7th Fleet commander, gone; Unpacking Trump’s Afghanistan strategy; Drones gear up to track missiles; China blasts US sanctions; and just a bit more...
The U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet commander has been fired. Two days after the year’s fourth shiphandling mishap in the Western Pacific, the U.S. Navy relieved Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin of his command of the Japan-based 7th Fleet. He was fired by Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Scott Swift, who cited a “loss of confidence” and who also ordered all ships in theater to plan for a “‘deliberate reset’...that focuses on navigation, maintaining mechanical systems and manning the ship’s bridge appropriately.” That comes on top of the review of Pacific Fleet operating procedures, operating tempo, training regimens, and more — a process expected to take months — ordered Monday by the Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson.
Also yesterday, the bodies of several of the 10 sailors missing from the USS John S. McCain after its Aug. 21 collision with an oil tanker off Singapore were found aboard the ship. Washington Post, here.
U.S. lawmaker wants a separate look. “Democratic Rep. Scott Peters issued the request on Tuesday, saying that a ‘thorough investigation’ could focus on whether the Navy’s operations tempo has become too high to be safe, and if the sea service has enough resources to do its job properly. San Diego Union-Tribune, here.
Some regional reax: “In South Korea, some people... joked that an enemy could disable American destroyers by deploying container ships,” The New York Times reported. “In Japan... The Yomiuri Shimbun, a right-leaning newspaper, quoted a Japanese naval officer expressing concern about the capacity of American troops to conduct surveillance at a time of heightened tensions with North Korea.”
From Defense One
Drones Will Help Protect Guam From North Korean Missiles // Patrick Tucker: A June 2016 test showed that drones can track missiles, promising better protection for forces and allies under threat of a North Korean missile strike.
Tell Me What an Afghanistan 'Win' Looks Like // Joshua A. Geltzer: Campaign-trail rhetoric aside, his inability to define victory was the most troubling part of his speech.
When Will Enough Be Enough in Afghanistan? // Andrew Exum: At some point, a president might have to acknowledge to the military: We fought hard, but we have other, greater priorities elsewhere.
Full Transcript: Donald Trump Announces His Afghanistan Policy // Nora Kelly: "No place is beyond the reach of American might and American arms."
Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. OTD1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union secretly agree to divide up Europe. Have something you want to share? Email us at the-d-brief@defenseone.com. (And if you’re reading this on our website, consider subscribing. It’s free.)
China demands the U.S. “immediately” withdraw a new round of sanctions on companies that the Treasury Department says help North Korea’s weapons programs, the Washington Post reports.
About the sanctions: “The cases target Chinese firms that allegedly had imported $700 million in North Korean coal since 2013 and a Russian-operated firm allegedly helping Pyongyang procure fuel,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “In all, the U.S. alleges that the coal trade generates more than $1 billion in revenue a year for North Korea, which helps to fuel its weapons programs.”
Investigators’ lead: a defector. “One person described in the complaint as ‘Defector 1, who has firsthand knowledge’ of North Korea’s financial dealings, said the government relies on the exports of coal ‘as its primary means of obtaining access to foreign currency,’ and that the North Korean military controls the amount of coal produced and its export,” the Journal reports.
What’s more, “The defector told investigators that ‘over 95%’ of North Korea’s foreign currency earnings from coal exports go toward advancing North Korea’s military and North Korea’s nuclear missiles and weapons programs.” Read on, here.
North Korea's state media reveal photos showing designs for one and possibly two new missiles—released just hours after U.S. officials praised Kim Jong-Un for apparent “restraint.”
About the missiles: “Concept diagrams of the missiles were seen hanging on a wall behind leader Kim Jong Un while he visited a plant that makes solid-fuel engines for the country’s ballistic-missile program,” the Associated Press reports. “One of the photos clearly showed a diagram for a missile called ‘Pukguksong-3,’ which appears to be the latest in its Pukguksong, or Polaris, series. The other was harder to discern, though it carried a ‘Hwasong,’ or Mars, designation name,”
The short take: The Pukguksong-3 "might be designed to fly farther and to be launched from protective canisters, which allow missiles to be transported more easily and makes them more difficult to locate and destroy in advance... It could possibly also boost the North’s submarine-launched missile capabilities." And that suspected Hwasong missile is from the North’s ICBM stocks.
Says @armscontrolwonk, Jeffrey Lewis: “If I understand North Korean propaganda, this is their way of telling us what we'll see in the air in the coming year.”
For more detailed takes on these developments, check out the Twitter threads from Ankit Panda, here; nonproliferation expert Joshua Pollack, here; or the Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ Dave Schmerler, here.
Rex-T on DPRK’s restraint: "I'm pleased to see that the regime in Pyongyang has certainly demonstrated some level of restraint that we've not seen in the past. We hope that this is the beginning of this signal we’ve been looking for," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a presser on Tuesday. Tillerson singled out an apparent absence of "missile launches or provocative acts" from Pyongyang since the UN Security Council imposed new sanctions on August 5.
Notes ABC News: “It has only been two and a half weeks since those sanctions passed – and just three and a half weeks since North Korea's latest missile launch, a second ICBM capable of hitting the continental United States.”
But the restraint turned to bluster once again on Tuesday when Pyongyang called President Trump’s approach to North Korea “unimaginably reckless,” adding, “Mad guy Trump’s unrestrained war-inciting tongue-lashing might turn the U.S. mainland into huge heaps of ashes.” Notes the Journal, reporting from Seoul, “The remarks came a day after the U.S. and South Korean militaries began annual drills, which the allies say are aimed at defending South Korea in the event of conflict but which Pyongyang says are rehearsals for an invasion.”
U.S. military reax: “[T]hat’s what we routinely expect—but it doesn’t stop us in our resolve,” said Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces-Korea. More here.
Defense Secretary James Mattis is in Ankara today. There, he will “he will hold talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli,” with the focus expected to be on the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia fighting ISIS in Syria, Agence France-Presse reports.
Mattis has already stopped in Baghdad on Monday, before hopping a helo to meet with the leadership of Irbil, in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
SitRep on the ISIS war: “Mosul completed. Raqqa 60 percent cleared. TalAfar surrounded. 5.5 million people freed,” Special Presidential Envoy for Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Brett McGurk, tweeted out late Tuesday.
Kushner goes to Egypt and Egypt changes the plan. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi meets today with an entourage led by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, AP reports. “Egypt’s top diplomat, Sameh Shoukry, was to meet with Kushner and the U.S. delegation, but a modified version of the minister’s schedule showed the meeting had been called off, shortly after the Americans landed in Cairo.”
And why it was called off may have something to do with this: “The Trump administration on Tuesday cut nearly $100 million in military and economic aid to Egypt and delayed almost $200 million more in military financing, pending human rights improvements and action to ease harsh restrictions on civic and other non-governmental groups.”
For what it’s worth, “A U.S. embassy official in Cairo said Kushner's meeting with Shoukry had never been set in stone because ‘the schedule was never fixed,’” Reuters adds.
Cairo’s foreign ministry called suspending the funds a “misjudgement,” CNN reports. “Trump approved the decision to withhold aid earlier this month, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed off within the last week.” More here.
Saudi-led airstrikes north of Yemen’s capital left dozens of rebels and civilians dead, Yemeni officials said this morning. “According to the officials, an estimated number of 60 were killed in the attack, which took place in the strikes on Wednesday morning in the town of Arhab, about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of Sanaa,” AP reports. “The two-story hotel in the town’s Qaa al-Qaidhi neighborhood sustained extensive damage and bodies were still being retrieved from under the rubble, witnesses said. They also said another airstrike hit a checkpoint manned by the Houthis, a few kilometers (miles) from the hotel.” Some truly grim reporting in AP’s story, but you can read the rest, here.
Iran is close to securing its “biggest prize yet” in the Syrian war: securing a land corridor to Mediterranean, AP reports. Though it is still hardly a fait accompli, you can read the rest of the story, here.
Lastly today: Erik Prince blames McMaster for blowing up his merc plan for Afghanistan. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker spoke to the Blackwater founder Tuesday to learn Prince is no fan of President Trump’s new Afghanistan strategy. “I see it as a temporary setback, because a year from now, or even six months from now, we will be dealing with the exact same issues we are now,” said Prince. “He rolled on this one.”
Prince has been back in the news lately for a May 31 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal advocating what he called “The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan.” The key components of the plan: centralized authority in a so-called “Viceroy,” who can make decisions independently, small teams of special operations forces striking high-value terrorist targets, culled from the local population but trained largely by Western military and contractors.
Trump reportedly was considering the idea but Prince says the plan was “absolutely blocked by [Lt. Gen.] H.R. McMaster [who] wanted nothing to do with any idea other than a more troops, more money solution.” Prince says his conversation with the president’s national security advisor “was polite. It was professional. But he didn’t like the idea of the Pentagon doing anything other than exactly what they’ve been doing.”
By his estimates, the plan would save the U.S. government more than $30 billion, a number that many others have reportedly found dubious. Prince told Defense One he would go “toe-to-toe” with anyone who disputed his claim but offered no further evidence as to its credibility or feasibility.
Although he is not getting any more encouragement from the White House (and was never getting any from the Pentagon) Prince says that the idea is not dead. “I see it as a temporary setback because a year from now, or even six months from now, we will be dealing with the exact same issues we are now,” he said.