Agnes Helou is Breaking Defense's Middle East Bureau Chief, with close to a decade of experience in covering regional defense and strategic topics. She was the managing Editor of Security and Defense Arabia, an Arabic language defense website and magazine, and covered the Middle East and North Africa defense and security topics for Defense News for three years. Her reporting expertise covers the Gulf, North Africa, Middle East and Southern Europe.
Agnes has a master’s degree and is pursuing her PhD in media economics from the Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities & Social Sciences in Lebanon. Her interests include artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, air defense, maritime and border security regional strategic issues.
Bryden Spurling, senior research leader for defence and security at RAND, said that there “was clearly reluctance [on the part of Washington and London] to strike the Houthis despite the threat they pose to one of the world’s most important waterways.”
Days after the US killed a suspected militant leader in Baghdad, Iraq’s prime minister called for a “quick” timeline for US and coalition forces to leave.
“We all watched as it exploded. No more details on that for right now,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the international Combined Maritime Forces, told reporters.
The Saudis and the Emiratis may have an obvious interest in secure shipping lanes themselves, former senior Pentagon official Mick Mulroy told Breaking Defense, “but [they] do not want to be seen as supporting Israel.”
“The Ford’s deployment had already been extended once. The Navy does not like to extend deployments too much because of fatigue on the crews,” analyst Mark Cancian told Breaking Defense.
Even if the Gaza conflict were to stop tomorrow, the international community has been shown how vulnerable vessels in the Red Sea can be — lessons already learned in the Arabian Gulf and off the coast of east Africa.
Long before the Middle East was plunged into a new Israel-Gaza conflict, plenty of geopolitical plates had shifted, with major defense deals in the balance.
“It will be interesting to see how EDGE succeeds or not with [their] strategy, but given the market and the way it’s behaving, there should be positive results for the company,” one analyst told Breaking Defenes. “Time will tell.”
“While expanding SAMI’s MRO capabilities is important, the target is to establish joint training activities to develop Saudi talents and transfer skills in the sector,” the Saudi firm’s CEO said.
“What they want to have is a regional standard air-to-air capability that will allow them to deter Israeli air-to-air capability. Right now the only threat Israel has in air operations from Iran is from ground-to-air,” analyst David Des Roches told Breaking Defense.
The lion’s share of the total dollar figure is due to a $1.1 billion (4.1 billion AED) arrangement EDGE signed with the UAE Ministry of Defense for aircraft munitions.
High-performance systems generate tremendous amounts of heat that can compromise missions and make high-tech systems less effective in tactical environments. But there is a solution to this modern-age challenge.
High-performance systems generate tremendous amounts of heat that can compromise missions and make high-tech systems less effective in tactical environments. But there is a solution to this modern-age challenge.
