BATTLEFIELD ASSESSMENT: Defense Secretary Ash Carter swept through Iraq over the weekend, meeting with Iraqi government officials, Kurdish leaders, and his top commanders to assess progress in the war on the Islamic State. So far the battle to liberate Mosul is going about as expected. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters taking villages from the east are moving a little faster than Iraqi troops coming up from the south. And the Islamic State is reacting in predictably brutal ways, executing civilians caught celebrating the liberators, while in some cases fleeing with their families to the west toward Syria. While the outcome appears inevitable, the liberation of Mosul still looks to be weeks away.
The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, describes Mosul as having a hard center, a soft middle, and very hard outer crust. “We’re still on the approach — the isolation, choking down the cordon around Mosul and getting through that hard external crust,” Townsend told reporters traveling with Carter. The general caution is that even when the Islamic State loses all its territory in Iraq and Syria, it will remain a threat, and simply morph into a different kind of enemy. Right now, Townsend says the Islamic State is fighting a very conventional fight. “At least we know where the enemy is, as long as he has territory. Once he no longer holds territory, it’s harder to know where he is.” Then the Islamic state won’t be able to claim to be a state at all, but will be an ideology and terrorist insurgent organization. “I mean you can’t be a state and you can’t be a caliphate without territory,” Townsend said.
DEATH NEAR THE FRONT LINES: Townsend also confirmed that Chief Petty Officer Jason Finan, who was killed last week in Iraq, was about as close to the front lines as you can get, when he was killed by an improvised explosive device. Finan was assigned to an explosive ordnance disposal team and was working with a SEAL team. But instead of defusing a bomb, he was helping direct troops away from an ISIS attack when the IED went off. The U.S. advisers were with a headquarters unit behind the lines that came under attack. “These guys said you know what, we probably need to move back a terrain and gain a little bit more stand-off. And they were in the process of that when they struck an IED.” Townsend said, based on an initial report. The front line is not a static boundary.
DEAL/ NO DEAL: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi rejected the offer of Turkish involvement in the battle against the Islamic State in Mosul, just a day after Carter said he had reached an “agreement in principle” with Turkish officials, Hoai-Tran Bui writes. Abadi said that while it was important to keep good relations with their Turkish neighbors, the “the Mosul battle is an Iraqi battle,” according to the Washington Post. “We don’t have any problems,” Abadi said. “[If help is needed,] we will ask for it from Turkey or from other regional countries.” Carter had hoped to ease tensions between the two U.S. allies, but made little if any progress.
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OUTRAGE! It’s one of those stories that makes your blood boil. Military recruiters, under pressure to make their numbers, handed out enlistment and reenlistment bonuses to National Guard troops, who in many cases returned to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it turns out many of the bonuses were improper, and the Pentagon is forcing the veterans to repay thousands of dollars, in some cases upwards of $15,000, according to the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story. “It is disgraceful that the men and women who answered their country’s call to duty following September 11 are now facing forced repayments of bonuses offered to them,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a statement Sunday. McCarthy is calling on the Department of Defense to waive the repayments and asked that the Army and National Guard provide a briefing on the matter.
MARCO’S MAD: Sen. Marco Rubio on Friday blasted the Obama administration’s latest Cuba policy shift as one that makes “no sense,” because it foresees some intelligence sharing between the two countries, Joel Gehrke writes.
“This makes absolutely no sense, considering Cuba’s intelligence agencies actively work to endanger American lives by stealing our military and national security secrets and selling them to Iran, North Korea, Russia and China,” he said. “At a time when Russia is actively trying to influence elections in the U.S., the Obama administration is saying it’s going to make nice with the very same Cuban intelligence agencies whose number one mission is to steal classified information from our government and recruit spies in the U.S.”
RANSOM REHASH: Sen. Kelly Ayotte is asking the intelligence community if the $1.7 billion sent to Iran this year could have paid for the missiles that targeted U.S. ships off the coast of Yemen this month. “I am concerned that Iran may have provided the missiles that were fired at the USS Mason or that the $1.7 billion cash ransom payment this administration has provided to Iran is being used directly or indirectly to facilitate or fund attacks against U.S. Navy vessels,” Ayotte wrote in the letter sent Friday to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
HAPPENING TODAY: The three service secretaries — Eric Fanning of the Army, Deborah Lee James of the Air Force and Ray Mabus of the Navy — will speak this morning at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in D.C. about challenges in transitioning to the next administration. The discussion will be moderated by CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, and will kick off with remarks from Michele Flournoy, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security and widely-rumored to be Hillary Clinton’s top pick for SecDef.
SOUTH CHINA STATEMENT: A U.S. Navy destroyer sailed through waters claimed by China in the South China Sea Friday, according to a Pentagon statement. The USS Decatur sailed in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands, which is occupied by China but also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.
The ship sailed in that area “to uphold the rights and freedoms of all States under international law, as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention,” said spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross. “This operation demonstrated that coastal States may not unlawfully restrict the navigation rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea that the United States and all States are entitled to exercise under international law.”
TALIBAN DRONES: The Taliban is believed to have used a drone to film a car bomb attack for the first time, according to video that showed up on Twitter last week. Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, a spokesman for the Resolute Support Mission, said he had not seen the Taliban use drone capability before and that he was not aware of the video, which you can see here.
KIA ID: The two Americans killed last week in the “inside the wire” attack at Camp Morehead in Afghanistan were identified as Sgt. Douglas Riney and Michael Sauro.
BIDEN’S REASSURANCE INITIATIVE: Vice President Joe Biden said everywhere he goes, world leaders want assurance that the United States will honor its treaty commitments in the wake of Donald Trump’s talk that U.S. commitments to NATO allies may be conditional, Nicole Duran writes.
Biden on Friday said he had to make a special trip to the Baltic region to discuss NATO. The leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania asked him to make a national, prime-time address to all of their citizens “to reassure them that we will protect them against a Russian invasion,” Biden said. “Because Donald Trump is already doing damage to us.
EARNINGS WEEK: The nation’s top five defense firms will release their third quarter earnings this week. On Tuesday, it’s Lockheed Martin, followed by Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics on Wednesday. Raytheon releases its earnings on Thursday.
WE JUST WANT TO SEE HOW DONALD IS DOING: The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., said on Friday it is “baffled” at how the U.S. government is dealing with a request to allow foreign officials to monitor polling stations on Election Day, Anna Giaritelli writes. “Overall, we are disappointed with the reaction of the U.S. administration, and, on top of that, with the unfriendly way it is currently portraying our desire to pursue normal diplomatic work in respectful contact with the authorities of the host country, which we hoped for,” the embassy said in a statement. “It is obvious that in this case our American colleagues are lacking transparency for this kind of work.”
OH, IT’S RUSSIA ALL RIGHT: Sen. Tim Kaine suggested Friday that Trump is not telling the truth when he says no one knows who’s behind the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee or the alleged hacking of Clinton’s campaign chairman, T. Becket Adams reports. “I am on the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee and I get briefed all the time in those committees about what’s going on,” Clinton’s running mate said at a campaign stop Friday. “And as a candidate for vice president, I get security briefings just like Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump does.”
IRAN IS UNIMPRESSED: Iranian president Hassan Rouhani chided the U.S. presidential candidates on Sunday for their grating manner of addressing one another at last week’s debate, Daniel Chaitin writes. “Did you see the debate and the way of their speaking, accusing and mocking each other? Do we want such a democracy and election in our country?” Rouhani said in the city of Arak, in central Iran.
VETS GROUP LEFT OUT: A leader of a top veterans group was concerned about not being included by the White House in 2009 before President Obama announced a 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan, according to e-mails unearthed by WikiLeaks, Robert King writes. The emails, taken illegally from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, center on the group VoteVets.org, which is backed by more than 400,000 veterans and seeks to lobby for veteran issues. “I know our members who we have polled don’t support what I think the [Obama] administration will unveil,” said Jon Soltz, chairman and co-founder of the group, in an email to Podesta on Nov. 28, 2009.
ABSENTEE SUCCESS?: The Pentagon and Justice Department both couldn’t say if all absentee ballots went out to troops by the deadline 45 days ahead of the election, but some members of Congress who represent large military populations said they haven’t heard any complaints from constituents so far this year. Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop said his office “has not been made aware of any irregularities in the absentee ballot process for service members.”
THE RUNDOWN
Washington Post: Plans to send heavier weapons to CIA-backed rebels in Syria stall amid White House skepticism
New York Times: Turkey’s Push to Join Battle for Mosul Inflames Tension With Iraq
Defense One: Someone Weaponized the Internet of Things
Breaking Defense: New T-X Airplanes Would Add $1B To Trainer Bill: Lockheed
Military.com: F-35 Jet Will Likely Change How America Fights Wars
UPI: U.S. Navy’s King Stallion helicopter completes operational testing
Military Times: Poll: Troops doubt next president can fix the military’s top issues
USNI News: Opinion: Iran Nuke Deal Will Spawn More Proxy Attacks Like The Ones In Yemen
Washington Post: Congressman raises concern over potential use of Russian satellites for troops’ Internet service
Defense One: US Special Operators Accelerate Killings of ISIS Leaders
Military Times: The ISIS chemical weapons arsenal is weak but instills fear
Reuters: Iraqi Kurds claim capture of town in advance on Mosul
Wall Street Journal: Fighting Returns to Aleppo After Cease-Fire Ends
Air Force Times: Meet the Air Force’s first enlisted drone pilots
Army Times: Laser zaps mosquitoes out of the sky
Marine Corps Times: Marines want new technologies to take enemy beaches
Calendar
MONDAY | OCTOBER 24
9 a.m. Willard Intercontinental Hotel. Army Secretary Eric Fanning, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus talk about the transition to the next administration. cnas.org
2 p.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. The CSIS Aerospace Security Project hosts its inaugural event on the U.S. military and commercial space industry. csis.org
WEDNESDAY | OCTOBER 26
12:30 p.m. 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW. The Stimson Center release its new report, “Military Budgets in India and Pakistan: Trajectories, Priorities, and Risks.” stimson.org
12:30 p.m. 901 17th St. NW. A group of experts talks about the defense relationship between the U.S. and Sweden, especially amid mounting Russian tension. atlanticcouncil.org
THURSDAY | OCTOBER 27
9 a.m. 1030 15th St. NW. A representative from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides keynote remarks at an event looking at the cause of conflict in the Middle East. atlanticcouncil.org
FRIDAY | OCTOBER 28
8 a.m. 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. Robert Work, the deputy secretary of the defense, and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Paul Selva speak about the third offset strategy. csis.org
