I - On Defense Podcast

For review:
1. The US military said Saturday it had struck and destroyed three oil tankers linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the Iranian military organization fired on American warships.
2. The navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says it targeted three oil tankers that were traveling through unauthorized routes in the Strait of Hormuz as well as three additional US vessels in other areas, according to a statement.
There is no immediate confirmation from the US.
3. US President Donald Trump’s administration is crafting a post-Iran war strategy to build a regional alignment of US allies to contain Iran, while also expanding the Abraham Accords.
4. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel’s “central mission” is to topple the Iranian regime, asserting that the goal was “within reach.”
“The regime is now faltering. It is weaker than ever. It is fighting for its survival,” PM Netanyahu said.
4.  The US State Department today greenlit several potential arms deals for key Middle East partners Saudi Arabia, Oman and Iraq, totaling about $6.1 billion-worth of equipment.
5. The European Union is reviewing Kyiv’s request to spend billions of euros on PAC-3 interceptor missiles for its Patriot batteries — the first time Ukraine has formally asked to tap a 90 billion Euro support loan approved earlier this year to buy the U.S.-made systems, European officials announced this week. 
6. Following steep losses of the General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper in recent combat operations against Iran, Air Force officials are accelerating efforts to replace the venerable drone with a new unmanned aircraft at a price of $10 million each.

For review:
1. The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday night that it had finished clearing a “strategic” underground facility belonging to the Hezbollah terror group beneath a mountainous ridge in southern Lebanon in recent weeks.
The Ali Taher Ridge is located within Israel’s southern Lebanon buffer zone, near Nabatieh. According to the IDF, Hezbollah built tunnel systems beneath the hill, which served as the “nerve center” of the terror group’s Badr regional division — a unit tasked with the area of southern Lebanon that is north of the Litani River.
2. Iran has warned the United States that it would respond forcefully to any Israeli offensive on a mountainous ridge in southern Lebanon where Iranian military personnel are holed up alongside Hezbollah fighters, three officials briefed on the message told Reuters.
3. US Vice President JD Vance says Washington will only return to negotiations with Iran if Tehran stops targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
4. South Korea is preparing to deploy military assets to support freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and aims to dispatch them before the end of the year, local media reports, citing government and military sources.
5. Russia has been helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles, an advanced weapon that is harder to defend against than subsonic variants, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
6. The German Navy said on Wednesday that it had successfully tested an Israeli ballistic missile system the previous night and would now begin to advance plans to procure the projectiles.
The Long-Range Artillery Weapon System, known by the acronym LORA, has a range of 400 kilometers and is accurate to within 10 meters, according to its manufacturer, Israel Aerospace Industries. It is classified as a short-range ballistic missile.
7. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday there was a chance of reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said U.S. negotiators trying to broker a deal would soon visit both Moscow and Kyiv.
‌Putin, speaking at an economic forum in Russia's far east, said a number of countries including the U.S. and China were ready to support a peace settlement.
8. The U.S. government on Thursday slapped new sanctions on Cuba in a fresh push to strangle the island’s economy and deepen its multiple crises. 
9. American Rheinmetall delivered the first Lynx XM30 prototype to the Army this week, the company said in a Tuesday statement, the latest move in the service’s effort to replace the M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The vehicle is slated to start testing, while seven additional prototypes are scheduled for delivery later this year.

For review:
1. The US military hit targets in Iran on Tuesday, and Tehran fired missiles and drones in response, as hostilities flared once again.
2. Jordan’s army says it has intercepted 10 ballistic missiles launched from Iran while three others landed in remote areas.
3. A Syrian site held infrastructure “consistent with a nuclear reactor,” the UN nuclear watchdog said in a confidential report seen by AFP on Tuesday, adding that the country’s former authorities “failed to report nuclear material, facilities and activities.”
4. “Special forces” of the Shin Bet captured the commander of Hamas’s internal security apparatus in a “bold operation” in Gaza City on Tuesday morning, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the military, and the domestic security agency.
5. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is meeting Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to discuss a Washington-backed 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, Fox Business reported on Aug. 31.
The two reportedly met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Asheville, North Carolina, marking the first in-person attendance by the Russian finance minister since the outbreak of Moscow's all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
6. Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping could hold a trilateral meeting at the upcoming APEC summit in China, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Sept. 1.
Ushakov said the possibility of a three-way meeting between the leaders is being considered ahead of the summit, according to Russian state media.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is scheduled to take place in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19.
7. Two weeks after the Army picked a winner to provide prototypes for its next-gen wheeled howitzer, the service’s fires acquisition shop is now seeking a tracked variant.
8. The Army has announced it awarded Georgia Tech Research Institute up to $33.4 million to be the lead weapons systems integrator for the service’s Common Autonomous Multidomain Launcher (CAML) prototype program.
The CAML program is set to serve as a replacement for the Army’s Typhon — its Mid-Range Capability (MRC) long-range launcher — after the service discovered it was too large to operate on the battlefield.

For review:
1. The U.S. military struck Iranian military targets to prevent the deployment of sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. official said.
2. Jordan’s army says it intercepted eight missiles, shortly after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it attacked US military targets in the Washington-allied kingdom.
“Air defense systems intercepted eight missiles that breached the kingdom’s airspace at dawn today, Monday,” reads a statement quoting the army’s spokesperson.
3. Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Sunday called on leaders of Muslim countries, and particularly those in the Gulf, to stand together against Israel and the United States, imploring them to “know your real enemy.”
4. The Trump administration plans to impose sanctions on another bank this week in an effort to clamp down on Iran transactions, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says.
5. The Hezbollah terror group has so far rejected overtures by the Lebanese government to pull its forces out of the contested Ali Taher Ridge in south Lebanon, according to a Saturday report.
6. Cuba is preparing to loosen some of the tightest controls over its communist economy, allowing private companies to trade directly with foreign businesses, giving foreign investors greater freedom to hire workers and expanding their ability to develop real estate on the island.
7. In a bid to accelerate missile production, India has approved the transfer of technologies for all conventional missile systems from a state-run organization to private companies.
8. The US Air Force has awarded aerospace giant Boeing a broad contract for the company’s F-15 fighter jet worth up to $131.2 billion, according to a DoW announcement.

For review:
1. CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Moscow, Russia, for meetings on Tuesday, sources familiar with the situation told CBS News.
2. Russia warned on Thursday that it could strike British military ​targets inside and outside Ukraine in response to Ukrainian attacks on targets inside Russia using long-range British cruise missiles.
3. The United States on Friday issued fresh Iran-related sanctions as the war hit its six-month mark in a move that was rebuffed by Tehran as “state terrorism.”
Iran condemned the United States’ new economic sanctions and said other countries were legally obliged not to implement them. 
4. The United Kingdom warned on Friday that expelling its representatives from the US-led coordination center for postwar Gaza, located in southern Israel, would “undermine” efforts to improve the situation in the war-torn Strip.
5. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Tuesday that Dutch representatives will be expelled from the US-backed international coordination center for Gaza, citing a series of “anti-Israel measures” by the Netherlands.
6. US President Donald Trump signed an order on Friday creating a US Space Academy, billing it as a new military and civilian institution modeled after West Point and other military service academies.
7. USN Aircraft Carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) will leave from San Diego in the coming weeks. The the strike group expected to move into US Central Command AOR to relieve the Japan-based USS George Wshington (CVN-73), which entered US 5th Fleet last week.
8. The Pentagon is betting big on a $1.15 trillion discretionary budget request with a further $350 billion coming from the reconciliation process — together adding up to a historic $1.5 trillion defense budget.