B-52s over the South China Sea; US tries new tack to shape Iraqi gov’t; Trump’s solo presser; DHS to replace bioterror-detectors; and just a bit more...

“Lookit those man-made islands.” The U.S. Air Force flew B-52 bombers “in the vicinity of” the South China Sea in a recent Guam-to-Diego Garcia mission, the Pentagon announced Wednesday (Reuters) — two days after indications that was happening surfaced via online flight trackers on Monday.

The U.S. military called the mission part of “regularly scheduled operations designed to enhance our interoperability with our partners and allies in the region.”

China’s foreign ministry called it “provocative… we are firmly against it and we will take all necessary means to safeguard our rights and interests,” the South China Morning Post reports.

Said U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Monday: “If it was 20 years ago and they have not militarised those features there, it would have just been another bomber on its way to Diego Garcia or whatever... So there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it, nor about our ships sailing through there.”

US Official: We May Cut Support for Iraq If New Government Seats Pro-Iran Politicians // Katie Bo Williams: The senior administration official’s warning is the latest tack in a largely fruitless bid to shape a new governing coalition in Baghdad.

DHS Aims to Replace Slow, Outdated Bioterror-Detection System // Patrick Tucker: A new plan to draw on big data and distributed sensors will replace a 2003 system that can take up to 39 hours to detect a threat.

What Trump's UN Speech Says About What Comes Next // Thomas Wright: His General Assembly speech laid out his worldview—and offered some clues about what could lie ahead.

Ukraine is Building a Mosquito Navy to Fend Off Russia, With US Help // Patrick Tucker: Hostilities in the Sea of Azov are heating up, and the U.S. is increasing its involvement.

Moon’s Praise-and-Pressure Plan to Get Trump to Help End Korean War // Uri Friedman: “You are, indeed, the only person who can solve this problem,” Moon said of Trump—just before he amped up the pressure.

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief by Bradley Peniston and Ben Watson. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. On this day in 1944, the U.S. carried out its first drone strikes — targeting the Japanese navy in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. According to the Smithsonian, “One of the TDR-1s was lost at sea. A second crashed 30 yards astern of the gun emplacement, but the bomb failed to detonate. The third probably hit the port side of the ship. The fourth flew through flak to land dead-center on target and explode.”

Trump’s press conference: Emerging from two days at the UN, the U.S. president spoke to reporters on Wednesday in just the second solo press conference of his term. (Transcript of the 81-minute exchange.) Among other subjects, he framed his foreign-policy approach as effectiveness toughness — with potential adversaries as well as U.S. allies.

The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman: “Rather than focusing on the steps North Korea has taken toward giving up its nuclear weapons—so far small, but not insignificant—Trump measured his success against the prospect of a catastrophic war on the Korean peninsula. And it’s true that, compared with this outcome, nearly a year without North Korean missile or nuclear tests is a positive development. But he ascribed the risk of such conflict to Barack Obama, while ignoring his own role in escalating that risk last year with serious planning for military strikes and threats of nuclear annihilation. These he downplayed as ‘rhetorical contests’ with Kim Jong Un that they now ‘laugh’ about.” Read on, here.

What was that about Obama? Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale: “Trump lies again that Obama said he was ‘ready to go to war’ with North Korea, this time adding for the first time, ‘You know how close he was to pressing the trigger for war?’ There is no indication anything like this has happened.”

The U.S. president uttered many other inaccuracies and untruths at the press conference. Among the natsec-related ones catalogued by Dale:

• On moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem: “...we got [it] open in four months for less than $500,000, and the budget was over a billion dollars.” The move is actually projected to cost some $21 million.
• On U.S. force posture: "We have 32,000 soldiers in South Korea." The U.S. has 28,598 military personnel there.
• On the Iran deal. Dale reports, “For the 21st time, Trump falsely claimed that Iran was given $150 billion as part of the nuclear deal. Less than $100 billion of its own assets were unfrozen.”

Why the president’s false statements matter: Stephen Walt, writing in Foreign Policy: “World leaders have never really trusted each other—but the president's behavior undermines American foreign policy anyway...First, it makes all Americans look dumber in the eyes of the rest of the world...Second, and following from the first point, Trump’s behavior as liar-in-chief sacrifices the moral high ground. Even a good realist like me thinks there are important differences between countries where leaders are held accountable, the rule of law is robust, and foreign policy is (mostly) reality-based and countries where leaders act with impunity and define for their subjects what sorts of beliefs are permissible and what sort of knowledge constitutes ‘truth.’” There’s more, here.

B-2 upgrade late, over budget. Upgrades intended to protect the 20 remaining B-2 bombers from improved Russian and Chinese defensive systems are now projected to start arriving in 2024, two years late, Bloomber reports. The estimated cost has also risen some $300 million to $3.07 billion.

Why? The Air Force switched acquisition approaches, and contractor Northrop Grumman failed “until recently to fully staff the program’s demanding software development,” Bloomberg writes. “Northrop Grumman, the original B-2 contractor, is also the prime contractor on the coming B-21 bomber, so its performance has drawn particular Pentagon scrutiny.”

SecState Mike Pompeo is headed to Pyongyang (for the fourth time) to lay the groundwork for the second Trump-Kim summit sometime later, the State Department announced Wednesday.

Said POTUS45 of Kim on Wednesday: "We have a very good relationship. He likes me. I like him. We get along. He wrote me two of the most beautiful letters…This is an incredible—this is a historic letter. And it is a historic letter. It’s a beautiful—it’s a beautiful piece of art."

Prediction from MIT’s Vipin Narang: “Kim Jong Un plays good cop, Kim Yong Chol plays bad cop. If Pompeo’s primary interlocutor in Pyongyang is KYC still, the North Korean strategy to burn a lot of clock with these games may run out the first term…”

New on Capitol Hill: A bi-partisan war powers resolution “to end U.S. military in involvement in Yemen,” Washington Democratic Rep. Adam Smith announced Wednesday.

There are 53 co-sponsors on the bill, (PDF here) which Smith said in a statement “push[es] a peaceful solution to end this civil war instead of supporting the Saudi-led coalition military campaign that has only destabilized the crisis further.” Read more from seven other lawmakers who are not Smith, here.

Also on Wednesday: House lawmakers were not pleased at how the Pentagon’s Syria guy handled questions about the war there, Stars and Stripes reported. The main issue: if the Trump administration wants to keep American troops in Syria to fight Iran — as National Security Adviser John Bolton said this week — then the administration needs to ask for Congressional authorization.” More where that came from, here.

And finally: This week in behavior unbecoming of an officer, the Vice Chief of the Indian Air Force accidentally shot himself in the thigh on Wednesday in Delhi, local NDTV news reported yesterday.

The gentleman in question, Air Marshal Shirish Baban Deo, just started the job in July. The latest word is he's now in a hospital with his femur set. Tiny bit more, here.