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The United States is cutting danger pay for personnel working in the Gulf. On 3 January, the Pentagon announced much-anticipated changes to its list of areas where staff are eligible to receive Imminent Danger Pay (IDP), which could save the government around $100m a year. The benefit gives troops in imminent danger areas about $7.50 per day up to the maximum monthly rate of $225, according to a Pentagon spokesman. In 2012, it cost the government around $500m. Among those areas which, from 1 June, will no longer be eligible are the land areas of Oman and the UAE, the land areas and airspace above Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the four water areas of the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea, and the water area and airspace above the Persian Gulf.

The $110bn worth of defence deals signed between Saudi Arabia and the United States on 20 May during Donald Trump’s visit to the kingdom are an expression of Riyadh’s concerted effort to give the US president something he could present as a triumph to his domestic audience while drawing the US closer to Riyadh. The deal-making represents an important fillip to the American defence industry following a period when Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, have appeared intent on diversifying their supplier base away from long-standing Western providers.

The US is to supply Qatar with an unspecified number of Mk-V fast patrol boats from United States Marine Incorporated, along with gun systems, ammunition and support equipment, in a deal approved by the Department of State on 23 August.

Riyadh appears to have revived two deals to buy warships that had been thought of as dormant or even cancelled. French newspaper La Tribune reported on 2 January that Saudi Arabia was set to move ahead with a €250m ($299m) order for three Combattante FS56 fast attack craft from French shipbuilder CMN. The initial deposit has been paid, it said.

According to GSN’s contacts in southern Yemen, the federal military is rapidly reinforcing the south. The regime in Sanaa appears to have deftly switched its more capable units from the Saada rebellion from 18 May onwards, bringing an estimated 14 battalions to the south in time for the unification anniversary on 22 May.

French defence minister Hervé Morin was in the Kingdom for a two-day visit in early June. He said

A security unit on board the British-flagged, Norwegian-crewed Stolt Apel fired at six gunmen aboard two speed boats that had fired an RPG7 rocket-propelled grenade at the 23,000t chemical tanker and were attempting to board the ship. The incident, on 17 May, unfolded 120km off Mukulla in the Gulf of Aden, the UK Maritime Trade Organisation reported.Maritime security company Dryad Global said this was the ninth such incident this year in the international transit corridor through the Gulf of Aden.

Since the beginning of 2009, there have been signs that the long-awaited overspill of jihadist violence from Yemen into Saudi Arabia has gathered pace, leading up to last month’s Saudi offensive against militant targets in the Yemeni borderlands.

There is always something new and surprising to learn about militancy in Saudi Arabia, and Al-Qaeda’s pledge to kidnap royals and foreigners has revealed interesting features of the evolving threat

The UAE is playing a leading role alongside the UK and Malaysia on countering the online propaganda drive by Islamic State (IS, Isil or Daesh), according to comments by US special envoy for theGlobal Coalition to Counter Isil Brett McGurk. Speaking at a briefing at the White House on 10 June, McGurk said Twitter had taken down about 125,000 pro-IS handles to date. “For every one on Twitter now there’s about six counter-Isil handles countering their messaging every day”, he said. Similar efforts are afoot on other platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

US construction company Perini Corporation has been awarded work worth $170m from the US Army Corps of Engineers (Usace) in Iraq to provide its blast-resistant overhead coverage systems (OCS). The projects come under an existing contract for design, build and construction services

Images of the decapitated bodies of northern Yemeni soldiers lying on the streets of the southern city of Aden, circulated on social media, leave no doubt as to the brutality of Yemen’s evolving conflict. While the focus in recent days has been on the Saudi-led assault on the Houthis, escalating violence in the south is a worrying reminder both of the complexity of Yemen’s crisis and of its potential to get far worse.

Further details about UK military staff in the Gulf have been revealed in written answers to parliament by junior minister at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) Mike Penning. His 13 September statement listed the following deployments:• Saudi Arabia – Penning said the UK had around 100 military personnel advising the Saudi Arabian National Guard and working on other projects related to UK-supplied aircraft, naval vessels, weapons and associated support services.

The Saudi government has been accused of carrying out a “systematic spying campaign” on its citizens in the United States, using mobile telecoms network data, according to a report in The Guardian on 29 March citing an anonymous whistle-blower. The informer claimed Saudi mobile telecoms firms sent millions of requests for location information for Saudi-registered phones over a four-month period starting in November, with no obvious legitimate reason for doing so.

The UAE’s newest armoured vehicle, the eight-wheeled Rabdan armoured personnel carrier, made its debut during a large military exercise carried out with the United States. The seventh running of Exercise Native Fury, which concluded on 23 March, involved 4,000 US marines from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force operating alongside troops from the Emirati Presidential Guard and assets from the UAE’s Joint Aviation Command. The finale involved an assault on an urban area, carried out in the training range at Al-Hamra, on the coast west of Abu Dhabi and adjacent to the Al-Barakah nuclear power plant.