The D Brief: Allies press US on missiles; Boeing workers strike; Israeli SOF hit Syria; Navy’s sub-building spur; And a bit more.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is visiting the White House today, partly in the hopes of convincing President Biden to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons inside Russia as Ukraine prepares for a Russian military newly supplied with ballistic missiles from Iran, U.S. officials told the Associated Press.

Biden is reportedly expected to permit British and French missiles (Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles, e.g.) to target military positions inside Russia, according to the New York Times, citing European officials; just not American-made long-range weapons like the ATACMS missile, with a range of around 190 miles. 

By the way: Poland’s top diplomat just urged Washington to lift those weapons restrictions, Reuters reported Thursday from Warsaw during a stop by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

But Russian leader Vladimir Putin had another ominous warning for Ukraine’s allies, saying Thursday that authorizing long-range strikes would put NATO countries “directly at war with Russia.”

On the other hand, 17 former ambassadors and generals think Putin’s threat of war with NATO can be ignored. Writing in a letter to the White House this week, they said, “Easing the restrictions on Western weapons will not cause Moscow to escalate. We know this because Ukraine is already striking territory Russia considers its own—including Crimea and Kursk—with these weapons and Moscow’s response remains unchanged.”

“It’s far more cost-effective to destroy the archer rather than the arrow,” the generals and diplomats said, arguing, “Ukraine should be empowered to use Western-provided weapons to destroy the sites where these missiles are housed should it have the opportunity, along with the more than 200 other Russian military and paramilitary targets identified by the Institute for the Study of War as being in range of Ukrainian ATACMS.”

Shifting red lines: Reuters compiled a list of weapons Kyiv’s allies have been reluctant to send, but eventually relented over the course of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, including: F-16s, tanks, ATACMS, and more. 

Also from Reuters: Russia has been producing a new exploding drone made with a Chinese engine, according to European intelligence officials. It’s known as the Garpiya-A1, and at least 2,500 of them were made over the last 12 months ending in July. 

“A former cement factory situated in Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic, in western Russia…is being used to produce the drones,” Reuters writes. And they’ve already been used in Ukraine, “causing damage to critical infrastructure as well as both civilian and military casualties.” Read more—including a reconstruction of the alleged “production chain” for these drones—here.

Additional reading: 

---

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 1862, 46-year-old volunteer U.S. Army Corporal Barton Mitchell found an envelope on the ground at a campground recently abandoned by Confederate troops in a field outside of Frederick, Maryland. Inside was a document known as Special Order 191, detailing maneuvers for Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s plans to invade the North. Four days later, the treasonous Lee’s troops were turned back by Army Maj. Gen. George McClellan’s forces near Sharpsburg, Maryland—yielding America’s bloodiest day ever at the Battle of Antietam, which left 22,727 soldiers dead, wounded, or missing.

Developing: 33,000 Boeing workers have gone on strike, a first for the titan of industry since 2008. Some work at facilities that help build U.S. Air Force aircraft such as the KC-46 tanker, E-7 radar plane, and more. It was unclear at press time whether the strike would affect these programs; stay tuned. 

Seven earlier strikes. Reuters has a list of the other times that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, has gone on strike at Boeing since the 1930s. Reuters has a list.

Navy adds $1B to its unconventional submarine-production push. After years of handwringing over the supply chain’s declining ability to meet the Navy’s demands for submarine production and maintenance, the Pentagon is paying third parties billions of dollars to restore it. 

On Tuesday, the Navy handed a $930 million contract to BlueForge Alliance, the two-year-old Texas nonprofit best known for the splashy BuildSubmarines.com workforce-recruiting campaign. That makes a total of about $1.4 billion to BlueForge, whose new job is “planning, resourcing, coordinating, and uplifting the U.S. Submarine Industrial Base and Foreign Military Sales requirements.”

BlueForge isn’t even getting the most (potential) money in this third-party push; that would be Deloitte, the accounting giant that in July received an up-to-$2.4 billion contract—it’s a one-year deal with four option years—to help the nation’s sub-builders “rapidly reach and sustain a programmed production rate of 1+2 submarines per year with a predominant emphasis on closing associated industrial workforce gaps.” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here.

Trivia: In August 2023, Australia “dumped” Deloitte, as one news outlet put it, as an adviser to its own nuclear-submarine program.

Get up to speed on subs with the Congressional Research Service’s Aug. 5 edition of “Navy Virginia-Class Submarine Program and AUKUS Submarine (Pillar 1) Project: Background and Issues for Congress.”

 Related reading: 

Israeli special forces carried out an especially daring raid late last weekend in Syria, attacking a facility allegedly used to manufacture precision weapons for Hezbollah and Iranian-linked forces near Lebanon, the New York Times reported Thursday. 

Location: A site known as the Scientific Studies and Research Center Institute 4000, near Masyaf, Syria, about 20 miles north of the Lebanese border. The Israelis have allegedly attacked it at least a dozen times before with airstrikes, but those airstrikes were insufficient to halt missile production inside the facility’s underground bunker complex. 

At least 18 people were killed and more than three dozen others wounded in the secretive operation, which began with airstrikes and featured commandos rappelling from helicopters before entering a facility and removing unspecified “materials” prior to exfil. 

BTW: The Israelis had been planning this operation for five years, according to Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute. 

The U.S. was reportedly informed in advance, including America’s top officer in the Middle East, Army Gen. Michael Kurilla of Central Command. Read more at the Times, here.  

From the region: 

And lastly: One of China’s top generals is scheduled to visit Indo-PACOM in Hawaii next week, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. That would be ​​Gen. Wu Yanan, who command’s China’s Southern Theater region, which includes activity around the South China Sea and (along with the Eastern Theater Command) Taiwan. 

Relatedly, “Michael Chase, the top Pentagon official for China policy, is currently in Beijing for defence policy coordination talks with his Chinese counterparts,” FT reported, noting it’s Chase’s “first visit to China since assuming the position in 2021.”

From the region: “N. Korea publicly discloses uranium enrichment facility for 1st time,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Friday; AP and the BBC have similar coverage.

Have a safe weekend, everyone. We’ll see you again on Monday!

Defense One