Key Iraqi refinery cleared at last; ISIS kill dozens in Libya; Army cyber civilian surge; And a bit more.

BREAKING: An airstrike on a Scud missile depot in Yemen’s capital this morning is being reported by witnesses as the largest explosion in the Saudi-led air war yet. Reuters from Sanaa.
AP: “Mushroom clouds rose over Fag Atan, in the mountainous outskirts of Sanaa where the capital's largest weapons caches are located. The site has been targeted several times during the three-week air campaign. A Yemeni official said the Saudi-led warplanes are demolishing parts of the mountain, hoping to uncover and destroy Scud missiles.”
BBC takes 20+ hour boat to reach Aden, Yemen, by sea where the hospital is running out of supplies and fuel. That, here.

Iraqi security forces cleared ISIS out of the key oil refinery at Bayji after nearly 50 airstrikes in a span of 9 days, CENTCOM announced this weekend. And, the Peshmerga clawed back another 32 square miles of terrain from ISIS. CNN has more.
But ISIS advanced further into Ramadi, reportedly holding roughly 20 percent of the Anbar provincial capital. McClatchy’s Mitchell Prothero from Irbil.

From Defense One

The Army this week wants to place cyber-trained reservists with more than a dozen private businesses to bolster the future defense of national infrastructure and industries, NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein reports.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said ISIS was behind a suicide bombing that killed at least 30 and injured another 100 in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad on Saturday. The Atlantic’s Matt Schiavenza with more.

A House Veterans subcommittee advanced a bill late last week to try again to cut back on bonuses awarded to VA executives under fraudulent circumstances, GovExec’s Kellie Lunnie reports.

Lawmakers are staging one final attempt to rein in the NSA’s surveillance powers, which are due to sunset on June 1, reports National Journal’s Dustin Volz.

This Wednesday: Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh joins Defense One’s global business reporter Marcus Weisgerber on stage for an intimate interview, the first installment of Defense One Live’s new “Leadership Briefing” series. Register for that one here.

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As we have expanded our newsroom in the past year, we also have expanded our ability to deliver original news, analysis and bold ideas about the future of defense—the very vision for Defense One. So, in the coming weeks as we retool this newsletter, The D Brief will continue to bring you even more of the most important defense and global security news and information that you need to know, five days a week, from Defense One and beyond, whether about the Beltway or Baghdad, the "pivot" or the personnel that matter most: you. — Kevin Baron, executive editor, Defense One

Today, President Obama meets with the UAE’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan today. Preview that one from McClatchy here.
A pending deal to sell Predator drones to the Emirates is but one of a rising number of U.S. arms sales to American allies in the Middle East. NYT’s Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper.

CIA Director John Brennan met with President al-Sissi during an unannounced trip to Cairo Sunday night, AFP reports.

ISIS fighters in Libya released a video yesterday showing the execution of roughly 30 Ethiopian Christians, shot point blank or beheaded. WSJ with more here.
White House reax, via NSC spox Bernadette Meehan: “This atrocity once again underscores the urgent need for a political resolution to the conflict in Libya to empower a unified Libyan rejection of terrorist groups.”
Senator Rand Paul said this weekend on the GOP 2016 campaign trail in New Hampshire that Obama drew the U.S. too close to the Libyan conflict, via Fox News: “Why the hell did we ever go in to Libya in the first place? …I think it was a mistake to be in Libya. It was a disaster. We never should have been there.”

Your Monday #WorthTheClick: A former intelligence colonel in Saddam Hussein’s air defense force secretly pulled the strings for ISIS for years. And when he died, he left a blueprint the group used to carry on its advances across Syria and Iraq, Germany’s Der Spiegel reports in an exclusive: “It is a folder full of handwritten organizational charts, lists and schedules, which describe how a country can be gradually subjugated. SPIEGEL has gained exclusive access to the 31 pages, some consisting of several pages pasted together. They reveal a multilayered composition and directives for action, some already tested and others newly devised for the anarchical situation in Syria's rebel-held territories. In a sense, the documents are the source code of the most successful terrorist army in recent history…”
An Iraqi Shiite militia is quick to announce DNA tests results reportedly confirm the death of Saddam’s former right-hand man—aka the “King of Clubs”—Ezzat al-Douri. Reuters has more on that, and WaPo’s Loveday Morris and Brian Murphy still more here.
After Gen. Martin Dempsey on Thursday downplayed the importance of Ramadi, Sen. John McCain—in a continuation of his critique of the Joint Chiefs chairman—on Friday called Dempsey's take a "gross characterization." The Hill’s Martin Matishak with more.

This morning, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a gruesome bomb attack on a UNICEF bus in northern Somalia that killed at least a half dozen people. Police told the AP the bomb appears to have been placed under a seat and remotely detonated, though AFP reports the explosion could also have come from a roadside bomb.
ICYMI: Watch this captivating thermal video of French paratroopers descending on hostile territory on the Libya-Niger border last week. The Daily Mail has the clip.

Meanwhile in Yemen, Houthi rebel leader Abdul-Malek al-Houthi gave his first public remarks since the Saudi-led air campaign began—vowing Sunday to “never surrender” in what the AP calls a rambling speech.

The largest U.S.-Philippine military exercise in 15 years begins today. Reuters has more from Manila.
Indonesia’s top general took a swipe at China’s South China Sea ambitions while announcing his military just wrapped its first major counter-ISIS operation on one of its eastern islands, Reuters again this morning.

The White House decision to send nearly $1 billion in attack helicopters to Pakistan will only fuel conflict in South Asia, Husain Haqqani of the Hudson Institute writes in the WSJ.
Tehran and Kabul will cooperate on anti-drug and counter–terrorism operations along their shared border, AFP reports.

The Air Force’s Gen. Welsh laid out the Next Step in the military’s cyber operations late last week, and a one-word description for it might be: “overwhelming.” Politico’s Phil Ewing.

The Marines want drones they can use while at sea, Military Times’ James Sanborn reports.

NYTs top story this morning: U.S. troops are “virtually powerless to hold accountable the health care system that treats them,” NYT’s Sharon LaFraniere reports: “In scores of interviews, active-duty patients, relatives and military medical workers described how, in that information vacuum, attempts to ferret out the truth about suspected medical mistakes — through freedom-of-information requests, complaints, meetings with military medical officials—produced anodyne letters of condolence, blanket denials of poor care or simply nothing at all... The experiences of active-duty patients point to broader questions of accountability in a system of 54 hospitals and hundreds of clinics that has recently come under intense scrutiny.”

Because of course. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un reportedly climbed his country’s highest mountain while enjoying “mental energy more powerful than nuclear weapons,” state media reported yesterday. AFP, here.