future of information security. At DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge, bots showed off their ability to help a world wallowing in vulnerable code. Tech Editor Patrick Tucker has the story, here.
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1945, a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
Afghanistan’s battlefield needs more U.S. airstrikes, Helmand officials say as the southern province still faces perhaps the stiffest Taliban resistance in the entire country, The New York Times reports. “Insurgent attacks across the country had increased by 28 percent in July compared with the previous month, with Helmand Province remaining near the top. Over the same period, ground operations by Afghan forces decreased by 22 percent. But airstrikes conducted by United States and Afghan forces increased by more than 50 percent — including, for the first time in years, the reintroduction of American B-52 strategic bombers to the Afghan battlefield.”
But in Helmand, “The main road connecting the city and the highway to the southern commercial and military hub of Kandahar has been repeatedly blocked in recent days by the Taliban, who blew up several bridges. Civilian passengers can travel on an alternate dirt road, but have to pass through insurgent checkpoints.” More here.
Over the skies around Yemen, the U.S. Air Force is still refueling the heck out of Saudi-led coalition jets, Military Times reported Monday. The number is actually a 61 percent increase in refueling since February, according to data from Air Forces Central Command. More here.
New imagery shows new aircraft hangars on China’s fake islands, increasing suspicions that Beijing’s goal in the South China Sea is more military than they’ve admitted. That, via the NYTs, here.
ICYMI: Here’s an assessment of a possible U.S.-China war by analysts at RAND Corporation.
Explains Reuters: “RAND examined two different scenarios, one for an inadvertent conflict taking place in the present day and one in 10 years from now, assuming Beijing’s military and economic buildup continues at roughly its current rate. China will substantially close its military gap with the United States over the next decade, it predicts – but the fundamental dynamics of how things will play out might not be hugely different.” Their summary, here.
And here are five lethal Chinese weapons stolen or copies from around the world, via The National Interest.
And oh, by the way, China is also working on a hypersonic spaceplane. Via Peter Singer aand PopSci, here.
While we’re military tech, Singapore has decided to delay its procurement of F-35s, Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio reported this morning. Not that the news surprised one analyst, who said, “They have a large and very new fleet of F-16s and F-15s, and the threats they face don’t really call for a plane in the F-35 class.”
Lastly on this ISIS war anniversary day, catch night-vision video of a stealth F-22 refueling between airstrikes. It’s from mid-July, but it’s an uncommon look at the stealth plane whose use in the ISIS fight, some observers feared, could give Russia an upper hand when it comes to countering U.S. systems. Video here; criticism of their use in Iraq and Syria (from December 2015), here.