Deadly bomb in an Afghan mosque; Warplane accidents hit six-year high; Thornberry warns Trump on Iran deal; Navy relaunches 2nd Fleet; and just a bit more...
A bomb of some kind detonated "inside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan that was being used as a voter registration center killed at least 12 people and wounded 33," AP reports from Kabul. The bomb appears to have been left behind, rather than the more ordinary suicide-bomber attack method. BBC puts the number killed at 17, adding, “No group has claimed responsibility but the Islamic State group has carried out similar attacks in the past.”
From Defense One
Trump Is Setting America on an Unpredictable Course in the Middle East // Philip Gordon: It starts with exiting the Iran nuclear deal without a plan, and it could end with a messy, violent, and unnecessary conflict.
Moscow Has Little Reason to Return to the INF Treaty // Alexander Velez-Green: The incentives that led Gorbachev to sign the pact are gone. The U.S. needs to prepare for a post-INF world.
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. On this day in 1960, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev told the world Russia had captured American U-2 pilot Gary Powers. How Powers made it back to the U.S. in 1962 was the plot of the 2015 film, "Bridge of Spies."
And if you have questions you’d like us to consider in this week’s Defense One Radio podcast, send them our way over at this address.
More Syrian security brought to you by cross-border Iraqi airstrikes. That’s according to the Iraqi Prime Minister’s office, which tweeted out news of the second recent strike its aircraft carried out against ISIS fighters in neighboring Syria on Sunday. CNN has a tiny bit more about that one, plus a few others going back to February 2017, here.
A growing problem for Iraq: addition to meth, especially in the southern city of Basra. Details and a video report on the subject and its implications for Iraq’s future from video journalist Nick Blakemore, here.
Turkey is not interested in exchanging a captured U.S. preacher for America’s F-35 jets, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Sunday — countering intentions by three U.S. senators who pitched the idea about two weeks ago, Reuters reports.
China denies Americans were hurt in Djibouti by China’s lasers, as the U.S. alleged last week, the Associated Press reported this weekend after Beijing said it had received “strict verification” of the incident, which “we have told the U.S. side that what they alleged is absolutely untrue.”
The official reax from Beijing: “China always strictly abides by international law and the law of the country of residency and is committed to maintaining regional security and stability,” according to a statement from the Defense Ministry this weekend. A bit more, here.
Alert: “Fatal military aviation accidents have reached a six-year high,” Military Times’ Tara Copp reported this weekend after combing more of the data they’ve assembled on American military aviation mishaps in recent years.
For the year to date, there have been “12 fatal accidents — 11 crashes and one ground incident — in fiscal year 2018, which began Oct. 1,” Copp writes. These incidents “have claimed the lives of 35 military pilots and crew. It’s the highest number of crashes in years, and the total number of deaths so far this year ties 2016’s deadly year, when 35 aviators were also killed.”
Why, in short: “No one is getting the training they need,” aviators told MTs.
The ominous warning: “There are still four months to go in fiscal 2018.” Worth the click, here.
Where will the Trump-Kim summit take place? “US President Donald Trump had floated the idea of holding the historic talks in the deeply symbolic setting of the demilitarized zone along the border between North and South Korea, but the two sides have instead chosen city state Singapore as a third-party host, unnamed sources told both the Chosun newspaper and Yonhap news agency,” reports the South China Morning Post.
In emerging weapons tech, DARPA’s “Gremlin” swarm drone attack and recovery program is picking up speed with a late-April “21-month, $38.6 million contract to Dynetics, a Huntsville, Ala.-based company,” the Washington Post reported this weekend. Dynetics will be working with “San Diego-based Kratos, a venture-funded tech company that specializes in cheap drones used for target practice.”
The gist: “The program, code-named ‘Gremlins,’ calls for the two companies to demonstrate the safe and reliable aerial launch and recovery of multiple unmanned aircraft. Having completed the technical designs for the small drones and the complex sensor systems that will enable them to fly in tandem, the companies are now working on the software that will allow for safe takeoff and landing.”
What’s lies ahead: “Next, they will have to show that they can launch a pack of four drones from the body of a C-130 cargo plane, sending them out to fly on their own for 30 minutes and then fly back into the plane.” A bit more, here.
Is the NSA collecting more data from U.S. phone companies, reporting more of it, or both? Impossible to know for sure, the New York Times reported Friday after a new release of info (called the “Statistical Transparency Report” PDF) from the secretive agency.
The numbers: “The National Security Agency vacuumed up more than 534 million records of phone calls and text messages from American telecommunications providers like AT&T and Verizon last year — more than three times what it collected in 2016.”
Three reasons why these numbers might be on the rise: “[C]hanges in the amount of historical data companies are choosing to keep, the number of phone accounts used by each target and changes to how the telecommunications industry creates records based on constantly shifting technology and practices,” Alex Joel of the Director of National Intelligence's chief civil liberties officer told the NYTs.
Former NSA lawyer Susan Hennessey’s take: “There is important context to understand some of the increased numbers. NSA has adopted new methodology on some metrics and increased CDRs [call detail records] reflect some telecom shifts and not increased targets. Lots of important stuff buried in this, but headline writers proceed with caution.”
Thornberry warns Trump on Iran deal: As the president’s self-imposed May 12 deadline for a decision nears, the House Armed Services chair “counsels” against leaving. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said “that while he was opposed to the deal when it was signed by the Obama Administration in 2015, exiting the agreement now would erode Washington’s leverage against Tehran,” Reuters reports.
Dirty tricks. Reports the Guardian: “People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to ‘get dirt’ on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.” Read that, here. Ronan Farrow has more details at the New Yorker.
With an eye on Russia, the U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet will be relaunched to “be responsible for Naval forces along the East Coast and in the northern Atlantic Ocean,” CNN reported from Norfolk, Va., where Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson spoke Friday at a change-of-command ceremony.
A bit of background from The Virginian-Pilot: "The Navy eliminated the Second Fleet command structure as a cost-saving measure in 2011, leaving the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada as the only part of the world where naval assets didn't report to a numbered fleet."
What to expect next: A command that “eventually involve[s] 250 personnel and be led by a three-star admiral.”
But that’s not all: “The Defense Department also announced that the US has offered to host and lead NATO's newly proposed Joint Force Command for the Atlantic at Norfolk, Virginia,” CNN writes.
Why, according to Pentagon spox Johnny Michael: “NATO is refocusing on the Atlantic in recognition of the great power competition prompted by a resurgent Russia." More, here.
On the other side of the U.S., the largest joint U.S.-Philippine drills of Duterte’s tenure (called “Balikatan”) are happening today, the Associated Press reports from Manila.
Involved: About “8,000 American and Filipino personnel and small contingents from Japan and Australia… In addition to amphibious beach landings, live-fire maneuvers and disaster-response scenarios, the exercises will involve combat drills in mock urban settings to train special forces in battling terrorists in cities as they did during the Islamic State group-linked siege on southern Marawi city last year.” A bit more, here.
And finally today, we turn back stateside where we learned last week that President Trump’s military escalation on the U.S.-Mexico border is running a tab of about $180 million, Just Security’s Kate Brannen reported Wednesday citing “two sources with knowledge of the request.”
FWIW, more could be coming. “CBP has submitted a second request, which will likely require the remaining 1,900 Guard troops but the Defense Department is still reviewing it,” Brannen reported. Read on, here