The D Brief: Base lockdown in Germany; Nord Stream suspect sought; F-15s to Israel; The Navy’s new long-range missile; And a bit more.
Developing: Two German bases on lockdown after possible sabotage of water supply, DW reports. The Cologne-Wahn base employs 4,300 soldiers and 1,200 civilians; the nearby NATO air base in the town of Geilenkirchen is now also on lockdown. The potential sabotage occurs against the backdrop of increasing Russian hybrid warfare attacks across Europe.
Russia may finally be pulling troops away from the frontline in Ukraine to deal with Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, CNN reports citing the commander of Ukraine’s “Nightingale” battalion. Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kasčiūnas says that Russia is also pulling troops out of Kaliningrad to deal with the Ukrainians on Russian territory.
Context: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that forces had captured 100 servicemen and had advanced another 0.6 to 1.2 miles into the region of Kursk. Ukraine officials claim they now control towns and villages 18 miles into Russia.
New: Nord Stream pipeline attack suspect named in warrant. Germany is looking for a Ukrainian man, named as Volodymyr Z, in connection with the September 2022 Nord Stream gas pipeline explosion, several outlets including CNN, Reuters and the Associated Press reported Wednesday. German news site Zeit Online also has a detailed breakdown of the ongoing investigation.
Related reading: “Beijing admits Chinese ship destroyed key Baltic gas pipeline ‘by accident’,” the South China Morning Post reported Monday.
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson and Patrick Tucker. 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 1941, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter laying out their postwar aims.
Developing: The U.S. may soon sell Israel 50 F-15s for more than $18 billion. That’s in addition to $700 million in tank rounds, $100 million in missiles, and more than $600 million for tactical vehicles and mortars.
The five new potential sales were announced Tuesday by the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency. “The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” DSCA said in each instance. “This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives,” the agency added.
The missiles could arrive first since current plans call for them to “be sourced from new production.” However, provided U.S. lawmakers do not block the proposed sales, the other four won’t materialize until much later—2026 for the M1148A1P2 Medium Tactical Vehicles and M933A1 120 mm mortars; 2027 for the 120 mm tank cartridges; and 2029 for the F-15IA and F-15I+ aircraft.
Near Yemen, U.S. forces say they “destroyed two Iranian-backed Houthi vessels in the Red Sea” on Monday. According to defense officials at Central Command, “These vessels presented a clear and imminent threat to U.S. and coalition forces, and merchant vessels in the region,” though they did not elaborate on the threat (e.g., an armed crew, an unmanned vessel containing a remote bomb, or something else; it’s unclear).
China says it destroyed a Tiawanese spy network. A statement from Chinese Ministry of State Security references more than a thousand alleged potential instances of spying by Tiawanese individuals, but few details were unveiled, according to Radio Free Asia.
A second opinion: Hung Chin-fu, a political science professor at National Cheng Kung University, told the Taipei Times that the announcement was part of a broader push by Chinese officials to portray the country as under attack both externally and internally.
Get to better know the U.S. Navy’s new AIM-174B missile. It was first acknowledged by U.S. officials just last month and, at 250 miles, Reuters reports it “outranges China’s PL-15 missile, allowing U.S. jets to keep threats farther from aircraft carriers, and safely strike ‘high-value’ Chinese targets, such as command-and-control planes.”
It’s built from Raytheon’s roughly $4 million SM-6 air defense missile, which could ease production considerations.
Parallel to this, “The secretive Lockheed Martin AIM-260, a separate U.S. Air Force program to develop an extremely long-range air-to-air missile small enough for stealth aircraft to carry internally, has been in development for at least seven years,” Reuters writes. LM was otherwise tightlipped about related developments. Read more, here.
From the region: By mid-2025, the Philippines say their new ATR72-600 aircraft will be kitted up with Israeli ISR, or airborne surveillance gear, the Philippine Inquirer reported Monday.
Trivia: Israel also supplies the Philippines with Shaldag Mk. V fast attack interdiction boats, as well as BRP Lolinato To-ong (PG-902) and BRP Gener Tinangag (PG-903) gunboats.
Additional reading:
Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are teaming up to make a new solid rocket motor, the firms behind Javelins and Patriot air defense missiles announced Tuesday.
Their first goal? Make “solid rocket motors for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System,” with work set to begin at the General Dynamics facility in Camden, Arkansas, beginning sometime next year, Lockheed Martin said in its press release.
Context: “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, demand for solid rocket motors has skyrocketed as the United States and its partners sought to backfill stocks of weapons like Javelin and Stinger, as well as provide motors to meet growing needs in the space domain,” Breaking Defense reports. “Although General Dynamics has kept its interest in the solid rocket motor market quiet until now, several defense tech startups such as Ursa Major Technologies, Anduril and X-Bow Systems have announced plans to enter the market.”
Related reading: “Defense Department engineer charged with retaining classified documents,” the Washington Post reported Friday after a man was arrested trying to fly to Mexico with 150 pages of documents, many reportedly marked “top secret.”
Happening this afternoon: Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., is set to keynote this year’s U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium in Omaha, Nebraska. Defense One’s Audrey Decker will be present for that, which begins at 2 p.m. ET.
By the way: Arms control historian and scholar Jeffrey Lewis recently explained “Why America Stands to Lose If It Resumes Nuclear Testing” two weeks ago in Foreign Affairs.
Why bring it up? One of former President Trump’s national security advisors Robert O’Brien floated the idea in a column for Foreign Affairs published in early July. According to O’Brien’s thinking, resuming nuclear testing—which has not been done in the U.S. since 1992—would somehow help the U.S. “maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles.”
The U.S., of course, already has far more nuclear warheads than China. But it wouldn’t take much of a nuclear exchange to cause a massive problem all around the world, as Lewis explained graphically in his work of speculative fiction, “The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States.”
Trivia: “During the Cold War, China set off 45 test explosions, France 210, Russia 715 and the United States 1,030, with the goal of uncovering flaws in weapon designs and verifying their reliability,” the New York Times reported after O’Brien published his argument last month.
Expert reax: “China has much more to gain from resumed testing than we do,” Siegfried Hecker, former director at the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico, told the Times. “It would open the door for others to test and reignite an arms race to the peril of the entire world. We shouldn’t go there,” he advised.
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