The D Brief: Attack wounds US troops; Mideast braces for Iranian retaliation; Robot minefield breachers; B-52 plan gets pricier; And a bit more…

By admin On Aug 6, 2024

At least two rockets hit Ain al Asad Air Base, Iraq, on Monday, wounding five U.S. troops and two contractors, the Washington Post reports, adding that all seven are in stable condition.

The attack “resembled previous ones carried out by Iran-backed Iraqi armed groups, which have targeted the base repeatedly over the past several years but intensified their attacks after Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza began in October,” the New York Times reports.

Israel, Hezbollah exchange fire. The latter “launched a stream of attack drones into northern Israel on Tuesday, in what the armed group said was a response to an Israeli strike a day earlier that the Israeli military said had killed a field commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. The tit-for-tat attacks are further ratcheting up anxiety in a region bracing for retaliation for twin strikes that killed Hamas and Hezbollah leaders last week,” the Times reports. “An Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed five people on Tuesday, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry; Israel said it had hit structures used by Hezbollah. Several hours later, Hezbollah said it had fired drones toward Israeli military sites north of the Israeli city of Acre.”

Video: Israeli police mop up the scene of one drone strike (Al Jazeera)

U.S., other diplomats race to head off Iranian retaliation. “It is a critical moment. We are engaged in intense diplomacy pretty much around the clock, with a very simple message: All parties must refrain from escalation. All parties must take steps to ease tensions. Escalation is not in anyone’s interest. It will only lead to more conflict, more violence, more insecurity,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a State Department news conference. “It is urgent that all parties make the right choices in the hours and days ahead.”

Blinken also called, again, for a ceasefire in Gaza. “That, in turn, will unlock possibilities for more enduring calm, not only in Gaza itself but in other areas where the conflict could spread.”

Explainer: Why is Iran expected to attack Israel? “Iran has vowed to retaliate for the killing of a senior Hamas leader in Tehran last week, an attack for which it has blamed Israel.” (NYT)

Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Bradley Peniston and Audrey Decker. 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 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. A year later, The New Yorker devoted an entire issue to journalist John Hersey’s report from the devastated city.

Recent multinational exercises in the Pacific have focused on Italy’s carrier strike group. “At the most basic level, why is there an Italian CSG in the Indo-Pacific in the first place? Is this yet another deployment joining the flurry of other European forays into the region? And, of no less relevance, in what ways – if at all – do these developments matter to the UK?” asks Alessio Patalano, war studies professor at King’s College London, writing for RUSI. The answers, Patalano says, show “a significant shift in approach to international affairs under Giorgia Meloni’s government. Such a shift is both a reflection of, and a driver for, the reconceptualisation and expansion of Italy’s geopolitical concept of an ‘enlarged Mediterranean’ which informs the country’s foreign and security policy.” Read that, here.

H/T to blogger Cmdr. Salamander, who applauds the Cavour-centered exercise as one of the “very good developments out there that are slowly building capacity and shaping national mindsets in a very positive direction for the West and her friends.”

Tomorrow’s soldiers may breach minefields with robots made from decades-old APCs. On Thursday, the Army test-fired a Mine Clearing Line Charge from a specially rigged M113 personnel carrier. Check out the video—and Sam Skove’s conversation with the innovators are 18th Airborne Corps who are searching for cheaper, safer ways to conduct combined arms breaches, here

The plan to keep B-52s flying is getting even pricier. The Air Force’s complex effort to put new engines and radars on its 1960s-era B-52 Stratofortresses is running billions of dollars over budget, according to service officials. D1’s Audrey Decker reports from Dayton, Ohio, here.

Additional reading:

Defense One