The D Brief: National Guard on alert; Russian bomb plot?; USAF’s tanker hedge; Boeing workers end strike; And a bit more.
Hundreds of National Guard troops are activated or on standby as Election Day begins. About 125 guardsmen are currently activated for operations across 10 states “in general support or in supporting cyber networks,” Ellis Hopkins, deputy division chief for National Guard current operations, told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. None are in “a civil disturbance or civil response mode.”
More states and Washington, D.C., have put units on stand-by and plan to activate them on Tuesday or later in the week, increasing the total number of guardsmen to roughly 250 total, according to a defense official.
The states with current missions include Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Washington state. Units are on standby in Colorado, D.C., Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. Oregon also has some more on standby.
U.S. intelligence agencies have warned of potential civil unrest on and after Election Day. Oregon and Washington began activating guardsmen after ballot boxes were set on fire in their states. As well, the National Guard has been stepping up its cyber support during recent elections to ward off potential attacks. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has a bit more, here.
Why might there be civil unrest? For one thing, Russia is pushing lies about potential election fraud in swing states, the intel community says. The effort aims to “undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans,” according to a joint statement released Monday evening by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Academic researchers are seeing the same thing. Several groups that traffic in pro-Kremlin stories across social media shifted their focus in recent months from attacking the Ukrainian government to undermining the Democratic nominee for president, according to a recent report from Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub. The report looks at the network behind Storm-1516, an pro-Russian disinformation campaign that is trying to shift Western public opinion on Ukraine and NATO. More, here.
For another, GOP candidate Donald Trump has been lying about the integrity of the electoral process ever since he lost the 2020 election, pushing false claims about electoral fraud to the heart of his campaign.
His efforts to sow these doubts have found an increasingly enthusiastic helper in Elon Musk, whose election-doubting posts on his X social network are shared 9 times more than his less extreme election content. “That’s despite many of Musk’s claims — like alleged noncitizen voting — being false,” NBC News reports after analyzing hundreds of the billionaire’s posts. Read, here.
One more thing: A 24-year-old white supremacist was arrested Saturday while trying to “attack Nashville’s power grid using a drone carrying an explosive device,” the Department of Justice announced Monday.
His violent plotting appears to have begun in June, when he told someone he wanted to commit a mass shooting at a YMCA facility. But the following month, he shifted his attention to attacking large interstate substations because, as he told an undercover informant, “if you want to do the most damage as an accelerationist, attack high economic, high tax, political zones in every major metropolis.”
The day of the attack, he “participated in a Nordic ritual, which included reciting a Nordic prayer and discussing the Norse god Odin,” the Justice Department says. Shortly afterward, he “was at the rear of the vehicle, with the drone powered up, and the explosive device was armed and located next to the drone” when agents arrested him and took him into custody.
“If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison,” the Department of Justice said. Read more, here.
Welcome to this 2024 Election Day 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 2017, a troubled Air Force veteran killed 26 people and wounded nearly two dozen others in a mass shooting at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Suspected Russian sabotage
Russia’s military spies were behind a plot to place bombs on cargo planes flying to the U.S. and Canada this summer, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing European security officials.
The incendiary devices were mailed in July via a DHL facility in Lithuania, and eventually caught fire at a different facility in Leipzig, Germany, as well as in Birmingham, England, triggering a multinational investigation. The BBC reports a third fire ignited at a transport company in Jablonow, Poland, near Warsaw; that incident took two hours to extinguish.
The fires began in electric massage machines containing a magnesium-based substance. “Magnesium-based fires are hard to put out, especially on board a plane,” the BBC reports.
The efforts appear to have been a “test run,” Polish officials allege. What’s more, “An aircraft far from land and over an ocean would have been at risk of going down,” German authorities said, according to the Journal.
The latest: “Polish authorities have arrested four people and are searching for two more in connection with the case,” NBC News reports. More, here.
Around the services
Air Force hedges on next-gen tanker plans: The U.S. Air Force has been devising plans to develop a future tanker called the Next Generation Air Refueling System, or NGAS, to use in contested operations in the Indo-Pacific, as China develops new counter-air systems that can threaten tankers at longer ranges.
The problem: Building a new tanker from scratch doesn’t look possible any time soon, so the service might resort to simply enhancing its current fleet of tankers, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Friday at the service’s annual Airlift/Tanker Association Symposium. “Unfortunately, any new design cannot be fielded for several years at best, even if affordable,” Kendall said.
Coming soon: The service plans to wrap up a study on NGAS and finish a review of the service’s sixth-generation fighter jet program, called Next Generation Air Dominance, by the end of the year, to inform the service’s 2026 budget request. Leaders paused the next-gen fighter program so they can take another look at cost projections, new threats, and the advent of other technologies, like new robot wingmen called collaborative combat aircraft. Defense One’s Audrey Decker has more, here.
Update: An American soldier injured while working to build a pier for residents in Gaza passed away on Thursday, CNN reported Monday. His name is Quandarius Davon Stanley, and he was a 23-year-old sergeant from a transportation brigade based at Virginia’s Joint Base Langley-Eustis. Stanley and two others were “injured out on a ship at sea” in May, though not from a combat-related incident, according to Central Command officials. The two others “were immediately returned to duty after suffering minor injuries,” but Stanley was transferred to medical facilities first in Israel, and later to Texas in June. Read more from CNN, here.
By the way: Under President Biden, the U.S. has sent more than 50,000 tons of weapons to Israel since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. During that same time, the U.S. paused a single shipment of 2,000-pound bombs, “which Israel maintains a stockpile of,” John Hudson of the Washington Post reported Monday.
Despite those billions in weapons sent, Republican Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul wrote a letter to Biden late last week insisting Biden lift the hold, criticizing the single paused shipment as “downright dangerous” and “misguided.” Read the letter here.
Industry
New: Boeing workers ended their seven-week strike Monday evening, which means about 33,000 workers are headed back to their jobs as soon as Wednesday and no later than November 12.
The strike had cost the aerospace titan an estimated $1 billion each month it dragged on, according to Washington NBC affiliate King5 News. “Average annual pay for machinists, now $75,608, would climb to $119,309 in four years under the current offer,” CBS News reports.
“The new contract will raise wages more than 43 percent cumulatively over the next four years,” the New York Times reports. “The new contract also includes a $12,000 ratification bonus, which is four times as much as the bonus in the initial offer. The deal calls for improved retirement benefits and a commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial airplane in the Seattle region.” Read more at the Seattle Times.
Developing: The U.S. may soon sell South Korea four E-7 Airborne Early Warning & Control aircraft and parts for about $5 billion. Boeing is the principal contractor. The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency has more details, here.
Additional industry reading:
- “Maxar finds buyer for radar, sensor tech group,” Washington Technology reported Monday;
- “Australia kills $5.3B military space program with Lockheed,” Breaking Defense reported Monday;
- “France looks to boost export financing to help mid-sized defense firms,” Defense News reported Tuesday;
- And “Russia's defense sector is running on overdrive — but firms are warning of bankruptcy,” Business Insider reported over the weekend.