Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
On May 15, 1969, the then still-under-construction Sturgeon-class nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Guitarro sank while undergoing her fitting out at the Mare Island site...
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For all the talk of spending targets, the Ankara NATO summit's real work happened elsewhere. Europe is being handed responsibility for NATO's conventional defense...
Western analysts fixate on North Korea's missiles. The real danger is speed — a mass artillery-and-missile salvo in the war's first hours, backed by...
The second Trump administration is reviewing America's military footprint in Europe, and the worst-case outcome is a full withdrawal. Andrew Michta argues that would...
The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding is being judged on whether it cools tensions in the Persian Gulf. Strategic-studies scholar Andrew Michta argues that's the...
As Russia runs at a record pace of ballistic missile attacks, the NYT reports Ukrainian firm Fire Point is stockpiling home-built interceptors — a...
The internet version says 24 missiles and 192 warheads. The verified version is smaller — and still beyond most nations' entire arsenals. Walk through...
Every source gives a different missile count for the Eagle II: 12, 22, 23, even 28. The audit sorts it out. Twelve air-to-air missiles...
A Ukrainian defense advisor reports Russia has mounted a simple magnetic compass on its cheap Molniya attack drones, read by the onboard camera, to...
Social Security’s funding gap is not a forecast — it is arithmetic. The size of the shortfall is known, the levers that can close...
The Memorandum of Understanding that paused the fighting has collapsed, Farley writes, because it never settled the status of the Strait of Hormuz or...
U.S. gas prices rose for the first time in eight weeks — 'Iran is the reason why,' per GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan — while...
Washington and Tehran can't agree whether the Strait of Hormuz is open — Trump declared it open under a new U.S. 'guardian' regime, while...
A New York Times analysis warns the US-Iran war sits on a 'knife's edge,' with experts urging a diplomatic off-ramp before it spirals beyond...
Iraq's new prime minister spent a week in Washington; Syria's president met Trump at the NATO summit. Frantzman reads the pattern: one envoy for...
Mediators have passed Iran a proposal for a ten-day ceasefire, Reuters reports, and Tehran's foreign ministry confirms diplomacy is moving — even as strikes...
Berlin is positioning to become Kyiv's chief postwar patron. Andrew Michta on the German-Polish competition for Ukraine — and why the strained Warsaw-Kyiv partnership...
Xi's first Pyongyang visit in seven years, a ratified Russia pact, and a declaration that the arsenal is permanent: Andrew Latham on why the...
Last year North Korea's newest destroyer rolled over at its own launch, and the world assumed the program was finished for years. Instead Pyongyang...
The KN-23, North Korea's version the Russian Iskander missile, showed up to fight in the Ukraine war. And it isn't the same platform as...
On May 21, 2025, a brand-new North Korean destroyer rolled over and partially capsized at its own launch ceremony — with Kim Jong Un...
On May 15, 1969, the then still-under-construction Sturgeon-class nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Guitarro sank while undergoing her fitting out at the Mare Island site...
Back in April, Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) posted a social media video highlighting the destruction of a "rare" Russian 2B16 Nona-K gun mortar near...
Dearly beloved 19FortyFive readers, it’s time for another one of my “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” moments. For all the articles I’ve...
So, the good news is that Joe Biden appears to have a clear path toward cancelling student debt (all of it, should he choose). The...
The social media wars continue. This new volley is with Mark Zuckerberg’s launch of Meta’s new app called Threads, postured by its creator as...
