Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Turkey has agreed to back Sweden's bid to join NATO, the alliance's chief Jens Stoltenberg said on the eve of the NATO summit, which...
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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...
Nothing was holding one of America's most advanced weather satellites to its fixture but gravity and friction — because another crew had borrowed the...
China is no longer experimenting with aircraft carriers. With Fujian now in service and more carriers expected, Beijing is building the foundation for a...
China's J-15 'Flying Shark' — the fighter that made its carriers viable — exists because Beijing bought an unfinished Su-33 prototype left in Ukraine...
Russia has modified its ballistic missiles to dive and maneuver in the terminal phase, evading Ukraine's interceptors, Reuben Johnson reports — a shift one...
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...
The US-Iran war has settled into a stalemate Trump can only break by sending in ground troops, argues Dr. Robert Kelly of Pusan National...
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...
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...
Turkey has agreed to back Sweden's bid to join NATO, the alliance's chief Jens Stoltenberg said on the eve of the NATO summit, which...
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that, just hours before NATO’s Vilnius Summit, he had finally done the impossible: Convinced Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to lift...
Now that Ukraine’s counter-offensive is picking up speed, more equipment losses are being documented. Since the onset of Russia’s invasion, main battle tanks (MBTs)...
Vladimir Putin’s seemingly perpetual “special military operation” in Ukraine is replete with weapons systems that are being heavily used on both sides of the...
In a somewhat surprising move, the Biden administration confirmed it would be providing cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of an upcoming military package. According...
