KJU to China, again; Will US seek defenses against Moscow’s missiles?; Russian hackers target US military spouses; and just a bit more...
All eyes on Trump and his nuke-deal decision. The U.S. president said Monday that he would announce Tuesday at noon whether he would withdraw the United States from the multinational 2015 deal with Iran. Allies have been trying to dissuade him. Wall Street Journal, here.
KJU goes to China (again). CNN’s Matt Rivers, tweeting from Beijing: “Huge news. Kim Jong Un has spent the last two days in China with Xi Jinping, per Chinese state media. It’s the second such meeting since March. Story airing now on evening news here.”
Trump phones Xi. At least he tweeted that he planned to on Tuesday: “I will be speaking to my friend, President Xi of China, this morning at 8:30. The primary topics will be Trade, where good things will happen, and North Korea, where relationships and trust are building.”
Happening today: China's first home-grown aircraft carrier (001A) is set to launch for sea trials, South Korea’s Yonhap News agency reported Monday.
China’s friggin’ laser? Writes @rajfortyseven: “This vehicle seems to be the culprit for the recent lazing events [against U.S. pilots off Djibouti]. Finally found the picture I was looking for.” See that, here.
From Defense One
The US May Seek Defenses Against Russian Missiles. We Need to Talk about That. // Ivanka Barzashka and Wyn Bowen: If the Trump administration goes down that path, it should boldly declare a change in strategy, not hide behind ambiguity.
Fixing The Iranian Missile Problem // Behnam Ben Taleblu: It won't be easy, but Europe and Washington should pressure Iran into suspending missile flight-testing.
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Russian hackers targeted U.S. military wives in an online harassment campaign, the Associated Press reports this morning from Paris. But that’s not all: They’re posing as ISIS hackers in the process.
How does AP know this? Thanks to “a digital hit list provided to the AP by the cybersecurity company Secureworks last year.”
Methodology: “The AP has previously used the list of 4,700 Gmail addresses to outline the group's espionage campaign against journalists, defense contractors and U.S. officials. More recent AP research has found that Fancy Bear, which Secureworks dubs ‘Iron Twilight,’ was actively trying to break into the military wives' mailboxes around the time that CyberCaliphate struck.”
The bottom line — in a much longer story: “The AP has found no link between CyberCaliphate and the St. Petersburg trolls, but their aims appeared to be the same: keep tension at a boil and radical Islam in the headlines.” Read on, here.
Happening today: An update from the war on ISIS. British Army Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney — whose lengthy title is deputy commander, strategy and support, Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve — briefs reporters via VTC from Baghdad to the Pentagon at 11 a.m. EDT. Watch it live, here.
In acquisition news, the Pentagon is now taking those F-35s from Lockheed Martin, Defense News reported Monday. The hold-up hinged on the fact that “the department and Lockheed had agreed upon a plan to repair about 200 jets that were impacted by a quality lapse [corrosion found in fastener holes] — but not who should be pay for it.” Still not a lot of transparency about what exactly is going on there (“While we don’t discuss specific cost figures and contracting terms, we have a comprehensive plan in place to effectively and efficiently address the F-35 hole primer issue,” said a LM spox), but you can read the rest, here.
Another setback for America’s newest aircraft carrier. A mechanical failure forced the USS Ford to return to port earlier this year, Bloomberg reports: “The previously undisclosed problem with a propulsion system bearing, which occurred in January but has yet to be remedied, comes as the Navy is poised to request approval from a supportive Congress to expedite a contract for a fourth carrier in what was to have been a three-ship class.” More, here.
In case anyone’s curious, the U.S. Navy says “93 Women Are Now Serving Aboard Pacific Fleet Submarines,” the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Monday from Pearl Harbor.
A bit more about the location, and the Navy’s ambitions: “Pearl Harbor has six newer Virginia-class subs and about a dozen older Los Angeles-class vessels — the greatest concentration of submarines in the Pacific. The current integration plan calls for three to five female officers per Virginia-class crew, and eventually 22 female enlisted per crew… The longer-term Navy goal is to have women make up 20 percent of submarine crews.”
What’s more, “In the Pacific, women also are aboard the biggest submarines in the Navy: 560-foot ballistic missile subs, and former ballistic missile ‘boomers’ that were converted to carry commandos and launch up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, all out of Washington state.” More here.
And if you want to know (or watch) a bit more about America’s “boomer fleet,” check out our explainer on the future of the Columbia-class nuclear-missile sub program, here.
Hezbollah rising in Lebanon. “Lebanon’s Hezbollah paramilitary movement emerged Monday as the main victor in the country’s first election in almost a decade, securing veto power in the Lebanese parliament as the prime minister’s fortunes fell,” the Washington Post reported Monday from Beirut.
Want a more detailed take on Lebanon’s power shift? George Washington University’s Firas Maksad has a five-tweet thread that covers a heckuva a lot of ground on the topic. His advice, in short: “Avoid alarmist analysis of Lebanon. Change here slow/requires patience/often frustrating. Took Iran 36 years of money/arms to dominate Beirut.”
Electronic warfare comes to the Sand Hills of Fort Bragg, N.C. Or, as the Fayetteville Observer describes it, “a complicated game of hide and seek” played out among paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division using a VMAX system — a system that “allows soldiers to conduct focused electronic attacks at certain frequencies in the spectrum,” Army Times reported back in October.
Previously, “soldiers used the VMAX systems defensively on drop zones to protect paratroopers from enemy systems. But the navigational test showed that the systems also could be used to pinpoint an enemy force.” More here.
The U.S. Army is reviewing the status of a retired officer who is now fighting (as a general) for the UAE in Yemen, Buzzfeed News’ Aram Roston reported Monday.
The man: Stephen Toumajan, but he answers the phone as "General Steve."
To the UAE, he is known as “His Excellency Major General Staff Pilot Stephen A. Toumajan,” and is “Commander” of the UAE’s Joint Aviation Command, Roston reports. And according to a UAE government site, Steve is "responsible for training, combat readiness, and 'execution of all aviation missions.'"
According to Steve himself (speaking in third person), “Stephen A. Toumajan has not sworn allegiance to the UAE nor is he in the UAE military… Stephen A. Toumajan is a civilian contractor whom has the trust and confidence of the Deputy Supreme Commander whom asked him to form the UAE Joint Aviation Command.”
According to Buzzfeed, “The US Army says it is currently reviewing Toumajan’s situation.” Lots more Qs than answers on this one, over here.
This week in what could go wrong: NASA successfully tested a nuclear reactor that works in space. Our sister site, Quartz, has the story of KRUSTY, or the “Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology,” here.
Finally today: So there’s a heckuva lot of garbage in space... which could be an opportunity for enterprising contractors. The Denver Post reported Monday “there are teams from Colorado and beyond working on technology” to deal with it.
Ideas include: “Lockheed Martin’s $915 million Space Fence project [designed to] scan a wide swath of space for out-of-control space junk.” There’s also “A robotic arm from Westminster’s Maxar Technologies and a space harpoon from Airbus in France aim to wrangle dead satellites out of the path of active space objects.”
The big worry: “Space-junk congestion was predicted in 1978 by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler. According to ‘Kessler’s syndrome,’ as more objects populate Earth’s orbit, the chance of collisions rises. A collision can start a domino effect, with dangerous debris clouds causing even more destruction.” Read on, here.