‘Iran on notice,’ says Pentagon spox of ongoing strikes against Houthis. U.S. forces are continuing strikes on Houthi sites in Yemen that began over the weekend, Pentagon officials told reporters on Monday, and the strikes will continue until the terrorist group agrees to stop shooting at ships in the Red Sea.
The Iran-supported Houthis had apparently not attacked a ship since January, when Israel and Hamas agreed a ceasefire, but said last week that they would respond to Israel’s airstrikes and food blockade in Gaza by resuming attacks on “Israeli ships”—whose loose definition has in the past included a broad swath of vessels.
Saturday’s initial wave of U.S. airstrikes struck 30 targets, including weapons plants and depots, training sites, and drone-launching sites, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the Joint Staff’s operations director. “Today, the operation continues, and it will continue in the coming days until we achieve the president’s objectives,” Grynkewich said at the new administration’s first on-the-record Pentagon briefing. Neither Grynkewich nor Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell would rule out deploying troops to Yemen.
Parnell said the strikes reflect a shift in policy: “I think President Trump has made it very clear that he’s put Iran on notice.” Tehran has long been the Houthis’ main benefactor, supplying the U.S.-designated terrorist group with weapons, gear, and military trainers and experts. Defense One’s Meghann Myers has more, here.
Other context: Trump has been pressing Tehran to negotiate a new deal to keep Iran from moving ahead with its nuclear-weapons program.
Israeli airstrikes kill more than 400 Palestinians across Gaza, “ending weeks of relative calm after talks to secure a permanent ceasefire stalled. Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas each accused the other of breaching the truce, which had broadly held since January,” Reuters reported.
Tuesday’s strikes killed men, women and children on one of the deadliest days of a war that has killed more than 18,000 Palestinians, the Gazan health ministry said.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered the strikes because of a lack of progress in talks to extend the ceasefire. The White House said it had been consulted and voiced support for Israel’s actions,” the Associated Press reported.
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to walk in space.
Russia’s Ukraine invasion
Ukraine’s military has carried out all-drone attacks on Russian positions going back to at least December, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday from Kharkiv. One such attack two months ago occurred over the course of about five hours, and involved “about 50” of these drones, reportedly “coordinat[ing] unmanned land and aerial vehicles on a scale that hadn’t previously been done.”
“The attack served as a proof of concept,” the Journal writes. And while “it had its problems, other Ukrainian units are now planning similar missions.”
Reminder: Ukraine has already witnessed aerial drone-on-drone warfare. But linking aerial drones with land robots and smaller, first-person-view drones is a novel application in modern warfare. One big obstacle to this approach, however, was terrain—mud, in particular, bogged down some of the ground robots, the Journal reports.
But Russian FPV drones then attacked the ground robots. “While it is unclear from the footage how successful the attack was, the spokesman said Ukrainian troops found Russian corpses when they moved in to take over the position.” Read on (gift link), here.
New: Russian secret service agents carried out arson and sabotage attacks in Lithuania and Poland last year, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced Monday on social media following an investigation across the two eastern European countries.
“The investigation of the Lithuanian prosecutor’s office has confirmed our suspicions that responsible for setting fires to shopping centres in Vilnius and Warsaw are the Russian secret services,” Tusk wrote, and noted ahead of U.S.-Russia talks on the future of Ukraine, “Good to know before negotiations. Such is the nature of this state.”
Bigger picture: “Russia is conducting an escalating and violent campaign of sabotage and subversion against European and U.S. targets in Europe led by Russian military intelligence,” according to a new report published Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington. “Despite the increase in Russian attacks, Western countries have not developed an effective strategy to counter these attacks,” the authors warn.
What’s going on: “The number of Russian attacks nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024,” Seth Jones of CSIS writes. The targets of these attacks have included “transportation, government, critical infrastructure, and industry, and its main weapons and tactics have included explosives, blunt or edged instruments (such as anchors), and electronic attack,” Jones said.
Notable: “The new study found no recorded attacks in European countries friendly to Russia, such as Serbia and Hungary,” the New York Times reports. “On the other hand, Poland, which has been the hub of Western aid flowing to Ukraine, has been repeatedly targeted.”
Update: U.S. support for Ukraine has jumped 16%, with nearly five in 10 people (46%) saying they believe the U.S. should do more to support the country that’s been fending off a Russian military invasion for the past three years. The numbers were recorded during the first two weeks of March by researchers at Gallup, which reported Tuesday that in the same poll, “the proportions thinking the U.S. is doing too much (30%) or the right amount (23%) for Ukraine have shrunk.”
The rising support for Ukraine marks “a new high in the trend that dates back to 2022,” Gallup writes. “Until now, the highest percentage of Americans who believed the U.S. was not doing enough to help Ukraine was 38%, recorded in Gallup’s initial measurement of this question in August 2022.” These latest numbers show “a 31-point increase among Democrats, to 79%, and a 14-point jump among independents, to 46%, since December, marking new highs for both groups.”
About the detractors: “Republicans have consistently been the most likely to assert that the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine, a sentiment that remains prevalent among them,” Gallup notes. “However, the latest figure—56%—marks an 11-point decline over the past three months.”
U.S. attitudes are also changing in terms of giving Russia invaded land inside Ukraine in exchange for peace: 53% want to preserve Ukrainian territory even if it means more conflict compared to 45% who want the war to end even if that means ceding invaded land to Russia.
Other notable observations:
- “Solid majorities of Democrats (95%) and Republicans (69%) express concern that Russia would violate the terms of any agreement,” Gallup writes;
- And if Russia violates an agreement, just 30% of Democrats would support sending U.S. ground troops to help Ukraine versus 16% of Republicans. Read more, here.
Status check: “Russia’s aim of destroying Ukrainian sovereignty remains unchanged since before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in its latest daily analysis of Russia’s Ukraine invasion. As far as Trump-Putin negotiations are concerned, “A strong Ukrainian military backed by security guarantees remains the most important component of a sustainable peace in Ukraine and deterrence of future Russian aggression,” ISW advises. More, here.
Around the Defense Department
In Colorado, an Army sergeant was charged with taking C4 explosives to his home, KRDO 13 reported from Colorado Springs on Monday. The soldier’s wife reported the explosives to the police, and told authorities the two are going through a divorce. His first court date is set for March 27.
Trump just added several loyalists and right-wing pundits to U.S. military academy oversight boards. His latest appointments include far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, former Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell, and Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville to the Air Force Academy’s Board of Visitors. “The boards of visitors provide guidance and oversight of each military institute’s morale, financial state and academics and provide an annual report to the president,” The Hill reports.
Others include Steve Bannon’s daughter and podcast producer Maureen; former White House spokesman Sean Spicer; as well as Michael Flynn and Walt Nauta, both of whom had been charged in investigations of Trump during and shortly after his first term in office. Nauta was appointed to a board overseeing the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland. Flynn was added to a board at the U.S. Army’s Military Academy at West Point in New York.
Rewind: “The president had purged the oversight boards at the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy last month, declaring that the institutions had been ‘infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues,’” the New York Times reminds readers. That occurred as Trump “carried out a sweeping purge of top officers, diversity initiatives, transgender service members and other policies and personnel.”
Related reading:
- “Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order,” Axios reported Monday;
- “Highest-Ranking Black Medal of Honor Recipient Erased in Pentagon DEI Purge,” Military-dot-com reported Monday;
- “Amid ‘DEI’ purge, Pentagon removes webpage on Iwo Jima flag-raiser,” the Washington Post reported Monday;
- And “Trump once hailed WWII vet Medgar Evers as a ‘great American hero.’ Now the U.S. Army has erased him from the Arlington National Cemetery website,” Mississippi Today reported Monday.
Musk-Trump
The U.S. just lowered its defenses against authoritarian propaganda, experts say. Gutting the U.S. Agency for Global Media reduces the country’s ability to fight off influence campaigns at home and promote freedom abroad, Nextgov reports.
Related reading:
- “Musk’s Team Evicts Officials at the U.S. Institute of Peace,” whose leaders said that “because the institute is a congressionally chartered nonprofit that is not part of the executive branch, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk do not have the authority to gut its operations,” the NYT reported on Monday.
- “DOGE staffer violated security policies at Treasury Department, court filing shows,” reports CyberScoop, to wit: “DOGE staffer Marko Elez, who resigned in February after racist social media posts surfaced, shared personally identifiable information in a spreadsheet with two General Services Administration officials.”
The post The D Brief: ‘Shift’ in Iran policy; Israel pounds Gaza; Ukraine’s all-drone attacks; Russian ops on NATO soil; And a bit more. appeared first on Defense One.
