Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Russia’s Su-30 is a foundational fighter jet that Moscow relies on. Wesley Culp, our in-house Russia military analyst and expert, explains why: The Su-30...
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Splitting Russia into 4 or 5 states would be neither unprecedented nor strange. There are more than 20 Arab countries. Somalis live across 5....
Iran does not yet have a reconnaissance-strike complex capable of putting a US Navy aircraft carrier battlegroup in serious danger. Finding warships, tracking them,...
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...
American doctrine promises that any North Korean nuclear attack will end the Kim regime. The Iran war has just tested that assumption. The United...
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...
"Courage isn't having the strength to go on — it is going on when you don't have strength." The line is attributed to Napoleon...
On 11 November 1942, with the Second Battle of El Alamein just won, Winston Churchill stood in the House of Commons and warned that...
"Better to fight for something than live for nothing," Patton said, and then the war ended and he did not get to. On 9...
China's Type 039A/B/C Yuan-class is a 3,600-ton diesel-electric attack submarine with air-independent propulsion, 6 533mm torpedo tubes, Yu-6 heavyweight torpedoes and YJ-18 anti-ship cruise...
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 Houthis have no warships. It doesn't need any. A blockade holds if shipowners and insurers decide the passage is not worth the risk,...
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 forces struck Iranian positions preparing to fire mine-carrying missiles into the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran answered with a handful of missiles that reportedly...
Analysts dismissed American control of the Strait of Hormuz as a near-impossible task. The US government now says it has been helping tankers move...
Drones reached Moscow on three of the last five nights. A ballistic missile would not extend Ukraine's reach so much as compress Russia's warning...
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...
Iran's Shahab-1 came from the Scud-B and reached 300km. The Khorramshahr, derived from North Korea's Musudan, reaches 2,000km — a 6.7-fold increase in reach.
Russia’s Su-30 is a foundational fighter jet that Moscow relies on. Wesley Culp, our in-house Russia military analyst and expert, explains why: The Su-30...
What made the MiG-29 so special and why was Ukraine so interested in acquiring them? Russia defense expert Wesley Culp takes those questions on: Despite...
What is the P-8 Poseidon’s role in the U.S. Navy? In the summer of 2020, during the first months of the pandemic, I was waiting...
A former member of the U.S. Air Force explains what you need to know about the E-6: The United States operates an airborne command and...
What exactly is SEAL Team Six? You’ve probably never heard of the U.S. Navy Special Warfare Development Group. This sounds like a Navy unit that...
