Obama at the UN; US may arm Syrian Kurds; USAF will cut holes in downed F-35 wings; Intel picture over Iraq getting cloudier; and just a bit more.
In his final address to the UN, Obama makes the case for liberal democracy. President Barack Obama used his last appearance before the global body to praise “enormous progress” on economics (recall the financial crisis of 2008) and global cooperation. But Obama also “lamented the ‘cycles of conflict and suffering’ that seemingly crop back up every time humanity finally seems to be getting it right,” AP reported Tuesday from the UN General Assembly in New York City.
“Perhaps that’s our fate,” Obama said of those cycles that drive conflicts like Syria’s five-and-a-half year civil war. Or Afghanistan. Or around Nigeria, Somalia and Libya, even Yemen.
“Basic security and order” in the Middle East “has broken down,” he said. Yet the “world is by many measures less violent and more prosperous than ever before” while the “number of democracies in the world has nearly doubled in the last 25 years.”
Obama’s remarks came a short while after the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, lampooned world leaders for “feeding the war machine” by ignoring, facilitating, and funding the war in Syria. “But Ban blamed the Syrian government for the most deaths,” AP reported. “He said it was continuing to drop barrel bombs on neighborhoods and torture thousands of detainees.”
The Syrian delegation condemned his address, saying “that the U.N had failed to resolve any conflicts on his watch.”
Obama on Russia: “In a world that left the age of empire behind, we see Russia attempting to recover lost glory through force."
On isolationism: “The world is too small for us to simply be able to build a wall and prevent (extremism) from affecting our own societies."
On interventions and extremism: “If we are honest, we know that no external power is going to be able to force different religious communities or ethnic communities to co-exist for long…Until basic questions are answered about how communities co-exist, the embers of extremism will continue to burn. Countless human beings will suffer.”
On the bright side: “Governments on Tuesday pledged about $4.5 billion more than 2015 levels in contributions to the U.N. and humanitarian organizations to address the global refugee crisis at a summit hosted by Obama at the U.N.,” AP writes. “More than 65.3 million people are currently displaced worldwide.”
Obama and Iraq’s Abadi vowed a “rapid” offensive to retake Mosul from the Islamic State. How rapid? “Within the next few months,” Abadi said.
The White House is now considering arming the Kurds in Syria, “a major policy shift that could speed up the offensive against the terrorist group but also sharply escalate tensions between Turkey and the United States,” the New York Times reports this morning.
The impetus: “Mr. Obama has told aides that he wants an offensive well underway before he leaves office that is aimed at routing the Islamic State from Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital in northern Syria.”
The plan has reportedly made its way up the channels to CENTCOM, and it “calls for providing the Syrian Kurds with small arms and ammunition, and some other supplies, for specific missions, but no heavy weapons such as antitank or antiaircraft weapons.”
The U.S. military has been resupplying Syrian Arab fighters for the past two years, including some 350 airdrops. But directly arming the Syrian Kurds has reportedly not happened “out of deference to Turkey,” which has been battling a Kurdish insurgency for many years.
On that note, reports have surfaced this morning that Turkey’s rebels have recently lost nine villages to ISIS in northern Syria.
And airstrikes killed several medical workers and “insurgents” near Aleppo, Reuters reports. “The raid hit the town of Khan Touman southwest of Aleppo city, an area controlled by insurgents. The British-based [Syrian Observatory for Human rights] said the rebels killed were from the Islamist alliance Jaish al-Fatah.”
A clinic near Aleppo was also struck overnight, killing four doctors and critically wounding a nurse. AFP, on location, has more here.
Russia’s account of the Monday airstrike on a UN aid convoy that killed nearly a dozen is...evolving. First, Russian officials said rebels did it; then they said the convoy caught fire. Now they’re saying they had nothing to do with it, and have released drone footage they say shows a piece of rebel artillery moving alongside the convoy is likely to blame. The problem with that last one, as OSINT investigators at The Interpreter write, is that artillery unit “was miles away from the location that the UN convoy was bombed.”
Meantime, a Syrian MiG-23 warplane had either crashed or been shot down near Damascus, Reuters reports. ISIS says it’s behind the downing of the jet.
Show of force, part deux, over North Korea. “Two U.S. supersonic [B-1B Lancer] bombers flew over South Korea on Wednesday, with one of them landing at an air base 40 km (25 miles) south of the capital, the second such flight since North Korea's Sept. 9 nuclear test,” Reuters reports this morning off a U.S. Air Force video release.
With that flyover mission—which was “accompanied by seven South Korean and U.S. fighter jets”— the B-1B made its first landing on the Korean peninsula in 20 years, Stars and Stripes reports. “The bomber deployments are ‘just the first steps’ in further strengthening the alliance with South Korea, USFK said in a statement. It did not provide more details, and military officials did not immediately respond to a question about how long the bomber would stay.”
And next month, “South Korea and the United States will conduct a mock attack on a nuclear facility next month,” CNN reports this morning, with virtually no details.
Elsewhere in the region, Taiwan’s defense ministry wants Google to blur images showing their new facilities “on Itu Aba, Taipei's sole holding in the disputed South China Sea,” Reuters reports. “The images seen on Google Earth show four three-pronged structures sitting in a semi-circle just off the northwestern shoreline of Itu Aba, across from an upgraded airstrip and recently constructed port that can dock 3,000-ton frigates.” More here.
From Defense One
The Intelligence Picture Over Iraq and Syria Has Gotten Much Cloudier // Tech Editor Patrick Tucker: The leader of Air Combat Command says new players on the battlefield are complicating the air fight against ISIS.
How Mistakes and Mission Creep Are Shaping Libya's Future // The Atlantic's Steven A. Cook: Lost in the din of developments at the UN this week is a British report on the 'failed' intervention that has turned the country into an 'unmitigated disaster.'
To Counter Russian Disinformation, Look to Cold War Tactics // Robert Caruso, via the Council on Foreign Relations: For the next administration, identifying, countering and neutralizing Moscow's influence operations should be a priority.
Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson, Marcus Weisgerber and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1780, Gen. Benedict Arnold gave the British detailed drawings of West Point. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
AFA Day 2 Wrap. Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force’s new chief of staff, gave his first big address to a packed, standing-room-only room of blue uniforms and industry. It was more of a motivational speech, focusing on leadership qualities through personal stories from throughout his career, similar to the addresses former Air Force Chief of Staff Mark Welsh used to give at the annual Air Force Association-sponsored event. One chunk of news, he talked about revamping the service’s squadron structure. Our friends at Air Force Times have more on that here.
At a press conference after the speech, Goldfein became the latest chief to weigh in on the decade-long debate about the proper aircraft for the combat search-and-rescue mission. A mix of HH-60 Black Hawks, V-22s Ospreys, or even ground troops might be the answer. Why does Goldfein care so much? Because he was rescued by a CSAR team when his F-16 was shot down over Serbia in 1999. Global Business Editor Marcus Weisgerber, who has written extensively about the Black Hawk-versus-Osprey debate for more than a decade, has that story here.
Fixing grounded F-35s will take a few months, and a few holes in wings. The Air Force’s planned repairs for the crumbling insulation that has grounded dozens of Joint Strike Fighters involves cutting holes in their wings to reach the offending material. A test run on a ground aircraft is planned, and the work is expected to take until October or November.
In the meantime, service officials are starting to look at ideas for the F-35’s successor. Defense One’s Caroline Houck has more on current and future fighters, here.
Today’s big speakers at the final day of AFA: Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work this morning and most of the Air Force’s four-star generals on one panel this afternoon. Watch live here.
An investigation into the NYC/NJ bomber suspect’s past is quite revealing, officials say. The findings reveal that Ahmad Khan Rahami “bought bomb ingredients on eBay and recorded a mirthful video of himself igniting a blast in a backyard. In a handwritten journal, he warned that bombs would resound in the streets and prayed he'd be martyred rather than caught,” AP reports after getting a look at federal court complaints filed Tuesday.
Also found in a journal on Rahami: “laudatory references to Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki — the American-born Muslim cleric who was killed in a 2011 drone strike and whose preaching has inspired other acts of violence — and Nidal Hasan, the former Army officer who went on a deadly shooting rampage in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, the complaints said.”
The investigation into Rahami’s alleged travels to Afghanistan and Pakistan is still in progress, as well as authorities attempting to speak with Rahami’s wife, Asia Bibi Rahami, believed to be a Pakistani national. CNN rolls up the known-knowns on her, here.
McMullin’s “middle ground” solution for the Middle East sounds very familiar, U.S. News’ Paul Shinkman reports on the 10-year undercover CIA veteran and independent presidential candidate and #NeverTrump-er, Evan McMullin.
His plan: “support allied ground forces through a limited number of American special operations commandos and intense airstrikes, embolden allies to conduct the bulk of other ground operations, and push for regime change in Syria.”
Writes Shinkman: “If that sounds like the crux of President Barack Obama's current strategy, that's because it is.”
McMullin’s respose: “I do believe that most of the tenets are correct... But, I question [Obama’s] commitment and follow-through."
McMullin on American counterterrorism operations—and how Donald Trump seemingly disrupts that: “The reality is, we haven't had a single [counterterror] success that hasn't in some way been facilitated by Muslims – Muslim-Americans or Muslims overseas. The reality is we depend on Muslims in order to be effective in the war on terror, and Donald Trump is attacking our most valuable partnership in that effort, thereby making us weaker, thereby doing ISIS' work for it in the U.S."
But as to what to do with Assad, he’s far less certain. Worth the click, here.
In case you’d forgotten: Iran would like to remind you of its newest weapon, the Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system, which it just showed off (again) in a parade at “the port of Bandar Abbas on the Gulf” where it also boasted of some 500 navy vessels, “as well as submarines and helicopters.”
For the record, Reuters writes that “U.S. officials say there have been more than 30 close encounters between U.S. and Iranian vessels in the Gulf so far this year, over twice as many as in the same period of 2015.”
Other weapons included “the Qadr H missile, which has a range of 2,000 km,” and “the new long-range ‘Zolfaqar’ ballistic missile,” with "a cluster warhead capable of hitting targets spread over the ground,” state media Tasnim reported.
And some things never change: “A banner on the side of a truck carrying the new missile bore a threat to Iran's arch-foe Israel: ‘If the leaders of the Zionist regime make a mistake then the Islamic Republic will turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust.’”
Playing catch-up on Iran’s missile capability? Watch this excellent and informative June 2015 video from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Or read CSIS’ Anthony Cordesman’s take on Tehran’s arsenal, from December, here.
Lastly today: A May 2015 report about “large quantities of fertilizer going through the border into Syria” from the NYTs has reportedly helped make the Middle East a little bit safer from ISIS, the paper proudly proclaimed on Monday. After photographs of the transit of ammonium nitrate fertilizer—an explosive precursor—emerged, Turkish officials reportedly closed the border crossing that served as a gateway for supply routes to ISIS in Syria. Catch the story here.