Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
With only a few of the first Boeing F-15EX Eagle II aircraft now operational as of late 2025, the U.S. Air Force is surging...
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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...
Zelenskyy is not only calling for more Patriot deliveries but also insists that Ukraine be granted a license to build them domestically.
In March 1990 the US Navy estimated the F-22 Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter at $66.1 billion — $8.5 billion to develop and $57.6 billion...
The helicopter's structural weakness has been the same since Vietnam: to be useful it must fly into the range of what is trying to...
An official Navy photograph puts USS Hawaii at 82.4 percent complete when work was formally suspended on 17 February 1947. All three 12-inch turrets...
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...
With only a few of the first Boeing F-15EX Eagle II aircraft now operational as of late 2025, the U.S. Air Force is surging...
Air superiority is the key reason the U.S. Air Force B-52 has been successful over Iran, as the large, non-stealthy classic platform would face...
The secrecy and enthusiasm surrounding the U.S. Air Force’s highly successful B-21 Raider stealth bomber program have inspired many to speculate about the mysterious,...
The U.S. Navy has systems capable of guiding an airplane in for a landing—some aircraft can land completely on autopilot. The very first airplane...
The United States Air Force has some of the best-trained pilots in the world serving in its ranks. These pilots are trained to serve...
