Russia sniffs around undersea cables; US, Saudi plan support for Syrian rebels; US appoints new anti-ISIS commander; and a bit more...

Trouble in the water. Russian ships and submarines are up to some very suspect business alongside “vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications,” raising the possibility that Moscow could attempt to sever or manipulate them amid rising tensions, the New York Times reports.

“Commanders and intelligence officials report in private “that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables.” (To be sure, the U.S. has been tapping such cables for decades, first to eavesdrop on the Soviet military, and more recently everyone else.) “What worries Pentagon planners most is that the Russians appear to be looking for vulnerabilities at much greater depths, where the cables are hard to monitor and breaks are hard to find and repair.”

Last month, American spy satellites, ships and planes watched a Russia spy ship cruise toward Cuba and a major cable that lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay. “Navy officials said the Yantar and the submersible vehicles it can drop off its decks have the capability to cut cables miles down in the sea.”

Oh, and: “Russia is also building an undersea unmanned drone capable of carrying a small, tactical nuclear weapon to use against harbors or coastal areas,” U.S. military and intel analysts told NYT. Read more, here.  

Washington and Riyadh are doubling down on support for rebels in Syria, The Telegraph reported Sunday night. State Secretary John Kerry dropped by the Saudi capital over the weekend to same-page their plans, pledging “to continue and intensify support to the moderate Syrian opposition while the political track is being pursued,” State said in a statement. This news comes after Russia reportedly floated a nine-point plan for Syria that “included setting a joint targets list between the countries conducting airstrikes in Syria, a cease-fire between the [Free Syrian Army] and government forces, and guarantees from Moscow that Assad will not run in the next election. The proposal also included a clause that would allow Russia to keep its military presence in Syria, with necessary U.N. resolutions, as a guarantee to the plan.” More via AP, here.

And for what it’s worth, “Russian warplanes sent to Syria to back the regime of Bashar Assad are breaking down at a rapid rate that appears to be affecting their ability to strike targets,” U.S. defense officials told USA Today. The cause: Syria’s harsh, dusty conditions. That, here.

The U.S. just got a new ISIS war commander. “Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last month quietly put Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland in charge of the coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” Defense One’s Marcus Weisgerber and Patrick Tucker write. “Carter announced the appointment Friday, following a spate of criticism that the Obama administration’s counter-ISIS campaign lacked coordinated leadership as it stretched across agencies also including the White House, State Department, intelligence community.”

“Rather than three generals responsible for different aspects of the campaign, as had been the case, I have empowered Lt. Gen. MacFarland as the single commander of counter-ISIL activities in both Iraq and Syria,” Carter said.

Additionally, Army Maj. Gen. Darsie Rogers will replace Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata as commander of U.S. special operations forces in the Middle East. Nagata oversaw the failed Obama administration effort to train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. Rogers, a Green Beret, was previously commander of the Army’s 1st Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg, a position he left in August. He has commanded Special Forces in Iraq numerous times of the past decade. That story, here.

Whether or not the U.S. military is in “combat” in Iraq is not a pedestrian concern, argues Defense One’s Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. When Carter took the podium to speak to the press on Friday, he insisted raids like Thursday morning’s hostage rescue mission in Hawija aren’t the same as the U.S. military “assuming a combat role.” But before Carter left the podium on Friday, he offered this explanation for why he couldn’t reveal more details of actions of the U.S. soldier killed in Thursday’s raid: “This is combat. Things are complicated.”

Why it matters: “Thursday’s events have thrust have into the public spotlight the rather plastic definitions of war and combat in which Americans have been operating now for a while. We may not by name or distinction be a nation at war, and we may not be a nation whose troops are part of full-scale, on-the-ground combat operations. But the men and women serving in those countries are indeed in a war zone and serving their nation in combat. They are at war whether or not we are as a nation.” Read her take, here.

And two video clips relating to Thursday’s raid were released in recent days. The first, evidently from a Peshmerga helmet cam, shows hostages being shuffled out of the prison during the mission. And the second clip, from CENTCOM, shows coalition airstrikes laying waste to the place in a few huge balls of fire. That here.

From Defense One

Counterterrorism’s false trade-off between security and freedom. Fighting terrorism across the globe involves a dangerous paradox: the better it works, the less we appreciate the need for it, argues The Atlantic’s David Frum in this talk given at a recent discussion on liberty and security at the Oxford Union, the famous English debating society.

Who are the real losers of extremism across India and Pakistan? The 1.3 billion people caught in the middle, writes Wajahat Ali of Al Jazeera America, who says “the seeds of India and Pakistan’s mutual mistrust—religious extremism and political stalemate—were sowed by the very same event that ushered in their independence,” the Great Partition of 1947. That explainer, here.

Why do top government officials continue to use private email for official business? “Maybe—just maybe—some of them actually believe that a personal email account is just as safe as one on a server maintained by a government agency IT team,” writes Josephine Wolff, a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “That’s not an excuse for breaking rules related to official government records. But it may not be wrong, either.” Her take, here.

Coming in one week—the Defense One Summit 2015: The Age of Everything. On Monday, Nov. 2, top national security leaders from military, government, and politics will gather to discuss how they are confronting today’s threats: from terrorism to cyberattacks, Russia, Iran, and in space, at sea, even in Chattanooga. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will appear in a live keynote interview. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley will talk about setting his service’s priorities to face ground threats. Join us! Register here.

Welcome to the Monday edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Tell your friends to subscribe here: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. Want to see something different? Got news? Let us know: the-d-brief@defenseone.com

Back to the future. Afghanistan is turning to Moscow for “artillery, small arms and Mi-35 helicopter gunships,” Afghan and Russian officials told the Wall Street Journal. “Abdul Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan’s first vice president, has been at the forefront of efforts to reach out to Russia directly. An ethnic Uzbek who rose to prominence as a military commander in Afghanistan’s pro-Soviet government, Mr. Dostum met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other defense officials in Moscow this month to discuss possible assistance.”

It’s common knowledge much of Kabul’s arsenal was made in Russia equipment, including Mi-17 transport helicopters that the Pentagon bought to send to Afghanistan. “But Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine in early 2014 prompted the U.S. to end that cooperation…and U.S. lawmakers have prohibited contracting with Rosoboronexport, the Russian arms exporter, except to help maintain the Afghan fleet and supply spare parts,” the WSJ notes. “Kabul now wants a separate deal with Rosoboronexport for Mi-35 helicopters” as the U.S. is “looking for other providers to supply Afghanistan with helicopters.” More, here.

Kunduz investigation gets a chief. Afghanistan’s current war commander, Gen. John Campbell, put a two-star general—U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Hickman—in charge of NATO’s Kunduz hospital bombing investigation, Campbell’s office said this weekend. Hickman’s appointment came after an assessment team found the civilian casualty reports “credible” and as Doctors Without Borders upped its death count to 30 from nearly two dozen.

What’s missing from the public debate over the Kunduz bombing? “The fact that the U.S. military takes the laws of war quite seriously,” Daniel Rothenberg, New America fellow and co-director of Arizona State University’s Center on the Future of War, writes in Defense One. He says that the public discussions of the legality of the use of force are often entwined with the quite different debates about the “legitimacy and efficacy of overall U.S. strategy,” he writes. Read his take here.

SOUTHCOM commander Marine Gen. John Kelly is retiring, and a Navy three-star is on tap to take over, the Miami Herald reported this weekend. Getting the nod: Vice Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, “a 37-year U.S. Navy officer whose career has focused on diplomacy and counterterrorism,” MH writes. “Two Defense officials confirmed the choice, but could not say when the White House would formally announce the nomination.”

“Tidd knows the region. For 10 months in 2011 and 2012, he ran Southcom’s Fourth Fleet out of Jacksonville, responsible for U.S. Navy activities in Central and South America and the Caribbean Basin. That job typically focuses on regional cooperation and counter-trafficking operations.” More here.

As for Kelly—who is off to Brookings next—his “military career has spanned more than 40 years,” Marine Corps Times notes. “It included high-profile assignments during the Iraq war and later, when operations intensified in Afghanistan, as the senior military adviser to then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And since the loss of his son, a Marine like his dad, the general has sought to comfort and reassure others who’ve also lost buddies and loved ones, at the same time speaking out publicly to ensure today’s combat veterans are held in the same high regard as those who fought in America’s previous wars.”

RoK looks to the youth to beef up its future cyber defense. “Having endured numerous cyberattacks — apparently stemming from North Korea — in recent years, South Korea is bolstering its technological defenses,” WaPo writes. “The National Intelligence Service and the Defense Ministry have this month been hosting a competition to find computer geniuses to use their skills for good — hence the ‘white hats’ — by intercepting attacks from nefarious ‘black hat’ hackers.”

The competition’s spoils: winners “will share $60,000 in prize money. They will get preferential treatment when they apply for intelligence or police jobs, and those who are younger could work in the cyber-command center during their compulsory military service.” That story, here.

U.S. Navy is looking for missiles for the two Littoral Combat Ships scheduled to deploy next year. The Navy has been looking for an over-the-horizon missile for the LCS since the Army cancelled the Non-Line-Of-Sight missile program in 2010. The options include the Boeing Harpoon—“ a tried-and-true weapon that has armed most US warships since the late 1970s”—and Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile—“the only naval strike missile to be fired from an LCS.” More here.

Is the U.S. Air Force’s new bomber contract coming Tuesday? Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio says yes. That, here.

Lastly: Who has the best snipers? Ireland, and its teams took home both the international and overall skill categories in the recent United States Sniper Competition held at Georgia’s Fort Benning. “The competition took place over four days in marsh and bush lands, encompassing 16 individual challenges,” Irish Times reports. “Tests include a sniper stalk, movement shoots by day and night, obstacles courses, pistol shoots, stress shoots and unknown distance shoots.” Competition included “the US rangers, airborne, Marine corps and mountain divisions, the FBI Swat team, and teams from Britain, Canada, Germany and Denmark.” So some pretty outstanding company, to be sure. That story, here.