Russia, Iran team up in Syria; Hit-or-miss airstrikes in Yemen; Pope cools to nukes; ‘Flab and cronyism’ in the NJ Guard; and a bit more.
Moscow, Tehran working together in Syria to shore up Assad. “Russia and Iran have stepped up coordination inside Syria as they move to safeguard President Bashar al-Assad’s control over his coastal stronghold, according to officials in the U.S. and Middle East, creating a new complication for Washington’s diplomatic goals,” writes the Wall Street Journal.
Bulking up. Moscow continues to add airpower to its forward operating base in Latakia with new fighter jets, the WSJ reports: “Russia now has a dozen Sukhoi Su-25s, which could be used provide air support for Syrian forces on the ground. It also has a dozen Sukhoi Su-24s, which have been used by Russia to carry out bombing runs everywhere from Afghanistan to Chechnya, and four Sukhoi Su-30s, an advanced model comparable to American F-15s, according to U.S. defense officials.”
Russian drones begin ops in Syria. And the aircrews of the U.S.-led coalition striking ISIS targets in Syria now have something else to keep their eyes peeled for: Russian surveillance drones.
From 4 or 5, now 70: Officials with U.S. Central Command confirmed news reports over the weekend that about 70 additional graduates of the U.S. train-and-equip program have entered the fray as New Syrian Forces. (This is, of course, the $500 million program that CENTCOM’s Gen. Lloyd Austin told Congress had produced only 4 or 5 fighters active in Syria last week.)
CENTCOM: More than 6,500 square miles retaken from ISIS: “The contributions of the NSF will be additive to those already being made in Syria by tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and other anti-ISIL forces, who have re-secured more than 17,000 square km. of territory previously held by ISIL, along with critical border crossing points between Syria and Turkey,” a CENTCOM statement said.
Yet still hopeful for in Iraq’s train-and-equip program: “Although it didn’t work the first time — when the United States spent $25 billion over more than a decade in the wake of the 2003 invasion — recently some U.S. officials have expressed guarded optimism about what the new training effort can achieve, both publicly and privately,” reports the Washington Post’.
In Yemen, about 20 people died in recent airstrikes by the Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition, possibly most of whom were even targeted and not civilians, reports the BBC.
Dept. of Counterproductivity: “The aerial campaign has helped coalition forces advance in parts of Yemen, but has been marked by a persistent imprecision that has led to the deaths of more than a thousand civilians, according to human rights groups,” NYT wrote over the weekend.
And yes, this has fostered conspiracy theories: “Errant airstrikes have become so frequent that critics of the coalition say they are part of a deliberate policy intended to terrorize the population and turn public opinion against the Houthis.”
Pope-poned! Acquisition chief reschedules because pontiff. Defense One LIVE’s “The State of Defense Acquisition” in Crystal City, Va. has been moved to Tuesday, Oct. 6. Come see Pentagon weapons buyer Frank Kendall and service acquisition leaders talk what’s new about how they buy. Full agenda and register for your spot right here.
From Defense One
Speaking of the pope: he’s lining up to ban nuclear weapons. Under Pope Francis, the Catholic church is moving away from Cold War nuclear acceptance faster than Congress and the Obama administration, write Joe Cirincione and Tom Collina of the Ploughshares Fund. “Up to now, the church has abhorred the inhumanity of these weapons that indiscriminately target innocent civilians and would kill them in massive numbers. But — until now — it has recognized a need for states to have nuclear weapons to deter other countries from launching a nuclear attack on them.”
The pontiff will likely take the church position a step further when he speaks in Washington and New York this week, Cirincione and Collina write. Read their analysis, here.
U.S. racing to catch up to China’s military coders. “It is believed China’s People’s Liberation Army has the deeper bench, with an estimated 100,000 code warriors recruited over the past two decades, and the world’s most powerful supercomputer. By comparison, U.S. Cyber Command started from near-scratch in 2010 and wants to reach a force size of 6,200 by 2016,” writes NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein.
“We need to start with ninth-graders,” said Vice Adm. Jan Tighe, the head of the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command. “Really. To hook them into this...if they don’t start at that point, it’s hard to catch up in terms of having the math skills to go into engineering type programs.” Read Sternstein’s fascinating report, here.
Protect the ISIS intelligence whistleblowers, writes David Shedd, a former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, at Defense One. Shedd says nothing is more important than the integrity of intelligence independent of politics and influence. The entire profession is nervous now that the Pentagon inspector general is looking into the allegations by dozens of DIA analysts who formally complained that senior CENTCOM officers intentionally altered their analyses of the Iraqi fight against ISIS.
“This is an extremely-high-stakes, high-profile case for the intelligence community,” Shedd writes. “The nation’s analytic professionals are watching closely to see how it is handled. Punishing these analysts will effectively negate the inspector general’s process with regard to analytic objectivity.” Read his piece, here.
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Death in Nigeria: Boko Haram detonated a series of bombs, killing 85 people in the insurgent group’s deadliest attacks since the new president came to power in May, the Vanguard reports.
My bad, says plotter: “The Burkina Faso general who seized power in a coup last week apologized to the nation Monday and said he would hand over control to a civilian transitional government after the military warned that its forces would converge on the capital and forcibly disarm the soldiers behind the power grab,” reports the Associated Press.
NATO chief in Ukraine: de-escalate. In his first visit to the embattled former Soviet republic, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he is encouraged by a recent lull in the fighting and “called on Russia to take the next step to advance the Ukrainian peace agreement by withdrawing its heavy weapons from the country’s east.” WSJ has the story.
Iran provided the samples that the IAEA used in its recent nuclear inspections, reports the WSJ. So, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., blasted the inspection regime as “an embarrassing charade,” but International Atomic Energy Agency officials said, roughly, this is how we do things; and Iran-deal supporters said it’s going to be okay.
Pentagon: we didn’t tell anyone to look the other way. Responding to yesterday’s stomach-churning New York Times article on the widespread sexual abuse of boys by the powerful and not-so-powerful in Afghanistan, DOD spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis “called the rapes ‘abhorrent’ but insisted there was no policy instructing service members to ignore allegations. ‘I can just tell you that there is nothing that would preclude any military member from making reports about human rights violations to their chain of command,’ Davis said.” NYT has the follow, here.
New Jersey ‘flab and cronyism trigger mutiny in the ranks’ of Gov. Chris Christie’s National Guard, reports the Washington Post. Christie, whom you may recall wants to be U.S. commander-in-chief, stands accused of appointing unfit officers to lead the 8,400-strong NJ Guard.
“Several high-ranking officers have filed whistleblower complaints, alleging that the Guard’s leadership is plagued by cronyism, racism and a “toxic” command climate, among other problems. State and federal officials have opened independent investigations. Legislators have pledged to hold hearings.” More, here.
Two down, 15 to go with the exit of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker yesterday. He’s the second GOP candidate to drop out in less than two weeks, after former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. “‘Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race,’ Walker said at a press conference Monday evening, ‘so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top of the field.’” That doozy of a line, from National Journal.
Finally: bringing B-52s back from the boneyard: The U.S. Air Force “intends to revive a dozen non-operational B-52H aircraft in storage at the boneyard in Arizona,” reports FlightGlobal. The service’s Global Strike Command announced the un-retirement last week, along with the news that — per treaty obligations — it would be rendering 30 other B-52Hs incapable of carrying nuclear weapons, as well as retiring 50 of its 450 Minuteman ICBMs. Now where is that new bomber…