Syrian hospital, bombed; Army’s first female infantry officer; Boeing eats $156M on tanker; Hunting for missile launchers; and a bit more.

Direct airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo leaves nearly three dozen dead, including six staff, three children and one of the city’s last pediatricians, the Associated Press and the Washington Post report this morning.

“A video posted online by [volunteer first-responders known as] the White Helmets showed a number of lifeless bodies, including those of children, being pulled out from a building and loaded into ambulances amid screaming and wailing,” AP writes. “It also showed distraught rescue workers trying to keep onlookers away from the scene, apparently fearing more airstrikes.”

It’s just the latest bloodshed from Syria’s largest city where more than 60 have been killed in the past day and nearly 190 have died since Friday as regime and its allied troops began a long march to flush out rebels who have been there since 2012. Doctors Without Borders said the Al Quds hospital “was the main referral centre for paediatrics and [the facility] had 8 doctors & 28 nurses.” There’s been no immediate response from the Assad regime, the Post writes.

Aleppo is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, the International Committee for the Red Cross said this morning.

Even before the bombing, the UN’s chief negotiator for Syrian peace talks tossed the white flag, calling on a “U.S.-Russian initiative at the highest level” to stop the violence in Syria.

Staggering statistic: “[I]n the last 48 hours, we have had an average of one Syrian killed every 25 minutes, one Syrian wounded every 13 minutes,” Staffan de Mistura said in frustration from Geneva. “How can you have substantial talks when you have only news about bombing and shelling?” De Mistura will take his case to Moscow next week, Russian media announced this morning.

This is what it’s like to fight for the Islamic State — in Iraqi Kurdistan, anyway. There are hundreds of ways to describe this video, acquired by Vice News, but we’ll leave today’s summary to War Is Boring’s David Axe: “Vice has video an ISIS fighter shot with a GoPro attached to his helmet. It’s a combat clown show and everyone dies.”

Said one U.S. military officer to The D Brief: “The kinds of mistakes [the ISIS fighters] make are incredulous.” The list is really too long to get into, so check out the video for yourself, here.

40 down, and counting. That’s how many ISIS “external operations leaders, planners, and facilitators” have been killed by U.S. special forces, The Daily Beast’s Kim Dozier reports this morning. But don’t expect to hear about them all “in order to see how ISIS responds,” one official explained.

Lebanese troops just killed an ISIS leader near the Syrian border. The deceased: Fayez al-Shaalaan, known as Abu Fawz, described “as the militant group’s leader in the Arsal area” who was killed when “the army attacked an Islamic State position on the edge of the town of Arsal in north Lebanon.” More here.

What drives ISIS foreign fighter flows? Contrary to what many believe, it is “not economic or political conditions but rather ​ideology and the difficulty of assimilation into homogeneous Western countries,” according to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which claims to present “the first systematic analysis of the link between economic, political, and social conditions and the global phenomenon of ISIS foreign fighters.” Find that, here.


From Defense One

The increasingly automated hunt for mobile missile launchers. The U.S. intelligence community is quietly experimenting with algorithms that might help keep tabs on mobile missile launchers like the ones North Korea has used in recent tests, affording more warning before an attack. Global Business Editor Marcus Weisgerber reports, here.

Trump makes his own head spin talking foreign policy. The Republican front-runner delivered his most scripted address yet laying out what he called his “consistent” and “unpredictable” national security ambitions. Via The Atlantic, here.

Obama offers rhetoric as Assad drops barrel bombs. // Frederic C. Hof, of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, says that as long as Syrian civilians are on the bullseye, nothing will be accomplished at peace talks. Read on, here.

Welcome to the Thursday edition of The D Brief, by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1792, Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led the mutiny on HMS Bounty. Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.


Boeing eats more money while building Air Force tanker — $156 million, to be exact. To date, the company has spent nearly $1.3 billion to fix various problems that have cropped up in development of the KC-46 tanker, a militarized version of the 767 jetliner. The latest charge “primarily reflects the cost incorporating engineering changes identified during testing into aircraft already built and in production along with the certification of those changes,” Dennis Muilenburg, the firm’s chairman, president and CEO, said during the company’s quarterly earnings call yesterday. The four test tankers have flown more than 500 test hours. More here.

Northrop happy to be working on the new Air Force bomber, and that’s about all it’ll say about the subject “The highlight during the quarter was getting back to work on the B-21 program,” Wes Bush, the company’s chairman, CEO and president, said during the company’s quarterly earnings call yesterday. We are absolutely committed to outstanding execution on this program and we are off to a strong start.” More here.

Germany’s foreign minister has some hopes for America this election season: “I can only hope that the election campaign in the USA does not lack the perception of reality,” FM Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. “The world's security architecture has changed and it is no longer based on two pillars alone. It cannot be conducted unilaterally,” referring to Trump’s “America First” message.

The rub: “Steinmeier said international conflicts could only be solved nowadays if heavyweights like the United States and Russia and others joined forces,” Reuters reports. “‘No American president can get round this change in the international security architecture,” Steinmeier said, adding that this was why America first is actually no answer to that.”

North Korea’s fifth recent launch goes kaput. “Around 6:40 a.m. local time, North Korea fired what appeared to be a Musudan-type midrange missile near the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman said,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “The missile crashed soon after launch, he said.”

An earlier test nearly two weeks ago “resulted in a huge fireball as the weapon exploded just after liftoff, according to U.S. defense officials. The Musudan has been displayed at recent North Korean military parades and has an estimated range of 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers (1,864 to 2,485 miles), putting U.S. bases in Japan and the island of Guam in theoretical range.” More here.

U.S. military planners may be keeping an eye on the Philippine elections as front-runner Rodrigo Duterte said the U.S. “should not meddle in our affairs,” Stars and Stripes reports. “Duterte has presented himself to voters as a straight-talker who is not part of the Manila elite – someone who can get things done even if he needs to bend the rules to do so. That includes the country’s foreign affairs.” His message of change to voters includes the view that “we really don’t need the Americans to deal with the Chinese because the Chinese want to talk to us alone.” But he still faces a considerable uphill climb “to garner support from an elite-controlled Manila,” according to Carl Baker, an expert on the U.S.-Philippines alliance at Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu. Read the rest, here.

Kunduz report due Friday. That’s the word from TDB’s Nancy Youseff and The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman, who has a bit of context for the decision, here.

It’s been now five years and one day since the deadly green-on-blue attack in Kabul that left eight U.S. airmen and an American contractor dead. Air Force Times’ Oriana Pawlyk has a remembrance with surviving family members, here.

Carter says oh-no to the Thornberry OCO. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter railed into House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry’s new spending plan that would take “$18 billion from the special overseas contingency operations (OCO) wartime fund and investing it into buying more weapon systems. Thornberry’s language would also end OCO come April, forcing the next president to request a new war-funding supplemental,” Defense News reported. “Carter flashed a bit of anger — unusual for the secretary — when discussing the plan, particularly the April end date for OCO, saying it amounts to ‘gambling’ with troops' funding at a time of war and calling it ‘deeply troubling’ and ‘flawed.’” More on that beef, here.

Congrats to Capt. Kristen Griest, one of the U.S. Army’s first Ranger-qualified females. She’s about to make history again today when she’s “expected to graduate from the Maneuver Captain's Career Course on Thursday wearing the distinctive blue infantry cord,” officials told Army Times.

And for a different take on females in combat, trace the path of a 9-year-old who was held hostage by FARC rebels and forced to become a child soldier in Colombia’s long insurgency. Her tough story of re-integration back into even her own family’s village is just one of dozens The New York Times’ Nicholas Casey found reporting from Caldas.

Finally today: We have an official update on that alleged drone collision at Heathrow in London. Turns out the object the pilot of an Airbus A320 flying from Geneva hit a…well, something—just not a drone, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said this morning. The UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch also announced this morning that it had ended its investigation into the incident.

“We made initial inquiries but there was insufficient information on what object was involved for us to take it further,” it said.

For what it’s worth, AP notes that “last week, junior Transport Minister Robert Goodwill speculated that the plane might have struck a plastic bag.”

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.