For review:
1. The Saudi-led coalition, pushing to retake strategic territory seized by the Houthis, said it had intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile north of the Saudi capital Riyadh.
The escalation came after Yemeni government forces, with Saudi-led coalition air support, launched a lightning counteroffensive this week to capture the Red Sea coast around the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait shipping route and the city of Mokha.
2. New satellite images show “significant renewed activity” at the underground Minzadehei nuclear facility near Tehran, which the IDF bombed during the war with Iran this year, according to a report published Tuesday by the Institute for Science and International Security.
3. Iran has “lost complete control” of the Strait of Hormuz, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday, adding that Tehran’s economy was “in total and complete freefall.”
4. Lithuania is ready to pay the cost to set up a permanent U.S. military base if Washington should agree to establish one there, Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said on Tuesday.
The US has kept an armored battalion of almost 1,000 troops there since 2019, in overlapping rotations, meaning the troops arrive and leave every few months.
5. France test-fired an upgraded version of its M51 strategic ballistic missile from a submarine for the first time on Tuesday, a capability demonstration that President Emmanuel Macron called “very important” for the country’s strategic credibility and which he said would be monitored by allies and adversaries alike.
6. Anduril is establishing a new shipyard to manufacture parts for Virginia-class Submarines in Baltimore County, Md., the company and the White House announced today.
The new facility, dubbed Arsenal-2, comes with a $6.6 billion investment, including $3.7 billion in private capital and up to $2.9 billion from the Navy. And notably, today’s announcement marks Anduril’s first entry into the supply chain for a major legacy defense program.
