Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
The best tank in the world right now isn't the most advanced — it's the cheap, 50-year-old Soviet T-72. The argument: modern war is...
Hi, what are you looking for?
A modern Arleigh Burke Flight III destroyer costs about $3 billion. At $23.4 billion, USS Defiant represents nearly eight of them. Pursuing the battleship...
The maximalists wanted regime change, the minimalists wanted nothing, and the doubters see only waffling. Carafano's answer: the victor gets to define victory —...
Reports indicate that American short-range ballistic missile inventories have been nearly exhausted and Tomahawk stockpiles badly depleted during the war with Iran. Patriot interceptors...
A peace settlement would have to resolve occupied territory, Ukraine's relationship with the West and sanctions, and neither government is close enough to the...
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 Navy has sold conventional aircraft carriers to breakers for one cent, because the scrapper keeps the recovered metal. Nuclear carriers work the other...
Thousands of full-charge rounds wore the rifling out of the Iowas' 16-inch guns, and the Navy replaced barrels after the war. The spares came...
When France fell in June 1940, Jean Bart was 77 percent complete with only one of her two main turrets installed. She escaped to...
Across 30 years of service, USS Parche accumulated nine Presidential Unit Citations, ten Navy Unit Commendations and 13 Navy Expeditionary Medals — more than...
No vessel entered any of the three Ukrainian ports in the Odesa region on Wednesday, the first such day since the grain corridor opened...
Oil futures are signaling that traders expect prices to fall over the coming months, despite the war and the disruption around Hormuz. The bet...
Ukraine's long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries have spread the fuel crisis into the countryside just as harvest begins, one analyst argues, with farmers...
Two tankers loaded with Saudi crude reversed course in the Red Sea — without being fired on — after the Houthis threatened any ship...
Ukraine on Tuesday executed a series of drone strikes on an industrial zone near Moscow, and across the whole country, strikes on three warehouses...
On July 20, a China Coast Guard team in a small boat closed on Philippine sailors near Second Thomas Shoal and repeatedly struck one...
A cruise missile came down about 90 kilometers inside Poland and hurt no one. That incident will be logged and forgotten. The question underneath...
Getting to Somaliland used to be simple. Then Somaliland refused more than a quarter of a billion dollars to drop Taiwan, and the routes...
North Korea has roughly 60 nuclear weapons and Kim Jong-un keeps demanding an exponential increase. Bruce Bennett works the problem backward, from Kim's objectives...
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...
The best tank in the world right now isn't the most advanced — it's the cheap, 50-year-old Soviet T-72. The argument: modern war is...
The JAS 39 Gripen was designed to be everything the F-35 isn't: cheap to fly, simple to maintain, and able to operate from a...
The U.S. is pouring billions into a handful of exquisite warplanes — the $300-million F-47 and the $700-million-plus B-21 Raider. But this analysis argues...
The F-22 Raptor is famous for its stealth, but its two Pratt & Whitney F119 engines are just as remarkable: 70,000 pounds of combined...
The U.S. Navy declared its electromagnetic railgun dead in 2021, beaten by barrel wear and impossible power demands. But in 2026 it's back —...
