The D Brief: Army’s runaway tank; Ukraine’s ‘long-range, remote combat’; Pyongyang confirms involvement; Trump’s natsec ‘emergencies’; And a bit more.
The U.S. Army made a tank it doesn’t need and can’t use. Now it’s figuring out what to do with it. Defense One’s Meghann Myers lays out the jaw-dropping history of the M10 Booker combat vehicle off a candid interview with Alex Miller, the Army’s chief technology officer. “This is not a story of acquisition gone awry,” Miller said. “This is a story of the requirements process creating so much inertia that the Army couldn’t get out of its own way, and it just kept rolling and rolling and rolling.”
“The Booker is a stark reminder of what can happen when the system is checking the boxes but doing no critical thinking,” Myers writes. “With the service under pressure to streamline the way it develops new technology, the Army has vowed to turn things around.” Read on, here.
The Army is rolling out a generative AI workspace to improve daily operations, while also working to reduce the heavy computing demands on the back end. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams has more, here.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1945, former Italian journalist-turned-fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was shot and killed near Lake Como one day after his capture by the Italian resistance movement.
Ukraine developments
Battlefield latest: The war in Ukraine now “primarily features ‘long-range, remote combat’ over meeting engagements between infantry and armored vehicles,” ISW reported Sunday.
“Ukrainian and Russian forces field new adaptations over the course of months rather than years and are constantly experimenting, further driving the feedback loop of increased reliance on technology and tactical innovation to maintain battlefield advantages,” ISW wrote, echoing some of the U.S. Army’s newest priorities as well. “The innovation and operational concepts being forged in Ukraine will set the stage for the future of warfare,” ISW predicted.
Russian troops are also reportedly attacking via motorcycles and ATVs more now. The smaller vehicles offer an advantage against drone attacks that have successfully targeted “heavy armored vehicles close to the line of fire” since Putin launched the invasion, ISW writes.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has unilaterally announced another short-term ceasefire for his Ukraine invasion, this time lasting three days so that Moscow can celebrate the end of the Second World War. Putin claims the cessation of hostilities will span May 8 to May 10, and “Russia believes that the Ukrainian side should follow suit,” Kremlin state-run media TASS reported Monday.
Putin had previously announced a 30-hour truce over Easter, but Ukrainian officials accused Russia of violating that unilateral ceasefire “nearly 3,000 times,” according to the BBC. TASS, for its part, on Monday accused Ukraine of violating that Easter ceasefire 4,900 times.
Ukraine reax: Why not ceasefire now? “Why wait for May 8? If we can cease fire now from any date and for 30 days—so that it is real, and not just for a parade,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on Twitter, alluding to a U.S.-backed proposal to cease fighting for 30 days. “Ukraine wants peace more than anyone else in the world. We never wanted this war, and we want it to end as soon as possible,” he added. “What we require is pressure on Russia and a clear strengthening of Ukraine, which will deprive Moscow of any illusions that it can turn the tide in its favor.”
Panning out: Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in their newest assessment Sunday, “Ukraine remains open to good-faith dialogue with Russia and is willing to consider territorial issues, while Russia fails to offer any concessions of its own and insists on terms tantamount to Ukraine’s surrender.”
What’s taking Trump so long to end a war he said he could stop within 24 hours of taking office? “Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration,” Trump told Time magazine in an interview published late last week marking his first 100 days in office. “Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest.”
Fact check: “It wasn’t ‘in jest.’ Here are 53 times Trump said he’d end Ukraine war within 24 hours or before taking office,” via CNN’s Daniel Dale reporting Friday.
Trump seems to finally be coming around to the idea that Putin is not interested in ending the war. On Saturday, the president took to social media after speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy at the Vatican. “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Trump wrote online.
“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,” the president bemoaned, suggesting Russia “has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”
Read more: “How Trump Plays Into Putin’s Hands, From Ukraine to Slashing U.S. Institutions,” via veteran White House correspondent Peter Baker of the New York Times, reporting Saturday (gift link).
New: North Korea finally confirmed it sent soldiers to Russia, state-run KCNA announced in a lengthy message Monday. The message was a public note of appreciation, KCNA said, “for performing heroic feats in the operations to repulse and frustrate the grave sovereignty infringement by the Ukrainian authorities, who invaded the territory of the Russian Federation, and completely liberate the occupied area of Kursk Region.”
Pyongyang: “The victorious conclusion of the operations for liberating the Kursk area is a victory of justice over injustice and, at the same time, a new chapter of history which demonstrated the highest strategic level of the firm militant friendship between the DPRK and Russia and the alliance and fraternal relations between the peoples of the two countries,” KCNA said.
Useful context: “Russia acknowledged the North Korean deployment for the first time over the weekend and said Ukrainian forces had been expelled from the last Russian village they were holding,” Reuters reports, adding, “Kyiv has denied the claim and said its troops were still operating in some parts of Russian territory.”
Recap: “North Korea sent an estimated 14,000 troops, including 3,000 reinforcements to replace its losses,” Reuters writes, citing Ukrainian estimates. “Lacking armoured vehicles and drone warfare experience, [the North Korean soldiers] took heavy casualties but adapted quickly.”
Related reading:
Trump 2.0
“I run the country and the world,” President Trump told The Atlantic about this second term in another interview marking 100 days since his inauguration. “The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” the president said. “And the second time, I run the country and the world,” he added.
Despite outrage and international law, Trump says he still wants to claim Canada as a U.S. state. In last week’s Time interview, Trump said he’s serious about incorporating Canada and that he wants a legacy of expanding U.S. territory. “We’re taking care of their military,” Trump said. “We’re taking care of every aspect of their lives, and we don’t need them to make cars for us. In fact, we don’t want them to make cars for us. We want to make our own cars. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.” The president was then asked, “Do you want to be remembered as a president who expanded American territory?” He responded, “Wouldn’t mind.”
Commentary: “Ideological purges reduce deterrence, readiness, and effectiveness. Just ask Stalin.” Bree Fram, a colonel in the U.S. Space Force, notes that Joseph Stalin’s purge of thousands of Red Army officers in the late 1930s helped Adolf Hitler convince himself that invading the Soviet Union was a good idea. The Red Army, and “General Winter,” eventually beat back the Nazi advance, but only after horrific losses magnified by the replacement of experienced officers with politically acceptable ones. She says the U.S. is making a similar mistake in the Trump administration’s effort to kick out thousands of transgender troops. Read on, here.
Two American children were sent to Honduras last week when their mother was deported, the New York Times reported Sunday. The children, ages four and seven, “were put on a flight to Honduras on Friday, the same day another child with U.S. citizenship, a 2-year-old girl, was sent to that country with her undocumented mother.” According to the Times, “Lawyers for both families said the mothers were not given an option to leave their children in the United States before they were deported.”
Regarding the two-year-old, a federal judge said Friday, “There is just no good-faith interpretation for what happened to these children.”
Related reading:
Jesus Christ is King
