‘Final rehearsal’ for Mosul; This week in Russian propaganda; Remote-controlled tanks, on the horizon; swarm attack on ex-USN ship off Yemen; and just a bit more...
The Mosul offensive’s “final rehearsal” is under way almost exactly a week after U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the “final request” of American trainers and advisors needed to retake Iraq’s second-largest city from the Islamic State group. Stars and Stripes’ Tara Copp: “Canadian Brig. Gen. Dave Anderson, the coalition’s director of training for Operation Inherent Resolve, said 12 Iraqi brigades—each made of 800 to 1,600 troops—will be used in the upcoming battle for Mosul. Each brigade will have completed U.S.- and coalition-provided training at one of five sites across Iraq.”
Bulldozers, designed for war: “In addition to the training, which has focused on counter-explosives training and conducting building searches and other skills, the Iraqi forces have received 380 Humvees and 60 bulldozers, with upgraded armor.” Why bulldozers? “To build berms and dispose of bombs.”
While the offensive unfolds, Iraq will also have to shift its priorities to “developing the police force that will be needed to hold Mosul once the Islamic State group is driven out of the city,” which officials estimate will require between 30,000 and 45,000 police. More from Stripes, here.
It was a chilly night in Erbil, Iraq—a subtle reminder of what’s to come for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people expected to flee the city during the offensive, “demand[ing] winter support that agencies just don't have,” warned Patrick Osgood, Kurdistan bureau chief for Iraq Oil Report.
Baghdad wants Turkey’s troops out of Iraq before the Mosul offensive gets too hectic to manage—or worse, sparks a “regional war.”
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi: “We have asked the Turkish side more than once not to intervene in Iraqi matters and I fear the Turkish adventure could turn into a regional war,” said the PM on state TV Wednesday.
“Most of [Turkey’s] troops are at a base in Bashiqa, north of Mosul, where they are helping to train Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and Sunni fighters,” Reuters writes.
The problem: “Turkey says its military is in Iraq at the invitation of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government, with which Ankara maintains solid ties.” More here.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wants to escalate in Syria now, so he offered this three-point plan: “Ground the regime’s air force, create safe zones for Syrian civilians, and arm the opposition,” he wrote in a Wednesday op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. “This will undoubtedly entail greater costs. But the alternative is far from cost-free: It is the continuation, for years and years, of terror, tragedy, slaughter, refugees, and a war in the heart of the Middle East that will continue to threaten the U.S. and destabilize the world,” he writes.
For what it’s worth, here’s a 2013 map, from Mother Jones, of all the countries John McCain has wanted to attack.
On plans for a U.S.-implemented no-fly zone in Syria, White House Press Secretary John Earnest explained the White House’s reluctance by tossing the ball to retired four-star, Gen. Martin Dempsey. Why Dempsey? He wrote then-Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, D-Mich., back in July 2013, offering “an unclassified assessment of options for the potential use of U.S. military force in the Syrian conflict.” The skinny on all that: There’s no way around putting thousands more American troops on the ground, not just in Syria, and the costs would soar to at least a billion dollars per month. Find his letter, here.
Where do American voters stand on intervention and escalation in Syria? Here are some quick takeaways from an August poll conducted by the Chicago Council: Voters like airstrikes (72 percent approve); just over half want a no-fly zone (52 percent); and 57 percent approve of sending SOF in to do the work, while only 42 percent approve of sending combat troops into Syria.
Tweeted Defense One’s Kevin Baron: “Dear America, special operations forces ARE combat troops.”
Lull coming to Aleppo? Syrian state TV announced Wednesday it will reduce air raids and shelling on Aleppo out “humanitarian” considerations. Fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, the chief of the White Helmets in Syria, Raed al-Saleh, has endured so many airstrikes from Syrian and Russian jets that he believes pretty strongly he can tell the difference in the sound of an incoming MiG-29 and an Su-24 (Moscow’s sort-of equivalent of the A-10). He told The Guardian he always wishes for the MiG, since “It’s the Su-24s that carry the cluster bombs.”
Speaking of clusterbombs in Syria—as well as incendiaries, barrel bombs and bunker busters—“Here’s 1,500 words on the kinds of weapons Russia dropped on Aleppo, and what if any treaties govern them,” from Popular Science’s Kelsey Atherton.
Here’s one more reason not to trust Russian media, pinpointed by Kathleen Hicks of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Saving you the click: Russian state media says rebels in Aleppo are about to use chemical weapons and blame their use on Russia.
Elsewhere in crazy Russian news, Moscow has reportedly told its citizens to prepare for nuclear war with the West.
And a Russian TV weatherman said if a nuke detonates over Nebraska, all American communications would be fried. “A weatherman,” The Daily Beast’s Michael Weiss repeated.
Before we leave the world of spin, the Russian Embassy to the U.S. has a message for Americans, and it’s hardly subtle.
From Defense One
Tank Maker Teams Up With Remote-Control Car Company // Tech Editor Patrick Tucker: General Dynamics and Kairos look to bridge the gap from here to autonomy.
Pentagon Fronts Bomb Buys For Allies Fighting ISIS // Global Business Editor Marcus Weisgerber: A special budget account is being used to boost weapons production ahead of allies’ formal orders.
As Anti-Corruption Efforts Expand Globally, the Defense Sector Remains an Outlier // Transparency International’s Hilary Hurd: A recent anti-corruption summit produced hundreds of commitments, exactly eight of which concerned defense.
Here’s How Countries Like China, Russia Control Online Dissent // Nikhil Sonnad and Keith Collins, via Quartz: Look at the physical systems that make up internet infrastructure, and you find a network that is a lot more centralized than you might think.
The CIA Says It Can Predict Social Unrest as Early as 3 to 5 Days Out // NextGov’s Frank Konkel: The reason: a dramatic improvement in analytics, cloud computing and “deep learning.”
US Military Spending Has Declined, But It Still Dwarfs All Other Nations’ // Quartz Staff: It’s easy to see why a steady decline of military spending might alarm many Americans. But a bit of perspective is in order.
Mike Pence Embraces Foreign Policy That GOP Voters Left Behind // The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart: By sidestepping Trump’s messages on foreign policy and trade in Tuesday’s debate, the vice-presidential nominee ignored the choices GOP voters made in their primaries.
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Happy birthday, Naval War College, founded on this day in 1884. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
I got a name: U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Adam S. Thomas, 31, of Takoma Park, Md., from the 10th Special Forces Group’s 2nd Battalion, based out of Fort Carson, Colo. Thomas died Tuesday in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province when he stepped on an IED. The Denver Post shares this remembrance of the decorated Green Beret who joined the Army in April 2008, here.
One of your D Brief-ers participated in an awful lot of dignified transfers of special operations troops from Afghanistan some five years ago, bookended by another handful of remembrance ceremonies back stateside. For this reason, we share Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler’s late-’60s tune, “Ballad of the Green Berets,” for your remembrance today.
Azerbaijan is said to be in talks with Tel Aviv to buy the Iron Dome. The likely reason: to counter Armenia’s new Russian-made Iskander missiles. More from Times of Israel, here.
India wants to rush a Predator Guardian drone deal before Obama leaves office, “one of several defence and nuclear projects the two sides are pursuing in the final months of the Obama administration,” Reuters reported Wednesday.
Hey, aviation fans: “Someone is selling a thrust reverser on Craigslist,” WSJ and Flightglobal alum Jon Ostrower found Wednesday. Why on Craigslist? “Because Seattle,” Ostrower says.
How not to fight an insurgency: with brutality and vengeance. And Nigeria’s military is learning it the hard way, a recent study indicates. The Washington Post has more, here.
How not to fight an insurgency, part 2: ditch your training while in America to disappear stateside. That’s what’s happened to 44 Afghan military recruits—out of some 2,200, for the record—Reuters reports this morning, writing that “the incidents raise questions about security and screening procedures for the [training] programs… While other foreign troops on U.S. military training visits have sometimes run away, a U.S. defense official said that the frequency of Afghan troops going missing was concerning and ‘out of the ordinary.’” That, here.
Lastly today: Swarm attack grounds Swift off the coast of Yemen. If you wondered what a largely aluminum transport ship looks like after a swarm attack on Saturday by insurgents on boats armed with RPGs and small arms, look no further than the UAE-rented HSV-2 Swift, formerly a U.S. Navy testing vessel turned into a cargo ship for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
The UAE called the attack on Swift an act of terrorism. BBC has more here.
The U.S. response: guided-missile destroyers USS Nitze (DDG-94), USS Mason (DDG-87) and the afloat forward staging base USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) are now in the area “off Yemen near the Bab Al Mandeb strait that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden,” U.S. Naval Institute’s Sam LaGrone wrote Tuesday after Fox News got the jump on the story.