15K troops to the border?; Koreas set up no-fly zone; Minehunting master plan; What the John Doe case means; And a bit more.
Trump: 15,000 troops could be heading south. One day after Pentagon officials pushed back on word 14,000 U.S. troops would be sent to America’s southern border, President Trump told reporters that number of deployed could go even higher — putting a topline estimate at 15,000 troops, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Said Trump from the South Lawn: "We have about 5,000 [deployed so far, from Friday’s announcement]. We'll do up anywhere between 10 and 15,000 military personnel on top of border patrol, ICE, and everybody else at the border."
About that pushback from Tuesday, AP reminds us of the hectic recent history on all this, reminding us, “Just last week officials were indicating that about 800 to 1,000 might be sent. On Monday, officials announced that about 5,200 were being deployed. The next day, the Air Force general running the operation said more than the initially announced total were going, and he pointedly rejected a news report that it could reach 14,000, saying that was ‘not consistent with what’s actually being planned.’”
What the Pentagon is planning for in all this: Stuff getting stolen. Because there is a past of that happening on these kind of border deployments, which happened in much smaller numbers in the past. Military Times’ Tara Copp has that angle, here.
Why all these troops, from Trump’s POV? “You have caravans coming up that look a lot larger than it’s reported actually. I’m pretty good at estimating crowd size. And I’ll tell you they look a lot bigger than people would think.”
BTW, said POTUS45 Wednesday evening to ABC News: “I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth. And sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that’s different or there’s a change, but I always like to be truthful.”
Read over the order to the U.S. military for this counter-caravan border surge via Newsweek’s Jim LaPorta — who obtained an unclassified FRAGO purportedly from U.S. Army North — here. Said LaPorta of what he read in that doc: It “reads like an invading army is about to overrun a combat outpost.”
From Defense One
The US Military Held an American as an Enemy Combatant for Over a Year. Here’s What That Means. // Katie Bo Williams, Defense One: The case could have upended the entire war on ISIS. Instead, it’s changing how we treat some detainees.
CyberCom Is Targeting Russia’s Election Meddlers — and Changing How Governments Use Cyber // Evan Perkoski and Michael Poznansky, Council on Foreign Relations: Although anonymity is generally prized for successful cyber operations, it might not be ideal in all cases, especially if the United States wants to deter an Russia spreading disinformation.
Pentagon Doesn’t Want Real Artificial Intelligence In War, Former Official Says // Aaron Boyd, Nextgov: No one at the Defense Department wants weapons that make their own decisions, said former Deputy Secretary Bob Work.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. If you find this useful, please consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. On this day in 1932, Germany scientist Wernher Von Braun was named head of the country’s liquid-fuel rocket program. He would go on to develop the V2 rocket for the Nazis (the world’s first ballistic missile), and later the Apollo space program for the Americans after the Second World War had ended.
Koreas install no-fly, no-exercise zone near their border. Reuters: “A no-fly zone and a ban on military drills near the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea came into effect on Thursday as the once uneasy neighbors push to further defuse tensions.” The U.S. apparently originally objected to the measure, saying it would hurt U.S.-ROK readiness, “though it displayed support at an annual security consultative meeting of defense ministers on Wednesday in Washington.” Read on, here.
Also at the meeting: The U.S. and South Korea may cancel more large-scale exercises; a decision will be made this month, AP reports.
GOP senators want to stop nuclear talks with Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi murder, NBC News reported Wednesday.
The senators: Cory Gardner of Colorado, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Dean Heller of Nevada and Todd Young of Indiana.
About those nuclear talks: They are “aimed at striking a cooperation agreement, known as a ‘123 agreement,’ that would allow U.S. companies like Westinghouse build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. Billions of dollars are at stake for American companies...But there have been longstanding concerns about enabling the Saudis to conduct fuel-making activities that could eventually lead to the country developing nuclear weapons, fueling a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”
Leverage: “The senators threatened to use an obscure provision in the Atomic Energy Act to block any U.S.-Saudi nuclear agreements if Trump does not heed their call.” Read on, here.
Background reading at Defense One:
- How Russia, China Use Nuclear Reactors To Win Global Influence
- The US Must Build Saudi Arabia’s First Nuclear Reactors
USN planning next generation of minehunting ships and aircraft. “The early-1980s Avenger-class MCM ships and the mid-1980s MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters will be on their way out next decade, and a mix-and-match system of sensors, offboard vehicles and platforms will take over the mission,” writes U.S. Naval Institute News.
Two-month deadline. The Navy’s director of expeditionary warfare is working with its program executive officer for “unmanned and small combatants” to develop a new master plan for presentation to the Chief of Naval Operations by year’s end.
New approaches. The envisioned new systems “attack the same problem from a different angle, applying unmanned systems to keep sailors farther from the mines in some cases, using artificial intelligence and big data technologies to help sift through search data faster, and working towards a ‘single sortie’ vision where the entire MCM apparatus could search waterways, identify an item out of the ordinary, classify what type of mine it is, and then neutralize the threat – all in real time.” Read on, here.
Reminder: mines are growing ever more sophisticated — think smart torpedoes and underwater robots — yet most of the American warships damaged in combat since World War II were hit by cheap, dumb mines.
When it comes to accountability for the war in Afghanistan, there’s still a long way to go. That’s because America’s watchdog for reconstruction efforts, SIGAR, announced in its October report: "DOD, Congress, and taxpayers lack the information necessary to assess the impact the advising effort has made in building the capacity of MOD and MOI, or the effectiveness of its $421 million advising contracts." Catch the report in full (PDF), here.
How President Trump views the Space Force: "So important. That's where it's at. It's all about space. Very soon, it's gonna, all about space, and we're gonna be stronger, as we are almost everywhere now, stronger than anyone, by far." Follow along with more of the president’s remarks to followers at a rally last night at Fort Meyers, Fla., via the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale, who live-tweeted the rally, here.
A British defense firm was just cleared to sell China a “limitless” quantity of radar gear and other military equipment, the South China Morning Post reports.
What's new here: "Unlike previous deals involving British arms sales to China, which were capped by amount and value, under the new agreement the supplier can 'export an unlimited quantity of goods,' including equipment, components, software and technology for military radar systems," according to Britain’s Department for International Trade.
Gear involved: “target acquisition, weapon control and countermeasure systems” for “aircraft, helicopters and drones.” More here.
And finally today: “This ad was paid for by…not who you think.” In the information space this week, Vice News says it bought ads on behalf of every U.S. senator — and Facebook approved every one.
The background: Facebook said this year it was changing its transparency policies for political ads on its platform. But Vice’s effort appears to show that Facebook doesn’t really even check that closely to make sure their new measure is implemented as intended. Story here.