Situation Report: Assad in Moscow; major intel failure in Afghanistan; Taliban pushing new offensives; Washington, Moscow reach agreement over Syria air ops; Iranian kamikaze drones; a new Goldwater-Nichols; stunning drone vids of Syria; fight for Aleppo looming; and lots more

By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

Lonely planet. For the first time since his troops began a violent crackdown on street protests in 2011 that would lead to a catastrophic civil war, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has traveled abroad, and where else could he go but Moscow? In a surprise meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the two leaders talked about Russian support for his regime, and agreed to keep their fight against Assad’s enemies going.

Assad didn’t stay long, and was back in Damascus by Wednesday. In brief public remarks, the two leaders agreed that their fight against terrorist groups in Syria is necessary, and that some kind of unspecified political solution between all sides is the only way forward. The trip reflects the renewed confidence that Assad feels after some 50 Russian warplanes and hundreds of Iranian troops have joined the fight against an array of Islamist and rebel groups fighting to push him from power.

More Kunduz failures. A key piece of the American intelligence network in Afghanistan has experienced intermittent failures over the past several months, and was down the night of the Oct. 3 U.S. attack on a MSF hospital in Kunduz, a Congressman who has spoken to U.S. service members has charged.

In an Oct. 20 letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Ca.) wrote that on the night of the airstrike which killed an estimated 22 civilians and injured dozens more, “the primary components of the Pentagon’s flagship Intelligence system, the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS), were not operational in Afghanistan.”

And new reports have emerged pointing to even more confusion and uncertainty on the night of the MSF attack, as the Afghan commandos in the city, and American Special Forces positioned outside town who relayed their pleas for help up the chain of command, were both new to the area and neither had worked with the crew of the AC-130 gunship before the air strike.

The dotted line. American and Russian military officials have finally signed off on a memorandum of understanding to deconflict their air operations over Syria. While the Russians asked American officials not to release the terms of the agreement, comments from officials in Moscow and Washington portray it as sticking closely to the air safety requirements that Washington was pushing for, while leaving out many of the more expansive information sharing provisions favored by Moscow, FP’s Dan De Luce reports.

The agreement follows hard on the heels of a number of incidents in which the Pentagon said Russian aircraft have come dangerously close to U.S. military planes, including drones, in the skies over Syria. In one video posted online on Tuesday, a Russian fighter jet flies dangerously close to what appears to be an American Reaper drone.  Earlier this month, Fox News reported that Russian jets had shadowed Predators flying over territory held by the Islamic State in Raqqa and near the Turkish border.

Taliban offensives, everywhere. The Taliban are most definitely on the move, and are fighting it out with Afghan forces in several parts of the country. Just days after taking over an entire district in the northwestern province of Faryab, fighters have now captured the district’s security chief and surrounded an Afghan Army base with several hundred soldiers.

While the fighting in the north and west is as widespread as it has been since the U.S. invasion in 2001, newly emboldened Taliban forces are making a push in the south as well, overrunning checkpoints near Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of southern Helmand Province. “Helmand’s capital appears to be under serious military pressure,” a Western official told Reuters. “We’re hearing reports about civilians fleeing in large numbers.” There is also new fighting in the western Herat province near the Shindand air base.

The assaults across the country come just as new Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour consolidates his grip on power after a contentious start to his reign, where some Taliban leaders questioned his authority to lead in the wake of public revelations of the death of the legendary founder of the group, Mullah Omar.

Good morning all! Thanks for joining us yet again here at SitRep. We like to think that we cast a pretty wide net over here, but if you have any juicy tidbits, or national security-related events pop up on your radar, please pass them along! Best way is to send them to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Syria

Blame Canada. Newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau phoned President Obama on Tuesday to say that he would be fulfilling a campaign pledge to withdraw Canadian air assets from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The move would withdraw the half dozen fighter jets that Trudeau’s more conservative predecessor, Stephen Harper, had dispatched to the region. Canadian advisors in northern Iraq will remain in place, however.

Recapturing Aleppo is the Assad regime’s foremost goal at the moment, and the quarterback for the ground operation is none other than Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, according to Shia militia officials who spoke to the Washington Post. The Post reports that Suleimani has tapped Hezbollah, Iranian troops and Iranian-backed Shia militias based in Iraq to comprise the bulk of his force to take Aleppo with Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah militia slated to lead the assault.

Drones

Russian news outlets are circulating this new video shot by a drone over Aleppo. The footage shows Syrian armor fighting in the city, but it’s the video’s depiction of the knee-buckling devastation of the city caused by over three years of war that is drawing so many gasps online.

Speaking of drones, rebels in Syria are now claiming that explosives-packed Iranian kamikaze drones are hitting their positions near the city of Idlib. Tehran has previously boasted of developing the Ra’ad 85 “suicide” drone, essentially an outdated model of Iran’s Mohajer-series of drones stuffed with explosives. Since January, commanders from Iran’s Artesh Ground Forces have been mentioning the Ra’ad 85 and “suicide” drones more and more often.

Lest we forget, the U.S. Army has also deployed its own “suicide drone” in Afghanistan. The camera-enabled, 6-pound, 24-inch-long Switchblade is a tube-launched munition that can be guided into a target by an operator, and has made some direct hits on Taliban positions.

Russia

Reuters reports that Russia may have suffered its first casualties in Syria, with three servicemen reportedly killed in an artillery strike in Latakia, where Russian ground forces and aircraft are based. Reuters cited a “senior pro-government military source” as the origin for its story, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a nonprofit group in London which monitors the conflict, confirmed that it has seen evidence corroborating the death of an unknown number of Russian troops.

The group also reported Tuesday that Russian airstrikes killed at least 45 civilians Monday in Latakia province.

Air power

The A-10 Warthog, beloved of American ground troops for its ability to provide close air support, has reportedly landed at Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base and already flown missions over Syria. The Defense Department confirmed on Tuesday that a dozen of the planes had arrived at Incirlik to replace several F-16 which have been flying missions over Syria since August. The arrival of the Warthog in Turkey has some experts thinking that the Pentagon is preparing to use the plane for a forthcoming assault on the Islamic State’s capital in Raqqa, Syria.

Libya

Libya’s warring political factions have refused to sign onto a U.N.-brokered peace plan and the international community is warning that their refusal to agree to a political solution to the conflict risks plunging the country further into chaos. The U.N. proposal calls for the two main factions based in Tripoli and Tobruk to help form a unity government and submit to a disarmament process to take weapons out of the hands of the country’s many militias. The European Union has said it can provide civilian and military assistance to the plan.

Yemen

The Washington Post tells the story of Haisam Farran, a former assistant defense attache at the U.S. embassy in Yemen who returned to the country as a security contractor and was kidnapped by a Yemeni counterterrorism unit trained by the U.S. Farran, who was kidnapped alongside Scott Darden, a contractor helping provide humanitarian supplies to Yemen, had arrived just as the Saudi-led coalition had begun bombing to oust the country’s Houthi movement from power the and was suspected of being an American spy by the then Houthi-led counterterrorism unit.

North Korea

North Korea may not have launched a missile this month as many feared it would, but word of an altogether bigger fireworks display north of the 38th parallel is starting to circulate. South Korean intelligence reports that Pyongyang may be preparing for a fourth nuclear weapons test, the Associated Press reports. Word of the National Intelligence Service’s assessment came via South Korean lawmakers, who said that intelligence officials don’t believe the test will happen anytime soon. In August and September, the North Korea watchers at 38 North examined satellite imagery and found renewed activity at the North’s uranium facilities and its nuclear test site.

The business of the Pentagon

Senator John McCain (R-Az.) and Congressman Mac Thornberry (R-Tx.) are calling for a rethinking of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, the landmark legislation that reorganized the Pentagon and changed the way the services did business. The original bill was most notable — and controversial at the time — for transferring power from the service chiefs to the office of the secretary of defense and the combatant commanders spread around the globe.

The two want to examine if the Pentagon’s structure needs to be updated to fit the ways in which the world has changed since 1986. “For example, cyber was not there 30 years ago,” McCain said at a think tank event on Tuesday. “We’re going to have to address how we can train and equip people in the cyber area. There are many things that happened in the last 30 years that require adjustments to a fundamentally fine piece of legislation.”

Who’s where when

10:15 a.m. The House Armed Services Committee has a busy day, holding two hearings, kicking off with “Examining DOD Security Cooperation: When It Works and When It Doesn’t” with Dr. Derek Reveron, professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College; Dr. Christopher Paul of the RAND Corporation; and (Ret.) Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser. Streamed here.

3:30 p.m. “Update on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program” with Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher C. Bogdan, program executive officer of the F-35 Joint Program Office; and Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, director, F-35 Integration Office. Streamed here.

And Finally…

On Monday evening we got another sneak peak at the upcoming seventh Star Wars sequel and the Washington Post‘s Thomas Gibbons-Neff provides an important breakdown of the origins of the small arms seen in Monday’s trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.