Today's D Brief: US strikes Somalia; Austin, Milley at the Pentagon; Nuclear football, under review; And a bit more.
By Ben Watson
July 21, 2021 10:45 AM ET
The D Brief
The U.S. military just carried out its first airstrike in Somalia since President Biden took office, the New York Times reported Tuesday. It was a single strike, and it targeted al-Shabab fighters attacking a U.S.-trained unit of Somali army commandos near the north-central city of Galkayo, the Defense Department said in an email to reporters.
A note on location: Galkayo “is a divided town that straddles a border between rival clans and sits on a major smuggling route used by militants,” Stars and Stripes reports.
Bigger picture: This was just the seventh strike so far this year; the six others all occurred in January. Last year, AFRICOM carried out 63 airstrikes in Somalia. But the Biden administration placed new limits on drone strikes during its first day, the Times reminds us. Since then, the White House “rejected a handful of requests by the military’s Africa Command to carry out drone strikes against Shabab targets in Somalia because they did not meet the new standards.”
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/07/the-d-brief-july-21-2021/183928/
