Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Lauren C. Williams with Ben Watson and Patrick Tucker. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2014, all 298 people on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were killed when Russian separatists inside Ukraine shot down the airliner with a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile. In May of this year, the U.N.’s aviation agency declared Russia was responsible for the tragedy. Europe’s Court of Human Rights announced the same finding as well just last week.
Around the Defense Department
The Army’s 25th Infantry Division is switching out Howitzers for HIMARS in Hawaii. A new long-range precision fires capability is heading to the Army’s Indo-Pacific stronghold, the commander of the 25th Infantry Division told reporters Tuesday. It’s part of the Army’s transformation initiative to divest of old technology and field more powerful systems across the service, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports.
What’s new: The division’s artillery brigade is preparing to integrate 16 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems over the next six weeks, said Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans. Their first system arrived Monday.
Background: The HIMARS move shot to the top of the list once the Pentagon released its interim national defense strategy earlier this year, as a signal to China and U.S. allies that the Army is committed to having its most powerful equipment in the Indo-Pacific, Myers writes. The division will test the effectiveness of its new addition at a Joint Pacific Multinational Training Center rotation this fall, alongside new infantry squad vehicles and reconnaissance drones. More, here.
Related reading: “The Army wants an artillery system that can run offense and defense,” Myers reported separately on Wednesday.
Developing: As part of plans to cut back on general officers, the Navy may soon drop about a half dozen admirals who help build ships, Politico reported Wednesday. That means potentially eliminating “three-star positions atop the five major commands—Naval Sea, Naval Air, Naval Information Warfare, Naval Facilities Engineering and Naval Supply,” Paul McLeary and Jack Detsch write. “This would remove experts intimately involved in designing, developing and acquiring new ships and submarines at a time when all of the service’s shipbuilding programs are facing significant delays,” they add.
Second opinion: “The systems commands do make some sense for reducing the officer ranks,” especially instead of reductions at combat units, former Naval officer Bryan Clark told Politico. Read more, here.
Meanwhile, in Detroit, Navy Secretary John Phelan addressed a room full of tech startups and investors, calling on them to help jumpstart American manufacturing on Wednesday. “While the Motor City is known for building the trucks, engines, aircraft and machinery that propelled the free world to victory in World War II, I am here today to ask for your help in an effort equally as noble, one inextricably linked to the reindustrialization in the United States—that’s restoring American shipbuilding and the broader maritime industrial base,” Phelan said during a keynote at the Reindustrialize conference.
On site: The former businessman stressed the need for fast tech adoption to keep pace with changing warfare, reports Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams with more to come. “We need to adopt things quicker. We need to learn how to test things faster…These are all things we need to get better at, because the speed is very different,” he said. “It’s not that we’re at war, but we should behave much more like we’re constantly being tested.”
Update: The Pentagon ended its deployment of about half the National Guard troops sent to Los Angeles, the Associated Press reported Tuesday evening. Trump federalized 4,000 Guard troops last month in response to protests against immigration raids in California. Another 700 Marines were sent to LA. “It was not immediately clear how long the remaining troops would stay in the Southern California city as immigration raids continue across the country,” AP noted.
A new normal? The House version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act features provisions that would increase military support for border protection and other law enforcement actions, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports. For instance, the bill makes permanent Defense Department support for joint task forces working to counter trans-national crime and allows the Secretary of Defense to hire tech and logistics contractors to support migration enforcement.
The National Guard had its networks “extensively compromised” by Salt Typhoon hackers back in 2024, the Department of Homeland Security said in a June memo. NBC News reported the existence of the memo on Tuesday with the help of the transparency nonprofit Property of the People, which obtained the document through a freedom of information request.
Between January and March of last year, Salt Typhoon also “exfiltrated configuration files associated with other U.S. government and critical infrastructure entities, including at least two U.S. state government agencies,” the memo says.
Panning out: Salt Typhoon breached major telecom carriers in a global, multi-year espionage campaign uncovered last year. Over time, news has trickled out about the scope and scale of the incident, which was first reported last September by the Wall Street Journal.
Expert reax: “The revelation that Salt Typhoon maintained access to a U.S. National Guard network for nearly a year is a serious escalation in the cyber domain,” said Ensar Seker, CISO at threat intelligence firm SOCRadar, to our sister site Nextgov. “It raises questions about visibility gaps, segmentation policies and detection capabilities in hybrid federal-state defense networks. It’s another reminder that advanced persistent threat actors like Salt Typhoon are not only targeting federal agencies but also state-level components where the security posture might be more varied.” Read more, here.
Immigration
The Marines recently rotated about 500 troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border for the past several months, officials announced on Monday. The rotation was finalized over the weekend.
Leaving: Task Force Sapper, involving Marines from the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, based at California’s Camp Pendleton. They’ve been working on tasks like replacing concertina wire since at least March; their tasks have expanded to include security detail patrols alongside Homeland Security personnel. According to Military-dot-com, some of Sapper’s troops “initially believed the mission would last about a month. As it stretched past that assumption, leaders began planning for a nine-month operation.”
Taking over: Task Force Forge, from the 1st Marine Logistics Group’s Combat Logistics Battalion 15, also from Camp Pendleton. “Working alongside U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Border Patrol, the task force will provide critical engineering and logistical support in accordance with the presidential executive order issued Jan. 20, 2025,” the Marines said Monday.
The new task force will be based in Yuma, Ariz., which Military-dot-com noted, “likely reflects the progression of barrier wall reinforcement that started on the coast of California and moved eastward during the mission.”
Commander’s POV: “Our mission is clear: support our federal partners and Joint Task Force-Southern Border, strengthen operational readiness, and support upholding the territorial integrity of our nation’s border with professionalism and precision,” Lt. Col. Colin Graham said in the release.
Headline from across the pond: “ICE is now richer than most of world’s militaries thanks to Trump’s new funding,” the UK’s Independent reported Wednesday.
Additional reading:
“Former US Marine Corps Reservist Charged in Texas Immigration Detention Center Shooting,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday evening;
And “Trump administration fires 17 immigration court judges across ten states, union says,” AP reported Tuesday as well.
Mideast
Deadly strike in Gaza. An Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 22 people, including two at Gaza’s only Catholic Church, Reuters reported Thursday. Israeli Defense Forces acknowledged reports “regarding damage caused to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City and casualties at the scene” and are reviewing the incident, Reuters staff reported.
Notable: The Patriarchate of Jerusalem said the church’s parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, was among the many injured, CBS News reported. The church was frequently visited by the late Pope Francis, who called for a ceasefire in his last public appearance. Pope Leo XIV reverberated those calls Thursday.
Syrian forces have begun to withdraw from the Sweida province as the ceasefire with Druze militia takes hold, the Associated Press reports.
Capitol Hill reax: “The only way forward is for all sides—Druze, Bedouin tribes, Israeli forces and the Syrian government—to de-escalate immediately,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a statement Wednesday. “Syria’s authorities need international support to build capacity, professionalize and train their forces and support our shared objectives of eliminating the threat posed by terrorist groups and other nefarious actors in Syria. To that end, we must all aim towards and support the path to a unified Syria that protects the interests of all citizens and can pursue peaceful relations with its neighbors,” she said.
Happening this afternoon at the Pentagon, Bahrain Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa is visiting SecDef Pete Hegseth and his team for bilateral talks.
CENTCOM celebrated the recent interception of a boatload of weapons intended for Yemen’s Houthis, “over 750 tons of munitions and hardware,” to be a bit more exact.
The haul included “hundreds of advanced cruise, anti-ship, and anti-aircraft missiles, warheads and seekers, components as well as hundreds of drone engines, air defense equipment, radar systems, and communications equipment,” officials from Central Command said in a statement Wednesday, along with photographs illustrating the interception at sea. However, no date or location was given for the incident.
“Congratulations to the Yemeni National Resistance Forces (NRF), led by Gen. Tareq Saleh, for the largest seizure of Iranian advanced conventional weapons in their history,” CENTCOM said. “The illegal shipment was intended for use by the Iranian-backed Houthis,” it added, and said the Yemeni troops found “manuals in Farsi and many of the systems were manufactured by a company affiliated with the Iranian Ministry of Defense that is sanctioned by the United States.”
Here’s an idea: “Maybe they should be onward supplied to Ukraine?” submitted H.I. Sutton, writing Wednesday on social media. CENTCOM did not elaborate on the fate of the weapons after the NRF’s interception.
ICYMI in the Horn of Africa: “Al Shabaab captures central Somali town, presses on with advance,” Reuters reported Monday from Mogadishu.
And a bit further south, “Eswatini says it is holding U.S. deportees in prisons, aims to repatriate them,” Reuters reported Wednesday from the capital in Mbabane.
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