Another plan to arm Syrian rebels; Squeezing ISIS’ cash flow; Next USAF chief a non-pilot?; Dispatches from the Space Symposium; and a bit more.
The U.S. is again prepping a plan to arm Syrian rebels, a “plan B” in case the ceasefire fails, which is looking increasingly likely. (Still, it’s held far longer than any other attempts to reduce violence in the country’s five-year war.)
After an initial report from the Wall Street Journal on the Obama administration’s desire for such an alternative plan, WSJ’s Adam Entous is back with “fresh details [that] have emerged on the nature of the new weaponry that could be deployed under the covert program,” to be run by the CIA “and its regional partners.”
Writes Entous: “Coalition members have agreed on the outlines of Plan B, but the White House must still approve the list of specific Plan B weapons systems before they can be introduced to the battlefield.”
But exactly what weapons—as well as how they might be altered before delivery—has not been publicly detailed. Officials fear that U.S.-backed rebels might be countered by the Assad regime or Russia or Iran’s proxies in the country. Still, the Journal reports: the CIA and its partners “are looking at different types of antiaircraft weapons, including Soviet-era systems that would be less mobile. But alternative systems, such as anti-aircraft batteries which come mounted on vehicles, may be easier targets for Syrian and Russian aircraft, according to officials involved in the deliberations.”
Here’s a brief history of U.S. efforts to arm Syrian rebels: “The CIA’s covert program has grown gradually since it was launched in 2013 with limited supplies of small arms and ammunition. In 2014, the CIA introduced advanced antitank TOW missiles on the battlefield, helping the rebels gain ground on the regime, until Russia’s intervention last year drove the fighters back. More recently, the CIA has allowed some rebel groups to receive Soviet-era BM-21 ‘Grad’ multiple rocket launcher systems, though the quantities have been relatively small.” Read the rest, here.
Since we praised democracy in NW Syria yesterday, it’s worth noting today that Syrians are voting for parliament in select, government-controlled regions—which, in total, add up to almost one-third of the country, Reuters reports. And for what it’s worth, today’s vote “is the second parliamentary election held by the government in wartime. Assad was reelected head of state in a presidential election in 2014.” More here.
Why has a Syrian man been racing to the border in a battered old truck with more than a hundred thousand documents recovered from “pits and hidden in caves and abandoned homes?” He was racing to meet a contact for the Commission for International Justice and Accountability to send along smuggled papers, more than 600,000 so far, “many of them from top-secret intelligence facilities”—all of which “culminated in a four-hundred-page legal brief that links the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of Syrians to a written policy approved by President Bashar al-Assad, coördinated among his security-intelligence agencies, and implemented by regime operatives,” The New Yorker’s Ben Taub reports in this epic #LongRead too enormous to excerpt here. Read what purports to be an exceptionally damning report, here.
And here are some interesting specs on that advanced Russian helo that crashed near Homs this week, killing two pilots.
Speaking of deaths in Syria—and broadening out to include Iraq—the U.S. says its airstrikes have killed 25,000 ISIS fighters, the New York Times reports this morning in a piece on how the group’s finances have taken a big hit in recent months.
From the same story: How much does it cost to engineer another Brussels attack? Somewhere between $10,000 to 15,000 to get the explosives out of a lab and into the hands of triggermen.
The U.S. is now dropping “cyber bombs” on ISIS, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Tuesday. But good luck figuring precisely how those work. A tiny bit more from Reuters, here.
Sen. Lindsey Graham: Sinai prophet? Graham had the jump as early as last week on yesterday’s development out of the Sinai—that U.S. troops will likely need to move out of northern Egypt to unspecified locales south. CNN has more here. (ICYMI: An argument for bringing the troops home entirely.)
For your eyes only: While some 6,000 Iraqis flee ISIS-held regions around Mosul this morning as Iraqi troops continue their offensive, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the sheer scale of real human concerns plaguing refugees from Iraq and Syria. And one family in particular has come under the microscope of journalist and filmmaker Marcel Mettelsiefen, who brought the world “Children of Aleppo” back in 2013. Now he’s back with a film that follows one family from Aleppo to Germany over a three-year period. It’s called “Watani - My Homeland,” and you can catch the trailer for that, here.
The next Air Force chief? Many at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on Tuesday were abuzz that Gen. John Hyten, the head of Air Force Space Command, might be the first non-pilot to lead the service in its 68-plus-year history. Listening to him address the thousands in attendance, one couldn’t help but wonder if this might be his last public appearance before a nomination.
Hyten focused on the same thing he has preached since entering his current job in 2014: that the Pentagon needs to protect its satellites. “It’s not about the single satellite,” Hyten said. “It’s about the force package that you build around that satellite to defend the satellite.” Read the rest from Defense One’s Global Business Reporter Marcus Weisgerber, on location, here. And more from Colorado Springs, below the fold.
From Defense One
Boko Haram has stepped up its use of children as suicide bombers—and most are girls. The group's suicide bombings involving children have jumped eleven fold within in the last two years, according to UNICEF. Via Quartz, here.
The Obama administration is struggling to reform the security clearance process. The Office of Personnel Management, the Office of the Director of Intelligence, and other agencies are failing to meet their own deadlines on a wide array of measures aimed at sniffing out internal threats. NextGov reports, here.
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of The D Brief, by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1204, the armies of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople, bringing down the Byzantine Empire. Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work dropped in on Colorado’s National Space Symposium on Tuesday to talk about his Third Offset quest to field new technologies that he hopes will give the Pentagon an edge on the battlefields of the future, but he also continued to raise concern about battles in space. “The growing vulnerability of our space assets is both a strategic and operational problem,” he said.
Work also got his nerd on, “with my fellow space geeks,” working lines like “Live long and prosper” and “may the force be with you all” into his speech.
The latest on the search for a replacement for Russian rocket engines. Aerojet Rocketdyne and Dynetics touted their work on the AR1 rocket engine, a replacement for the Russian-made RD-180 engine, the booster that propels the American Atlas V rocket into orbit. Their AR1 engine, “when coupled with the Atlas V, it provides the same or greater launch capability than we have together in this country,” Julie Van Kleeck, Aerojet Rocketdyne vice president of Advanced Space and Launch, said. We first told you about the AR1 in 2014 (here). The companies are building the engines in a public-private partnership with the government and were awarded a $543 million contract and the firms have invested $70 million in the project. The goal is for the companies to deliver engines to the Air Force by 2019. “It is the only solution that fits on the Atlas V vehicle,” Van Kleeck said. Aerojet Rocketdyne and Dynetics are competing against the BE-4 being developed by Blue Origin, the aerospace firm founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. More here.
Speaking of Bezos, here was at the Space Symposium touting (and showing off video of) the recent launch and vertical landing of his New Shepard rocket. That one, here.
Finally, Weisgerber gives props to Bill Nye (that Science Guy), a regular at the Space Symposium, who was rocking an amazing blue plaid suit, which this photo does no justice.
The heads of the military’s science and technology outfits testified before the Senate. It was a tale of two trends, writes Defense One’s Patrick Tucker: On the one hand, the acceleration of technology is bringing the military more capabilities faster. But the military has lost exclusive control over a lot of innovation, said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Steve Welby.
Welby will speak today at the National Defense Industrial Association's Science and Engineering Technology Conference where yesterday, Air Force Col. Stephen Butow, lead of the National Guard Element for DIUx, sounded a similar theme on tech innovation: “The center of gravity is in the commercial sector. Not public sector,” he said.
For what it’s worth: The Defense Department’s science-and-tech budget request for 2017 is $12.7, a fraction of the $650 billion expected to be spent by private companies worldwide on R&D. Yesterday's event saw presentations by science heads in Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA. The focus was on autonomy and hypersonics.
Sen. John McCain wants Pentagon drones on the southern border with Mexico, he wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
Lastly today—While GOP 2016 front-runner Donald Trump complains about Republicans “rigging” the system against him, it’s worth digging into the man’s foreign policy, which Georgetown University Law Professor Rosa Brooks says is “coherent,” “realist,” and contains a “bold vision of America’s role in the world.” In no time at all, Prof. Brooks is in the house of mirrors that is Trump’s campaign rhetoric, forking her analysis in three directions on just the topic of nuclear arms alone.
The real meat of the matter comes down to countering Trump’s ideas with sense and clarity—not something Washington is known for.
But it presents an opportunity to ask a number of important questions, she writes, including: “Why, exactly, does the United States need to keep troops in Japan, or Germany, or Kuwait? Would the sky really fall if the United States had fewer forward-deployed troops? What contingencies are we preparing for? Who and what are we deterring, and how do we know if it’s working? Who are we trying to reassure? What are the financial and opportunity costs? Do the defense treaties and overseas bases that emerged after World War II still serve U.S. interests? Which interests? How? Does a U.S. alliance with the Saudis truly offer more benefits than costs? What bad things would happen if we shifted course, taking a less compromising stance toward “allies” who don’t offer much in return?” Worth the click, here.