Exclusive: Houthi arsenal shocks the Pentagon's top weapons buyer

• Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante on Wednesday said the Houthis "are getting scary."
• "I'm an engineer and a physicist, and I've been around missiles my whole career," he said at the Future of Defense summit in Washington, DC. "What I've seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I'm just shocked."

State of play: The group's forces menace almost every ship passing by — civilian or military — and have even sent some to the seafloor.

• Two U.S. Navy destroyers were attacked days ago as they slipped through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
• At least eight attack drones, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and four anti-ship cruise missiles were intercepted, according to U.S. Central Command. No injuries or damage to the warships were reported.
• The barrages are said to be in retaliation to Israel's war in Gaza. But many targets have no obvious affiliation.

Zoom out: The Houthis are empowered by Iran. The U.S. considers the regime a national security threat.

• "The Houthis are the only Iranian proxy with anti-ship ballistic missiles," Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Axios. "That is no accident."
• Houthi zeal and Iranian backing, he added, "have proven to be a lethal combination."

Go deeper: U.S. bombers strike Iran-backed Houthi weapons storage sites in Yemen