US to beef up in Eastern Europe; Pentagon’s reluctance for war in Iraq; ‘Jeb!’ and Hillary dive in; The spy who loved hot wings; And a bit more.
Did a U.S. airstrike over Libya Saturday night kill the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb outcast Mokhtar Belmokhtar—aka “Mister Marlboro”—or not? The Pentagon last night said yes, the Washington Post’s Missy Ryan reports, while an AP report from Cairo is less sure: “An Islamist with ties to Libyan militants, however, said the airstrikes missed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, instead killing four members of a Libyan extremist group the U.S. has linked to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi...”
“This isn’t the first time authorities have claimed to have killed Belmokhtar, a militant believed to be 43 who reportedly lost his eye in combat” and whom “intelligence officials say…built a bridge between AQIM and the underworld.”
A bit of a lone wolf within AQ’s North African branch. AP’s Rukmini Callimachi explains how Belmokhtar bucked the terrorist organization’s bureaucracy shortly before staging his most spectacular attack—the 2013 siege of a gas plant in Algeria.
For what it’s worth—Belmokhtar’s various nicknames included “Belaouer the One Eyed, Abou al-Abbes and ‘Mister Marlboro,’ the last name a play on the fact he’s accused of smuggling contraband cigarettes through the Sahara and the Sahel,” as AP reports.
Enough tanks, vehicles and weapons to support roughly 5,000 U.S. troops could be headed to Russia’s doorstep, The New York Times reported from Latvia on Saturday: “As the proposal stands now, a company’s worth of equipment—enough for about 150 soldiers—would be stored in each of the three Baltic nations: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Enough for a company or possibly a battalion—about 750 soldiers—would be located in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary…”
“The Pentagon’s proposal still requires approval by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and the White House,” Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers write. “And political hurdles remain, as the significance of the potential step has stirred concern among some NATO allies about Russia’s reaction to a buildup of equipment.”
“Decisions are near,” Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak tweeted Sunday alluding to talks with Secretary Carter about storing U.S. Army heavy equipment in Polish warehouses “for decades to come,” the AP reported.
Meantime, U.S. Marines—and their MV-22B Ospreys—will be hopping aboard NATO ships this fall to plug logistics and sea-basing gaps in its regional crisis response force strategy, the Marine Corps Times reported Sunday. “First up will be an Italian ship in September, followed by a British gator in November as Marines test what’s called the Allied Maritime Basing Initiative.”
The candidate many view as having the most foreign policy experience launched her campaign in New York City this weekend by hardly even touching the subject. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton isn’t going to any pains to talk U.S. foreign policy as her campaign kicks into gear against a backdrop of global security crises and a GOP field full of self-professed hawks, Defense One reports on location from the campaign trail in New York.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announces his official entry into the crowded GOP field in Miami today at 3 p.m. EDT. He’ll be diving headlong into an already harsh spotlight where he'll inevitably continue to take questions on his brother’s foreign policy foibles while trying to be his “own man” without losing further momentum to a younger generation of Republicans such as Bush protégé Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. (As a preview, Bush's team unveiled the critical campaign logo this weekend: a giant red “Jeb!” set in the uber-authoritative Baskerville font and capped with punctuation that calls to mind the chain store Big Lots.)
The biannual defense industry bonanza known as the Paris Air Show is under way in Le Bourget this morning. Defense One’s Global Business Reporter Marcus Weisgerber has the latest on the scene—including a big announcement from industry giant United Technologies Corps.—over here.
From Defense One
The Obama administration transferred six detainees, all citizens of Yemen, from Guantanamo to Oman Friday night, Molly O’Toole reported. The transfers, the first under Defense Secretary Ash Carter, capped a five-month freeze in emptying the military prison and amid a heated battle between Congress and the White House over its future. Read the full story here.
Hackers may now have detailed bios on virtually every U.S. intelligence asset, Technology Editor Patrick Tucker reports on the heels of the Friday news dump that a second hack of the U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management swept up a trove of sensitive information American defense personnel provided to acquire mid- and high-level security clearances.
Every federal agency has been ordered to lock down their systems and beef up security “immediately,” NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein reports.
It’s happened before and it will happen again, The Atlantic’s Adrienne LaFrance explains in this rollup of how the OPM hacks remove any doubt that a new and incredibly destructive method of warfare is firmly in our midst.
Major changes to military retirement get Defense Department backing. Pentagon leaders think mandated troop participation in the department’s 401(k)-like Thrift Savings Plan will save it a world of financial pain in the future and help it retain its top talent. Government Executive’s Kellie Lunney explains.
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The State Department is among the most aggressive—and urgently articulative—U.S. agencies looking to escalate the fight against the Islamic State group, as WaPo’s Greg Jaffe and Missy Ryan reported yesterday. Pentagon leaders, by contrast, aren’t so eager to pursue a plan that would put U.S. advisors near the front of any assault with Iraqi security forces any time soon. The reasons come down to trust (the specter of Afghanistan’s “insider attacks” looms, e.g.) and a decade of tough lessons in counterinsurgency and nation-building while thousands of troop casualties have all but sapped the military of its over-eager Curtis LeMay types.
“Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, like other military officials doubted that the gains from using embedded advisers and attack helicopters were worth the possible cost in American blood...Gen. Lloyd Austin III, who oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East and developed the higher-risk option, conceded that the ground spotters and helicopters could make U.S. military operations more lethal, but he also said they weren’t needed in Iraq right now…”
The implications for 2016 could put GOP contenders in a tight spot as the Pentagon’s careful stance on escalating the fight, Jaffe and Ryan write, “could undercut calls from…former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.), who have pressed for sending more U.S. troops to fight Islamic State militants.”
Meantime, the CIA just shook up its approach to ISIS, creating new teams of specialists, spies and scientists to recalibrate its “stove piped” process against the group to date, WSJ’s Damian Paletta reported.
Defense manufacturer Raytheon just closed a $31 million deal with the Defense Department for its Small Diameter Bomb II, Defense News reported.
Speaking of weapons—a high turnover rate coupled with an entrenched bureaucracy for acquiring weapons may be what’s keeping U.S. Marine snipers from getting their hands on a rifle with a competitive effective range for today’s enemies, WaPo reported on Saturday.
Taliban insurgents overran an Afghan police station in southern Helmand province in a “large-scale attack” Saturday, killing 17 of the 19 officers stationed there, NYT’s Rod Nordland reported from Kabul.
Pakistan, meantime, says it has killed a staggering 2,700 militants in fighting in North Waziristan since last June. AFP has more on the offensive that’s pushing closer to Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
Iran is licking its economic chops as it rather optimistically eyes an agreement with the G7 nations on its nuclear program, the New York Times reported this weekend.
Obama’s legacy on nuclear disarmament—a chief part of his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize and a diminishing point of emphasis after Russia annexed Crimea—hangs in the balance on the Iran deal, WSJ’s Jay Solomon writes as talks with Tehran drag on.
ICYMI—Russia and China may have gotten their hands on some 1 million classified files released by Edward Snowden in a move that's rattled MI6, which has been forced to pull agents from the field. The Sunday Times of London has the story.
Back stateside, find out how an “ordinary Joe” brought down a Russian spy at Hooters in this counterintelligence whopper of a tale from New York Post’s Larry Getlan.
And in more spy shenanigans, here’s the story of the highest-ranking officer out of Langley to be convicted of espionage, Jim Nicholson—and how, from behind bars, he passed the dirty business on to his son, Nathan.