Dunford: who’s in charge here?; Assad & friends grind toward Aleppo; Canada drops out of ISIS fight; A-10s head back to war; and just a bit more...

Dunford on Iraq: Don’t call it a stalemate. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford dropped by Baghdad on Tuesday — after stopping off at the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Irbil, where he said “his team was working to speed supplies of ammunition for Kurdish peshmerga forces,” Reuters reports. In Baghdad, the Joint Chiefs chairman floated the possibility of “boosting training to Iraq's elite counter-terrorism services, who U.S. officials said led the advance in Baiji” and he flagged Iraq’s need for new vehicles and gear to counter Islamic State bombs.

But Dunford also flagged his concern about “different commanders speaking to the United States on behalf of Iraq’s army, its Popular Mobilization Forces, its police and Kurdish peshmerga.” “If we had one person to talk to that could speak with authority about the campaign,” he said, “that’s kind of what we need.”

The general also apparently persuaded Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi that it hadn’t been such a hot idea to invite Russia to strike ISIS targets inside Iraq. That bit, here.

For the first time since 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has traveled to Moscow to meet with his new BFF. “On the question of a settlement in Syria,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “our position is that positive results in military operations will lay the basis for then working out a long-term settlement, based on a political process that involves all political forces, ethnic and religious groups…Ultimately, it is the Syrian people alone who must have the deciding voice here.”

But Russian airstrikes have been killing more than a few of those Syrian people—about one civilian for every two combatants, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. More on that, here.

Latest on the Russian-Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah-militia offensive on Aleppo: The joint forces “were trying to advance Tuesday on more than half a dozen front lines…as a slowly developing offensive stretched into its fifth day,” the New York Times reports. The alliance’s progress “has been halting, however, slowed in part by American-made antitank weapons supplied to insurgents by Saudi Arabia.”

Rebels yell for unity: “Rebel commanders have sent out panicked calls to fighters to end their divisions in the face of the latest threat,” the NYTs writes.

And speaking of a fragmented force: some Arab militias say they never received anything from that 50-ton bundle of ammo the U.S. airdropped to its allies in the Syrian Arab Coalition on October 11, McClatchy reports from Syria. That airdrop “went to the people who were intended to receive it,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook insisted Tuesday. Adds McClatchy: “Whether the ammunition went to Arab fighters or the Kurdish YPG militia is a sensitive issue. Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, has protested the United States sending arms to the YPG. The YPG is the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, a group that has fought the Turkish government for autonomy for more than 30 years.”

And on Tuesday, the U.S. and Russia signed a memo of understanding on safe conduct for their pilots over the skies of Syria. But listen, folks, it's not an “agreement” since the U.S. still doesn’t condone Russia’s method of intervention in Syria, Cook said.

What’s in the memo? Comms freqs, an on-the-ground communications channel with Moscow’s military in the region, and a few lines about “maintaining professional airmanship at all times.”

What’s not in the memo? Any sort of clarity on what constitutes a “safe distance” the two nations’ pilots must maintain with one another during bombing runs and recon flights. It’s a point Russia’s defense ministry rather awkwardly brought attention to on Tuesday when it posted footage of its jets circling what appeared to be a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone.

With Canada under new management, what are the implications of the new prime minister’s vow to drop the F-35 program? In the near-term, it’s a sales opportunity for the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet or even the Dassault Rafale, “both of which could be in production longer based on international orders,” said Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners. “While neither is comparable to the F-35, both represent good-enough alternatives for some countries.”

Canada planned to buy 60 F-35s—four to eight a year beginning in 2017—to replace its 30-year-old CF-18 Hornets, writes Defense One Global Business reporter Marcus Weisgerber. “But Ottawa’s F-35 purchase has been debated for years — memorably stirred by a 2014 video of two boys playing with toy fighter jets.”

If Canada drops out of the international program, the price tag could rise for everyone else. Read the rest, here.

Yesterday, the new prime minister told Barack Obama that Canada would withdraw from the U.S.-led anti-ISIS air campaign. How else will Canada’s foreign policy change in the coming months? U.S. News’ Paul Shinkman digs into the issue, here.

From Defense One

A-10 “Warthogs” are heading back to war, this time in Syria. Cook confirmed Tuesday that the cheap, slow-flying, highly effective attack planes are indeed arriving at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base. It’s not the first time the Thunderbolt II has been sent to fight ISIS — last November, several Indiana Air National Guard were sent to help out in Iraq — but this latest deployment is sure to add fuel to the long-simmering debate over the Air Force’s push to retire the controversial aircraft.  

Gillibrand rising. Whether confronting the military’s top brass over sexual assault or her fellow Democrats over the Iran deal, the ambitions of New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand stretch beyond Hillary Clinton’s shadow, reports Defense One’s Molly O’Toole. She talked with Gillibrand about breaking into the national security boys’ clubs in Congress and at the Pentagon, the 2016 election, and whom she endorses as the first female defense secretary. Read O’Toole’s profile here.

Jim Webb, departing. Webb, who brought unmatched military experience to the Democratic presidential field, withdrew having made barely a ripple in his party’s national-security debate. But he left the possibility of an independent run open. That, here.

About that alleged hack of CIA Director John Brennan’s AOL (!) account: Can a random teenager really break into the CIA director’s private email? The problem isn’t technical, explains Tech Editor Patrick Tucker: “Finding a critical vulnerability in a firewall is just one way to steal data. A more reliable, inexpensive, and generally effective method is to exploit the human tendency to trust information provided as accurate. In other words, the way you get to the CIA director’s email is to convince a Verizon employee to give you John Brennan’s personal information just because you may be a Verizon employee.” Read the rest, here.

Saudi Arabia is planning to buy more U.S. arms: four more powerful versions of the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships, 10 submarine hunting Seahawk helicopters, and 750 missiles, freeing up U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf. That, here.

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Boehner sends $612 billion defense bill to Obama’s desk. In what could be one of his last acts as House Speaker, Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner and other leaders signed the defense authorization bill in a Capitol ceremony last night.

The massive bill was physically hauled to the White House later that evening, kicking off the 10-day clock in which President Obama will decide whether to veto the bill, as threatened. The president opposes a budget mechanism by which Republicans want to increase defense spending using the Pentagon's war funds, or Overseas Contingency Operations, skirting the caps.

Fittingly, later that evening, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said he’d throw his name into the hat to replace Boehner—but only if all of the disparate factions of the House Republican caucus unite behind him. It was just two years ago that Ryan, with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., brokered a temporary budget agreement that granted the Pentagon some relief from the caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act. Many are hoping he can play that role again, but in a sign of some difficult weeks to come, Boehner said last night that the White House has walked away from budget talks this week.

“What does it say to our adversaries when we take a paycheck-to-paycheck approach to our nation’s defense?” Defense Secretary Ash Carter asks in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, echoing many of his remarks from mid-September at the Air Force Association’s Air & Space Conference. “A short-term stopgap measure called a continuing resolution eventually passed, but it funded the military for just 10 more weeks… In this uncertain security environment, the U.S. military needs to be agile and dynamic. What it has now is a straitjacket. At the Defense Department, we are forced to make hasty reductions when choices should be considered carefully and strategically… The nation cannot allow this to become the new normal.” Read Carter’s op-ed in full, here.

ICYMI: The WSJ Editorial Board posted their take on the veto threat on Tuesday under the unambiguous headline: “Obama Takes the Military Hostage.” The president, they write, “admits that he’s willing to squeeze a military that is fighting the likes of Islamic State unless he gets more for Head Start, ‘job training and employment services’ and welfare programs…It’s hard to find a worse example of Washington dysfunction than a Commander in Chief, backed by fellow Democrats, who is willing to punish the military so he can break the little fiscal discipline that Congress has.” That take, here.

U.S. Army’s $5 billion intel network wasn’t working when the Kunduz hospital was bombed. “Significant elements of the Distributed Common Ground System, a network of computers and sensors designed to knit together disparate strands of intelligence, were offline in Afghanistan when U.S. commanders approved an air strike Oct. 3 that killed 22 staff,” AP reports, citing a letter sent by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., to Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

What components were down? “The intelligence fusion server, which is supposed to allow seamless information sharing across various Army elements, and the cloud, which is supposed to offer connectivity to units in the field.”

However, AP adds: “It’s unclear whether the breakdown of key DCGS systems contributed to the decision to approve the air attack, which Pentagon officials say was a mistake. But the coordinates of the hospital were entered into an intelligence database that is part of the DCGS intelligence network,” an anonymous U.S. official said.

Worth noting: Congressman Hunter’s state is home to a DCGS competitor, Palantir.

For a closer look at how the DCGS integrates with analysts at Langley, our Weisgerber took a look for himself, here, back in November.

And back to Kunduz, briefly: a combination of U.S. Special Forces new to the area and Afghan commandos new to the AC-130 gunship crew that bombarded the facility may have contributed to the tragic events of October 3. That via the NYT, here.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s identity and leadership crisis isn’t over yet. Reuters reports factions displeased with current Taliban emir Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour have promised to choose a new leader “within days.” That here.

All about Biden. As speculation over whether Vice President Joe Biden will enter the 2016 race reaches media mouth-frothing fervor, he added fuel yesterday in an appearance at George Washington University with former VP Walter Mondale. It’s been reported that Biden was one of those in the room who urged caution as President Obama weighed whether to launch the raid that would kill Osama bin Laden—“Leon Panetta said go,” while Bob Gates said “don’t,” Biden recounted—whereas still-presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Obama’s first secretary of state, almost immediately concluded she was all in, according to her book “Hard Choices.”

Yet on Tuesday, the man from Scranton seemed to tell a slightly different story. He said he initially gave a third way: “I think we should make one more pass” to ensure it was really bin Laden, Bloomberg writes. “I didn’t want to take a position to go if that was not where [Obama] was going to go,” he explained, but said later, privately, he told Obama he would go, but he should trust his own gut. “I never, on a difficult issue, never say what I think finally until I go up in the Oval with him alone.”

U.S. Navy hits first ballistic missile target during an exercise in Europe. The crew of the North Atlantic-staged USS Ross on Tuesday launched a SM-3 Block IA into space to knock out a Terrier Orion ballistic missile target—a 2,800-lb two-stage rocket, Navy Times reports, fired from Scotland’s northwest coast. More here, or catch video of the intercept right here.

While we’re on the topic of tech at high altitudes, China is testing a blimp-looking “near-space airship,” IHS Janes reports. The ship is intended to soar at least 20 kilometers above the surface of the earth to help with everything an eye at that height provides: largely surveillance and early warning capability. More here.

Lastly today, senior U.S. Navy officials boarded Beijing’s only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, on Monday. The following day the Chinese navy’s submarine academy in what appears “to reflect the growing momentum of military exchanges between the sides, despite occasional flare-ups in tensions and Washington’s complaints over what it calls the Chinese military’s lack of transparency,” AP reports. For a bit of background on those U.S.-China mil-to-mil talks, check out a nifty data-packed chart here. Or for a bit more on that aircraft carrier, head over here.

CORRECTION: Palantir Technologies is based in Palo Alto, Calif., not in the East San Diego County area represented by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.