Situation Report: Debate over Turkish bombing campaign; SEAL Team 6 exposed; nuke negotiators to the Hill; Russian tank competition; and lots more

By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

Continental drift. At Turkey’s request, NATO held a rare emergency meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, a conflict that Turkey jumped into with both feet over the weekend with multiple airstrikes in both countries.

The Alliance’s founding treaty says that members can call for such a meeting when they consider their “territorial integrity, political independence or security” to be at risk. While no decisions about how to wage the war will come out of the meeting, Ege Seckin, an analyst at IHS Country Risk told SitRep that they “could serve as a precursor for a request for assistance” at a later date, and is likely “an attempt for Turkey to internationalize the issue. This could be mean logistical and intelligence support,” from the alliance if the air war drags on for an extended period of time.

NATO issued a rather run of the mill statement at the conclusion of the closed door meeting, saying that “we strongly condemn the terrorist attacks against Turkey,” while pledging to “continue to follow the developments on the South-Eastern border of NATO very closely.”

More plans, more bombs. The Americans and the Turks are also hashing out what to do about a plan to establish a “safe zone” in northern Syria free from Islamic State fighters, from which moderate Syrian forces could launch attacks against the jihadists. It’s not clear who these Syrian forces might be, since the U.S. has only managed to train about 60 Syrians to date, despite sinking $500 million into an ambitious training program designed to have trained up about 3,000 fighters by the end of this year.

Planning to plan. While NATO chews things over, U.S. and Turkish officials in Ankara are also locked in intense negotiations over American warplanes using Turkish bases to launch manned and unmanned airstrikes against the Islamic State. But a Defense Department official said on Monday not to expect the bombing to begin any time soon. If an agreement is hammered out, U.S. pilots won’t begin flying for “weeks,” spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters at the Pentagon.

American defense officials say that the U.S. is not providing any logistical or intelligence support for the Turkish strikes and have only shared information “in the interest of deconfliction” between U.S. and Turkish warplanes over Syrian and Iraqi airspace.

Real talk. While the U.S.-led coalition is focused on the Islamic State, Ankara has also started hitting Kurdish positions in Iraq, and the Turkish view on the Kurdish PKK militia — with which it has been locked in a decades-long bloody conflict — is pretty clear. “There is no difference between PKK and Daesh,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters Monday, using an alternate term for the jihadist group. “You can’t say that PKK is better because it is fighting Daesh,” he added.

Bills to pay. And in case anyone is paying attention, the cost of the U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria has reached $3.2 billion, clocking in at $9.4 million a day.

Happy Tuesday! The Situation Report is at it early again this week, and we’re always on the lookout for anything noteworthy or ahead of the news cycle to flag, so please pass any items along to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or send a shout or DM on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Special Ops Oops

No one seems able to explain how or why it happened, but earlier this month the Government Accountability Office went ahead and published a report that contained a fascinating and secret detail: the exact size of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6. No one really seemed to notice until FP’s Sean Naylor, who soaks up all of the Special Ops-related information he can find, flipped through the 71-page report, discovering that as of fiscal year 2014, the unit had a total of 1,787 authorized positions, of which 1,342 are military and 445 are civilian. But people are still scratching their heads as to how the numbers made it into the public sphere. “I don’t know why they would do that,” a former team member told Naylor.

Syria

FP’s John Hudson makes a special guest appearance with us this morning. He writes: There’s a new Syria Envoy in town. Michael Ratney will replace Dan Rubinstein for the job of U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday. Readers of The Cable learned back in early June that Ratney, the U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem and a fluent Arabic speaker, was a top contender for the position. The job entails a lot of outreach to the diverse range of groups that make up the Syrian opposition. It also involves trying to bring an end to the four-year Syrian civil war by reviving the perpetually stalled peace talks between the opposition and the Syrian government. In the coming weeks, Ratney will travel to the region to consult with Syrians and other major players in the conflict.

NBC News reports that Islamic State fighters have planted “thousands” of mines and the area surrounding Hasakah in northern Syria. Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State told NBC that the extent of mining in villages near the city has rendered the area “uninhabitable” for civilians.

Nuke deal

House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has tapped former undersecretary of state for political affairs Bill Burns to help sell the Iran nuclear deal to the House Democratic Caucus. Pelosi is lining up a week’s worth of meetings, including with White House officials, to help shore up support for the deal among Democrats as Republicans aim to block the administration’s ability to implement the nuclear agreement.

Navy

The Navy will christen the latest Littoral Combat Ship to roll of the production line the USS Cooperstown, in honor of the 64 combat veterans enshrined in Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Sub Hunt

After a very public hunt for a Russian mini-submarine along its shores last year, Sweden has at last found the wreckage of a Russian submarine — from 1916. Explorers from Ocean X Team found the submarine somewhere off the eastern coast of Sweden. Swedish officials are mum on who might’ve owned the wreckage but Cyrillic letters on the hull has prompted some experts to speculate that the sub could be a Russian one which sank off Sweden’s coast in the middle of WWI.

Russia

Come one, come all and witness the wonders of armored sportsmanship at this year’s annual World Championship Tank Biathlon in Russia. Teams from 13 countries, including China and India, will converge in Russia on August 1 to test their skills and battle tanks against one another. Cameras posted along the course and surveillance from helicopters and drones overhead will offer viewers a 360-degree view of the event. The Vegas line on the odds-on favorite to win were unavailable at press time, but Russian tanks have reportedly been busy with live fire training in the off-season in Ukraine.

Air Force

The U.S. Air Force is sticking to the plan to mothball the service’s entire fleet of A-10 attack planes, so beloved by ground troops for its ability to fly slow and low to provide close air support. But the air service desperately needs the cash and the maintenance crews for the F-35 program, which will start taking to the skies — and chewing through money — over the next several years. Air Force leaders say that sending the whole fleet to the boneyard will save it about $4.2 billion over five years. There had been some talk of selling off some of the A-10s to allies instead of shrink wrapping the birds and parking them in the Arizona desert, but the Air Force recently closed the door on that possibility, telling Flightglobal, “There are no anticipated sales of A-10 aircraft to anyone.”

North Korea

North Korea’s ambassador to China gave a rare and unorthodox press conference on Tuesday in which he cautioned the world not to hold its breath for an Iran-style deal with Kim Jong Un to give up his nukes. Ji Jae Ryong told an audience that North Korea isn’t Iran and has no “interest at all in dialogue for unilaterally freezing or giving up our nukes.”

Who’s where when

10:00 a.m. Secretary of State John Kerry, Jacob Lew of Treasury, and Ernest Moniz of Energy, head back to Capitol Hill to discuss the Iran deal with the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

10:00 a.m. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Chemical and Biological Defense Dr. D. Christian Hassell testifies before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on accidental DoD shipments of live anthrax.

10:30 a.m. Army Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, provides a briefing on the mission from his headquarters in Kabul via livestream.

Think tanked

The Century Foundation released a new report, “A Plan for Syria” by FP contributor Thanassis Cambanis that proposes a significant shift in the U.S. role in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria – stepping up American involvement on the northern front to raise the chances of a negotiated settlement to Syria’s civil war.