The D Letter: Russia pushes deeper into Ukraine; N. Korea prepares nuclear test?; DOD releases industrial plan; Fire at British shipyard; And a little more.

An estimated 3,000 North Korean soldiers have moved to western Russia. South Korean officials said this on Wednesday, the newspaper said Associated press. Seoul Yonhap news agency did not confirm that number, but did report on Wednesday that “at least 11,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia, some of them to Russia’s western region near the border with Ukraine.”

US officials have not yet confirmed that the North Koreans are already fighting in Ukraine. although CNN notes, “US officials only publicly confirmed that the troops were in Russia weeks after South Korea first claimed so.”

Latest battlefield: Russia’s latest offensive, across a 40-mile front in the east, “has breached Ukrainian defenses in just a few days in many areas,” said conflict analyst Emil Kastehelmi writes. “Right now, the Russians are struggling to expand their breakthrough into a breakthrough. Even though the Ukrainians are losing many square kilometers, the defense has not crumbled into chaos and nothing extremely crucial has been lost,” he added.

Bigger picture: “The pace of Russia’s advance in Ukraine has increased in recent weeks but remains slow and consistent with positional warfare rather than rapid mechanized maneuvers,” said the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote Tuesday. “Russian forces have made recent gains in eastern Ukraine, but comparing these gains to Russia’s initial deep penetration into Ukraine at the start of the war misleadingly frames these latest advances,” ISW warns.

Manpower update: Russian army “recruits about 30,000 men per month” That’s not quite “enough to achieve internal objectives,” but it is believed to be sufficient “to cover even the colossal losses of recent months,” NATO officials told the Economist this week.

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Boom times

The Russian army say it “practiced launching a massive nuclear attack in response to a nuclear attack by a simulated enemy” on Tuesday. As part of the exercises, the Russians launched a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile from a base near Alaska, launched submarine ballistic missiles northeast of Norway and north of Japan, and sent Tu-95 strategic bombers that fired air-launched cruise missiles .

The nuclear tests are “a reliable guarantee for the sovereignty and security of our country” and “solve the problems of strategic deterrence, and maintain nuclear parity and balance of power in the world as objective factors of global stability,” Russian leader Vladimir Putin said in a statement.

Context: Russia’s focus on weapons of mass destruction is aimed at providing reassurance to a domestic audience amid the uneven performance of Russian forces in Ukraine, and at deterring Western countries from supplying more advanced weapons to Ukraine. New York Times writes.

South Korea’s military says the North is about to conduct its seventh nuclear weapons test. although it is unclear whether this will take place before or after Election Day in the US on November 5 Associated press messages from Seoul.

“It appears that preparations are almost complete for a long-range ICBM-class missile. including a space launch vehicle,” South Korea’s Defense Intelligence Agency said on Wednesday, according to Yonhap. “Preparations for a transporter-erector launcher have been completed and it has been deployed in a specific area,” but no missile has been loaded yet, two lawmakers said.

Rewind: This would not be the first time that Russia and North Korea have conducted nuclear exercises just before the US presidential elections. Eight years ago, North Korea detonated a hydrogen bomb less than two months before the election, and Russia announced: “nuclear bomb survival drills‘the following month.

By the way: South Korean military chief Kim Yong Hyun is visiting the Pentagon today for discussions with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his team. Similar conversations – under the banner of a US-ROK Security Consultation Meeting– occur almost every year, including last November with Seoul’s previous defense minister.

Industrial strategy

The Pentagon’s Defense Industrial Strategy Implementation Plan was rolled out Tuesday and includes six “initiatives” for the 2025 budget year, starting with improvements to the missile and submarine industries. The nearly 100-page unclassified document precedes a classified “annex” to come, Laura Taylor-Kale, who heads the Pentagon’s industrial base policy, told reporters on Tuesday.

The strategy, itself rolled out in January, broadly aims to strengthen supply chains to make weapons safe, faster and in bulk. The Pentagon spent about $39.4 billion on the strategy in the 2024 budget year and requested $37.7 billion in 2025. More than three-quarters of the money – about $60 billion in total – will go to missiles and munitions, followed by 3. $3 billion for the submarine industrial base. and $500 million for the Defense Department’s Replicator Initiative.

What can go wrong? Well, Congress might fail to pass 2025 budget bills before the continuing resolution expires in December, Taylor-Kale said. “It creates a lot of challenges in terms of procurement in general, and also in planning for us, if we have these ongoing resolutions.” From Defense Lauren C. Williams has more, here.

The best way to ensure the Pentagon gets the quantum sensors it needs is to increase R&D spending within the federal government, a new industry-backed one report argues. Currently, the US government spends approximately $900 million on it quantum detection each year most go to the Ministry of Defense. The report, prepared by the industry-led Quantum Economic Development Consortium, with funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, says an increase is needed.

By boosting the emerging quantum sensor industry and its efforts to serve domestic markets from aerospace to energy, the report said, these increases will help answer years-long calls from defense leaders for new instruments – quantum magnetometers, gravimeters and clocks – that do not rely on vulnerable signals from the space to provide navigation and timing data. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports: here.

Europe

Development: A fire at the British nuclear shipyard hospitalized two workers. The fire broke out early on Wednesday morning at BAE Systems’ six-acre assembly hall in Barrow-in-Furness, where Britain’s four Dreadnought-class missile boats and an Astute attack submarine are built. The Lancaster Guardian And BBC have some more.

And finally, Spain has deployed a thousand soldiers to help people evacuate after flash floods which have killed at least 64 people so far. The Army Emergency Unit has been posted videos of some airlift rescues. Read more on the New York Times.