Post by Admin on Jun 29, 2021 11:13:42 GMT
Strikes and counterstrikes in Syria. Rockets landed on Monday at an oil field site that U.S. officials call "Green Village," leading U.S. troops to fire defenses against the incoming munitions. Green Village is "part of a larger security zone where some 900 U.S. troops operate to protect support local Syrian fighters against ISIS," CNN reports. No injuries were immediately reported
The attack followed Sunday's U.S. airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias, which were retaliation for militia-launched UAV attacks on bases inside Iraq.
About those UAVs: The 12- to 15-foot drones carry up to 30 kg of explosives, making them "a clear escalation by Iran — and a worrying signal to intelligence officials that the US no longer enjoys autonomy in the skies over Iraq," reports CNN's Katie Bo Williams. "Rather than being guided by a pilot from a remote location, some of these small, fixed-wing drones use GPS navigation, making them far less visible to US surveillance systems and impervious to jamming."
Actions renew concern over war-powers authorization. Some Democrats say the Biden administration should be consulting Congress, but the White House says the strikes are within the president's Article II authority. CNN: "The airstrikes come after the House passed legislation earlier this month repealing the 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is planning to take up similar legislation next month, and the Biden administration has said it supports the repeal, arguing that the 2002 authorization is no longer used for any military operations."
The attack followed Sunday's U.S. airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias, which were retaliation for militia-launched UAV attacks on bases inside Iraq.
About those UAVs: The 12- to 15-foot drones carry up to 30 kg of explosives, making them "a clear escalation by Iran — and a worrying signal to intelligence officials that the US no longer enjoys autonomy in the skies over Iraq," reports CNN's Katie Bo Williams. "Rather than being guided by a pilot from a remote location, some of these small, fixed-wing drones use GPS navigation, making them far less visible to US surveillance systems and impervious to jamming."
Actions renew concern over war-powers authorization. Some Democrats say the Biden administration should be consulting Congress, but the White House says the strikes are within the president's Article II authority. CNN: "The airstrikes come after the House passed legislation earlier this month repealing the 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is planning to take up similar legislation next month, and the Biden administration has said it supports the repeal, arguing that the 2002 authorization is no longer used for any military operations."
Feb. 15: Rockets kill one U.S. contractor, injure one servicemember at Erbil International Airport in Iraq.
Feb. 26: U.S. forces hit a site in Syria used by two Iranian-backed militia groups.
April: A CIA hangar in Erbil is damaged by a UAV launched by Iran-backed militia forces.
June: Another drone attack damaged a dining facility at Baghdad's main airport.
June 27: U.S. forces hit two sites they say were used to launch the drone attacks, one in Syria and one in Iraq.
June 28: Rockets hit a U.S. military base in Syria.
The rapid spread of COVID's delta variant is causing new lockdowns around the world. Washington Post: "The new curbs on travel and daily life stretched from Australia and Bangladesh to South Africa and Germany, where authorities over the weekend set new limits on travelers from 'virus-variant zones' such as Portugal and Russia." More, here.
Lastly today: Physics throws cold water on predictions of Space Force "starcruisers." Responding in War on the Rocks to a previous article there, Rebecca Reesman and James Wilson write: "Jeff Becker claims that the era of 'starcruisers' — spacecraft whose maneuvering is not principally dictated by orbital mechanics — is closer than people think. While Becker examines some meaningful technological developments, his analysis — like other work on the topic — does not recognize the challenges and physics that would be involved in fighting a conflict in space."
The U.S. military hit a series of alleged small drone facilities across Iraq and Syria with airstrikes on Sunday evening. Two locations inside Syria and another in Iraq were hit in order to "disrupt and deter...unmanned aerial vehicle attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Four militiamen were allegedly killed in the strikes, the Associated Press reports, citing militia officials without specifying affiliations. The U.S. military alleges militiamen with Kata'ib Hezbollah and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada were among "several Iran-backed militia groups" that worked inside the buildings now destroyed. (According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, those two groups are closely linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.)
Background: "Since April, Iranian-backed militias have launched at least five drone attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq," the Wall Street Journal reports. Reuters reported on one of earliest of those, which occurred on April 14 in Erbil. The apparent uptick suggests the units "are turning to more sophisticated means of putting pressure on the American presence in the country," according to U.S. officials.
Iraq's prime minister and military condemned the strikes in statements via their spokesmen.
Four militiamen were allegedly killed in the strikes, the Associated Press reports, citing militia officials without specifying affiliations. The U.S. military alleges militiamen with Kata'ib Hezbollah and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada were among "several Iran-backed militia groups" that worked inside the buildings now destroyed. (According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, those two groups are closely linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.)
Background: "Since April, Iranian-backed militias have launched at least five drone attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq," the Wall Street Journal reports. Reuters reported on one of earliest of those, which occurred on April 14 in Erbil. The apparent uptick suggests the units "are turning to more sophisticated means of putting pressure on the American presence in the country," according to U.S. officials.
Iraq's prime minister and military condemned the strikes in statements via their spokesmen.
"Defensive precision airstrikes" on "operational and weapons storage facilities" is how the Pentagon described its actions in a statement from spokesman John Kirby. (The Pentagon also released three video clips of the strikes, which you can find here, here, and here.)
Disrupt and deter trivia: "The last such strike was at the end of February," Reuters' Idrees Ali tweeted Sunday evening.
"Forever War Lite" is how Task & Purpose describes the strikes, with an accompanying graphic.
Worth noting: At least two larger developments are unfolding as this militias-vs.-U.S. beef plays out:
The quest for a new "Iran deal," since both Tehran and Washington are back on a diplomatic track that could lead to a nuclear monitoring deal to curb Iran's nuclear program;
The U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan, a remarkable note, really, and a fraught milestone that officials have said for weeks is possible as early as mid-July (see, e.g., New York Times from May 25 and Associated Press on June 24).
One last thing about small drones: For at least the past year, CENTCOM's Gen. Frank McKenzie has been sounding the alarm bells over the disruptive and dangerous threat from unmanned aerial systems and armed small drones—not that there are a whole lot of countermeasures widely available, as we've reviewed in our podcast as recently as this past October:
"The UAS threat, the small drone threat, the quadcopter less than the arms length of a human being, is what really probably concerns me the most in the theater," he told reporters April 22. "I would note, those things concern me greatly because our air defense system and our patriots and our other radars, they're very good at seeing the larger objects, be it ballistic missiles or be it larger land-attack cruise missiles or larger drones. The smaller drone is a problem, and [the] smaller drone is the future of warfare, and we need to get ahead of that right now."
"I argue all the time with my Air Force friends that the future of flight is vertical and it's unmanned, and I believe we are seeing it now," he said on June 10, 2020, at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. "And I'm not talking about the large unmanned platforms which are the size of a conventional fighter jet that we can see and deal with as we would any other platform. I'm talking about one that you can go out and buy at Costco right now in the United States for a thousand dollars, you know a four-quad rotorcraft or something like that that can be launched and flown and with very simple modifications it can be made into something that can drop a weapon—a hand grenade or something else. Right now, the fact of the matter is we're on the wrong side of that equation."
Disrupt and deter trivia: "The last such strike was at the end of February," Reuters' Idrees Ali tweeted Sunday evening.
"Forever War Lite" is how Task & Purpose describes the strikes, with an accompanying graphic.
Worth noting: At least two larger developments are unfolding as this militias-vs.-U.S. beef plays out:
The quest for a new "Iran deal," since both Tehran and Washington are back on a diplomatic track that could lead to a nuclear monitoring deal to curb Iran's nuclear program;
The U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan, a remarkable note, really, and a fraught milestone that officials have said for weeks is possible as early as mid-July (see, e.g., New York Times from May 25 and Associated Press on June 24).
One last thing about small drones: For at least the past year, CENTCOM's Gen. Frank McKenzie has been sounding the alarm bells over the disruptive and dangerous threat from unmanned aerial systems and armed small drones—not that there are a whole lot of countermeasures widely available, as we've reviewed in our podcast as recently as this past October:
"The UAS threat, the small drone threat, the quadcopter less than the arms length of a human being, is what really probably concerns me the most in the theater," he told reporters April 22. "I would note, those things concern me greatly because our air defense system and our patriots and our other radars, they're very good at seeing the larger objects, be it ballistic missiles or be it larger land-attack cruise missiles or larger drones. The smaller drone is a problem, and [the] smaller drone is the future of warfare, and we need to get ahead of that right now."
"I argue all the time with my Air Force friends that the future of flight is vertical and it's unmanned, and I believe we are seeing it now," he said on June 10, 2020, at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. "And I'm not talking about the large unmanned platforms which are the size of a conventional fighter jet that we can see and deal with as we would any other platform. I'm talking about one that you can go out and buy at Costco right now in the United States for a thousand dollars, you know a four-quad rotorcraft or something like that that can be launched and flown and with very simple modifications it can be made into something that can drop a weapon—a hand grenade or something else. Right now, the fact of the matter is we're on the wrong side of that equation."
The Afghanistan conflict is "not a winnable war," and the U.S. will continue withdrawing troops from the country, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday, the same day President Biden met with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani.
One big reason this matters: Republicans had been pressing Biden to reverse course and stop the withdrawal, Defense One's Jacqueline Feldscher reports.
As for Ghani, he said he respects America's decision to withdraw and rejects any "false narratives of abandonment." But he still painted a grim picture of the security situation in Afghanistan," comparing it to 1861, when the Civil War began in the United States. "The then-young republic of the United States was under attack and unity, determination, and ensuring that an exclusionary agenda was not allowed—[this] is the type of moment for us," Ghani told journalists. Read on, here.
And finally today: Allegedly classified British documents were found in a "soggy heap" behind a bus station in Kent last Tuesday morning, the BBC reported this weekend.
There were at least two sets of documents recovered in the almost 50-page heap, and one batch concerned "the likely Russian reaction to [the Royal Navy's HMS Defender's] passage through Ukrainian waters off the Crimea coast." (That event occurred one day after the documents were found.) The other bundle "detail[ed] plans for a possible UK military presence in Afghanistan after the US-led Nato operation there ends," the BBC reports, and even shared photos of some of what was found.
Said the British military in a statement: "As the public would expect, the Ministry of Defence plans carefully.
One big reason this matters: Republicans had been pressing Biden to reverse course and stop the withdrawal, Defense One's Jacqueline Feldscher reports.
As for Ghani, he said he respects America's decision to withdraw and rejects any "false narratives of abandonment." But he still painted a grim picture of the security situation in Afghanistan," comparing it to 1861, when the Civil War began in the United States. "The then-young republic of the United States was under attack and unity, determination, and ensuring that an exclusionary agenda was not allowed—[this] is the type of moment for us," Ghani told journalists. Read on, here.
And finally today: Allegedly classified British documents were found in a "soggy heap" behind a bus station in Kent last Tuesday morning, the BBC reported this weekend.
There were at least two sets of documents recovered in the almost 50-page heap, and one batch concerned "the likely Russian reaction to [the Royal Navy's HMS Defender's] passage through Ukrainian waters off the Crimea coast." (That event occurred one day after the documents were found.) The other bundle "detail[ed] plans for a possible UK military presence in Afghanistan after the US-led Nato operation there ends," the BBC reports, and even shared photos of some of what was found.
Said the British military in a statement: "As the public would expect, the Ministry of Defence plans carefully.
America’s Afghan helpers may get evacuated. The Biden administration appears to be heeding calls to bring people who worked as interpreters or in other roles during U.S. operations out of the country until their request for asylum can be processed, according to a White House plan reported by the New York Times. It’s not clear to which countries tens of thousands of Afghans could be sent.
Army vaccine trials. A vaccine being researched and tested by the Army is effective against different coronavirus variants, Defense One reports. However, the United States remains vulnerable to future pandemics, according to the scientists.
Military pulled into racism-teaching politics. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushed back on GOP lawmaker’s comments Wednesday regarding critical race theory being taught and discussed among military personnel, including West Point cadets, Defense One reports.
Here’s a quote: “I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. And the United States Military Academy is a university. And it is important that we train and we understand — and I want to understand white rage and I’m white. And I want to understand it,” Milley said.
Army vaccine trials. A vaccine being researched and tested by the Army is effective against different coronavirus variants, Defense One reports. However, the United States remains vulnerable to future pandemics, according to the scientists.
Military pulled into racism-teaching politics. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushed back on GOP lawmaker’s comments Wednesday regarding critical race theory being taught and discussed among military personnel, including West Point cadets, Defense One reports.
Here’s a quote: “I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. And the United States Military Academy is a university. And it is important that we train and we understand — and I want to understand white rage and I’m white. And I want to understand it,” Milley said.