Mosul’s new phase; McMaster to the Situation Room; WH confuses Europe; Mattis says no to Iraqi oil theft; Gorka, in context; Drone suicide boat in Yemen; And a bit more.
McMaster to the White House. The president will hold a National Security Council briefing in the Situation Room today with his new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster. With the 3-star general in place, “President Donald Trump added one of the most talented officers the U.S. Army has ever produced to a key post,” says Andrew Exum, former Defense Department official under Obama and retired Army Ranger. “That sounds like hyperbole but isn’t,” he says.
Trump’s pick was widely praised over the weekend, a sentiment Exum summed up fairly well, calling it “unambiguously good news. The United States, and the world, are safer for his decision.”
Why? Exum: “Like Ben Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression brought in to lead the Federal Reserve immediately prior to the Great Recession, McMaster comes to his job having carefully studied and criticized the national-security decision-making process for which he will now be responsible.”
However, Exum cautions, “This job is going to drive him crazy, because he does not suffer fools gladly. Unless he has been given some assurances about both staffing and process, he will struggle in a competition to influence the president—to be the last man in the room when the president makes a key decision.” Read the rest of his short take, here.
NPR veteran war and Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman also discussed what McMaster brings to job at length, and you can listen here.
McMaster is known as much for his intellect as for his blunt opinions, which some thought may have slowed his rise to higher ranks a general. But his experience as a tank commander in the Gulf War’s Battle of 73 Easting brings a different focus to the Situation Room than Trump’s first advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported McMaster back in May described how the Pentagon is preparing for a tank war with Russia. Find that, here.
So, how could McMaster change—or not change—the way the U.S. goes to war? “The most important thing to know about McMaster is that he’s not a fan of committing troops to action if they, or their allies, can’t hold the territory they seize,” writes Tucker, who poured over McMaster’s previous remarks to find a man “skeptical of surgical special operations raids and drone strikes absent a realistic plan to change political realities on the ground.”
McMaster’s bottom line: “It’s very difficult to achieve sustainable political outcomes from standoff range,” he said. So—as Tucker writes—you go big or you don’t go. Read his McMaster profile, here.
Conflicting White House promises to Europe. Vice President Mike Pence told European officials “The United States’ commitment to the European Union is steadfast and enduring,” the Washington Post reported from Brussels on Monday.
But Reuters reports this morning, “In the week before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Brussels...White House chief strategist Steve Bannon met with a German diplomat and delivered a different message,” according to three people reportedly briefed on the meeting. “Bannon, these people said, signalled to Germany's ambassador to Washington that he viewed the EU as a flawed construct and favoured conducting relations with Europe on a bilateral basis.”
White House reax? An official “confirmed the meeting had taken place but said the account provided to Reuters was inaccurate. ‘They only spoke for about three minutes and it was just a quick hello,’ the official said.” Read the rest of that one, here.
Who is the real Sebastian Gorka? For one thing, he’s a big fan of “Trump’s opening shot in a high-stakes civilizational war” with the president’s deliberate choice to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” writes WaPo’s Greg Jaffe. “For Gorka and his allies, the words are more than just a description of the enemy. They signal a radical break with the approach that Republicans and Democrats have taken over the past 16 years to counterterrorism and the Muslim world.”
The crux of Gorka’s position: “For him, the terrorism problem has nothing to do with repression, alienation, torture, tribalism, poverty, or America’s foreign policy blunders and a messy and complex Middle East...For him, the terror threat is rooted in Islam and 'martial' parts of the Koran that he says predispose some Muslims to acts of terror."
On the flip side, writes Jaffe, "Most counterterrorism experts dismiss Gorka’s ideas as a dangerous oversimplification that could alienate Muslim allies and boost support for terrorist groups...Religious scholars are equally withering."
But "Gorka has heard all of those criticisms before and fought against them — often ferociously." This #LongRead is worth your time, and you can find it in full, here.
Elsewhere in White House cabinet news, Defense Secretary James Mattis directly countered President Trump’s claim the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil long ago and it may one day do so down the road.
“We're not in Iraq to seize anybody's oil,” Mattis said at a stop in Abu Dhabi during travels to Baghdad. You can read a bit more from The New York Times, here—or via The Wall Street Journal, here.
Mattis has returned to Washington from his weeklong trip, but was in Iraq just as the Mosul offensive’s next phase began. In it, “about 450 U.S. special forces and spotters have traveled with the Iraqis to direct airstrikes against Islamic State positions and advise Iraqi ground commanders on how best to advance on the battlefield as they move to free west Mosul,” the Los Angeles Times reported Monday from Baghdad. "It is true that we are operating closer and deeper into Iraqi formations," Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria said. "We adjusted our posture during the east Mosul fight, and we embedded advisors a bit farther down into the formation." More on that, here.
Iraqi troops have advanced to the edge of the city’s airport, Reuters reports on location: “Federal police and elite interior ministry units known as Rapid Response are leading the charge toward the airport on the southern outskirts of Mosul and plan to turn it into a close support base for the push into western Mosul, commanders have said...Elite Counter-Terrorism Service units headed to frontlines around the western side of Mosul, a city divided in two by the Tigris River. Helicopters were seen strafing the Albu Saif hill during the day to clear it of snipers, while machinegun fire and rocket propelled grenades could be heard. The advancing forces also disabled a car bomb, used by militants to obstruct attacking forces. The Iraqi forces have been advancing so far in sparsely populated areas and there were no families seen escaping. The fighting will get tougher as they get nearer to the city itself and the risk greater for civilians.” More here.
From Defense One
EXCLUSIVE: US Air Force 'Urgently' Needs Funds By April // Air Force Acting Secretary Lisa Disbrow and Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein, in an op-ed: Pass a bill, top leaders tell Congress, warning another delay would 'reverse' badly needed expansions, upgrades, and readiness needed to fight the ISIS War.
Can a 'Comparable' Super Hornet Steal Orders from the F-35C? // Ben Watson and Marcus Weisgerber: Two aircraft are on President Trump's radar. Here's how the F/A-18 is different, and why it matters to more than just power players in Washington.
The Man who Led the Syrian Train-and-Equip Effort Wants A Cultural Translation App // Patrick Tucker: Lt. Gen. Mike Nagata says the complex, delicate missions of today and tomorrow need a better way to bring fused intelligence to operators.
We're Ignoring the Best Bad Option for Syria // Alexander Decina of the Council on Foreign Relations: A frozen conflict would give the country space to begin rebuilding.
What America's Last Red Scare Can Tell Us About Trump and Russia // Uri Friedman via The Atlantic: 'Quite often the facts get lost in the hysteria,' one historian says.
Europe Contemplates Life without NATO // Paul Hockenos via The Atlantic: Germany is leading a sweeping, on-the-fly rethink of how the European Union might best fend for itself.
Donald Trump Will Defeat ISIS // Andrew Exum via The Atlantic: And it will be mostly due to the work of his predecessor.
US Military Is Looking to Add AI to Its Cyber Defense // Mohana Ravindranath via NextGov: The Pentagon's outgoing chief information officer said the Pentagon has already looked into IBM's Watson platform.
What Former NSA Chief Keith Alexander Thinks of Trump's Cyber Stance // Joseph Marks via NextGov: The former NSA director hopes Trump will allow government to more actively defend industry from cyberattacks.
Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Kevin Baron. On this day in 1972, President Nixon began his historic trip to Beijing to normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China. (Got a tip? Let us know by clicking this link to email us: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.)
Live-tweeting the Battle of Mosul, BBC’s Quentin Sommerville is sharing some gorgeous, poignant, and graphic realtime photos and videos. The correspondent describes the peace and horrors of war, 140 characters or less at a time. “It's smells of corpses. To the left of the frame the hand of a dead boy, an IS fighter,” he wrote Tuesday. “Here an Islamic State permission slip for leave. He didn't make it. Now smeared with his blood.” And, “Just birdsong here now. I'd almost call it peaceful. But we have to move on, it's not safe,” he tweets, with a picture of a tranquil waterscape. Iraqi and coalition forces took their time to secure the east over many months. Now they’ve headed into the west, where ISIS is surrounded. Once again they are meeting resistance, killing ISIS holdouts, and painstakingly defusing or detonating IEDs everywhere. Coalition forces say they’ve taken Abu Saif, south of the Mosul airport. More, here.
CIA’s rebels in Syria have been left hanging without any military aid “since they came under major Islamist attack last month, rebel sources said, raising doubts about foreign support key to their war against President Bashar al-Assad,” Reuters reports.
So, what’s going on? “The halt in assistance, which has included salaries, training, ammunition and in some cases guided anti-tank missiles, is a response to jihadist attacks and has nothing to do with U.S. President Donald Trump replacing Barack Obama in January, two U.S. officials familiar with the CIA-led program said. The freeze reflects the troubles facing Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels in the almost in the almost six-year-old revolt against Assad, who now appears militarily unassailable in his core western region largely thanks to direct intervention on his side by Russia and Iran.”
And about those rebel-on-rebel attacks: “Last month's militant assault on the FSA groups was launched by a group formerly known as the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's official affiliate in the war until last year when it formally cut ties and renamed itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The jihadist onslaught led several FSA groups to merge with the powerful Islamist faction Ahrar al-Sham, widely believed to be backed by Assad's foreign adversaries in the region. That will likely give pause to foreign donors: Ahrar al-Sham is set apart from the FSA factions by a strongly Sunni Islamist ideology and it has previously fought alongside the Nusra Front.” More here.
Elsewhere in Syria, “Four Russian servicemen were killed and two were wounded in Syria last week when their car was blown up by a remote-controlled bomb,” The New York Times reported off Russian news Interfax. “Counting last week’s blast, 27 Russians have been killed in combat in Syria, according to official statistics, which Kremlin critics say understates the true figure.” Story here.
Dunford and Turkey review plans to retake Raqqa from ISIS—two of them, in fact, Reuters reports. “In a meeting on Friday at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, a key hub for the U.S.-led coalition against the jihadists, Turkish military chief Hulusi Akar and his U.S. counterpart Joseph Dunford discussed the two Raqqa road maps, Hurriyet said, citing security sources.”
The two options they’ve put forward: “Turkish and U.S. special forces, backed by commandos and Turkey-backed Syrian rebels entering Syria through the border town of Tel Abyad, currently held by Kurdish YPG militia, the newspaper said. The forces would cut through YPG territory, before pushing on to Raqqa, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south. Such a plan would require the United States to convince the Kurdish militia to grant the Turkey-backed forces a 20-kilometre (12-mile)-wide strip through YPG territory.”
Option 2: "Push toward Raqqa via the Syrian town of Bab, Hurriyet reported, which Turkey-backed forces have been fighting to seize from Islamic State for the past two months. But the long journey of 180 kilometers (about 110 miles) and mountainous terrain make that possibility less likely, it said." Read the rest, here.
The war in Yemen has delivered a new weapon: the drone boat, Defense News reported Sunday. The background: “The Houthi boat that attacked and hit a Saudi frigate Jan. 30 in the Red Sea, reported earlier as a suicide boat, was instead carried out by an unmanned, remote-controlled craft filled with explosives,” Chris Cavas writes.
Said Vice Adm. Kevin Donegan, head of US Naval Forces Central Command: “Our assessment is that it was an unmanned, remote-controlled boat of some kind...I don’t know that it’s Iranian-built, but I believe that it’s production in some way was supported by Iran.” Donegan goes on to “connect the dots” on his theory, which you can find in full, over here.
The USS Carl Vinson has begun “routine patrols” of the South China Sea, CNN reported Monday. “The operation comes amid growing tensions between the United States and China over territory and trade, and as the Trump administration looks set to take a more confrontational stance toward China than its predecessor...The cruise of the Vinson in the South China Sea is the second of a high-profile US Navy vessel this month. Last week, the littoral combat ship USS Coronado, which is temporarily based in Singapore, was conducting training operations in the South China Sea, according to a Navy statement.” More here.
Lastly today: “Robots poised to take over wide range of military jobs,” reads this headline from The San Diego Union-Tribune on Monday. For a few examples: “Warehouse robots that scoot goods to delivery vans could run the same chores inside Air Force ordnance and supply units. New machines that can scan, collate and analyze hundreds of thousands of pages of legal documents in a day might outperform Navy legal researchers. Nurses, physicians and corpsmen could face competition from computers designed to diagnose diseases and assist in the operating room. Frogmen might no longer need to rip out sea mines by hand — robots could do that for them.” Story, here.