Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
The Ukrainian defenders in Bakhmut are under increasingly heavy pressure from the Russians. On day 375 of the war in Ukraine, it is likely that the...
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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...
The Soviets built it, SALT II banned it by name, and Moscow gave it up. In 2021, China flew it again — with a...
Feared on reputation, bought as defiance — and now possibly traded away in Ankara. The twenty-year arc of Russia's most consequential weapons export. Meet...
Tucked inside an answer about F-15s and F-16s was a price nobody requested: $15.9 million to make the A-10 a nuclear bomber. The memo...
She cost $285 million, made Thailand Southeast Asia's only carrier power, and hasn't launched a jet since 2006. The Chakri Naruebet is easy 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...
Growth at 0.4 percent and a blown deficit look like pressure toward peace. Latham's case: four years of war built a political economy with...
Tehran treats the Strait of Hormuz as non-negotiable, Holmes writes, and no air campaign eliminates every missile. That leaves four courses: walk away and...
Carafano argues Iran has lost its nuclear option, its missile mass, its proxy network, and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz all at...
Ukrainian drones set two major Russian refineries ablaze overnight — including Salavat in Bashkortostan, the last gas refinery untouched in 2026 — while Russia...
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...
Fake Russian IDs, Orders Never to Be Captured, and 50% Casualties: Inside North Korea’s Secret War in Ukraine The Russian Army has sustained nearly...
The Ukrainian defenders in Bakhmut are under increasingly heavy pressure from the Russians. On day 375 of the war in Ukraine, it is likely that the...
A year came and went, and the war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. The two sides are tangled up in a...
The Scharnhorst was far from the most heavily armed battleship deployed by the Kriegsmarine—but she arguably was its most successful. She and sistership Gneisenau...
Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s CPAC 2023 attendance is remarkable, and it could have massive implications for the future of political discourse in the...
Of late there’s been a lively discussion in the halls of U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. (where I serve as the J....
