The D Brief: Secret Service chief resigns; Biden’s allied focus; B-52s to Romania; The wrong drone lessons?; And a bit more.
Breaking: The director of the Secret Service has resigned, one day after an hours-long grilling in a House hearing into how a would-be assassin managed to wound a presidential candidate. Kimberly Cheatle, a three-decade veteran of the agency, resigned Tuesday morning. (CNN)
Cheatle had even lost the confidence of some of her own agents, the Washington Post reports, adding a tick-tock of how we got here—and several of the agency’s notable failures of the past. Read that, here.
Can Biden’s arsenal-of-democracy foreign policy outlast his presidency? The foreign-policy legacy of President Biden will be defined, in part, by his exhaustive support of allies in crisis: Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan. “American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with,” the president said last October in an Oval Office appeal for more aid. “To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.” But Biden’s successor will likely view these three areas, and America’s role in them, in at least slightly—and possibly wildly—different ways. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker explores why, here.
Welcome to this Tuesday 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 1972, the U.S. launched Landsat 1, which NASA remembers as “the first Earth-observing satellite to be launched with the express intent to study and monitor our planet’s landmasses.” As a result of its new imagery, “Country boundaries were redrawn, and entire islands were discovered,” according to the U.S. Geological Service. One such newly-discovered locale off Canada’s coast was given the name “Landsat Island.”
The U.S. just deployed a strategic bomber task force to Romania for the first time ever—and attracted the attention of Russia in the process, the Air Force announced this weekend. Two B-52H Stratofortress aircraft flew to Eastern Europe after departing Louisiana and traveling over the Barents Sea, where they were intercepted by two Russian aircraft at about 8 in the morning Sunday.
“The U.S. aircraft did not change course due to the [Russian] intercept and continued along their scheduled flight plan without incident” before arriving at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, the Air Force said.
For the record, “The B-52s [sent to Romania] are NOT nuclear-capable but equipped to launch long-range conventional missiles,” noted nuclear scholar Hans Kristensen.
Sampling bias alert: Ukraine’s allies risk learning the wrong lessons when it comes to drones and warfare today, Defense One’s Sam Skove reported Monday. That’s because numerous social media videos of Ukrainian drones destroying tanks give viewers the impression that the units flying the drones are more successful than they actually are, said Michael Koffman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The least successful units are going to show you probably their most successful strikes,” said Kofman, who has traveled to Ukraine several times since Russia launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.
An overreliance on drones could also lead to commanders micromanaging troops, he said, likening the process to playing a real-time strategy computer game.
There’s also an “overemphasis on maneuver warfare,” in the U.S. military, Koffman warned, referring to a military strategy consisting of disorienting the enemy through fast, unexpected strikes that result in fewer casualties. But with a conflict like the war in Ukraine, “you really have to make peace with a high level of attrition.” Read more, here.
From the gym to the frontlines: Ahead of the Olympics, which begin Friday, the New York Times just published a feature focusing on Ukraine’s many exceptional athletes and coaches—about 500 of whom have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine. That represents “about one in six of the 3,000 sports figures who have taken up arms” since February 2022.
“Among the dead are 50 athletes and coaches who were civilians and died in airstrikes or were killed in another defenseless manner,” according to the Times, which notes, “Their deaths are being investigated as possible war crimes.” Continue reading, here.
For your ears only: Get to better know Ukraine’s Olympic climber Jenya Kazbekova in a recent episode of Alex Honnold’s “Climbing Gold” podcast. Kazbekova discusses her own family legacy (her grandmother was an Olympic climber for the Soviets), as well as the difficulties of ordinary things like simply focusing while your country is at war and you’re at the gym.
And travel inside Ukraine’s wartime underground gym culture with British journalist Matt Groom, who visited Ukraine’s Kharkiv, where a gym owner taught kids during breaks from fighting with his special forces team trying to push Russia away from Kharkiv. You can watch a trailer for that one on YouTube, here.
Pentagon’s new Arctic strategy notes Chinese-Russian cooperation and warming seas, and the new technology to help deal with them. Released on Monday, the new strategy says robotic automation and artificial intelligence will help the U.S. military keep tabs on the accelerating activity at the top of the world. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports.
Can AI speed up the discovery of new materials? The U.S. Army aims to find out. Through two new contracts with SandboxAQ, an Alphabet spinoff, service officials hope AI can shorten its hunt for alloys that make tanks lighter, chemicals that make batteries last longer, even 3D-printers that replace long supply lines with a forward-deployed workbench. Patrick Tucker has more.
And lastly: New design for UK-Italy-Japan fighter unveiled at FIA. Three companies building a next-generation combat fighter for the U.K., Italy, and Japan just released a new concept for its design with a bigger, triangular wingspan, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports from this week’s Farnborough International Airshow in the UK.
The trilateral effort is called the Global Combat Air Programme, or GCAP. The idea is to use technology developed for the UK’s Tempest program, which aims to fly its own prototype in 2027 and ultimately produce a jet to replace the Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoon.
But the unveiling comes amid uncertainty about the future of the multi-billion dollar program—and indeed, of Western sixth-gen combat jets in general. Continue reading, here.
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