Covid-19 shuts down F-35 factory; US bombs Taliban, first time in 11 days; Esper, Milley on the Hill; Turkish losses grow in NW Syria; And a bit more.

The U.S. military just carried out its first new airstrike on the Taliban since signing the historic peace agreement this past Saturday. The U.S. strike fell near suspected Taliban in the Nahr-e Saraj district of southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, Col. Sonny Leggett tweeted news of the strike, saying the Taliban fighters targeted “were actively attacking an [Afghan National Security Forces] checkpoint.” And thus he called it “a defensive strike to disrupt the attack,” which was the first by the U.S. in 11 days. 

According to Leggett, the Taliban carried out 43 attacks on Tuesday in Helmand province alone, and that’s only counting attacks against ANSF checkpoints. “Taliban leadership promised the int’l community they would reduce violence and not increase attacks,” Leggett tweeted. “We call on the Taliban to stop needless attacks and uphold their commitments. As we have demonstrated, we will defend our partners when required.”

What do the Taliban have to say? The Saturday agreement will be implemented gradually, region by region, and not all across the country simply overnight, as it were. That, anyway, seems to be the (translated) message from two Taliban spokesmen (Suhail Shaheen and Zabiullah Mujahid) on Twitter today. 

FWIW, Mujahid — like the U.S. military — predicted more violence, saying Tuesday that “Our attacks against [the] Kabul administration will continue as before [Saturday’s agreement with the U.S. was signed] until we will come to a conclusion in intra-Afghan talks,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

“To be clear,” U.S. military spox Col. Leggett wrote in a third and final tweet on the airstrike in Helmand this morning, “we are committed to peace, however we have the responsibility to defend our [Afghan security forces] partners. #Afghans & US have complied w/ our agreements; however, Talibs appear intent on squandering this opp. and ignoring the will of the people for #peace.”

Eleven Afghan forces and four civilians have been killed over the past 24 hours in 30 attacks across 15 provinces, according to the Afghan Ministry of Interior. During that time, ANSF are believed to have killed 17 Taliban fighters in those attacks, AP and Reuters report today. And for the record, “The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for any of these attacks so far or commented on the U.S. airstrike Wednesday,” AP writes. 

ICYMI: President Trump on Tuesday became the first U.S. president to speak to the Taliban since the war in Afghanistan began nearly 20 years ago. On the other end of the line was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s co-founder and top political leader, according to the Washington Post. 

“I spoke to the leader of the Taliban today," the president told reporters at the White House Tuesday. "We had a good conversation. We’ve agreed there’s no violence, we don’t want violence; we’ll see what happens... They’re dealing with Afghanistan, but we’ll see what happens. We had actually a very good talk.”

As for what’s next, Trump said, “I’ll be meeting personally with Taliban leaders in the not-too-distant future,” with no elaboration on that timeline — though intra-Afghan talks could begin as soon as one week in Oslo, Norway. Stay tuned on that. “And we’ll be very much hoping that they will be doing what they say they’re going to be doing: They will be killing terrorists,” the president assured reporters. “They will be killing some very bad people. They will keep that fight going.”

The Taliban were the ones who announced the Trump phone call first, doing so in a tweet (of course) with the following message: “Mr President! You should act on the withdrawal of foreign troops and positive relations, and shouldn’t allow anyone to act against the deal. They would engage you in this long war.”

One more big thing: Tensions over who will actually be Afghanistan’s rightful president are still not fully resolved, the WSJ reminds us. That’s in part why America’s top negotiator for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, is expected in Kabul this week to try to make the Norway meeting happen. A bit more, here. 

From Defense One

BREAKING: F-35 Factory in Japan Shuts Down Amid Coronavirus Outbreak // Marcus Weisgerber: Lockheed Martin also told workers at an Italian factory to work from home.

Exclusive: House Bill Tries To Force Trump To Keep Troops In Africa // Katie Bo Williams: The legislation from Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif., raises constitutional concerns but might still be a useful messaging tool for lawmakers.

A Military-Funded Biosensor Could be the Future of Pandemic Detection // Patrick Tucker: If it wins FDA approval next year, the two-part sensor could help spot new infections weeks before symptoms begin to show.

The Biggest Change In a Sanders Administration Might Be a New Definition For ‘Hostilities’ // Katie Bo Williams: If Sanders sticks with his own precedent in the Senate, he could reshape American military engagement.

The US Should Send More, Not Fewer, Troops to West Africa // Matthew Dalton: America’s interests and unique security partnerships in this burgeoning region argue for more help, not less.

Explainer: The US-Taliban Deal in Afghanistan // Lindsay Maizland, Council on Foreign Relations: What's in the recent agreement between the United States and the Taliban? What might still derail it?

The Official Numbers on the Coronavirus Are Wrong, and Everyone Knows It // Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic: Because the U.S. data on coronavirus infections are so deeply flawed, the quantification of the outbreak obscures more than it illuminates.

How an AI Sent an Early Warning about the Coronavirus Outbreak // Vandana Janeja, The Conversation: BlueDot’s algorithm draws on news stories, disease-tracking networks, and even airline ticketing. But such tools are hardly foolproof.

Judge: Acting Immigration Services Director Was Unlawfully Appointed // Courtney Bublé, Government Executive: Ken Cuccinelli — also acting DHS secretary — was named acting head of USCIS without having first served in a subordinate position.

Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. If you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day two years ago, former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Russian-made chemical nerve agent known as Novichok in Salisbury, England.

Two more Turkish soldiers died in Syria today and right before Turkish President Erdogan departs for new ceasefire talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Moscow, AP reports today from the Turkish capital. 
To date, Turkish-Syrian fighting in NW Syria has killed 58 Turkish troops over the past month,” AP writes, “including 33 soldiers killed Thursday in a single airstrike.”
And on Europe’s doorstep, “Greek authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades Wednesday morning to repulse a push by migrants to cross its land border from Turkey,” AP reports separately today from Turkey’s far northwestern border, near Bulgaria.
Bigger picture: “More than 10,000 migrants have been trying to breach the border since Turkey said last Thursday it would no longer abide by a 2016 deal with the European Union to halt illegal migration flows to Europe in return for billions of euros in aid,” Reuters reports from the Greek island of Lesbos. “EU leaders on Tuesday pledged 700 million euros to help Greece handle the migrant crisis and urged Turkey to hold up its end of the 2016 accord. They fear a repeat of the 2015-16 migrant crisis, when more than a million migrants came to western Europe via Turkey and the Balkans, straining European security and welfare services and boosting support for far-right parties.”
And by the way: "Greece’s sea border with Turkey has also come under pressure,” AP adds. “In the past few days, hundreds of people have headed to Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast in dinghies… Greece sent a navy ship to the island of Lesbos Wednesday to house more than 400 of the new arrivals. Tension has mounted with some local residents on the island, where the main migrant camp is massively overcrowded." More here. And The Wall Street Journal’s Ahmed Deeb has some arresting images of the migrant journey across Turkey, here. 

Encouraging signs that COVID-19 isn’t as deadly as feared. NPR explains why the death rate is dropping in China. Among the reasons: officials were slow to detect and understand the outbreak in Hubei, allowing it to overwhelm local health facilities. “Early severe cases made COVID-19 look like a much bigger killer. It was only after officials in China stepped up surveillance that they started uncovering many more mild cases (people with symptoms such as fever and dry cough but limited or no pneumonia),” NPR reports. 
Still: Although the death rate in China is down to 0.4 to 0.7 percent, “that's still about four to seven times greater than the death rate for seasonal flu. Also, the China CDC study shows that for coronavirus patients aged 70 to 79 the death rate more than triples. For those older than 80 it's more than six times as high.” Read on, here.
Misinformation watch. On Monday, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said “U.S. labs will have enough materials on hand by the end of this week to perform ‘close to 1 million’ coronavirus tests,” but that’s far more than the roughly 10,000 total tests that American labs can actually run each day, Politico reported.
VP Mike Pence said Tuesday, “We’re issuing clear guidance that subject to doctors’ orders, any American can be tested.” But that was already the case; the actual bottlenecks are the number of test kits available and the number of labs that can process them, public health officials told the Washington Post. 
By the numbers: 94,250 cases worldwide, including 128 in the United States, per Johns Hopkins’ COVID-19 dashboard. Nine Americans have died.

After Goldfein. The White House nominated U.S. Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces, to be the next USAF Chief of Staff, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday — followed by many other outlets. If Brown’s nomination is approved by lawmakers, he will replace Air Force Gen. David Goldfein, who is expected to retire sometime around the summer. A bit more here.

And finally, it’s another busy day on Capitol Hill as a raft of U.S. military civilians and uniformed personnel are testifying before members of congress for budget review and posture hearing season. 
Today we expect (in order): 

• Air and Space Force leaders before the House Armed Services Committee (that began at 10 a.m. ET); 
• Navy leaders are also already testifying before HASC’s Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces; 
• the Senate is talking over the Dec. 9 attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola; 
• Navy leaders are talking about shipbuilding with the Senate Armed Service’s Seapower Subcommittee now, too; 
• Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley head before SASC to talk over the Defense Department’s budget request at 2:30 p.m. ET; 
• Cyber Command’s Gen. Paul Nakasone goes before HASC’s Subcommittee on Intelligence and Emerging Threats and Capabilities at the same time;
• and Space Force leaders talk about organizational plans at 3 p.m. ET.