The D Brief: Bracing for Iran’s response; ISIS rises in Syria; Ukraine’s 20-mile incursion; Longer Korean deployments; And a bit more.

Full speed ahead: SecDef Lloyd Austin ordered the acceleration of a carrier strike group headed to the Middle East in defense of Israeli and U.S. troops in the region, the Pentagon announced in a statement Sunday. Israel and its allies are bracing for a wide range of possible retaliatory attacks from Iran and Iran-backed groups in the region following the recent assassinations of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, on July 31 in Tehran and a top Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, the day prior in Beirut. 

Involved: The USS Abraham Lincoln strike group, which is en route to the Middle East with F-35C fighters onboard. Those elements are set to replace the Navy’s USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, which is already in the region and is slated to return home once the Lincoln arrives—though that arrival isn’t expected before the end of the month, according to the Associated Press. 

New: Austin ordered the USS Georgia (SSGN 729) guided missile submarine to help defend the Central Command region, the Defense Department said Sunday in what Reuters described as a rare public acknowledgement of U.S. submarine activity. Austin also rang his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, Sunday to discuss the troop movements as well as “progress towards securing a ceasefire” with Hamas, according to the Pentagon. 

Worth noting: It’s been nearly 12 days since Haniyeh and Shukr were killed. Iran waited 12 days to attack Israel the last time a top official was killed, likely by Israeli agents, back in April. In that response, “Iran and its allies fired around 170 one-way attack drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel,” analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War recall in their latest report. 

Thanks to U.S. and allied intercepts, “the [April 13] Iranian attack did significantly less damage than Tehran intended,” and so “Iranian leaders are therefore incentivized to carefully and slowly calculate their next attack to ensure that the attack inflicts serious damage on Israel, thereby restoring Iranian deterrence with Israel,” ISW predicts. However, they write, “Iran will likely also ensure that the attack will not trigger a major war.”

On the radar: Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps troops on Tuesday are set to end previously announced drills in western Iran that began Friday. The Russian military, with its Ukraine invasion, has shown us drills can be a useful cover for far more nefarious actions. 

The U.S. announcements follow an Israeli airstrike that killed some 100 people at a school-turned-shelter in Gaza on Saturday. Israeli officials claimed 19 militants were hiding in the shelter, and alleged the death toll, which included almost a dozen children, was inflated. Reuters posted a video of the aftermath, here.  

And U.S. troops are under attack again in Syria, with a Friday drone attack wounding several U.S. and coalition troops at the Rumalyn Landing Zone in northeastern Syria, Reuters reported this weekend. And last Monday, five U.S. troops were wounded in a separate attack at the Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq. 

Dispatch from Syria: The Islamic State group is once again “training young recruits to become suicide bombers, directing attacks on allied troops and preparing to resurrect its dream of ruling an Islamist caliphate,” Michael Phillips of the Wall Street Journal reported Monday from a U.S. special forces base in northeastern Syria. Granted, we’ve known for several years that ISIS was not completely defeated (it’s almost impossible to defeat an ideology, after all). But: “Militant fighters have doubled their pace of attacks in Syria and Iraq this year,” Phillips writes, echoing the findings in a report published last month by the Middle East Institute. 

“This year has been the worst year since we defeated Islamic State,” a top commander in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said. “No matter how much you knock them down, they’ll try to get up again,” she said. 

What’s new here? “Now the group operates in smaller cells armed with rifles and booby traps,” Phillips reports. And “Twice this year, insurgents have tried to stage breakouts from detention facilities.” Read on, here. 

Related reading: 

• “Arizona National Guard soldiers return to Arizona after surviving deadly Jordan drone attack,” Fox10 Phoenix reported Saturday; 
• “The ISIS Plot Against Taylor Swift,” Seth Jones of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote Sunday in the Wall Street Journal;
• See also “The threat Israel didn't foresee: Hezbollah's growing drone power,” via AP, reporting Friday from Beirut.

Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2016, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces captured a major ISIS stronghold in the Syrian city of Manbij.

Ukrainian troops are keeping up the pressure on Vladimir Putin after rushing across the border and into Russia’s Kursk region in a surprise offensive that began last Tuesday. The movement, featuring troops from Kyiv’s 225th Assault Battalion and 80th Air Assault Brigade, is using lots of U.S.-provided equipment and vehicles, according to Chris Miller of the Financial Times. 

“Our mood is good. Morale is high,” one Ukrainian soldier told FT. At least some Ukrainian forces have progressed 20 miles inside Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy confirmed the cross-border incursion, describing it in a video Saturday as a “push to drive the war onto the aggressor’s territory.” 

Expert reax: Russia hasn’t sent a notable number of troops to respond just yet, said Matthew Savill of London’s Royal United Services Institute. “The Russians have been severely embarrassed and the loss of territory and evacuation of civilians will play poorly back in Russia as evidence they ‘can’t defend themselves’ (especially alongside continued Ukrainian drone attacks as deep strikes),” he said. 

However, “Sustaining a force of any size in Russia, and defending against counter-attacks, will be hard, given the limited reserves available to Ukraine,” Savill said. And perhaps more importantly, the incursion has not “thus far resulted in the Russians slowing their advances around the Donbas, where the situations around Chasiv Yar and towards Povrovsk remain difficult.”

“It seems unlikely [Ukraine] would want to sustain a large incursion for months,” Savill said. “They will have a decision to make about the best time to trade in the ground they have captured, and to what end,” he added. 

From the region: Norway wants to buy 15 HIMARS and parts from the U.S. for about $580 million, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced Friday. Details here. 

Additional reading: 

• “Russia set fire to Ukrainian nuclear plant to ‘blackmail’ Kyiv, says Zelensky,” the UK’s Telegraph reported Monday; 
• And “Eastern Europe's armies struggle to enlist young people with war not far away,” Reuters reported Friday from Czechia. 

New: Certain U.S. soldiers serving in South Korea without their family members are now expected to deploy there for two years, Stars and Stripes reported Friday. 

The extension is intended to “improve readiness” across seven career fields, including: 

• air traffic control operators;
• UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter repairers;
• working military dog handlers;
• counterintelligence agents;
• signal intelligence analysts;
• and enlisted and warrant officer special agents in the Criminal Investigation Division.

By the way: South Korea’s president just appointed a new military chief. “President Yoon Suk Yeol named Presidential Security Service chief Kim Yong-hyun as new defense minister while Defense Minister Shin Won-sik was named as new national security adviser,” Seoul’s Yonhap news agency reported Monday. Defense Minister Kim is a retired three-star army general who had been Yoon’s security chief since May 2022. A bit more, here. 

Coming soon: The U.S. and South Korean militaries are poised to begin joint drills next week, AP reported Monday from Seoul. The exercise, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, runs for 10 days beginning August 19. About 19,000 South Korean troops and an unspecified number of Americans are slated to participate. 

Four days of civil defense drills are also planned, beginning August 19. Those are designed to prepare the public for North Korean nuclear attack scenarios, AP reports. More, here. 

From the region: 

• “Philippines says actions of China air force 'illegal', 'reckless',” Reuters reported Sunday from Manila;
• “We salute this sailor rockin' out during underway refueling at RIMPAC,” via Task & Purpose, writing Thursday; 
• And don’t miss a special report on “China’s Great Wall of Villages,” via the New York Times, writing Saturday in an interesting multimedia feature. 

New: “The US Navy’s warship production is in its worst state in 25 years,” AP reported Monday, citing labor shortages, shifting defense priorities, design changes, and cost overruns that have created “backlogs in ship production and maintenance at a time when the Navy faces expanding global threats.”

FWIW: The report mentions in passing BuildSubmarines, the Navy’s effort to recruit workers for the private shipyards that build subs; the service has spent an eye-popping $500 million on the effort so far. It does not mention the up-to-$2.4 billion contract awarded last month to Deloitte Consulting “to work with the Navy and Defense Department on their efforts to modernize and expand the submarine industrial base.”

Developing: Coast Guard Academy works to overhaul culture amid sexual abuse scandal. Last year, an internal service probe of the Connecticut school uncovered “a dark history of rapes, assaults and other serious misconduct being ignored and, at times, covered up by high-ranking officials,” as CNN put it. AP has a new report on what the school is doing about it.

Among the seven changes: the cadets’ first summer/boot camp is no longer a “shock-and-awe” experience. “This year, the cadre read forcefully from a prepared script, avoiding improvisation and yelling.”

But the sexual-abuse problem has spread far beyond the academy. Last Wednesday, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a staff report titled “A Pervasive Problem,” featuring accounts from more than 80 whistleblowers who spoke to committee staff.

ICYMI: Lawmakers blasted the Coast Guard at a June 12 hearing.

The U.S. Army recently broke ground on a new $100 million barracks project at Washington’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord. “The new buildings, designed to house 168 Soldiers of the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force, will help the Army evaluate the benefits of using sustainable building materials and design techniques for military construction projects,” the Army writes.

And lastly: Iran allegedly hacked into the email account of a “former senior adviser” to a presidential campaign, then tried to spearphish the campaign itself, Microsoft said in a Friday report. “Foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 US election started off slowly but has steadily picked up pace over the last six months due initially to Russian operations, but more recently from Iranian activity,” it said.

The following day, Politico received emails with documents stolen from inside Trump’s campaign organization; the newsroom could not confirm the sender’s identity or motivation. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said their operation had been hacked by Iranians but could not provide evidence. More from Politico and the New York Times.