The D Brief: Russian strike leaves blackouts; SecDef heads to Asia; Earth’s hot streak; Olympians in uniform; And a bit more.

An overnight Russian drone barrage knocked out electricity for more than 68,000 Ukrainians, including near the capital city of Kyiv, Reuters reported Friday. Ukraine’s military says it shot down 20 of the 22 drones Russia launched at four different regions, Kherson, Sumy, Zhytomyr and Chernihiv. 

Less than half of those afflicted had their electricity restored by the morning. But this dynamic is likely to persist until the war ends. Reuters has more, here. 

Developing: Inflation is gradually upsetting ordinary life in Russia, “with a vast range of goods and services becoming costlier from potatoes (up 91% so far this year) to economy-class flights (up 35%),” the Wall Street Journal (gift link) reported Friday. 

What’s going on: “A surge in military spending by the government and a record labor shortage as working-age men go to the front or flee have fueled wages and pushed up prices,” the Journal writes. 

However, “Prices aren’t rising fast enough to cause an economic crisis or social unrest,” but “Stubborn inflation also means that prosecuting the war becomes costlier, which then leads to even larger military spending.” 

And sanctions on Russia by the U.S. and Ukraine’s allies have done virtually nothing to stop the flow of chips to Russia, the New York Times reported Thursday. That’s thanks in large part to at least four shell companies “facilitating the illicit trade of Western technology to Russia” via Hong Kong. 

“The companies have names like Olax Finance and Rikkon Holding,” the Times reports. “Their office, with a faded 704 number on the door, appears unoccupied. No one answered during a visit last month. An ad for air-conditioning hung in the crack of the door.” Read more (gift link), here. 

Meanwhile, the Pentagon says it just found another $2 billion in possible Ukraine aid thanks to math, or “unclear accounting definitions,” Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reported Thursday, citing a recent Government Accountability Office report. 

Speaking of the Pentagon, an alleged Ukrainian covert operation led to a highly unusual call between the military chiefs of the U.S. and Russia about two weeks ago, the New York Times reported Friday in a piece bereft of most key details. “But whatever [Russian Defense Minister Andrei] Belousov revealed…it was taken seriously enough that the Americans contacted the Ukrainians and said, essentially, if you’re thinking about doing something like this, don’t,” Eric Schmitt of the Times writes. A bit more, here. 

New: The Canadian military recently awarded General Motors a roughly $25 million contract for 90 light tactical vehicles, with the option to up to 18 more LTVs, GM announced this week. The contract involves “both nine-passenger LTVs and a new utility variant…based on the mid-size architecture of the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2,” the firm said. View an image of one, here. 

The LTVs will be used by Canada’s troop contingent deployed to Latvia for NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence Multinational Battlegroup. Canada expects to have more than 2,000 troops training in Latvia by 2026. 

Delivery is expected within five weeks, GM’s defense subsidiary said Tuesday. More, here.  

Also new: NATO just selected three firms to advance its new helicopter replacement search, known as the Next Generation Rotorcraft Capability program, alliance officials announced Friday from the Farnborough International Airshow. 

On tap: Airbus Helicopters, Lockheed Martin Sikorsky and Leonardo, which brings together expertise from six different nations—France, Germany, the U.K., the U.S., Ireland and Italy. The design plans are expected to be “modular and multi-mission, and fully interoperable with NATO standards, with a high degree of connectivity and resilient communication system,” NATO said in its award announcement. 

“The strategy to launch 3 parallel contracts awarded by competition delivers on our commitment to maximize industry expertise, opportunity and engagement in the programme, and will provide a broad range of potential concepts in the study results for our multinational customers,” NATO procurement official Stacy Cummings said in a statement Friday.

Read more: Our colleagues at Forecast International have more background, here.

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Welcome to this Friday 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 1948, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military.

SecDef is wheels-up to the Pacific Rim. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker is going along, and has this curtain-raiser on the trip: “Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin heads to Asia today for what officials described as one of the most consequential visits to the region for ‘U.S. defense ties in the Indo-Pacific since the start of the [Biden] administration.’ The trip features a meeting with counterparts from Japan and South Korea in Tokyo, and a stop in the Philippines, where Austin will announce $500 million in foreign military financing to help the island nation bolster its defenses.” Read on, here.

Related reading:

F-35’s price might rise, Lockheed warns, because the jets are getting new capabilities and hence more complexity, inflation, and because the Pentagon—maybe—will cut or slow future purchases. Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports from the Farnborough air show, here. 

Navy is still planning to pick a builder for F/A-XX next year, Northrop Grumman CEO says. In the company’s recent earnings call, Kathy Warden said that as far as she’s heard, and despite recent doubt being cast on the Pentagon’s sixth-generation aircraft projects, the Navy still intends to choose a lead designer and builder for the plane slated to replace the F/A-18 Hornet. Read on, here.

A boom in space-based intelligence is coming. Can ground networks keep up? A flood of space-based intelligence is heading toward U.S. networks as satellite constellations grow and new sensors come online—not just photos, but radar, thermal, and radio data. But to properly exploit it will take new tools, new tech, and even new ways of working with contractors, the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency says. Read what, here.

This week featured the two hottest days ever recorded on Earth—the latest records in a year of them. After Sunday’s average global temperature hit 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit, Monday’s beat it by a tenth of a degree, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. 

“This week’s records come amid a hot streak of such scale and intensity [that] scientists have struggled to fully explain it,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Those days “came on the heels of 13 straight months of unprecedented temperatures and the hottest year scientists have ever seen — are yet another worrying sign of how human-caused climate change is pushing the planet to dangerous new extremes.” 

Getting hotter, faster: “What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said. 

For the “Earth’s climate has always changed” crowd: A temperature timeline traces the changes over the past 20,000 years. Scroll all the way to the bottom, then realize that the chart is eight years old.

Lastly today: Good luck to the U.S. troops and veterans competing in the Olympic Games! Stars and Stripes previews: “Seven U.S. Army soldiers and at least two veterans qualified for the Olympic Games, held July 26 through Aug. 11 in Paris and other French cities. Another three active-duty soldiers will compete in the Paralympics from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8.” Read on, here, and have a safe weekend.

Defense One