Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
China launches a carrier every 20 months. America just delayed its newest one to 2034 — because the shipyard physically can't fit it —...
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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...
Japan’s Yamato-class battleships were larger, carried heavier guns and wore thicker armor. The Iowa class still offered the stronger overall combat system through superior...
The US military will still need stealth aircraft and carriers, and some airspace will remain too dangerous for an unprotected platforms. What is ending...
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...
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...
China launches a carrier every 20 months. America just delayed its newest one to 2034 — because the shipyard physically can't fit it —...
China operates three aircraft carriers today, but the Pentagon believes Beijing is building toward nine by 2035 — the fastest carrier build-up in the...
Greece has selected Embraer's C-390 over a new Lockheed C-130 to replace its aging Hercules fleet, approving €600 million for three jets. It's the...
Europe's most ambitious fighter program is dead: the Franco-German FCAS collapsed after Paris and Berlin couldn't agree on control. Now eight German and Spanish...
Boeing has pulled its T-7A Red Hawk from the U.S. Navy's competition to replace the aging T-45 Goshawk trainer — the second prime contractor...
