Singapore summit; China’s new SAMs; Syrian shootout; WH axes pandemic team; and just a bit more...

Singapore, June 12. That’s the location and date of the proposed Trump-Kim summit between the two leaders of the U.S. and North Korea, POTUS tweeted Thursday. "The June 12 summit could mark a turning point after more than six decades of confrontation," The Wall Street Journal writes. "The president has spent recent weeks preparing with his advisers for the meeting, which is set to take place days after the Group of Seven summit in Quebec, Canada."

In regional threat prep: Russia just sent an advanced air defense system to China, “the first regimental set of S-400 Triumf advanced interceptor-based air defense systems,” The Diplomat reported Thursday.

Specs: “In comparison to its predecessor, the S-300, the S-400 air defense system features an improved radar system and updated software; it can purportedly fire four new types of surface-to-air (SAM) missiles in addition to the S-300’s 48N6E, a vertical tube launched, solid fuel, single stage SAM with an estimated range of 150 kilometers (93 miles), and the improved 48N6E2 missile with a reported range of 195 kilometers (121 miles).”

Worth noting: “The S-400 is touted as one of the most effective long-range air defense systems in the world, although it has never been tested under actual combat conditions.” More here.

And speaking of Chinese military gear, Beijing sent "a military plane on the last of its three airstrips in the disputed South China Sea," Bloomberg reported Thursday off new data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

The aircraft: a Shaanxi Y-8 transport plane which landed on Subi Reef.

Beijing’s reax: “China’s peaceful construction activities on the Spratly Islands, including the deployment of necessary homeland defense facilities, is necessary to protect sovereignty and national security.” More — including a recent history of Chinese aircraft deployments in the disputed waters of the SCS — here.

More on new weapons in the region: The Philippines is about to get its hands on “missile-firing assault vessels in about three months, likely for territorial defense, anti-insurgency strikes and deterrence,” the Associated Press reported from Manila. “The Israeli-made missiles [known as “Spike ER”], which have a range of 5 miles, are being installed in three multipurpose attack vessels.” Despite the addition, AP writes, Manila’s navy chief said his country “remains ‘centuries’ behind the naval might of Asian countries such as China.”

From Defense One

Making the Most of North Korea's Mixed Motives // CFR’s Patricia M. Kim: To work toward peace, the White House will need to lead a tightly coordinated balancing act to deter Kim Jong-un's worst intentions while leveraging his desire for economic development.

The US Army Will Help Uber Get Flying Taxis Off the Ground // Nextgov’s Jack Corrigan: The joint venture aims for quieter, more efficient propellers for stealth or urban flights.

The Global Business Brief, May 10 // Marcus Weisgerber: What's in the House NDAA?; Pentagon's 3D-mapping service; New Marine One, weed whacker; and more.

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. OTD1995: More than 170 countries agree to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Shoot-out at high noon in eastern Syria. Someone with artillery tried to attack the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces near the eastern city of Dayr Az Zawr at noon Thursday, CENTCOM said in a statement. As a result, and with little detail, the "SDF responded in self-defense, resulting in the destruction of one artillery piece."
FWIW: CENTCOM said it carried out one airstrike Thursday near Dayr Az-Zawr, and credited the destroyed artillery piece in that strike to Daesh, or ISIS.
ISIS is still making car bombs. And two days before, near the border with Iraq, two airstrikes are said to have destroyed five different car bomb factories near the cities of Abu Kamal and Al Shadaddi.
For the record: ISIS is down to its last two percent of territory it once held in Iraq and Syria, Stars and Stripes reported from the USS Harry Truman — which is “pounding” ISIS in Syria from the carrier’s position in the Mediterranean Sea. More here.

Iran Deal exit fallout: European edition. Berlin’s tune is changing. From “I Wanna Be With You Everywhere” to “You Can Go Your Own Way,” Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday, “It’s no longer the case that the United States will simply just protect us. Rather, Europe needs to take its fate into its own hands. That’s the task for the future.”
Adds Bloomberg: “Merkel’s comments on Thursday reprise a theme she first sounded last year in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy and his hectoring of European NATO allies for allegedly spending too little on defense.” A tiny bit more, here.
“World Turning?” If anyone’s asking, the U.S.’s top military official in Europe says the mission there “is as important as ever.” Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, EUCOM chief and NATO’s supreme allied commander, was in Washington last night to receive one of the Atlantic Council’s annual distinguished leadership awards, Defense One’s Caroline Houck reported on location.
Scap told the packed banquet room that a strong and free Europe was a vital U.S. interest, one that was backed up with U.S. European Command’s 60,000 troops and civilians who “support NATO, deter Russia, defend Israel, counter transnational threats, and enable operations around the world.”

Coming later today: Episode 3 of Defense One Radio, our weekly national security podcast. Discussed:

• Fallout from the Iran deal exit — including Chancellor Merkel’s remarks;
• What lawmakers missed in Gina Haspel’s CIA confirmation hearing this week;
• And seven months after it happened, we finally have a better picture of what happened in Niger back in October.

Subscribe on Google Play, iTunes or Overcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

There’s now one less admiral on the National Security Council, the Washington Post reported after the "abrupt departure of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer," who job was to lead "the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic" or bioterrorism attack (think Ebola).
Said an admin official to the Post: “In a world of limited resources, you have to pick and choose... We lost a little bit of the leadership, but the expertise remains.”
What remains: "Two members of Ziemer's team have been merged into a unit in charge of weapons of mass destruction, and another official's position is now part of a unit responsible for international organizations." Read on, here.

From parachute rigger to a bad conduct discharge. The U.S. Army sergeant behind the destruction of three humvees during an airdrop back in 2016 “was found guilty at court martial in Vilseck, Germany, of destroying military property and giving a false official statement,” Stars and Stripes reported Wednesday.
Sgt. John Skipper, 29, was reduced in rank to private (E5 to E1). Stripes writes “His sentence could have been harsher. Willful destruction of government property carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, a dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of all pay and allowances under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Negligent destruction carries a maximum punishment of a year in prison, a bad-conduct discharge and forfeiture of all pay and allowances.” A bit more here.

JSOC’s next commander once commanded a secretive aviation unit. Lt. Gen. Scott A. Howell, whose appointment requires Senate confirmation, would be the first Air Force officer to lead the nearly-four-decade-old JSOC, the Fayetteville Observer reports. He’s currently the vice commander for U.S. Special Operations Command in D.C., where he coordinates with the rest of the Pentagon and federal government. But in 2008-10, he led the Aviation Tactics Evaluation Group, based at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Never heard of AvTEG? You’re not alone. Not much is known about it beyond its mission to support secret ops; The Drive has the unit’s org chart and not much more, here.

Finally this week, a dispatch from the war on the internet of things. “Researchers can now send secret audio instructions undetectable to the human ear to Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant,” the New York Times reported Thursday.
The gist: "A group of students from University of California, Berkeley, and Georgetown University showed in 2016 that they could hide commands in white noise played over loudspeakers and through YouTube videos to get smart devices to turn on airplane mode or open a website."
But just this month, "some of those Berkeley researchers published a research paper that went further, saying they could embed commands directly into recordings of music or spoken text... By making slight changes to audio files, researchers were able to cancel out the sound that the speech recognition system was supposed to hear and replace it with a sound that would be transcribed differently by machines while being nearly undetectable to the human ear."
Bottom line: “These deceptions illustrate how artificial intelligence — even as it is making great strides — can still be tricked and manipulated... while there was no evidence that these techniques have left the lab, it may only be a matter of time before someone starts exploiting them." Worth the click — considering more than half of U.S. homes are expected to have a smart speaker by 2021 — here.
Have a safe weekend, gang. And we’ll catch you again on Monday!