Today’s D Brief: 200 U.S. soldiers to Poland; Russian tensions escalate in Minsk; ‘Detainee crisis’ in Syria; SOS in the Pacific; And a bit more.
It’s official now: The U.S. Army is sending 200 troops to Poland, where its newly reactivated V Corps will deploy during the next fiscal year.
Army Chief Gen. James McConville travelled to Poland today to unfurl the unit’s colors (photos here) alongside Corps Commander Lt. Gen. John Kolasheski, who just received his third star for the gig.
Background: “In February, the U.S. Army announced the reactivation of V Corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and identified Europe as the location for a forward command post,” the Army said in a statement this morning. “The location of the V Corps Headquarters (Forward) was brought to fruition by the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, announced July 31.”
Of course, 200 soldiers alone can’t stop Russia from a Baltic invasion, so the unit’s job will focus more broadly on “operational planning, mission command and oversight of the rotational forces in Europe,” the Army says. And the unit could see its first big action as part of next year’s scheduled Defender Europe exercise, which typically starts in the spring — provided next year’s drills are not delayed or cut short by the coronavirus.
The U.S. currently has as many as 50,000 troops and civilians in Europe, the Washington Post reported in late July; and that number is set to decline by 12,000 or so uniformed troops in the coming months following last week’s “repositioning” announcement from Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Counterpoint: “William of Ockham would like a word with those who worry more about a potential Russian invasion of the Baltics than ongoing interventions in the Balkans,” writes Robert Hamilton, retired colonel and Army War College prof. Read his “NATO Needs to Focus on the Black Sea.”
And here’s some related news from the region: “Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused Moscow on Tuesday of lying in a row about the arrest of a group of Russian security contractors in Minsk, and said unnamed forces were plotting a revolution that would fail,” Reuters reports from the Belarusian capital. Read on, here.
From Defense One
The U-2's Latest Feat: Passing Data from F-35s to Army Missiles // Patrick Tucker: A recent demonstration used the old spy plane as an airborne comms relay between fighters and ground-based weaponry.
Trump Sidesteps Congress To Install Controversial Pentagon Nominee // Katie Bo Williams: A legal loophole may allow Tata to take the top job without Senate confirmation at all.
NATO Needs to Focus on the Black Sea // Robert E. Hamilton: William of Ockham would like a word with those who worry more about a potential Russian invasion of the Baltics than ongoing interventions in the Balkans.
Like NATO, But for Economic Warfare // Anthony Vinci, The Atlantic: America’s alliances were built to address a Soviet military threat. The economic bullying that Beijing uses requires a different kind of collective self-defense.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief from Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Send us tips from your community right here. And if you’re not already subscribed to The D Brief, you can do that here. On this day in 1790, the service now known as the U.S. Coast Guard was first established. Listen to a recent conversation with Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz on the Defense One Radio podcast, here.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper was scheduled to talk this morning in a digital event with the Center for a New American Security… but that event was scrapped at the last minute with no apparent explanation.
ISIS in the Middle East isn't finished, but it's also "not resurging," the U.S. military says in its latest inspector general report. Meanwhile, Syria wants to pry the SDF away from the U.S., and that's understandable: the latter two are still "guarding" Syrian oil fields near Deir ez-Zor.
Also: There are still 10,000 or so ISIS prisoners held by the SDF, including 2,000 foreign fighters in detention "because their countries are unwilling to repatriate them." The IG report calls this a "detainee crisis." More (PDF), here.
We know a bit more about that ISIS-claimed prison attack in eastern Afghanistan thanks to reporting from the Washington Post’s Susannah George, Aziz Tassal and Sharif Hassan. Those reporters called it “the most ambitious operation the group has mounted in Afghanistan since it officially established a branch in the country in 2015.”
Among the biggest updates to the narrative: After the initial car bomb detonated at the prison gate, “Afghan security forces rushed to the scene, [as] one group of gunmen took over a high-rise building abutting the complex while a second group launched another attack from the back of the prison, using rocket-propelled grenades to blast through a perimeter wall bordering a residential neighborhood.”
And in case you’re curious, “As of Monday evening, more than 330 inmates remained at large,” a nameless Afghan official told the Post.
Worth noting: “The Jalalabad prison operation was almost identical to past Taliban attacks,” including a “Taliban raid on a prison in Ghazni in 2015 that freed more than 350 prisoners also began with a car bomb that breached the complex’s perimeter before gunmen stormed the buildings.” Continue reading, here.
Back stateside, the House is investigating DHS surveillance of protestors in Portland, according to a Monday letter from the House intelligence committee to the Department of Homeland Security. More at The Hill, here.
The U.S. needs to get daily COVID cases down to 10,000 in three weeks, or “we're going to have a really bad situation in the fall,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday. Autumn, of course, is when the seasonal flu comes roaring back, and people start to stay indoors more.
Current status: Monday saw at least 602 U.S. coronavirus deaths and 47,832 new cases. Both stats are down from the 7-day average: 1,042 and 60,194, respectively, according to the New York Times tracker.
Watch: In an interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, President Trump tries to explain away the metrics that show the United States is doing worse at confronting the coronavirus than almost any other country. Here’s a 2:54 excerpt from the interview.
And finally today: The Australian and U.S. militaries helped rescue three stranded sailors who were stuck on an island in Micronesia for three days. The men had scrawled SOS in the sand before they were spotted “after officials in the U.S. territory of Guam raised the alarm, following the men’s failure to complete a 42-km (26-mile) trip between Pacific atolls,” Reuters reports. “The men had apparently set out from Pulawat atoll in a 7-meter (23-foot) boat on July 30 and had intended to travel about 43 kilometers (27 miles) to Pulap atoll when they sailed off course and ran out of fuel,” AP adds, reporting from nearby New Zealand. “The military ship, Canberra, which was returning to Australia from exercises in Hawaii, diverted to the area and joined forces with U.S. searchers from Guam.” More here.