Today's D Brief: Kim tests missiles; ISIS hit with hundreds more airstrikes; China’s AI; Domestic-terror hearings; And a bit more.
By Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston
March 24, 2021 10:50 AM ET
The D Brief
North Korea’s new missile tests. The “Hermit Kingdom†is back in the headlines after launching what the Washington Post called “multiple short-range missiles†on Sunday in Pyongyang’s first challenge to the Biden administration. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency later identified them as cruise missiles, which “are not sanctioned by U.N. Security Council resolutions.â€
The Sunday test follows nine days of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which began in early March and — like the last two iterations in 2020 and 2019 — were also “computer-simulated command post†drills, according to Reuters and The Diplomat. (There were also early indications the North was maneuvering for some kind of new activity, but exactly what was unclear, as 38 North reported on March 12.)
You may remember that large-scale U.S.-RoK drills like the “Foal Eagle†exercise have not been conducted as planned since 2017, the year before POTUS45’s infamous “fire and fury†threats that led to an unprecedented summit between the two nations’ leaders in Singapore in 2018. Since then, North Korea “has refrained from detonating a nuclear device or launching a long-range missile,†the Post reports.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/03/the-d-brief-march-24-2021/172881/
