Counter-siege in Aleppo; ISIS gathers human shields in Mosul; Marines want radio-hunting mini-missiles; Refueling F-35s from V-22; and a bit more...
ISIS is rounding up “tens of thousands” of Iraqi civilians for use as human shields inside the city of Mosul, the UN says. What’s worse, “Many of those who refused to comply were shot on the spot, and even among those who did comply, many of them — including 190 former ISF officers and 42 other civilians — were shot dead,” spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani of the United Nations’ human rights office said this morning in Geneva. AP: “The officers, who had been brought from a district south of the city, were killed at a military base in Mosul while the civilians were shot in the Hamam al-Alil district for refusing to join IS.” More on that, here.
The U.S. military says Iraq’s troops have clawed back 40 villages in the vicinity of Mosul, AP reports this morning, bucking previous figures from Iraqi army officials which put that number closer to 90 on Tuesday.
Baghdad’s new brother to their elite Counterterrorism Police, the Rapid Response Division (also trained by U.S. special forces), “is now at the forefront of the southern advance on Mosul,” AFP reports from Q-West, Iraq. “Backed by artillery and trained in a programme influenced by American special forces, the interior ministry unit has played a major role in other battles against the Islamic State (IS) group, including in Fallujah. It is the culmination of a major transformation for the force, which was originally made up of ‘small groups from the provinces’ tasked with arresting criminals and fighting terrorism,” its commander, Maj. Gen. Thamer Mohammed Ismail, told AFP. “Rapid Response is now armed with new Croatian assault rifles, advances in matte green armoured Humvees mounted with machineguns, and is backed by its own artillery and rocket units.” More on the unit here.
Watch some hairy combat footage from embedding with the Counterterrorism Police: BBC’s Ayman Oghanna “captured the moment when Iraqi Special Forces came under fire from so-called Islamic State” as they moved on Mosul. Oghanna also captured some incredible scenes of civilians greeting Iraqi soldiers. Things start getting messy at about the 0:54 mark; see for yourself here.
Syrian rebels and al-Qaeda-linked groups in eastern Aleppo have launched a new offensive to break the Assad regime’s siege, Reuters reports. “The assault, employing heavy shelling and suicide car bombs, was mainly focused on the city's western edge by rebels based outside Aleppo. It included Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, a former affiliate of al Qaeda previously known as the Nusra Front, and groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner.”
The offensive kicked off when it did thanks to heavy clouds, providing relative cover from air strikes, the Middle East Institute’s Charles Lister says. Lister goes on to provide a list of at least 20 rebel groups involved in an operation he says has been in the works for at least six weeks.
Reuters: “Heavy rebel bombardment, with more than 150 rockets and shells, struck southwestern districts… Photographs showed insurgents approaching Aleppo in tanks, armored vehicles, bulldozers, make-shift mine sweepers, pick-up trucks and on motorcycles, and showed a large column of smoke rising in the distance after an explosion.”
The offensive has already claimed the lives of more than 15 civilians and wounded another 100 in government-held western Aleppo, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Not to be left out, ISIS fighters also clashed “with the Syrian army on Friday at a government-held airbase 37km (23 miles) east of Aleppo, next to territory the jihadist group already controls, the Observatory reported.”
As well, “Grad rockets were launched at Aleppo's Nairab air base before the assault began said Zakaria Malahifji, head of the political office of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group, adding that it was going to be ‘a big battle.’” More on that front, here.
From Defense One
Lisa Monaco is speaking at the 2016 Defense One Summit; you should come. The White House’s homeland security advisor will share the agenda with Army Secretary Eric Fanning, USAF Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, and many other national-security leaders on Thurs., Nov. 17, in Washington, D.C. Register here.
The Marines Want Mini-Missiles That Hunt for Specific Radio Signals // Tech Editor Patrick Tucker: Signals-intelligence collection and drones are coming together in new packages for forward-deployed troops.
Global Business Brief: October 27 // Marcus Weisgerber: What a redacted protest decision says about the future; Pentagon competition declines; Bonjour, Silicon Valley.
Welcome to Friday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1882, Lt. Cmdr. French E. Chadwick was ordered to London as the first naval attaché. (Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
A nuclear vote at the UN: The resolution to begin talks on a new nuclear weapons ban passed a committee by a vote of 123 to 38 (with 38 abstentions). But the idea, now headed for a full General Assembly vote in December, seems destined for a quick death: not one member of the UN Security Council supported it, Agence France-Presse reported.
Among the “no” votes: Britain, France, Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea. China, India and Pakistan abstained. The Guardian has their take, here. Or check out the resolution for yourself, here.
Security review at Booz Allen Hamilton. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been hired “to conduct a review of the firm’s security processes after one of its employees was charged with stealing huge amounts of classified data from the National Security Agency,” the Washington Post reports.
For a quick review of what’s at stake: “In a complaint that was unsealed this month, Harold T. Martin was charged in what is alleged to be one of the largest thefts of classified material in U.S. history…Prosecutors have said that Martin took at least 50 terabytes of digital data, or as much as 500 million pages of information. He also had six boxes of files, many of which were left open in his house or car, prosecutors said.”
According to a federal legal filing (PDF), Martin’s homeward haul included “numerous names of intelligence officers of the United States. These officers operate under cover outside the United States,” risking “exposure of American intelligence operations,” Politico reported Thursday. Martin’s defense lawyer says he is a hoarder whose “behavior escalated into a compulsion and, eventually, a form of mental illness.” More here.
Two pilots from the east African nation of Eritrea reportedly defected—with their jets—to Ethiopia, AP reported Thursday: “The two pilots flew their small-sized fighter jets to Mekelle on Wednesday morning,” Nasredin Ahmed Ali, spokesman for the Ethiopia-based Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization, told The Associated Press. The spokesman identified the pilots as Afeworki Fisehaye and Mebrahtu Tesfamariam and described them as being very experienced with Eritrea’s air force. He said Ethiopian fighter jets accompanied them upon their entry into the country’s air space.”
For the record: Something similar occurred four years ago when two Eritrean pilots flew their jet to Saudi Arabia to defect. Their home nation then sent a female pilot to Jizan, Saudi Arabia, to recover the plane—but she defected, too. And here’s Task & Purpose from June 2015 with a little extra info on why “Eritrea Is The Worst Place In The World To Serve In The Military.”
A British company was awarded a contract to help the V-22 Osprey refuel F-35s, DoDBuzz writes. Cobham “announced Tuesday it had been awarded a contract from the Bell-Boeing Joint Project Office to develop a ‘roll-on/roll-off’ palletized refueling system, know as the V-22 Aerial Refueling System, or VARS. VARS will be based on Cobham’s existing FR-300 hose drum unit, used by the KC-130 for in-air refueling of other aircraft. With the system, according to a news release, the Osprey can conduct mid-air refuelings of the F-35 and the F/A-18 Hornet, from land or from off an aircraft carrier.” More here.
“Total dysfunction preceded Marines’ deadliest crash this year,” Marine Corps Times’ Jeff Schogol reported Thursday after officials investigated a January 14 incident when two of its CH-53 Super Stallions crashed off the coast of Hawaii. “The immediate cause of the mid-air collision between the two helicopters with Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463 was ‘pilot error,’ an official said, in the crash that took the lives of all 12 Marines aboard both aircraft.”
But “the underlying causes of the crash reveal the squadron suffered from severe readiness problems,” including the fact that “the squadron did not have enough helicopters that could fly; crews were not getting enough flying hours; morale was low and crews were battling fatigue.” More here.
A former member of the Virginia National Guard pled guilty Thursday to “charges of attempting to provide material support” to ISIS, the Justice Department announced. What’s notable about this indictment? It involves actual contact with a member of ISIS, a trip to Nigeria to meet an ISIS “facilitator,” as well as inspiration from U.S.-born (and now deceased) cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
The accused, 27-year-old Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, “claimed he knew how to shoot guns and praised the gunman who killed five U.S. military members in a terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July 2015. Jalloh also stated that he had been thinking about conducting an attack similar to the November 2009, attack at Ft. Hood, Texas, which killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.” More here.
Duterte talked to God, and God said, “Stop swearing so much.” That’s Rody D’s side of the story, according to Philippine ABS-CBN news. Watch him explain, here.
Meantime, Duturte’s troops just killed Samsudin Dimaukom, the mayor of a small town, when just this morning “he and nine other men were shot dead at a highway police checkpoint, in what the police described as an antidrug operation,” The New York Times reports from Manila. “According to the police, a checkpoint was set up along his expected route in the town of Makilala, about 70 miles east of Datu Saudi-Ampatuan by road. The mayor and his party approached around 4 a.m…. Photographs taken at the scene showed various weapons and what appeared to be sachets of shabu near an S.U.V. with bullet holes in the front windshield. No police officers were harmed, the police said.” More here.
And now for something completely different: An American abroad just rediscovered an old WWI field typewriter—as well as a German cipher machine—amid an amazing trove in Spain yesterday. It’s a pretty incredible story, so we’ll let Marcin Wichary tell the tale, here.