Evacuations resume in Aleppo; China to return USNS drone; A SecArmy pick; Mapping Trump’s natsec conflicts-of-interest; And a bit more.

Evacuations are underway again in Aleppo, Reuters reports, and already there have been 20,000 moved from the city so far, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced this morning on Twitter. “Families had spent hours waiting in below-freezing temperatures, sheltering from the rain in bombed-out apartment blocks and waiting desperately for news on a new wave of departures,” Agence France-Presse reports on location.

Russia had held up the latest evacuation plan over a provision that required UN observers “monitors to oversee the protection of civilians,” but eventually consented after four hours of negotiations with UN officials on Sunday, AFP writes.

On Sunday, rebels—believed to be from Jabhat al-Nusra and Liwa Shuhada—set fire to three buses “sent to bring people out of the two Shiite-majority villages,” killing a driver in the process, and throwing the situation into greater uncertainty before Monday’s plan finally began moving forward once more.

Russian, Iranian and Turkish foreign ministers will meet in Moscow on Tuesday to talk about next steps in Syria. "It is not a miracle meeting, but will give all sides a chance to listen to each other," a Turkish official told Reuters.

The word from Russia: “We hope to speak in detail and concrete terms with those who can really bring about an improvement in the situation on the ground, while our Western partners are busier with rhetoric and propaganda and aren’t influencing those who listen to them,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying in state-run RIA news.  

Elsewhere in Syria, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are taking casualties, but they’re still rolling in their advance toward Raqqa. "The latest advances in the countryside about 50 km (30 miles) west and northwest of Raqqa follow an earlier phase of SDF gains on another front about 30 km north of the city. Three SDF soldiers were killed fighting Islamic State after the capture of five villages," Reuters reports.

And Turkey’s push to clear ISIS from the northern Syrian town of al-Bab is still plodding along, with 11 militants killed on Sunday along with one Turkish soldier from fighting around the city, Turkish officials said this morning. More here.

Before we leave Turkey, its purge of those suspected of being involved in the July coup attempt total one-third of its military. More here.  

Trump picks an Army Secretary. It’s Vincent Viola, a former Ranger-turned-Wall Street billionaire. “A graduate of West Point and New York Law School, Viola helped fund the creation of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point in 2003,” Reuters reports. And here’s the early-Monday statement from the Trump camp, here.

Will Trump’s foreign policy serve America’s interests or his own? The president-elect says he’s going to keep his global business empire. Caroline Houck maps his known projects and for-profit endeavors and takes a look through a national-security lens. Maps, lists, and analysis, here.

Beijing says it’ll give back that U.S. research drone it snagged from the waters of the South China Sea late last week. Just don’t call it a “theft,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

Trump, of course, raised the temperature with a pair of tweets, saying first that China had “rip[ped] it from the water” and later saying “let them keep it!”

This led the New York Times to mull the difference between America’s next president and China’s leader Xi Jinping: “‘The situation could become quite combustible,’ said Jessica Chen Weiss, an associate professor at Cornell University who studies Chinese foreign policy.” More, here.

While we’re mulling: What will happen when James Mattis and John Kelly work with Donald Trump and Mike Flynn? Some basic conflicts are already baked in, reports U.S. News’ Paul Shinkman. Read on, here.

The Trump transition team has toned down its skepticism of Russian hacking, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Tillerson’s Bahamas connection to Moscow. Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, “Rex Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – became a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, in 1998...Though there is nothing untoward about this directorship, it has not been reported before and is likely to raise fresh questions over Tillerson’s relationship with Russia ahead of a potentially stormy confirmation hearing by the US senate foreign relations committee.” The Guardian has more, here.

From Defense One

Tracking Trump’s National-Security Conflicts of Interest // Caroline Houck: A global business empire raises the question: will the next president's foreign policy serve America’s interests or his own? Maps and lists of Trump’s various for-profit endeavors around the world.

Global Conflicts to Watch in 2017 // The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman: The greatest unknown for U.S. interests in the world might be the United States itself.

How to Make Donald Trump’s Phone Safe // National Journal’s George E. Condon Jr. The man who led the effort to let President Obama keep his BlackBerry says the best solution for Trump might be multiple devices.

Welcome to the Dec. 19 edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1777, the Continental Army settles into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pa. (Enjoy the D Brief? Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)

The U.S. Navy has grounded its F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets and E/A-18G Growlers after an undisclosed incident at Washington’s Naval Air Station Whidbey Island on Friday, Navy Times reported. Navy officials called the incident an “on-deck emergency” involving a pilot and an electronic warfare officer, both of whom were taken to the hospital with injuries. “The ground emergency involved the jet’s canopy, and an investigation is underway to determine the cause of the incident.” More here.

The Navy wants a lot more ships—355, up from 308, per the previous assessment in 2012—according to “the results of a much-awaited internal review of fleet size known as a ‘Force Structure Assessment,’” retired Naval officer Bryan McGrath writes in War on the Rocks.

One key takeaway: While “the requirement for attack submarines was 48, the number in the fleet is headed downward to 41 as Reagan-era submarines built at a clip of three per year are replaced by Virginia-class hulls built at two per year. Clearly, the nuclear industrial base is in for a boost. For the 66 attack submarines called for in this assessment to be realized, three per year should be constructed, even as the Navy replaces its aging Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines.”

McGrath’s last word: “This 355-ship Navy will be considerably more expensive to acquire, train, man, and equip than the current 273 ship fleet, and given the readiness hole the Navy is already in, the expense of this plan could amount to an additional $40 billion annually (in 2016 dollars).” Worth the click, here.

U.S. Marines launched “a full-scale amphibious landing exercise” in the Horn of Africa, “off the coast of Djibouti last week in the Gulf of Aden,” Marine Corps Times reports. “The month-long training event—dubbed ‘Alligator Dagger’—puts the entire 2,400-strong air-ground task force [of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit] to work, honing its ability to quickly respond to unfolding crises” via “the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group — the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, the dock landing ship Comstock and amphibious transport dock Somerset — which entered the Navy's 5th Fleet area of operations on Nov. 30.”

Just a few of the concerns plaguing the region around the Horn: “Sunni jihadist groups, failed states, the on-going civil war in Yemen with an Iran-backed Houthi insurgency, piracy, migration and weapons flows.” Story, here.

Not far from the Horn, an ISIS suicide bomber—believed to have been hiding a bomb in a bandaged cast on his leg—killed 50 more people in the Yemeni port city of Aden on Sunday just days after a previous bomber from the group killed 52, the Washington Post reports.

What happened: “Hundreds of soldiers and policemen, he said, had arrived about 5 a.m. to line up to collect their salaries in front of the residence of a special forces commander, about 500 feet from the Solaban military base, the site of last week’s bombing. About 1,200 were let in after guards frisked them for weapons, and the rest were told to return Monday. But many soldiers and police officers remained outside, refusing to disperse in the hopes they would get paid.”

Three hours later, the bomber—dressed in a traffic police uniform—walked up with the help of crutches and detonated. More on Sunday’s attack, here.  

Lastly today, a little holiday reading guide from the folks at Military Times. Their teaser: “Two titles note the duration of two wars. In two other books, blind combat veterans show spunk. Other subjects include moral injury, maps, majors, Muslims and married caregivers. And there’s fine fiction about Nashville and West Point.”

Lots to dig into, so ask Santa for more time to read this holiday and check out the list for yourself, here.