Female Rangers make history; Bombing in Bangkok; Di$crepancy in LRSB costs?; Moscow Twitter trolls US intel; Rubik’s cube puzzler; And a bit more.
A hearty, historic congrats to the Army’s first two Ranger-qualified females—but the question now shifts to what comes next? And it’s looming larger than ever over the Pentagon as Defense Secretary Ash Carter mulls a monumental policy decision expected by year’s end, Defense One’s Kevin Baron writes. “American women have seen combat, fought in wars, and died on battlefields. But for the first time, two of them have completed the U.S. Army’s Ranger School…but [this] does not guarantee assignment to the 75th Ranger Regiment, the unit of active-duty Rangers dispatched on the most dangerous and specialized of missions.”
“For the Army, that decision will be made by the new chief of staff, Gen. Mark Milley, who was sworn in on Friday. Along with the Army secretary, Milley must recommend by Dec. 31 which jobs to keep blocked from female soldiers. The current secretary, John McHugh is expected to retire soon, possibly leaving the final say to his replacement. Either way, Milley and the secretary will have plenty of information — including the results of this Ranger School.” Read the rest, here.
A bomb detonated at a shrine in the commercial hub during rush hour at Thailand’s capital city Bangkok on Monday, killing at least 20 and wounding nearly 100 others, Reuters reports. Authorities are searching for a man—evidently quite young, judging by the images Thai authorities distributed late Monday—who is not just a suspect, “He is the bomber,” Police Lt. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri, a police spokesman, told the AP. The Wall Street Journal’s James Hookway also has this from the capital.
Thailand has endured a nearly decade-long insurgency in its largely Muslim south, though authorities said late Monday that the Bangkok bombing didn’t resemble tactics used by the southern separatists.
For a bit of background on troubled Thailand, which has been under military rule since May 2014—the Council on Foreign Relations’ Josh Kurlantzick filed this sadly evergreen report on martial law in Defense One just three months ago. Conspicuously quiet: the Pentagon, which relies on Thailand as a key U.S. treaty ally in Southeast Asia and has longterm cozy relationships with Thai military leaders. In June, the U.S. confirmed that it still would conduct a scaled-down version of 2016 Cobra Gold military exercise, despite the country’s political and human rights troubles.
Fires raging back stateside. For the first time in nine years, U.S. troops have been called up to help quell a number of fires raging across Oregon, California, Idaho and Washington, Fox News reports. The National Interagency Fire Center announced 200 active-duty military troops—10 crews of 20 soldiers from the 17th Field Artillery Brigade of the 7th Infantry Division were added to the fight. The Washington National Guard has been fighting that state’s most active fires since at least Friday.
In Ukraine, Moscow and Kiev traded blame for yet another alarming escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine, WSJ reports. “The Ukrainian government said two civilians were killed and six were wounded by overnight shelling on the outskirts of the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the largest government-held city in the area...A separatist official denied separatist troops were attacking outside Mariupol, according to the rebel news agency DAN.
Separatists fingered the U.S. State Department for what it says are essentially baseless allegations on Monday, WSJ adds. “Separatists also said two civilians were killed and 10 were wounded by Ukrainian artillery fire in the rebel capital of Donetsk.”
NATO nations on the alliance’s eastern flank have called for an early November meeting in Bucharest to discuss increasing protections against Russian forces, including the new Polish president’s request for a permanent NATO presence in his country.
Meanwhile, U.S. Marines just shipped some heavy artillery to eastern Europe, including “four Abrams main battle tanks, three howitzer artillery cannons and six light armored reconnaissance vehicles” to Bulgaria “where about 160 Marines are deployed on six-month rotations,” Marine Corps Times reported Monday.
From Defense One
Russia’s troll army is making life difficult for America’s spies. NextGov’s Aliya Sternstein talks with officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about how Russia’s robotic feeds and paid social-media commentators complicate the business of open-source intelligence gathering.
In Iraq, seething public anger over persistent corruption and poor governance has paved the way for the most sweeping reform plan to hit Baghdad since the fall of Saddam. And Jane Arraf, former Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations—as well as the only Western journalist based in Baghdad during the 1990s who still regularly covers Iraq—explains why there appears to be genuine cause for optimism in the fractured country.
The Pentagon’s war on disruptive cyber attacks is looking very ambitious. By next spring, researchers are expected to unveil new tools enabling organizations like the Defense Department a rapid response to so-called distributed denial-of-service attacks. The goal: a recovery rate of at most 10 seconds. That story, here.
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Kevin Baron. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Here’s our subscribe link. And please tell us what you like, don’t like, or want to drop on our radar right here at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
The Iran deal is very probably going to happen, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told business leaders in his home state of Kentucky on Monday, RFE/RL reported yesterday: “He can win by getting one-third plus one of either house. So he's still got a great likelihood of success,” McConnell said.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, officially came out against the Iran deal in a Monday Washington Post op-ed. No surprise there. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is expected to follow suit in a foreign policy address later today. If he does, he'll add another senior Democrat—also a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee—to the “no” column, joining Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a few weeks away from the vote.
Next week, Moscow is due to finalize its contract with Tehran for four S-300 missile defense systems, Reuters reports this morning. For some background on the S-300s, read about the weapon that U.S. Air Force Col. Clint Hinote argued in Defense One back in April could “tip the balance in the Middle East.
At sea, Washington and Tehran have been playing spy-vs.-spy naval games in the waters off the coast of Iran for weeks, the New York Times’ Helene Cooper reported from the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet HQs in Bahrain.
Blame the dog. The Savannah River nuclear site in South Carolina was shut down briefly on Monday over fears a bomb was about to find its way through the gates. What really happened: “a bomb-sniffing dog over-reacted” and “barked at a truck that services vending machines,” an anonymous official told Reuters. “The facility, which was put in lockdown for a ‘potential security event’ following the alarm, purifies highly enriched uranium and is part of the DoE's nuclear arm.”
A potentially bad omen looms over the Air Force’s secretive new long-range bomber: cost overruns.
What’s going on? “Last year, the Air Force estimated the cost of the top secret Long-Range Strike Bomber at $33.1 billion from fiscal 2015 through 2025. This year, it reported the fiscal 2016-2026 cost as $58.4 billion,” Bloomberg reported Monday. But, when “asked to explain the change from one estimate to the other, the Air Force responded that both numbers were wrong—and the correct ones were $41.7 billion for each period. The 10-year cost is the first installment in what could be a 30-year program.”
What it means: “The cost is significantly higher over the next 10 years than previously realized, if the corrected figures are in fact correct,” Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Bloomberg.
Meantime, “Two teams are vying to win the contract award—with Lockheed Martin and Boeing on one side, and Northrop Grumman on the other. The Defense Department is expected to announce the winner as early as September,” Harper adds.
Wanna read up on some of the bells and whistles sought for this new bomber? Defense One’s Marcus Weisgerber has this.
The Chinese and Russian navies are two days away from their largest ever joint exercise in the Pacific, the U.S. Naval Institute writes. What’s involved? “More than 20 ships from the Russian Navy and the People’s Liberation Army Navy,” which is sending seven ships as well as “six helicopters, five fixed wing planes and 200 marines.” Russia's throwing in two submarines, 12 fixed-wing aircraft and 16 surface ships.
Not to be outdone, the U.S. just kicked off its own joint naval drill, the 21st annual Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Malaysia exercise involving “more than 1,000 U.S. military members alongside counterparts from the Malaysian Armed Services,” The Diplomat reports. Read the rest here.
Lastly today, we share this Tuesday head-scratcher, and ultimate—if also extremely dangerous—parachuting challenge: Can you solve a Rubik’s cube while descending thousands of feet to the ground in a static-line chute? Doubts surround the video, the Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe writes, including what nation is represented in the soldier’s shenanigans. (Your D-Brief-er can tell you for a fact that the 82nd Airborne rarely, if ever, drops from such heights; moreover, it’s doubtful U.S. safety officers and NCOs on the ground would have been so quiet when the jumper at last hits the drop zone. Catch a more regulation-driven jump with the 82nd, here.) Nevertheless, it’s a stunning watch from a great height.