🏹 🇺🇸 💵 The U.S. Army awarded Lockheed Martin a multi-year contract worth $4.5 billion for its air defense Patriot Missiles system, the Pentagon said on Friday.

🔶️ The contract covers 870 PAC-3 MSE missiles and associated hardware.

🔶️ Lockheed is manufacturing the newest version of the interceptors that arm the Patriot, known as PAC-3 MSE, which cost about $4 million each, according to Army budget documents.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-army-awards-lockheed-martin-45-bln-contract-2024-06-28/

https://archive.ph/jBwGo

🏹 🇷🇺 🇾🇪 US intelligence claims Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Saudi Arabia permission to arm Yemen's Houthis with cruise missiles

🔶️ The fears of what current and former US officials described to Middle East Eye as "secondary" and "tertiary" effects of an Israeli ground attack on Hezbollah are being driven by US intelligence that claims Russia is considering stepping up its support for Iran's so-called Axis of Resistance.

🔶️ In Yemen, Russian President Vladimir Putin has considered providing Houthi rebel fighters with anti-ship ballistic cruise missiles, a senior US official told MEE, citing intelligence, and speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive report.

🔶️ The notion is not unprecedented. In November, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Wagner group, a Russian paramilitary, planned to provide Lebanon's Hezbollah with a Russian air defence system.

🔶️ "If Israel attacks inside Lebanon it would likely prompt a further deepening of the military relationship that Iran has with Russia in order to help Hezbollah defend itself," William Usher, a former senior Middle East analyst at the CIA, told MEE.

🔶️ “Russia could already be thinking about how it would assist the Houthis.”

🔶️ "Putin sees the US responsible for Ukrainian attacks on Russian vessels in the Black Sea. It is possible he could see doing something in the Red Sea as payback."

🔶️ But Fabian Hinz, an expert on ballistic and cruise missiles at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that between the Houthis and Russia, supply and demand matches.

🔶️ “If I was the Houthis, supersonic cruise missiles would be very high-up on my shopping list,” Hinz said. “And the Russians have quite good supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles.”

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-officials-concerned-israeli-offensive-hezbollah-could-drag-russia

🇮🇱❌🇱🇧🇮🇷 — Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, in direct answer to his Iranian Mission at UN, promises to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran if it enters in the War between the Jewish State and the Lebanese Shiite Party Hezbollah

🇮🇱 Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel Katz on Twitter/X:

Iran threatens today to destroy Israel if Israel fully responds to Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon.

My response to Iran is clear:

➡️ 1. If Hezbollah does not cease its fire and withdraw from southern Lebanon, we will act against it with full force until security is restored and residents can return to their homes.

➡️ 2. ⁠A regime that threatens destruction deserves to be destroyed.

🔗 ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz)

🇦🇷🏴❗️⛓ — The government of President Javier Milei has sent a bill to the Argentine Congress that lowers the age of criminal responsibility to 13 years. The government has also requested urgency in approving the measure, according to a statement from the Ministry of Security.

📝 Currently, the age of criminal responsibility in Argentina is 16 years. According to Bullrich, the goal of the bill is to "protect the Argentine citizen from crime" and "end impunity."

☄️ The bill, named the “Juvenile Penal Regime,” establishes a new penal regime for adolescents between 13 and 18 years old who commit crimes. The penalties can reach up to 20 years in prison, as reported by the Argentine newspaper "La Nación."

"This is an issue that all governments have been pushing aside year after year, and it costs Argentine lives. Populism, the lie of a present state, and the educational catastrophe have left the country unable to protect itself from crime. This bill aims to end impunity.

It is important for young people to have opportunities, but the main opportunity is to live in a community with low crime rates, reducing the number of young offenders. Those who commit crimes must know that if they do, they will have to pay!"

💬 To justify the law, Justice Minister Mariano Libarona argued that times have changed, and consequently, so have young people. He cited the case of the gang rape of a Jewish girl in France, committed by 12 and 13-year-old adolescents, as an example of the severity of the situation.

Source 🖇

🇧🇷🤡🛠 — Lula compares himself to Marx, Lenin, and Fidel Castro and says he wants to “revolutionize Brazil”

➡️ President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) emphasized that the Federal Constitution is the primary resource necessary for a leader to transform the country. Citing philosophers Karl Marx and Lenin, figures often referenced by the radical left, Lula stressed the importance of regulating the rights already provided for in the Constitution.

➡️ It is worth noting that in his 1917 work, The State and Revolution, Vladimir Lenin explicitly mentions the practical application of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” through a violent revolution. Fidel Castro, in turn, adopting a Marxist-Leninist model of development, converted Cuba into a dictatorship of the proletariat under the command of the Communist Party, the first in the Western Hemisphere.

🇧🇷 The event was attended by several ministers and government authorities, including Margareth Menezes, Minister of Culture; Renan Filho and Alexandre Silveira, ministers giving a joint speech; and Jader Filho, who spoke alongside the president of the Brazilian Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco.

🏹 🇷🇺 🏭 Artillery production in Russia.

— At the start of 2022, Russia produced 250,000 rounds of 152mm ammunition annually.
— By early 2023, production increased to 1 million rounds per year.
— For 2024, Russia expects to manufacture 1.325 million rounds of 152mm shells.
— 122mm artillery ammunition production is projected to reach 800,000 rounds in 2024.
— Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) production is growing rapidly:
2023: 33,000 rounds of 122mm Grad rockets
2024: Expected to exceed 500,000 rounds
📎 Source: RUSI analysis, quoting an internal RU MoD report
— Also, a recent CNN report claimed Russia is producing artillery shells at a much faster rate than Ukraine's allies, with the ability to manufacture around 4.5 million 152mm shells this year at a cost of $1,000 per round.
— In contrast, European countries and the US are only expected to produce 1.3 million 155mm shells combined in 2024, at an average cost of $4,000 per unit.

📎 Clash Report