Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
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...
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The consequences of 9/11 ran straight into the procurement system. The Navy, unable to explain its role in a war on terror, committed to...
Michael Rubin's argument at 25 years is that almost nothing was learned. The hijackers were neither poor nor occupied, yet the assumption that grievance...
Twenty-five years on, the familiar verdict is that American intelligence agencies failed to warn. Lieutenant General Wallace "Chip" Gregson argues the failure was broader...
The Witkoff-Kushner shuttle between Moscow and Kyiv ended, predictably, without a breakthrough — and Andrew Michta argues the failure reveals something deeper than bad...
German Foreign Minister Wadephul's fourth Kyiv visit — two days before Ukraine's Independence Day — capped an accelerating shift: Berlin is becoming Ukraine's principal...
The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative emerged from US Army Europe and Africa and NATO's Allied Land Command as a concept for restoring deterrence by...
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...
Ninety miles in half a minute. The X-43D would have been an unmanned, hydrogen-fueled scramjet demonstrator built by NASA and Boeing, with active cooling...
Cadmium-plated steel tools embrittled titanium on contact, so Lockheed had to build new tools out of titanium for the SR-71 Blackbird. Parts washed in...
The Navy historically allowed six months for a Planned Incremental Availability. The Carl Vinson's latest ran seven, from November 2025 to June 12, 2026....
The Army killed the M1A2 SEPv4 upgrade in September 2023 and started over, creating the M1E3. Major General Glenn Dean explained why: "The Abrams...
"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has,...
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has unveiled Operation Economic Outcast: secondary sanctions across five sectors and more than sixty targets, with no relief attached. Iran's...
Rezaei's threat goes beyond the strait: no oil leaving the Gulf by any route if neighbors cooperate. In practice that would mean strikes on...
Of the 1.5 billion barrels in emergency stocks, the IEA cannot order the commercial half released, leaving governments under a billion. The American reserve...
The US and Canada have 3 unsettled maritime disputes: the Beaufort Sea, the Northwest Passage, and a rock in the Bay of Fundy. None...
Splitting Russia into 4 or 5 states would be neither unprecedented nor strange. There are more than 20 Arab countries. Somalis live across 5....
Wars rarely win elections. George H.W. Bush ended the Cold War, won the most decisive American military victory in modern history, and lost in...
Speaking in Baghdad on August 20, Iran's parliament speaker warned that military power counts for nothing if the people are hungry. Four days later...
American doctrine promises that any North Korean nuclear attack will end the Kim regime. The Iran war has just tested that assumption. The United...
Trump ordered Ulchi Freedom Shield cut from eleven days to five before Kim Jong-un had agreed to anything in return. Kim Yo-jong dismissed the...
As President Trump downsizes the Ulchi Freedom Shield war games after South Korea declined to help with Iran, one uncomfortable fact goes almost completely...
Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine since late 2023. The early shots missed by kilometers. Later ones did not. That combat...
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 —...
The United States and Iran can probably keep the shooting stopped for 60 days — but only if neither side mistakes the pause for...
