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The United States deployed a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system and US military personnel to operate the system to Israel on October 13 to bolster Israeli air defenses following the April 13 and October 1 Iranian attacks on Israel. The THAAD system is a “ground-based interceptor designed to shoot down ballistic missiles.”
Russian forces have recently resumed tactical offensive attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area and have made tactical gains in localized assaults, but this activity so far does not appear to be a part of a larger operational offensive effort to support the wider Russian offensive operation in western Donetsk Oblast.
Lebanese Hezbollah is falsely presenting Israeli ground operations as a failure in order to degrade Israeli will and underscore Hezbollah’s own resilience in the face of massive Hezbollah losses since mid-September. Hezbollah claimed that Israeli forces have failed to take control of any tactically significant hills or ridgelines in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah asserted that Israeli forces have only advanced to the outskirts of Lebanese towns and are using propaganda images to misrepresent military successes. Geolocated footage and commercially available satellite imagery show Israeli forces are operating in the center of southern Lebanese towns, however.
Russian forces are reportedly relying on illicitly obtained Starlink terminals to improve combat coordination and the effectiveness of their tactical reconnaissance strike complex (TRSC) in Ukraine as part of an overarching effort to reach technological parity with Ukrainian forces. Ukrainian military personnel operating in Donetsk Oblast told the Washington Post in an article published on October 12 that Starlink terminals have increasingly appeared at Russian frontline positions and that the illicitly obtained technology is helping Russian forces fix persisting issues with combat coordination and communications while improving the precision of Russian tactical fires.
The IDF 91st Division has seized terrain in an unspecified area of southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah direct fire attacks into Israel, supporting the stated Israeli war aim of returning Israeli civilians to the north.
Russian forces intensified their ongoing effort to dislodge Ukrainian forces from Kursk Oblast around the evening of October 10 and have recently advanced further into the main Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast while reportedly eliminating almost the entirety of the smaller Ukrainian salient in Glushkovsky Raion.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) accused Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) President Lai Ching-te on October 10 of promoting separatism and inciting cross-strait confrontation in his National Day speech.
Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi threatened senior Saudi officials, warning that the Axis of Resistance would attack Saudi energy assets and infrastructure if Saudi Arabia supports an Israeli attack on Iran, according to anonymous Iranian officials speaking to Reuters
The FARDC and allied militias launched an offensive operation on September 26 against a Rwandan rebel group in eastern DRC. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) may have launched the offensive against the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) to advance ongoing peace talks aiming to end the conflict in the eastern DRC among the DRC, Rwanda, and their proxies. An anti-FDLR offensive has been a key Rwandan demand in peace talks because Rwanda’s Tutsi-dominated government views the FDLR as a threat.
Ukrainian forces reportedly struck a Shahed drone storage facility in Krasnodar Krai and an ammunition warehouse in the Republic of Adygea on October 9 and 10.