Today's D Brief: Optimism for Ukraine?; $230M to 2017 shooting victims; GOP draws Ottawa's ire; Robot dogs on the border; And a bit more.
Russia will allegedly pull its troops back after it’s done wargaming in Belarus, according to French officials with visibility into Monday’s five-hour meeting in Moscow between French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. Macron seemed to confirm this while speaking Tuesday in Kyiv, but Reuters notes “Putin himself did not mention such concessions when he spoke to the media” Monday evening.
According to the Kremlin, “No one ever said that Russian troops would remain on the territory of Belarus, there was no talk of this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday in Moscow. “We are talking about allied exercises, and it is understood that after these exercises are completed, the troops will return to their permanent locations.”
Macron’s takeaways: Perhaps the biggest seems to have been securing Putin’s involvement in salvaging the so-called Minsk agreement, initially drafted in 2015. (The New York Times just published an explainer on that, here.) But more immediately, France will join key officials from Germany, Russia, and Ukraine for continued talks Thursday in Berlin. “It will take time to get results,” Macron told reporters Tuesday.
Meanwhile in the U.S., “I think it would be wise [for Americans] to leave” Ukraine, President Joe Biden said Monday during a joint press conference with Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz. “I would hate to see them get caught in a cross-fire if in fact [Russia] did invade. And there’s no need for that, and if I had anyone there I’d say leave.” The Hill has a tiny bit more, here.
NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is in Lithuania today and tomorrow. He’s marking the fifth anniversary of the alliance’s “enhanced forward presence” mission, which was launched after Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. NATO has a bit more about Stoltenberg’s travels, here.
Related reading:
- “Putin Says the West Is Goading Russia Into War With Ukraine—and Many Russians Agree,” via the Wall Street Journal, reporting Tuesday;
- And “Biden says a Russia-to-Germany pipeline would not go forward if Moscow invades Ukraine,” which was NYT’s spot report from Monday’s presser at the White House.
From Defense One
It Could Be Months Before the Biden Administration Submits Its Spending Proposal // Marcus Weisgerber: The fiscal year is one-third over, and the White House is still waiting for Congress to pass a budget.
China Wants to Own the Hypersonic ‘Domain,’ DOD Official Says // Patrick Tucker: While the United States focuses on highly maneuverable missiles, China aims to control all of “near space.”
Germany, US Agree To Condemn Russian Violence in Ukraine // Jacqueline Feldscher: Biden shot down speculation that there were cracks in the longtime partnership with Berlin.
Air Force Commits Millions to Experiment with ‘Space Internet’ // Brandi Vincent: Arctic coverage and airborne communications are two areas highlighted for exploration.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson, with Jennifer Hlad. If you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began with a surprise Japanese attack at the Battle of Port Arthur, at the southern edge of modern-day China’s Liaodong Peninsula.
CENTCOM could get a new commander soon. U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Kurilla sat down for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:30 a.m. ET. Catch the livestream here.
Elsewhere on the Hill: Defense Department personnel retention is the focus of a House hearing this afternoon, featuring representatives from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as the Air and Space Forces. That gets started at 2 p.m. ET. Details here.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger will deliver a keynote address at the 2022 National Defense Industrial Association Expeditionary Warfare Conference. That’s slated for 11:40 a.m. ET. Details and registration (required for the livestream) here.
Arctic security and untapped energy resources dominate an event and panel discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank today. The Pentagon’s Senior Advisor for Arctic Security Affairs Randy Kee joins the lineup for that one, which is set for 12 p.m. ET. Details here.
And Army Secretary Christine Wormuth will discuss the future and near-term priorities for the service in a “virtual fireside chat” hosted by Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn of the Center for a New American Security. That begins at 1 p.m. ET. Registration and deets, here.
The federal government must pay $230 million to victims of the 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Reuters reported Monday. The same judge previously ruled that the government was 60 percent responsible for the shooting by the former U.S. airman.
Twenty-six people were killed and 22 others injured when he opened fire during a Sunday service at the First Baptist Church. Officials afterward said the former airman should not have been allowed to buy the guns he used in the shooting, after admitting to domestic violence during a court martial and being discharged from the Air Force for bad conduct. More, here.
Water safety update at Hawaii’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and Aliamanu Military Reservation. Congress’ latest proposal for a continuing resolution—a stopgap bill to fund the federal government—includes $350 million for the military to deal with the ongoing water contamination in Hawaii, Bloomberg’s Roxana Tiron and Military Times’s Leo Shane III report. That’s $250 million to cover related expenses for the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Air Force, and an additional $100 million for the Pentagon to comply with the state of Hawaii’s emergency order, requiring it to drain the fuel tanks—an order the DOD initially resisted before deciding to comply.
Meanwhile in the Capital region: Cold showers. A different type of water-related quality-of-life issue has prompted the Navy to move hundreds of sailors and soldiers out of the barracks at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center: lack of hot water. Residents of the barracks at the world-renowned medical facility have been living without hot water “and other basic amenities” for years, Navy Times reports, noting that one facility was built—in 1981—without the infrastructure needed to get hot water to the third and fourth floors. Another building has been plagued with hot water problems since 2015—a year after it opened. More about the problems, here.
Another dismal Afghan evacuation report has surfaced. This time, the Washington Post got its hands on 2,000 more pages of an internal U.S. Army probe.
One takeaway: “Disagreement between U.S. military officials and American diplomats in Kabul about when to press forward with an evacuation appears to have gone back months,” the Post’s Alex Horton and Dan Lamothe write. Other revelations include allegations of drunkenness among State Department personnel, and a perceived general lack of urgency (which has seemingly been the case among non-uniformed U.S. officials in Afghanistan for … many years). Continue reading at WaPo, here.
Related reading: “Inside the Afghan Evacuation: Rogue Flights, Crowded Tents, Hope and Chaos,” via the New York Times, reporting Sept. 3; and “Lack of planning by Biden marred evacuation of Afghans: Senate GOP report,” via NBC News, reporting Feb. 2.
Canada wants Republicans lawmakers in the U.S. to mind their own biscuits when it comes to pandemic safety in Ottawa.
Where this comes from: A group known as the Freedom Truck Convoy. They’ve parked at least 400 trucks in Canada’s capital, paralyzing its business district over the last several days. The protesters vowed not to leave “until all vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions are lifted,” and they also want to remove Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, even though most restrictions protesters oppose “were put in place by provincial governments,” AP reported Monday.
On Monday, Ottawa’s mayor asked for 1,800 more police to help deal with the protesters since light rail is the only transportation that can reach the downtown area, where thousands of residents live and oppose the protests and rancor. Noise levels had gotten so bad that a local judge issued an order to silence the truckers’ “incessant honking” for the next 10 days. “Tooting a horn is not an expression of any great thought I'm aware of,” said the judge in an Ottawa court hearing on Monday.
Why the GOP has gotten involved: Because former President Donald Trump chimed in Friday, calling Trudeau a “far left lunatic” who has “destroyed Canada with insane COVID mandates.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have also given their support to protesters and anyone in the U.S. who wants to donate money to them. That effort was stymied a bit when the fundraising site GoFundMe announced on Friday that it would refund all donations made to the convoy group from its platform. The total is believed to be at least around $7 million, according to Buzzfeed News.
Ottawa’s reax: “We need to be vigilant about potential foreign interference,” said Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino. “Whatever statements may have been made by some foreign official are neither here nor there. We’re Canadian. We have our own set of laws. We will follow them.” AP has more, here.
And lastly today: The U.S. is testing robot dogs for security patrols along its southern border. The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate shared a lengthy, photo-packed explainer on the process and the many possibilities inherent just last week.
Unlike tracked vehicles, these dogs can handle uneven terrain with relative ease. And so DHS has been supervising the machines—sometimes referred to as “quadruped mechanical reinforcements” because of their four legs—doing a variety of tasks like “walking up hills, down ravines, and over rocks, all while carrying 20-pounds worth of payload.” And those payloads could involve any number of devices and gadgetry, including a package of lenses and sensors for monitoring. Developers from the Philadelphia-based firm Ghost Robotics have also been sending the dogs on largely unassisted patrols, guided by pre-programmed GPS waypoints, and at both day and night.
The big idea: To “reduce human exposure to life-threatening hazards,” Homeland Security officials said in their explainer. And while safety has always been a big concern for the department, 2021 was a particularly lethal year for Border Patrol agents; 15 passed away last year in the line of duty, which is more than any previous year on record (COVID-19 claimed 13 of the 15 agents who died in the line of duty in 2021). The department also repatriated more than 1.2 million people trying to enter the country during the last fiscal year, “which represents a 15-year high,” according to DHS.
Several factors have compounded the pressures on Border Patrol agents at America’s southern border, Homeland Security officials said in early January. That includes “a continued long-term shift from almost all encounters being single adults from Mexico to large numbers of individuals in family units; a continued rise in encounters of unaccompanied children; and increasing migration flows from countries other than Mexico or the Northern Triangle.”
Robot dog testing is now in its third year at DHS. And the latest phase of “advanced testing and evaluation” has been taking place around El Paso, Texas. It’s unclear when, if at all, the dogs might be approved for wider use among CBP agents. Read more, here.