The D Brief: Biden green lights ATACMS for Kursk; SecDef Austin in Australia; Trump stands by Hegseth; Reed, Shaheen request Musk probe; And a bit more.
Biden lifts restrictions on long-range missiles
It’s been 999 days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And just before that anniversary, outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden finally authorized Ukraine’s use of U.S.-made long-range missiles to attack Russian military targets inside Russia, with an early emphasis on Ukrainian-held territory inside Russia’s Kursk region, U.S. officials told multiple news outlets over the weekend, including the New York Times and the Associated Press.
It’s a decision Ukraine’s president has been requesting for months, at least partly because many Russian aircraft launch missile and glide bomb attacks against Ukraine from well inside Russia’s borders. Since Ukraine first requested the Army Tactical Missile System authorization, White House officials signaled a reluctance to escalate the conflict and potentially provoke Russia into launching a nuclear attack or a war on NATO in response.
The missiles, which can be fired from High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, can fly as far as 190 miles, potentially allowing Ukraine to strike additional Russian military resupply routes, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker writes. Back in August, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War published a series of maps to illustrate how the White House restrictions have hampered Ukraine’s ability to target Russian forces that were directly attacking Ukraine.
But Russia’s military has escalated its own drone and missile attacks on Ukraine in recent days, and Russia has been more deliberately targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with long-range strikes, which could prove especially devastating as Ukraine heads into its third consecutive winter under the boot of Russian invasion forces. And this winter, those invasion forces are backed up by a contingent of North Korean troops.
Why lift the restrictions now? The short answer is North Korea, U.S. officials reportedly said. The president was reportedly convinced “by concerns that the Russian assault force would be able to overwhelm Ukrainian troops in Kursk if they were not allowed to defend themselves with long-range weapons,” according to the Times. And AP reported Biden’s decision “followed meetings over the last two days with the leaders of South Korea, Japan and China,” noting “the addition of North Korean troops was central to the talks” with those leaders.
Think tanker reax: “The Biden Administration’s shift to allow ATACMS use in Russia is a good thing, but it must extend beyond Kursk Oblast,” George Barros of ISW wrote on social media Sunday. “There are hundreds of valid, legal, legitimate, and operationally consequential military targets in range of Ukrainian ATACMS,” he added.
Another thing: “Both the French and UK government[s] have previously indicated a willingness to approve Ukrainian use against targets in Russia of the cruise missiles they have supplied,” Matthew Savill of the London-based Royal United Services Institute writes. “However, both rely on updated targeting data that probably comes from the US, meaning that they too have been blocked from Ukrainian use,” he notes.
“It stands to reason that relaxation of the ATACMS criteria will similarly lead to some relaxation on both Storm Shadow and SCALP,” Savill speculated. “If so, from the Ukrainian perspective it would be preferable for this take place privately and not be announced until after first use, though the Russians already have some advance warning.”
For what it’s worth “The overall supply of ATACMS missiles is short, so U.S. officials in the past have questioned whether they could give Ukraine enough to make a difference,” AP noted, while the Times points out, “U.S. officials said they do not believe that the decision will change the course of the war.”
While Republican Sen. Roger Wicker said he’s “encouraged” by the decision, which he also said came far too late, others close to President-elect Donald Trump questioned the change in policy. That included David Sacks, a close ally of Elon Musk and a favored Trump donor. “President Trump won a clear mandate to end the war in Ukraine. So what does Biden do in his final two months in office? Massively escalate it. Is his goal to hand Trump the worst situation possible?” Sacks wrote Sunday on Musk’s social media platform.
The view from Kyiv: “Strikes are not carried out with words. These things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves,” President Volodymir Zelenskyy said on social media Sunday.
One Ukrainian military POV: “With Trump, everyone is joking that it’s better to have a horrible end than unending horror,” a soldier told the BBC last week. Trump, he said, is “willing to take hard decisions, and from there, we’re getting better chances to get a good decision versus Democrats, who would be reluctant to make any hard decisions. They’re pretty weak. Overall, it’s surprisingly not as bad as I expected. So overall, the morale is quite nice. And we’re all looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen.”
Additional reading/listening:
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson 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 1978, the F/A-18 Hornet completed its first flight at Maryland’s Naval Air Test Center. It was first introduced to the U.S. military just over four years later, in January 1983.
SecDef Austin’s (likely) last Pacific swing
Japan, Australia, and the United States say they’re strengthening three-way defense cooperation—vowing, among other things, to consult with each other in military planning and regional crises, Defense One’s Bradley Peniston reported Sunday while traveling in the region with the U.S. defense secretary.
The increased coordination will take place under a new structure called the Trilateral Defense Consultations, Richard Marles, Australia’s deputy prime minister and minister for defence, told reporters at the naval base in Darwin, Australia. “It provides a substance and a structure to the trilateral meeting of our three countries which has not been there before, and it represents the ambition that all of us have about taking this architecture of our three countries even further,” Marles said.
Marles spoke after an annual meeting with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts—Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani—that produced a slew of other announcements, including (1) Japan’s new Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade will join annual U.S.-Australian exercises held by the Marine Rotational Force–Darwin, starting with Talisman Sabre 2025 and building toward the countries’ first air- and missile-defense live-fire training event in the exercise’s 2027 edition; (2) Australian forces will join U.S.-Japanese exercises, beginning with Orient Shield 2025, and increase their participation in others, including Yama Sakura, Keen Edge, and Keen Sword; and (3) the three nations will look for ways to increase Australian participation in the U.S.-Japanese Bilateral Information Analysis Cell. Read more, here.
From the region:
Around the Defense Department
In a new first, the U.S. Air Force awarded the Silver Star to a female airman, Capt. Lacie “Sonic” Hester, after Hester helped defend Israel from Iranian drones and missiles in April. Air Force F-15E jets shot down 80 drones during Iran’s attack on Israel, one of the largest-ever drone attacks. The Silver Star is the U.S. military’s third-highest decoration for valor in combat.
Update: Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault, but he maintains that the encounter was consensual, and thereby is not something that should disqualify him from leading the U.S. military during Trump’s second term, the Washington Post reported over the weekend.
Hegseth’s attorney said he paid the woman out of fear of being fired from his post as a Fox TV personality. The Post obtained a copy of a memo sent to the Trump transition team from a friend of the accuser, detailing the allegations. The accuser signed a nondisclosure agreement and received a payment after threatening litigation in 2020.
Trump himself is reportedly undeterred. Indeed, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung insisted last week that “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all allegations, and no charges were filed,” said Cheung.
Some senior officers in the Army’s ROTC program have used their power to make unwanted sexual advances on young students, Military.com reported Friday. The investigation, which interviewed 15 women, found that “the ROTC has consistently been a place where senior instructors — positions overwhelmingly held by men — can use the program as a personal dating pool, targeting women in the program and often taking advantage of their ability to skirt the traditional oversight the service has on its senior officers.”
Etc.
And lastly today: Reed, Shaheen request probe into Musk’s Russia calls. New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen says she and Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed have requested an “investigation into Elon Musk’s involvement in U.S. government contracts with SpaceX,” citing several alleged phone calls between Musk and Russian officials over the past few months.
“These relationships between a well-known U.S. adversary and Mr. Musk, a beneficiary of billions of dollars in U.S. government funding, pose serious questions regarding Mr. Musk’s reliability as a government contractor and a clearance holder,” the senators warn in a letter (PDF) to U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General Robert Storch and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“We urge an immediate review into this reporting to ascertain whether Mr. Musk’s conversation and specific ties to high-level Russian officials warrant an investigation and a determination by the Department of Defense’s senior debarment official whether SpaceX should exclude Mr. Musk’s involvement in any and all U.S. Government contracts,” they write.
The two senators are also worried Musk has outsized influence within the Space Force, including a possible “overreliance on SpaceX for national security space activities,” they wrote in a separate letter (PDF) to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. “We are also concerned that SpaceX’s Starlink is the only commercial service available to offer global broadband connectivity in low-Earth orbit,” they said to Kendall.
Worth noting: “The call by Shaheen and Reed for a federal probe is a longshot effort,” Reuters reports, noting “Trump prepares to return to the White House with backing from Musk, who spent over $119 million on Trump’s reelection campaign and was appointed co-head of the president-elect’s forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency.” More, here.
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