The D Brief: Israel, Hezbollah exchange strikes; Russia pounds Ukraine; Chinese plane in Japanese airspace; Army’s cutting-edge exercise; And a bit more.

Nearly 100 Israeli jets carried out a massive air attack inside Lebanon early Sunday, striking dozens of Hezbollah targets in order to stop what it described as “a large-scale terrorist attack” using rockets and drones, according to Israel’s military.

Targets included “thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels staged across “more than 40 Hezbollah launch areas” and “aimed for immediate fire toward northern and central Israel,” the IDF announced on social media. The Israelis also attacked “a terrorist cell operating in the area of Khiam in southern Lebanon,” it added. 

Locations around at least 10 Lebanese cities were hit, according to the BBC, which described the Israeli strikes as “its biggest since the full-scale war” between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.

Hezbollah was still able to fire more than 300 rockets at nearly a dozen Israeli military facilities and positions, including in the Golan Heights, the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed afterward. Those rockets were used to distract Israel’s air defense systems while Hezbollah drones attacked elsewhere, Nasrallah said. 

Worth noting: Some Hezbollah drones “were launched at a military site in central Israel, reflecting the growing range and sophistication of Hezbollah’s arsenal,” the New York Times reported. “Nasrallah identified the target in central Israel as the Glilot military base just outside Tel Aviv, headquarters of Unit 8200, a vaunted signals intelligence branch.” Nasrallah claimed the strike on Glilot was successful; the Israelis say otherwise.

Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport even halted flights for a while, but those operations resumed by 7 a.m. Sunday, according to the Washington Post. 

For now, the Hezbollah-Israel exchange of fire is over, Nasrallah said. However, “If we decide that this initial response isn’t enough and needs completion, that can come later, at another time,” he said Sunday. But “At the current stage, people can take a breath and relax,” he added. 

The IDF had been bracing for a Hezbollah attack since the Israelis assassinated a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut late last month. The region has been on edge since, with observers around the world expecting some kind of widening regional violence beyond the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war inside Gaza.

By the way: America’s top military officer is in Israel. Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown arrived Sunday evening. According to the Israeli military, Brown has talks scheduled with Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and others. “The IDF will continue to deepen its relationship with the U.S. Armed Forces out of a commitment to strengthening regional stability and the coordination between the two militaries,” the Israelis tweeted Sunday. 

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin also spoke with his Israeli counterpart on Sunday. The two “reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and the United States’ ironclad resolve to support Israel’s defense against threats from Iran and its regional partners and proxies,” Austin’s team said in a statement. 

Austin has also ordered two Carrier Strike Groups “to remain in the region” for an indefinite period of time, the Pentagon said. And Austin urged the Israelis to complete “negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage-release deal” with Hamas. But that process still doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast. Reuters has the latest from Cairo, here. 

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Welcome to this Monday 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 three years ago, an ISIS suicide bomber detonated outside of the airport in Kabul during the hurried U.S. withdrawal, killing 13 U.S. troops and at least 169 Afghan civilians. “These 13 Americans—and the many more that were wounded—were patriots in the highest sense,” President Biden said in a statement Monday. “They embodied the very best of who we are as a nation: brave, committed, selfless,” the president said, “And we owe them and their families a sacred debt we will never be able to fully repay, but will never cease working to fulfill.”

Pentagon: “Another year has passed, but our gratitude will never wane,” Defense Secretary Austin said in his own statement. “My thoughts are with our fallen troops and their families on this somber day — and with the families of all those whose loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice during America’s two decades of war in Afghanistan.”

Russia hit Ukraine overnight with one of its largest strikes of the war so far, “involving over a hundred missiles of various types and around a hundred [Iran-designed drones known informally as] ‘Shaheds,’” Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky said in a video message posted to social media. “The energy sector has sustained significant damage, but in every area affected by power outages, restoration work is already in progress,” he said Monday. 

The death toll is unknown, but deaths have been reported in the Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Volyn and Zhytomyr regions, according to Ukrainian authorities.

The attacks targeted energy infrastructure, causing power outages in several cities. “Throughout the war, Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, attempting to plunge its citizens into darkness and use freezing winter temperatures as a weapon of war,” CNN reports.

One of the Russian drones damaged the hydroelectric plant of the Dniepr River dam at Vyshhorod, Ukrainian officials said, adding that the dam itself is intact—and indeed, invulnerable to missile attacks.

Zelenskyy also asked European allied pilots to help shoot down Russian missiles and drones. “Across Ukraine, we could do much more to protect lives if the aviation of our European neighbors operated in concert with our F-16s and air defense systems,” he said Monday. “If such unity has proven effective in the Middle East, it must work in Europe too. Life holds the same value everywhere.”

He also seemed again to ask “America, Britain, France, and our other partners” to be allowed to use donated or transferred weapons to strike inside Russia. “Ukraine cannot be constrained in its long-range capabilities when the terrorists face no such limitations,” Zelenskyy said. “Our defenders cannot be restricted in their weapons when Russia deploys its entire arsenal, including ‘Shaheds’ and ballistic missiles from North Korea.” More, here.

In a new first, a Chinese spy plane breached Japanese airspace, causing Tokyo to scramble jets near the Danjo Islands around noon local time Monday, Reuters reports in a particularly brief dispatch. 

Involved: A single Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance plane. 

How it happened: The intrusion began “around 10:40 a.m, the Chinese plane started to circle over waters southeast of the Danjo Islands in Goto City in the southwestern prefecture of Nagasaki,” NHK news reports. “Then, around 11:29 a.m, it entered Japanese airspace from about 22 kilometers east of the islands and stayed there for about two minutes…After that, it continued circling the area. It headed for mainland China at about 1:15 p.m.”

For the record: “Chinese non-military aircraft have entered Japanese airspace before,” NHK writes, and notes “A propeller aircraft of the now-defunct State Oceanic Administration was confirmed to have entered airspace over waters off the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture in December 2012. A small unmanned aircraft also entered around the same area in May 2017.” But that most recent episode was seven years ago, illustrating the unusual nature of this apparent breach. 

North Korea tests suicide drones. Four types were visible in photos released by Pyongyang, including at least one rocket-assisted variant, Reuters reports. State media reported on Monday that the drones hit various test targets. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watched the Saturday tests at the Drone Institute of North Korea’s Academy of Defence Sciences, and urged researchers to develop artificial intelligence for the unmanned vehicles, state media reported on Monday. More, here.

Developing: Arrest of Telegram founder could hurt public understanding of the Ukraine war. Sunday’s arrest in France of the controversial Russian-born founder of Telegram—and potential actions against the social media and messaging platform itself—could reduce the public’s ability to fully understand the war in Ukraine, reports D1’s Patrick Tucker, because the site is a key source of analysis and opinion of Russian military bloggers. More, here. 

More on the Army’s recent Louisiana exercise. ​​The Army just put a new unit loaded with cutting-edge tech to the test at Fort Johnson. In the latest episode of the Defense One Podcast, D1’s Sam Skove shares what he witnessed during a recent week-long wargame. Listen, here.

ICYMI: Read Skove’s report, which kicks off with the moped-like whine of a drone overhead—that the Army unit can hear but can’t find with its special drone-detector gear.

Lastly today: The launch of China’s first highly-anticipated and highly-rated video game comes with a bit of censorship. Released last week after years of anticipation, Black Myth: Wukong quickly “became the second most-played game ever on streaming platform Steam, garnering more than 2.1 million concurrent players and selling more than 4.5 million copies,” the BBC reports.

“It’s not just a Chinese game targeting the Chinese market or the Chinese-speaking world,” Haiqing Yu, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University, whose studies the sociopolitical and economic impact of China’s digital media, told the BBC. “Players all over the world [are playing] a game that has a Chinese cultural factor.”

But: “Many players were furious after the company behind Black Myth: Wukong sent them a list of topics to avoid while livestreaming the game, including ‘feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse’.” Read on, here.

Defense One