Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Over at the Wall Street Journal this week current 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, my former U.S. Naval War College colleague and current dean at 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...
NASA receives 12,000 to 18,000 applications in a typical astronaut cycle and selects about ten to twelve people, an acceptance rate well below one...
A Canadian fighter fleet built around both the F-35 and the Gripen isn't foolish. It's demanding, and nothing in Ottawa's recent behavior suggests it's...
The Iowa-class battleships were the most powerful America ever built, designed to win a decisive gun duel with an enemy fleet. By the time...
The F-111B was supposed to be the Navy's long-range fleet defender. Shifting Cold War priorities and unhappy aviators killed it in 1968, and everything...
A single Ukrainian drone forced Russia's largest refinery, in Omsk, to halt operations, knocking out units that make roughly 75 percent of its output...
Iran is moving to charge ships for passing through the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway that carries a fifth of the world's oil...
A film celebrating ten years of China's Y-20 transport slipped in something no other country has shown on official camera: a sixth-generation fighter refueling...
A decade after it surfaced, China's H-20 has no flying prototype and no production line. The reasons are industrial, not financial: an intercontinental flying...
National security expert James Jay Carafano argues that although the fighting grinds on, the war in Ukraine is strategically over — and Putin has...
President Trump arrived at the NATO summit in Ankara and threatened to withdraw substantial U.S. forces from Europe unless Denmark softens its grip on...
Cheap drones can make a Chinese assault on Taiwan bloodier and a quick victory less likely — but they don't repeal geography or remove...
The expectation that cutting U.S. aid would force Ukraine to fold is dead: Russia cannot win this war without a mass mobilization or nuclear...
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...
Over at the Wall Street Journal this week current 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, my former U.S. Naval War College colleague and current dean at the...
Following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-governing island of Taiwan, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) began a series of joint military...
Was the Ford-class a mistake? This month, the United States Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) – the lead vessel of a...
The Russian military is never found wanting for grand predictions about the capabilities of their new equipment designs. But reality often fails to match...
Earlier this week on 19FortyFive, we published a story on the XM25 25x40mm grenade launcher aka the “Punisher,” an ill-fated joint venture between Heckler...
