Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
American analysts keep mirror-imaging China's J-20 as a rival dogfighter to the F-22. That's the wrong lens. The Mighty Dragon is evolving into a...
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The war began on 28 February with little public explanation. The administration did not make a full case to Congress or to the country,...
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...
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...
A CSIS assessment found that munitions beyond air interceptors are running low after the Iran war, including Tomahawk cruise missiles. Replacement is the harder...
The F-117 retired in 2008, yet selected jets will fly through 2034 as low-observable adversaries, sensor testbeds and missile surrogates.
On 22 July, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that any time Iran shot at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz — "by...
The A-12 Avenger II was intended to replace the A-6 with a low-observable carrier strike aircraft carrying weapons internally. The Navy once projected 620...
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...
Trump calls the strait "sort of open." Iran calls the arrangement "a new and different model." Last June, vague wording in a similar deal...
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...
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...
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...
American analysts keep mirror-imaging China's J-20 as a rival dogfighter to the F-22. That's the wrong lens. The Mighty Dragon is evolving into a...
Trump put a number on last night's strikes: 49 Tomahawks — roughly six months of production fired in one night. The Iran war has...
Ten days before Desert Storm proved stealth worked, Dick Cheney canceled the Navy's stealth bomber. The bill: a carrier air wing with half its...
The Navy packed two dozen first-of-kind technologies into one aircraft carrier hull and spent a decade getting hammered for it. Now the Ford has...
On April 23, 1991, the Air Force picked the YF-22 over a competitor that was stealthier, faster, and longer-legged. Thirty-five years later, every sixth-generation...
