Eyes in the Sky

US-Israeli war on Iran, day 14: The U.S. lost six more service members amid President Trump’s war against Iran on Thursday. All six crew members perished when their KC-135 refueling tanker aircraft went down in western Iraq after colliding with another aircraft. (An initial version of this newsletter noted the aircraft went down in western Iran; but that was a regrettable typo.) “The incident occurred in friendly airspace during Operation Epic Fury,” military officials at Central Command said in an initial statement Thursday evening. “Two aircraft were involved in the incident. One of the aircraft went down in western Iraq, and the second landed safely. This was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire,” and the accident is under investigation, they said.  “All six crew members aboard a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft that went down in western Iraq are now confirmed deceased,” CENTCOM said in a follow-up Friday morning.  The casualties raise the U.S. death toll to 13, in addition to at least 140 injuries from retaliatory attacks by Iranian forces since Feb. 28.  More than 1,400 Iranians have died in the war so far, as well as 15 in Israel and at least 19 in nations across the Gulf region, al-Jazeera reports. More than 2,000 Israelis have been wounded from retaliatory attacks. And an estimated 18,000 have been injured inside Iran alone, according to the country’s Ministry of Health. At least six French soldiers were also wounded in attacks on a military base in Iraq, the governor of Erbil said Thursday, according to Reuters. More than 680 others have been killed inside Lebanon, which is Israel’s additional front in this war as it pursues Iran-backed militants around Beirut. Another 1,700 have been reportedly injured in those attacks, and 816,000 have been displaced across Lebanon since the outbreak of the war. That represents roughly 14% of the country’s population.  Another potential casualty: U.S. influence. “Analysts say the war has left Gulf states reassessing both their security dependence on Washington and the prospect of eventually engaging Tehran on new regional security arrangements,” Reuters reported Wednesday. Survey says: “Americans don’t see the point of this war,” CNN reported Thursday, calling it “the biggest Iran polling takeaway” so far citing at least seven recent surveys.  Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston, Lauren C. Williams and Meghann Myers. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1567, the Eighty Years War began in present-day Belgium; the conflict temporarily halted in 1609 before later giving way to the much-bloodier Thirty Years War, which swept across Europe until it came to an end in 1648. New: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claims Iran’s weapons production capabilities are now “functionally defeated,” he said at a press conference Friday at the Pentagon.  Missile attacks are down 90 percent and one-way attack drone strikes are down 95 percent since the first day of Iranian retaliation, according to Hegseth. “So we're shooting down and destroying what missiles they still have in stock, but more importantly, ensuring that they have no ability to make more—their production lines, their military plants, their defense innovation centers, defeated,” he said Hegseth also claimed Iran’s new leader “is wounded and likely disfigured,” at least partly because Mojtaba Khamenei’s first public message Thursday was read aloud on state TV and did not include a video or photo. “Iran has plenty of cameras and voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. He is scared. He is injured. He is on the run,” Hegseth said. Defense One’s Meghann Myers has more. Related reading:  “How Hegseth Came to See Moral Purpose in War as Weakness,” via Greg Jaffe writing Thursday for the New York Times; See also, “‘America’s mortal enemy’: Pete Hegseth expressed extreme antipathy toward Iran for years,” via the Guardian reporting Thursday using comments about Iran from Hegseth’s own books, speeches and online videos. Eventually, the U.S. Navy may begin escorting tankers through Hormuz “as soon as ​it is militarily possible,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the UK’s Sky News on Thursday. Navy officials earlier this week reportedly declined escort requests, citing elevated risks inside the Strait, which include Iranian air and naval drones, as well as mining efforts along the ordinarily busy waterway.  Bessent also suggested the escorts might happen “perhaps ⁠with an international coalition,” though it’s unclear just yet who might be involved in such a high-risk mission. France has ordered nearly a dozen warships to the Mediterranean and the Red Seas; but its defense minister said Thursday none will head to the Strait of Hormuz.  Update: At least 22 civilian ships in the region have been attacked by Iran since the war began, Reuters reports in a detailed tracker published Thursday, citing data from the Institute for the Study of War and AEI Critical Threats project. That includes two tankers attacked at an Iraqi port Thursday.  Trendspotting: U.S. and allied militaries have turned to fighter jets in their struggle to ward off Iranian drones, but former pilots say the mission is expensive, dangerous, and, ultimately, unsustainable with current tactics, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported Thursday. On Tuesday, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that U.S. and allied forces had conducted “intercepts against one-way attack drones using fighters and attack helicopters,” and said it was one reason that Iran’s use of the drones had “decreased 83 percent since the beginning of the operation.” One former British military officer called it “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.” Some of Iran’s drones, which cost in the low five figures, are being downed by missiles that cost twenty or forty times as much, launched from aircraft with relatively high operating costs. And the speed differential between jets and drones can pose problems in chaotic battlespaces.  That’s at least partly why the U.S. is now seeking advice, guidance, and support from Ukraine’s military on how to counter enemy drones based on what it has learned during its four-year war with Russia. Continue reading, here.  Putin’s big break: The U.S.-Israeli war has disrupted global energy markets so deeply that the Trump administration just lifted sanctions against the sale of Russian crude oil, the U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday. As much as half of Russia’s annual revenue comes from petroleum sales. The sanctions were put in place after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago in flagrant violation of international law. The new U.S. authorization is initially set to last 30 days, ending April 11.  Big picture: “The war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” the International Energy Agency announced in a new report Thursday. “The ultimate impact on oil and gas markets and the broader economy from the conflict will depend not only on the intensity of military attacks and any damage to energy assets, but also, crucially, on the duration of disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,” the report’s authors write.   Just last month, Russian oil sales had declined to their lowest levels since the start of Putin’s Ukraine invasion, the IEA said Thursday. “The decline ​was due to reduced exports to India—as Washington discouraged such cooperation with Russia—and to the closure of flows via the Ukrainian stretch of the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia at the end of January,” Reuters reports. But Russia is now “earning as much as $150 million a day in extra budget revenues from its oil sales, making it the biggest winner from the conflict in the Middle East,” the Financial Times reported Thursday. That includes an “estimated $1.3bn-$1.9bn windfall from taxes on oil exports” since the onset of war, and it “could receive $3.3bn-$4.9bn in overall additional revenues by the end of March,” FT calculates citing industry data and analyst assessments.  Moscow has already made more than $6.8 billion in estimated oil sales since Feb. 28, the Guardian reported citing a new analysis published Thursday by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “Currently, Russia can balance its budget with a price of $59 a barrel,” the Wall Street Journal noted earlier this week. But the price of oil is now well above that, and has surged 40% since the war began nearly two weeks ago.  Expert reax: The current high prices “will help Russia to meet budget indicators this quarter and even start saving some money,” Borys Dodonov, head of energy and climate studies at the Kyiv School of Economics, told FT.  Capitol Hill reax: “Instead of squeezing Russia’s faltering economy, the President’s ill-planned war is giving Putin a windfall while American families face higher prices,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.  Kyiv’s reax: “This certainly does not help peace,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a visit to Paris. “This easing alone by the United States could provide Russia with about $10 billion for the war,” he predicted. “Lifting sanctions only so that more drones will later be flying at you is, in my opinion, not the right decision,” he added.  “Another beneficiary could be Iran,” the Washington Post reported Thursday, “because its government and independent militias probably own many of the tankers that make up a ‘shadow fleet’ of hundreds of vessels currently holding Russian oil. This fleet is designed specifically to evade sanctions. It is made up of older, less reliable vessels that sailed uninsured and used radar-jamming devices and other techniques to avoid detection.” After opposing a resolution forcing Trump to seek congressional approval for the Iran war, GOP Sen. Todd Young of Indiana criticized the lack of public debate and hearings about the conflict in remarks Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Institute’s National Security Innovation Base summit in Washington, D.C. “It's consistent with our responsibilities to force hard questions, to stress test plans in development, to take our public conversations private where necessary, and dive more deeply and then move to the extent we can, with a more unified country, into military conflict,” Young said.  “I think it's an indictment of our own party and our own institution that we didn't force some harder conversations over the last several weeks preceding military engagement,” he said eight days after joining more than 50 of his Republican colleagues in shooting down the war powers resolution. “We're now at war. We are at war, and I want the President to succeed in his stated objectives as he's brought more clarity to those and I'm going to be helpful in that regard, and I hope this ends quickly, as does he. But what incentive do future commanders in chief have to work with Congress to make their case to the American people, if there aren't a few of us piping up and indicating that ‘now we may be on board, but we're still not happy with how we got here.’” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., voted in support of the resolution, which would have spurred more public debate. Most of what senators know about the Iran war comes “from classified hearings, and that's one of my gripes about this is that if we only get information and classified, that means we can't really answer questions that we ought to be able to answer,” Kaine said Thursday. “I've got all these Virginians who are deployed in the Ford carrier strike group, and those in the Bush strike group that are about to go out, and their families ask me questions: ‘How long? What's the end game?’ Et cetera. And as frustrating as it is to not know the answer to a question, it's even more frustrating to know an answer and yet be handcuffed and not able to say it, because thus far, the hearings have only been classified.” After numerous reports emerged this week claiming the first week of war cost around $11 billion, Kaine said he couldn’t share exactly what he knew because related briefings have been classified, but those estimates were not far off. “I can't really tell you what I know,” he said Thursday. “It's been pretty widely reported that the daily cost is around $800 million a day. And I'll just say that that is not wildly wrong, so let me just leave it there.” As the Iran war rages, NATO is rewriting its air-defense plans, and “This is the first time this has been done in decades,” the top commander of U.S. forces in Europe told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday. Those plans “should be done by this summer,” said Air Force Gen. Alex Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and commander of U.S. European Command. Defense Scoop has a bit more. Grynkewich also warned that bombing civilians during a war, as the U.S. military is reportedly alleged to have done on the first day of the conflict, can have lasting effects on the duration of fighting. Grynkewich was speaking about Russia’s war in Ukraine when he told lawmakers Thursday, “What I've observed over the course of studying air power in history is that any time you attack a civilian population, you usually end up finding that it just hardens their resolve,” he said. “We take this all the way back to the London Blitz in World War II. The Brits just had a stiff upper lip and kept on fighting, and I think that’s what we’ve seen in Ukraine, as well.” Rewind: Experts predicted a similar effect in Iran. Air strikes “usually stiffen a government’s grip on power, not loosen it. That’s especially true in countries that have long suffered from foreign meddling, such as Iran, where the U.S.-backed ouster of Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953 remains a source of anger, and where the war launched in 1980 by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein solidified support for the new Islamist regime,” wrote Rosemary Kelanic, who leads the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, in January. Additional reading:  “Israeli Officials Think Iran’s Regime Isn’t Likely to Fall Soon,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday;  “Hormuz oil shock cuts 8 million barrels a day globally,” Quartz reported Thursday;  On top of shocks to global energy markets, the “US economy expanded at sluggish 0.7% in fourth quarter, government says, downgrading first estimate,” the Associated Press reported Friday;  “White House turns to a familiar promise of pain for gain as oil spikes,” Semafor reported Friday;  And ICYMI, “Iran appears to have conducted a significant cyberattack against a U.S. company, a first since the war started,” NBC News reported Wednesday. ]]>

“Bad things can happen,” defense secretary says of Thursday’s KC-135 crash over Iraq

Former pilots laud the arrival of cheap munitions and help from Ukraine.

US-Israeli war on Iran, day 13: The U.S. military spent more than $11 billion in just the first week of Trump’s war against Iran, Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a classified briefing Tuesday on Capitol Hill. The New York Times reported the fiscal tally, which “did not include many of the costs associated with the operation, such as the buildup of military hardware and personnel ahead of the first strikes,” on Wednesday.  Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., attended the two-hour briefing behind closed doors Tuesday. “I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are,” he wrote on social media afterward. “Maybe the lead is that the war goals DO NOT involve destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program,” he said, which is in sharp contrast with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s message earlier Tuesday that the U.S. is working to “permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever” with the ongoing war. The Pentagon’s goals for Iran include “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories,” Murphy said, which echoes some input this week from Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and even Hegseth earlier Tuesday. “But the question that stumped them,” Murphy said of the classified briefing, is “what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production? They hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war.” And perhaps most vexing for the White House at the moment, “on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN,” Murphy said. “I can't go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it [to] say, right now, [U.S. officials] don't know how to get it safely back open.” Related: The U.S. military warned “civilians in Iran to immediately avoid all port facilities where Iranian naval forces are operating,” in a statement from Central Command officials Wednesday. “The Iranian regime is using civilian ports along the Strait of Hormuz to conduct military operations that threaten international shipping,” and “Civilian ports used for military purposes lose protected status and become legitimate military targets under international law,” CENTCOM said.  Murphy and more than 40 other senators are demanding detailed answers from the U.S. military about a strike on an elementary school that reportedly killed around 170 people, including children, on Feb. 28 in southern Iran. The lawmakers’ 22 questions were submitted to the Defense Department after numerous media outlets noticed what appeared to be a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile striking the area near the school during the time when the strike occurred. Those reports began emerging late last week and over the weekend, and continued early this week.  United Nations and human rights experts have requested an independent investigation into the strike, which they said may be a violation of the laws of war prohibiting attacks against civilians and civilian objects. Key detail: The apparent use of a Tomahawk, which only the U.S. military is known to use in this conflict, strongly suggested the Defense Department was responsible for the strike on the school. President Trump initially blamed the strike on Iran, but as more reporting surfaced this week, he said Wednesday he didn’t know about the incident. The 40-plus lawmakers—in an ensemble that does not include any Republicans—are seeking insight into the attack no later than next Wednesday.  Latest: U.S. military officials now allege “outdated targeting data” may have led to the strike on the school, the New York Times reported Wednesday, citing an ongoing internal investigation. The Washington Post corroborated that account later Wednesday. If true, that would seem to suggest the U.S. military may have been using satellite imagery from at least 2016, according to these BBC satellite comparisons, because Google Maps shows a playground and a wall in place around the school beginning around 2017.  By the way: Two satellite imaging firms are restricting or delaying access to imagery over the Middle East in order to protect NATO and “allied” partner forces, Planet Labs and Vantor said this week, Reuters reported Tuesday.  Last week, Planet Labs announced a four-day delay in accessing imagery; but that hold has now been expanded to two weeks. According to a company spokesman, “the change is not the result of a directive or requirement from any government. It is Planet’s decision,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday evening. Vantor released a similar statement, and said it “independently determines when and how these controls are implemented as part of our responsible business practices. These decisions are not mandated by any government, military organization, or third party.” Update: “At least 11 American military bases or installations have been damaged” by Iranian retaliatory strikes across the region, the Times reported Wednesday after reviewing satellite imagery. That includes Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; Ali Al Salem Air Base and Camp Buehring Base in Kuwait; and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Air-defense sensors at an Air Force base in Jordan was also attacked early in the conflict.  Replenishing the Pentagon’s advanced munitions “will take years and billions” of dollars, Becca Wasser writes for Bloomberg. And that would seem to suggest “Iran is waging a cost-imposing battle on the US defense industrial base—and its working,” she says.  Related reading: The NYT offers “a guide to the primary weapons being used in the current conflict.” USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) update: The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier is racing through the region to help with the Iran war. Its crew experienced a slight hiccup on Thursday however, after a fire broke out “in the ship’s main laundry spaces,” injuring two people, officials said in a statement. “The cause of the fire was not combat-related and is contained,” and the aircraft carrier remains fully operational.” Toward an end to the fighting: “Iran's president has set conditions for an end to the war, including reparations and guarantees against future aggression,” Germany’s Deutsche Welle, or DW, reported Wednesday.  But Iran’s leader has vowed to continue fighting, and to keep the Hormuz Strait closed as long as possible, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reports. Three merchant ships sustained minor damage after being attacked in or near the strait on Wednesday, British maritime authorities reported.  Two fuel tankers were hit by explosive Iranian boats on Thursday while in Iraqi waters. Iraqi officials said they’ve completely stopped oil exports for now. “We will deliver the most severe blows to the aggressor enemy by maintaining the strategy of keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed,” an Iranian naval commander vowed on social media Thursday.  Brent crude prices soared above $100 per barrel again on Thursday, and “The International Energy Agency's plan to release 400 million barrels of oil from its reserves, announced on Wednesday in the largest ​such move in its history, failed to soothe investors,” Reuters reports.  Low oil prices are bad for Russia’s economy, which means Moscow is doing pretty well during this Iran war since “Currently, Russia can balance its budget with a price of $59 a barrel,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.  Additional reading:  “US to release 172m barrels of oil from strategic petroleum reserve,” the Guardian reported Wednesday;  “Thanks to Trump, petro-imperialism is back,” Brown University’s Jeff Colgan wrote Wednesday in Mother Jones; relatedly, scientists recently discovered sea levels are “higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments,” according to a new study published in Nature; someone online joked, “If we could just raise sea levels by 150 meters we get a backup Strait of Hormuz.” After Iranian strikes on three Amazon Web Services facilities in the region, review “The Legal and Policy Fallout from Data Center Strikes in the Middle East War,” via a new explainer published Thursday at the Tech Policy Press;  “AI Used to Promote Non-Existent Evacuation Flights From the Middle East,” Bellingcat reported Thursday;  And ICYMI (we did), “State Department Bypasses Congress to Send Israel More Than 20,000 Bombs,” the Times reported Friday.  Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1947, President Harry S Truman laid out what would become known as the Truman Doctrine: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Around the Defense Department Some see effort to evade accountability in Hegseth’s “ruthless” review of JAG, civilian legal offices. “I'm directing the service secretaries, the Army, Navy, and Air Force through their general counsels and JAGs and the [staff judge advocate] to the commandant to execute a ruthless, no-excuses review,” Hegseth said in a video posted on Wednesday. “Scrub it clean, cut duplication and bureaucracy, clarify roles, and reporting. No more moral ambiguity.” But current and former members of the judge advocate general corps told Defense One’s Thomas Novelly that they fear the move is part of attempts to gut legal oversight of the administration’s actions. Read on, here.  B-21 spotted in aerial-refueling test flights. After planespotters posted photos of the new bomber flying close to a tanker, an Air Force spokesperson confirmed to Defense One’s Thomas Novelly that the Raider was executing tests leading up to aerial refueling. A bit more, here. The Defense Department is seeking investment bankers to help invest $200 billion in defense deals, Semafor reports. The department is “specifically going after Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Bank of America as prime recruiting targets for the 30-person team, the headhunter brief outlines, explaining that ‘this is not a career move, but a two-to-three-year secondment program’” intended to help counter China. Read on, here. Update: “The U.S. has spent at least $3.4 trillion countering China militarily since 2012,” according to a recent report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. “This figure, an average of $260 billion a year, is more than total U.S. spending on 20 years of war in Afghanistan ($2.3 trillion),” Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities said.  Pentagon bans photographers after “unflattering” photos. “The Defense Department has barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed ‘unflattering,’”  the Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing “two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.” In a statement, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson wrote: “In order to use space in the Pentagon Briefing Room effectively, we are allowing one representative per news outlet if uncredentialed, excluding pool.” More, here.  Etc. Ukraine is making China-free drones. “A year ago, most Ukrainian defense companies could not produce these [circuit] boards, which are key ingredients in small exploding drones. But this advance, among others, has helped the country reach a milestone: It can now make drones with no components imported from China,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday. ]]>

Current and former military lawyers question the secretary’s motives and timing.