Turkish forces roll in NW Syria; Civilian deaths soar in Mideast; Dunford visits Afghanistan; Austin bomber using tripwires; and just a bit more...
Turkey is on a rampage, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Monday to send his invasion forces on from formerly Kurdish-held Afrin, Syria, toward the city of Manbij, where American troops are deployed in support of Kurdish fighters. Recall that Erdogan’s goal is to end the Kurdish presence wherever it can be found, in this case near its border with Syria, as the Kurdish YPG militia have been waging an insurgency in Turkey for years.
Of the ongoing incursion into NW Syria, Erdogan said, "We will continue this process until we entirely eliminate this corridor, including in Manbij, Ayn al-Arab, Tal Abyad, Ras al-Ayn and Qamishli."
The U.S. military’s reax was tepid and cautious. "We are very concerned about the effect that fighting there [in Afrin] has had" on the war against ISIS in Syria, Pentagon spokesman U.S. Army Col. Rob Manning told reporters Monday.
But Erdogan wasn’t done talking — nor was he finished taking swings at the U.S. “You [that is, the U.S.] have tried to deceive us,” Erdogan told parliament this morning, according to Kurdish Rudaw news. “If we are strategic partners, you will have to respect us and move along with us. You [U.S.] tried to deceive us. You sent 5,000 trucks of weapons there. You sent more than 2,000 trucks of ammunition there. We wanted weapons from you to buy with our money, but you did not give any to us. What kind of a strategic partnership or solidarity is this?” he asked for the cameras. More from Turkey’s Hürriyet Daily News, here.
Some lessons from the fall of Afrin: “After three years of close military cooperation with the United States in countering ISIS in Syria, the YPG had been widely celebrated as a formidable force, but its defense of Afrin district—encompassing the city and hundreds of villages and towns—collapsed in less than two months,” wrote the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister on Monday. “A Turkish assault on YPG/SDF positions outside of America’s zone of influence was always inevitable and its initiation has placed a severe strain on U.S.-SDF relations. That explains why Russia so clearly authorized Turkey’s military intervention in Afrin—it clearly hoped to weaken the one mechanism that enables a continued American military presence in Syria.” More here.
For your eyes only: NBC’s Richard Engel reported from the Conoco oil fields in eastern Syria this weekend, where the U.S military counterattacked those Russian and pro-Syrian troops on February 7. Find his report — featuring an interview with Brig. Gen. Jonathan Braga, the counter-ISIS coalition's director of operations — here.
From Defense One
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Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Email us. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. OTD2003: The U.S. invaded Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confidently predicted it would be cheap and take a mere “five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” (Here’s a remembrance of the day from a young tank-platoon commander.)
Russia says almost two-thirds of Syria’s Eastern Ghouta has been retaken from rebels, Reuters reports this morning. In the process — again, according to Moscow — no fewer than 79,702 “civilians, mostly children” have been evacuated from the besieged suburb of the capital city of Damascus.
The heavy focus on Ghouta has provided ISIS an opening nearby, Reuters reports this morning. The al-Qadam district of southern Damascus was evacuated by rebels last week as part of a deal that would see Syrian troops move in. But on Monday, remaining ISIS fighters assaulted and took control of a "small pocket in Qadam, a patch of territory in southwest Syria near the borders with Jordan and Israel."
Elsewhere in Syria, ISIS is reportedly still holding onto "two small areas of desert on each side of the Euphrates near the border with Iraq." More from Reuters, here.
ICYMI: Civilian deaths in the Middle East have soared under Trump, the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan reminded readers Sunday. She begins: “2017 was the deadliest year for civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, with as many as 6,000 people killed in strikes conducted by the U.S.-led coalition, according to the watchdog group Airwars. That is an increase of more than 200 percent over the previous year. It is far more if you add in countries like Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia and many others.”
The problem, according to an Amnesty International official: “The media has unfortunately been so distracted by the chaos of the Trump administration and allegations of the president’s collusion with Russia that it’s neglected to look closely at the things he’s actually doing already.”
The solution, according to Sullivan: have a national debate on the topic of civilian casualties, something she predicts “will not happen any time soon — certainly not while we have the Twitter feed of Stormy Daniels to occupy us.”
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford is in Afghanistan today wrapping up a two-day stop “to evaluate the military campaign and ensure new American advisory teams and an upgraded Afghan Air Force are on target as the next fighting season with the Taliban looms,” the Associated Press reports, traveling with Dunford to Bagram Air Base.
Dunford — who commanded the Afghan war for a little more than a year beginning in 2013 — said he’s using this visit "to understand the goals for the coming months so the U.S.-led coalition can develop ways to measure progress in the fight." A bit more, here.
Navy may buy its next two carriers at once. Service officials have asked Huntington Ingalls for more information about how the shipbuilder would trim costs and schedule if the Navy ordered CVNs 80 and 81 under a single contract. A two-carrier buy — it would be the first since the Reagan administration — promises to allow the shipbuilder to plan ahead, build multiple components at once, and better manage its workforce. USNI News has more details, here.
“Buy America,” armed drone exports edition. “President Donald Trump will soon make it easier to export some types of lethal U.S.-made drones to potentially dozens more allies and partners,” Reuters reports this morning, calling the moves “the first phase of a broader overhaul of arms export regulations.”
The motivating factor: “We’re getting outplayed all over the world,” a U.S. official told Reuters. “Why can our competitors sell to our own allies the equipment they are clamoring to buy from us? This policy is meant to turn that around.”
Elements to focus on involve upcoming efforts "to lower barriers to sales of smaller hunter-killer drones that carry fewer missiles and travel shorter distances than larger models such as the iconic Predator drone, the sources said. Export regulations will also be eased for surveillance drones of all sizes."
One catch: "Trump will stop short of completely opening up sales of top-of-the-line lethal drones."
Among the nations on the White House’s “fast-track” list for export: "NATO members, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf partners as well as treaty allies such as Japan and South Korea." Read the rest, here.
A new first for drones in the U.S. The Dallas-Fort Worth Airport first responders are now officially the first in the country to get “special approval from the federal government to operate drones directly over the airfield,” Dallas’s WFAA NBC8 reported Monday.
The drones can used infrared tech to “hunt for bomb threats” and… well, look around. Not a whole lot of detail out of that plan. But you can read more, here.
Alleged serial bomber in Austin is using tripwires. The fourth and latest bomb set on a doorstep by an unknown attacker in Texas’ capital city was triggered Sunday by a nearly invisible tripwire strung across the nearby street, police said Monday.
That indicates: A "higher level of sophistication" than police and the FBI have seen before, and that the carnage is random, rather than targeted at someone in particular.
The toll: “Two people have now been killed and four wounded in bombings over a span of less than three weeks,” reports the CBS affiliate in Austin.
The first known death from a fully self-driving car happened Sunday evening in Arizona. “A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she walked her bicycle across a street in Tempe, Arizona, Sunday night,” CNN reported Monday.
Known-knowns: “Based on preliminary information, the car was going approximately 40 mph in a 35 mph zone... For self-driving cars, dealing with pedestrians and bicyclists is a challenging task. The self-driving industry has found quicker success with highway driving, which is a less complicated environment... The National Transportation Safety Board said it is launching an investigation.”
FWIW: “This isn't the first futuristic car involved in a fatal crash. In 2016, a man driving a Tesla was killed while its autopilot system was activated. But Tesla Autopilot is partially autonomous. A human driver is required to handle much of the driving.” More here.
One more FWIW: It’s been now almost 40 years since the first robot-related death at an assembly line in Michigan in 1979.
Finally today, in new tech news: F-35Bs just left Okinawa to patrol the Pacific onboard the USS Wasp, Stars and Stripes reported Monday. “More than 2,300 members of the Okinawa-based 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit are embarked with the strike group, which includes the 844-foot flattop Wasp, the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey, the dock-landing ship USS Ashland and the amphibious transport dock ship USS Green Bay... During the patrol, sailors and Marines — who are trained to conduct amphibious assaults, seize airfields, reinforce embassies, evacuate civilians and respond to disasters — will learn to work together.” A bit more, here.