Brexit hits defense stocks; US warplanes hit Taliban; Marines pull F-18s from boneyard; Army plans new advise-and-assist teams; and just a bit more.
Britain votes to leave the EU; here’s what that means for defense. Most European defense stocks were down as global markets tanked and the pound fell to a 30-year low. How bad is it? As of 8 a.m. EST, BAE was down about 4 percent, Cobham down 5 percent, QinetiQ down 9 percent, Airbus down nearly 7 percent and Thales down 2 percent. Not so bad for everyone: Rolls-Royce was up about 1.5 percent, Saab up just over 1 percent and Leonardo (Finmeccanica) was up slightly.
Coming up: uncertainty. The New York Times called the results “a historic decision sure to reshape the nation’s place in the world, rattle the Continent and rock political establishments throughout the West.” And the market hates uncertainty, as we told you earlier this week. Overall, Brexit is expected to hit defense firms the way sequestration in the U.S. has slowed defense sales.
Will Scotland now break from the UK? BBC: Scotland’s first minister has said a second independence referendum is ‘highly likely’ after the UK voted to leave the EU. Nicola Sturgeon said it was ‘democratically unacceptable’ that Scotland faced the prospect of being taken out of the EU against its will.” More here.
A Scottish departure from the U.K. would have a real effect on defense. The Royal Navy bases all of its nuclear ballistic submarines there and its new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers are being built there.
Hours after the “leave” vote prevailed, Prime Minister David Cameron, a supporter of “stay,” said he would step down in the coming months. “I will do everything I can as prime minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination. This is not a decision I’ve taken lightly. But I do believe it’s in the national interest to have a period of stability, and then the new leadership required.”
NATO’s Secretary General sees no change to the alliance from the Brexit vote.
The U.S. military has launched its first airstrikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan since Defense Secretary Carter announced the military would widen its air campaign to include the group, USA Today reports. “Within days, the first missions were flown, said Col. Michael Lawhorn, a military spokesman in Kabul. Since there have been only a few airstrikes, it’s too early to assess their effects, he said.”
The old rules: “Prior to last week’s change, U.S. forces could attack enemies in Afghanistan for three reasons: self-defense; counter-terrorism strikes against al-Qaida terrorists, its affiliates and Islamic State fighters; and racing to the aid of Afghan forces facing catastrophic loss of key terrain or suffering significant casualties,” a defense official said.
The new rules: “An example of the type of mission that can be approved would be surveillance from drones, airstrikes and combat advisers to help Afghan troops retake a provincial capital seized by the Taliban.” More here.
The world needs more bridges and fewer walls, writes former NATO commander Adm. James Stavridis has an op-ed this morning in The Cipher Brief: “Let’s begin by admitting that occasionally walls make sense in tactical ways. We need tactical walls around secure compounds and bases, there are times when a temporary wall can separate deeply opposed factions, and the symbol of a wall can have political meaning, a la the 48th parallel in Korea. Barricades around various protected enclaves in Baghdad and Kabul have reduced suicide bombings. Israel has achieved tactical reductions in terrorist incidents through building walls.”
Now for some of the less-successful efforts: “But think about the vast strategic ‘walls’ of the 20th century: the Hawley Smoot tariffs that were part of the global creation of tariff barriers in the run up to the Great Depression; the trenches of the First World War, overrun easily by the Schlieffen Plan; the failed Maginot Line of the Second World War; the Iron Curtain and its Asian cousin, the Bamboo Curtain; and most iconic of all, the Berlin Wall. How did all those walls work out?” Read on for his prescription, here.
From Defense One
Don’t learn the wrong lessons from rapid acquisition. Our enthusiasm must be tempered by an understanding of the wartime circumstances that made it work and the downsides that were accepted, writes Marine infantryman-turned-RAND-analyst Jonathan Wong, here.
Welcome to the Brexit edition of The D Brief, by Ben Watson, Bradley Peniston, and Marcus Weisgerber. On this day in 1916, a British artillery bombardment launched the epic military disaster called the Battle of the Somme. Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
Meanwhile in Russia, “In a throwback to the Soviet time,” Russia’s parliament just passed a raft of counter-terrorism amendments, one of which “introduced prison sentences for failing to report a crime,” AP reports this morning. “The amendments that the Duma voted on Friday include introducing prison sentences for failure to report a grave crime and doubling the number of crimes that Russians as young as 14 years old can be prosecuted. Another forces telecommunications companies to store logs and data for months, a measure which threatens to eat almost all of the companies’ profits.”
Get up to speed on the security and information operations dynamics in Ukraine via U.S. News’ Paul Shinkman, who just returned from a trip to the country to find the cease-fire monitors known as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine are busy pushing back against a flurry of disinformation, including “speculation among the region's top leaders that it may soon take up arms.” Read that dispatch, here.
Get your talking points ready: The Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson will brief the press on the Navy’s investigation into the temporary detention of U.S. sailors by Iran back in January, the Washington Examiner reported Thursday.
While you were probably looking elsewhere, Colombia and its FARC rebels agreed to end their 50-plus-year war this week. The Wall Street Journal has more on that, here. And NPR spoke with Colombian journalist John Otis to break down what you need to know, here.
The U.S. Marines are in the midst of an “aviation crisis,” Marine Corps Times reports. And their temporary way out is to pluck nearly two dozen F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters from the boneyard. “The Hornet and the newer F/A-18 E-F Super Hornet were supposed to be phased out in the mid-2020s and 2035 respectively, but delays in the F-35 program have forced the Marine Corps and Navy to find ways to keep the aircraft flying much longer than intended. The 30 F/A-18C Hornets headed back to the fleet are being upgraded to the C+ configuration,” Capt. Sarah Burns, a Marine spokeswoman at the Pentagon, said. “That means they'll include updates to the flight-deck displays and a joint helmet mounted cueing system, which gives the pilot more control over the aircraft.”
Expected ready-date: “Each Hornet takes between nine and 18 months to upgrade, depending in the condition of the aircraft. Boeing expects to refurbish 10 Hornets a year starting in 2017.” Read the rest, here.
The U.S. Army plans to have new “advise-and-assist brigades” ready in two to three years, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Thursday. Defense News: “The new concept would raise advise-and-assist brigades from the ground up using the existing chain of command consisting of sergeants and officers of infantry brigades, for example, but they wouldn’t have the privates or the soldiers serving underneath that leadership chain, according to Milley.”
The problem with the old approach: “The Army, in a way, already employs the concept of advise-and-assist units in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but the problem with the current organization is that leadership from a unit is ripped away from its soldiers when deployed overseas to do the training and advising, thus destroying the force structure of those units.”
An additional perk: “If a national emergency were to happen that would require the Army to surge back to higher end strength in order to respond to the crisis, new volunteers would train up for several months together and then the Army could ‘marry up’ those soldiers to the advise-and-assist units creating brigades and battalions, Milley said. ‘That would considerably shorten the length of time it would take to create units of brigades and battalion.’” More here.
Lastly today: Wonder what Milley’s thoughts are on the A-10 close air support debate? “I don’t give a rat’s ass what platform brings it in,” he told the Thursday crowd. “The only thing I care about is the effect on the target… I could care less if it’s a B-52, if it’s a B-1 bomber, if it’s an F-16, an F-15, an A-10. I don’t care if the thing was delivered by carrier pigeon. I want the enemy taken care of.” The National Interest digs into the options and alternatives, here.