Tensions surround the Syrian deal; Details emerge on huge US-Israeli aid pact; DIUx opens its wallet; Someone is ‘learning to take down the internet’; and just a bit more...
The Syrian ceasefire agreement is still holding, but it’s putting tension on allies and would-be allies in the war against ISIS. Now Russia is alleging that the U.S. has failed to produce any “moderate opposition” that will abide by the terms of the deal. Russia’s defense ministry took to Facebook to claim that “it appears that ‘verbal curtain’ of Washington is aimed at hiding the nonfulfillment of the U.S. obligations” from the agreement. “Only the Syrian army has been observing the ceasefire regime within these three days of implementation of the agreements while the US-led ‘moderate opposition’ has been increasing the number of shellings of residential quarters.”
Now France wants to see the text of that still-secret U.S.-Russia deal, echoing sentiments from the Russian MoD, Reuters reports this morning.
On the bright side, aid trucks are moving in Syria, AFP reports, just a few short hours after the UN complained the Assad regime was holding them up at the Turkish border.
The largest single military aid package to Israel was signed quietly by two people largely unknown to most Americans—Israel’s acting national security adviser, Jacob Nagel, and State Department undersecretary of state for political affairs, Thomas Shannon. Wrote the Washington Post on Wednesday evening: “The low-level optics for an aid package that both countries heralded as proof of the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel were remarkable.”
Nevertheless, the deal, which “amounts to more than half of all direct military aid the United States provides worldwide… will provide Israel with a windfall of hardware and technology,” the Post reports, including $500 million a year for Israel’s missile defense systems plus more money to buy F-35s.
What’s done away with in the deal? “Israel cannot directly lobby Congress for more aid, unless it is at war. The pact also ends U.S. aid to the Israeli military for fuel purchases — a high-ticket item” that has totalled nearly $5 billion since 2010.
Further, “The new agreement also ends the amount of the aid that Israel can spend on purchases from its own defense industry. In the previous 10-year aid deal, Israel could purchase up to 26 percent of its military hardware from Israeli suppliers. This was unique in U.S. military aid packages. Israel said it was important to help the Israeli defense industry grow and mature, especially in high technology. The new deal phases that out.” Read the rest, here.
This headline: “‘We Misled You’: How the Saudis Are Coming Clean on Funding Terrorism,” comes to us from Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, writing in Politico on Wednesday. Khalilzad recently visited the country in a trip arranged by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy to bring back quite a story on the Saudis’ about-face on regional security dynamics—and their history of supporting extremists going back to “the early 1960s as a counter to Nasserism—the socialist political ideology that came out of the thinking of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser—which threatened Saudi Arabia and led to war between the two countries along the Yemen border. This tactic allowed them to successfully contain Nasserism, and the Saudis concluded that Islamism could be a powerful tool with broader utility.” But it began biting them and their allies in the back about two decades ago.
As Khalilzad writes, “They had created a monster that had begun to devour them. ‘We did not own up to it after 9/11 because we feared you would abandon or treat us as the enemy,’ the Saudi senior official conceded. ‘And we were in denial.’”
But the big turning point could be in Riyadh’s view of Israel: “The Saudis stated with unusual directness that they do not regard Israel as an enemy and that the kingdom is making no military contingency plans directed against Israel. They did emphasize the need for progress on the Palestinian issue, but the tone on this subject was noticeably less emotional than in the past. The clear priority was on defeating ISIL and balancing Iran from a position of strength.” The thrust of the piece, at its heart, concerns Saudi officials’ efforts to modernize the country in the face of that “monster” they created so many years ago. Officials said they’re embarking on “revolution under the cover of modernization,” and you can read all about it, here.
ICYMI: Iran’s foreign minister’s penned an op-ed for the NYT on Wednesday taking the Saudis to task for supporting Wahhabism and al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria. That, here.
In Yemen, Houthi rebels “have captured a Saudi military post in the border region of Jizan,” AP reports this morning. “A Saudi military spokesman has denied the Houthi claim as “lies,” but a 15-minute video clip posted on social media networks and aired late Wednesday by the Houthis’ al-Masirah TV purportedly shows the shelling of the hilltop post and the attacking force examining weapons and ammunition left behind by the Saudi soldiers who fled.”
A bit more on the location: “Jizan is one of several southern Saudi regions that some Yemenis claim were illegally annexed by Saudi Arabia in the last century. It is not clear, however, whether the attack on the Jizan post is the start of a wider campaign to capture and hold Saudi territory in that region.” More here.
From Defense One
The Military’s Tech Matchmaker Is Getting Ready to Open Its Wallet // Tech Editor Patrick Tucker: Carter says DIUx will also get a new Austin branch, its third after Boston and Silicon Valley.
Powerful Countries Don’t Nuke First // The Atlantic’s Dominic Tierney: A no-first-use approach toward nuclear weapons is the policy of Goliath, not Gandhi.
McCain to White House: If You Won’t Establish a Cyber Defense Policy, Congress Will // NextGov’s Mohana Ravindranath: “Ignoring the issue, as the White House has done, is not an option,” said the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman on Tuesday.
The NSA Is Using Bomb-Defusing Software to Grow the Next Generation of Analysts // NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein: This year’s codebreaking contest has a twist: the college teams must remotely locate and neutralize a roadside bomb.
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1894, a Japanese force defeated a Qing dynasty army at the Battle of Pyongyang. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
A “hitman” alleged under oath that Philippines’ Rody Duterte had a justice official fed to a croc while serving as mayor, multiple news agencies are reporting this morning. The allegations, aired in a Philippines Senate inquiry this morning, stem from Duterte’s current “anti-crime crackdown that police said has left 3,140 people dead in his first 72 days in office,” AFP reports. But the croc claim goes back to Duterte’s time as mayor of the city of Davao, when some 1,000 people were killed over a 25-year period, from 1988 to 2013.
The informant: “Edgar Matobato, 57, told the nationally televised Senate committee hearing that he heard Duterte order some of the killings, and acknowledged that he himself carried out about 50 deadly assaults as an assassin, including a suspected kidnapper fed to a crocodile in 2007 in southern Davao del Sur province,” AP reports.
Duterte’s spokesman calls the testimony the product of “mere hearsay” from “a madman.”
The allegations get much more wild (and gruesome), and you can read more from Reuters’ write-up of the exchange before the Philippine Senate, here.
ICYMI: Someone (or some nation-state) is learning to take down the internet, security expert Bruce Schneier writes in Lawfare. “Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet. These probes take the form of precisely calibrated attacks designed to determine exactly how well these companies can defend themselves, and what would be required to take them down. We don't know who is doing this, but it feels like a large a large nation state. China and Russia would be my first guesses.” Definitely worth the click, here.
The U.S. Air Force’s first new GPS satellite will now be 32 months late after tacking on another four-month delay because a Lockheed Martin subcontractor “failed to conduct testing on a key part years ago,” Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio reports.
What the new satellite promises: “The Global Positioning System developed by the U.S. military provides turn-by-turn directions on the smartphones of drivers and hikers as well as coordinates for bombs hitting Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq. The new GPS III satellites promise increased accuracy for navigation, a signal compatible with similar European satellites and improved security against cyberattacks.” More here.
Wanted: a new public-affairs advisor for SecDef. Per USAJobs: “This is a Tier 3 position. Salaries for Tier 3 positions generally range from $123,175 to $185,100.” The job once belonged to Bryan Whitman, who was placed on leave in June after his bosses learned that he had been “charged with stealing a Capitol Hill nanny’s license plates,” as the Washington Post put it.
Parris Island investigation into the hazing death of a Muslim recruit could wrap up as many as 20 Marines, and calls into question the “Jarhead culture of toughness.” The New York Times has the difficult-to-stomach story of 20-year-old Raheel Siddiqui’s death and follow-on inquiry, here.
And finally: Watch and listen to this amazing HUD video as an F-16’s safety system “takes the jet” and saves an unconscious pilot from death.