Today’s D Brief: Israel pounds Gaza; Navy’s readiness plan; UK, Ukraine ink 100-year pact; ‘Remember your oath’; And just a bit more…
Tel Aviv mulls ceasefire
With security group’s OK, decision moves to full cabinet. A ceasefire deal negotiated by Israel and Hamas has cleared the national-security subset of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, and is expected to go before the full body later on Friday, the New York Times reports, adding that Netanyahu “has sought to persuade hawkish members of his government not to leave the coalition over the cease-fire deal.”
Meanwhile, Israel has intensified its airstrikes on Gaza. NBC: “In less than two days since the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was announced Wednesday, fighting in Gaza and a series of deadly airstrikes have killed at least 115 people, Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense agency told NBC News on Friday.” Israel Defense Forces told NBC on Thursday that it had struck about 50 targets in Gaza “over the last day.” More, here.
U.S. funds Israeli effort to make anti-missile lasers, upgrade air defenses. The IDF said on Thursday that Israel will pay Rafael Advanced Defense Systems $5.2 billion to improve the Iron Dome and David’s Sling systems under a new contract made possible by American funding. “The deal also covers work on Iron Beam, a laser system Israel is developing to shoot down missiles,” Stripes reports.
ProPublica: Biden’s “empty threats” allowed Israeli human rights abuses. “Since Oct. 7, 2023, Biden has repeatedly issued threats that Israel ignored. U.S. officials tried to enforce consequences — but they couldn’t,” the independent newsroom reported on Friday. “Experts say Biden’s failure to follow through led to impunity for widespread human rights abuses, including blocking aid deliveries, even after explicit U.S. warnings.” Read on, here.
Welcome to this Friday 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 1991, Operation Desert Shield ended and Desert Storm—the U.S.-led assault on Iraq in retaliation for its invasion of Kuwait—began.
Ukraine
British prime minister signs 100-year defense-cooperation agreement with Ukraine. The Thursday pact is “part of a European show of support and promises to keep helping Ukraine endure in its nearly three-year war with Russia,” AP wrote. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that “the landmark century-long agreement commits the two sides to cooperate on defense — especially maritime security against Russian activity in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Sea of Azov — and on technology projects including drones, which have become vital weapons for both sides in the war. The treaty also includes a system to help track stolen Ukrainian grain exported by Russia from occupied parts of the country.” More, here.
Russian decoy drone downed by Ukrainian air defenses over Kyiv on Thursday. The drone fell close to where President Volodymyr Zelensky was meeting with Starmer, The War Zone reports: “The drone’s presence further underscores the threat posed to Ukraine by long-range Russian uncrewed aerial vehicles, including unarmed ones intended to stimulate and confuse Ukrainian air defenses.” Read on, here.
Trump 2.0
NRO official tapped to by Air Force secretary. On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Troy Meink, currently principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, to lead the Department of the Air Force. The move emphasizes the next administration’s pro-space agenda, writes Audrey Decker, one of today’s D Briefers.
Trump officials join White House homeland-security tabletop exercise. AP: “Senior officials from President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, including the majority of his designated Cabinet nominees, were at the White House on Wednesday to participate in a transition exercise” chaired by Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall in the White House Situation Room. The exercise, which “touched on the management of potential terror attacks and avian flu, among other challenges…has been a key part of presidential transitions since the September 11, 2001, attacks and give the outgoing and incoming teams a chance to rehearse how to respond to and manage a range of national security crises.” More, here.
In final remarks to military, Biden tells troops “remember your oath.” “Our commitment to honor, to integrity, to unity, to protecting and defending not a person or a party or a place, but an idea,” the outgoing commander in chief said at a farewell ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Fort Myer in Arlington, Va. “That’s the idea that generations of service members have fought for, an idea you have sworn an oath to defend as a nation. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never, ever, ever walked away from it. Our country is counting on you to ensure that that will always be true.” The Hill has more from that speech, here.
Biden’s words evoked warnings from civil-military experts about his successor, who has suggested the deployment of the National Guard or military against “the enemy from within,” which he said included members of his political opposition. Trump’s remarks, aired during an Oct. 13 interview on Fox, marked an unprecedented departure from major-party presidential candidates’ publicly evinced views of the role of the military in domestic politics. Writing before the election, National Defense University’s Gregory Foster suggested that troops and commanders contemplate their moral, ethical, and legal duties now. Political scientist Matthew MacWilliams agreed. If Trump wins the election, he said, “The military will be asked to do things that violate their oath of office—the oath they swear to the Constitution. And what are they going to do? They need to think about it ahead of time…If Trump wins, the military will decide the future of this country by the actions that it takes.”
ICYMI: Trump vowed to be a dictator on “day one” of his administration. He will be sworn in on Monday.
Capitol Hill
HASC releases subcommittee assignments. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., have unveiled the new subcommittee roster for HASC, which oversees the funding and operations of the Defense Department. See the full lineup, here.
A MAGA shakeup for House intelligence committee. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has replaced House intel committee chair Mike Turner, R-Ohio., with Trump-aligned Rick Crawford, R-Ark., and added more pro-Trump members to the committee. Politico reports that the turnover on the committee and removal of Turner, a staunch supporter of Ukraine and defense hawk, signals a growing rift within the GOP as traditional Republicans grapple with the MAGA takeover. “The sea change on the panel is already triggering intense backlash from some Republicans on the committee and across the conference, who worry it’s a warning sign about the House’s willingness to stay independent of Trump. That’s to say nothing of Democrats, who fear the return of the partisan warfare that wracked the panel during Trump’s first term.” Read more, here.
SCOTUS declines to block TikTok ban. The Supreme Court ruled Friday that TikTok can be banned in the U.S., rejecting an appeal from the app’s owners that the ban would violate free speech. “The decision, which followed warnings from the Biden administration that the app posed a ‘grave’ national security threat because of its ties to China, will allow the ban to start Sunday. But there are a lot of lingering questions about how the ban would work in practice because there’s no precedent for the US government blocking a major social media platform. And how exactly the government would enforce it remains unclear,” CNN reports. Read more, here.
Read Lawfare’s technical tick-tock of what happens next, here.
Angry users are downloading another Chinese social-network app. “New users have piled in to Chinese social media app RedNote just days before a proposed U.S. ban on the popular social media app TikTok, as the lesser-known company rushes to capitalize on the sudden influx while walking a delicate line of moderating English-language content, sources told Reuters.” Read on, here.
Navy
New strategy aims to get 80% of Navy ships deployable. The Navy has released a plan to achieve CNO Adm. Lisa Franchetti’s ambitious goal of having 80% of the service’s ships ready for deployment by 2027. That plan includes speeding up maintenance and getting newly built ships in the water on time, D1’s Meghann Myers reports. To do this, the service needs to get better at planning and adhere to tight schedules to make sure repairs and upgrades are done on time. Read more, here.
Money alone won’t fix the Navy’s shipbuilding woes, lawmaker says. Congress might have to “micromanage” the Navy’s shipbuilding efforts, said top SASC lawmaker Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who argues that the service’s long-time struggle to build ships on time can’t be fixed by throwing more money at the problem. Fixing the submarine industrial base will require new thinking about workforce challenges, Kaine said. The senator’s comments come as the Congressional Budget Office reports that the Navy’s lofty shipbuilding plan would require $40 billion per year over the next 30 years. Read more, here.
U.S. warships must leave Red Sea for weeks to reload. The need to reload missiles far from the fight against Houthi drones and missiles poses a “real challenge” for operations in the Red Sea, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said at the Surface Navy Association conference. “That challenge extends not only to the Red Sea campaign, he said, but especially to a future war with China across the vast West Pacific expanse as well,” The War Zone reports. Read more, here.
Industry
Blue Origin’s rocket reaches orbit on first flight, promising competition for SpaceX. Early Thursday morning, Jeff Bezos’s private space company Blue Origin successfully launched its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, bringing the company closer to challenging SpaceX in the race to send U.S. military and spy satellites to space. The company achieved its primary goal of reaching orbit, but fell short of bringing the first-stage booster back for reuse. Landing the booster on the first try was an “ambitious goal” but the company “learned a lot from today” and will try again during its next launch this spring, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a statement. Read more, here.
Lastly today: Learn how National Guard helicopter crews are fighting wildfires. Task & Purpose: “A California National Guard pilot describes how flyers perform a firefighting mission in the battle against Los Angeles’ raging fires.” Read that, here.
D Brief will be off Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday. Have a safe weekend, and we’ll see you next Tuesday.
Jesus Christ is King
