Five Things to Know, Aug. 12, 2024
1. The United States and South Korea will kick off their second large-scale military exercise of the year next week with specific North Korean threats in mind. The 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise will begin Aug. 19 throughout the South and focus on “realistic threats” from North Korea, such as weapons of mass destruction, cyber-attacks and GPS jamming, the Joint Chiefs said in a news release Monday. Roughly 19,000 South Korean troops will participate in the training, according to the Joint Chiefs. U.S. Forces Korea — the command overseeing the roughly 28,500 American troops on the peninsula — does not disclose the number of U.S. forces involved in the semiannual exercise as a matter of policy, citing operational security concerns.
2. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and is telling the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to sail more quickly to the area, the Defense Department said Sunday. The moves come as the U.S. and other allies push for Israel and Hamas to achieve a cease-fire agreement that could help calm soaring tensions in the region following the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut. Officials have been on the lookout for retaliatory strikes by both Iran and Hezbollah for the killings, and the U.S. has been beefing up its presence in the region.
3. The leaders of France, Germany and Britain have endorsed calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, the return of scores of hostages held by Hamas and the “unfettered” delivery of humanitarian aid. In a joint statement released Monday, they endorsed the latest push by the United States, Qatar and Egypt to broker an agreement to end the 10-month-old Israel-Hamas war. The mediators have spent months trying to get the sides to agree to a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the remaining hostages captured in its Oct. 7 attack in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and Israel would withdraw from Gaza.
4. A Marine Corps investigation released late Friday into an MV-22 Osprey crash off the northern coast of Australia that led to three fatalities last August pointed to "pilot error and complacency" as causing the accident. The investigation also found "several concerning maintenance practices" by the unit, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 363. And, while investigators did not directly blame those practices for causing the crash, it concluded that the tiltrotor aircraft never should have been certified safe-for-flight that day.
The U.S. Navy is struggling to build affordable warships needed to face expanding threats around the world. Among the numerous challenges obstructing its efforts are a serious shortage of skilled workers, poor shipyard employee retention, last-minute design changes and the Pentagon’s shifting priorities. Eric Labs is a longtime naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He says the shipbuilding industry is in its worst state in 25 years.