Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Caleb Larson, former POLITICO Europe defense reporter, examines the U.S. Navy's decision to extend the service lives of USS Ohio and USS Florida. Following...
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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...
Ukraine's Defense AI Center says over 200 domestic companies are developing AI-enabled drones and more than 70 AI and computer vision systems are in...
A crew on the Moon is roughly three days from Earth and can abort home. A crew bound for Mars is seven to nine...
In August 1945 the Royal Navy counted 990 major combat units — frigates and larger, including submarines. In August 2026 the surface escort force...
GAO put the cost of reactivating and modernizing all four Iowa-class battleships at about $1.7 billion. Only two reached the Persian Gulf. USS Missouri...
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...
Caleb Larson, former POLITICO Europe defense reporter, examines the U.S. Navy's decision to extend the service lives of USS Ohio and USS Florida. Following...
Harrison Kass, attorney and national security journalist, examines the strategic consequences of retiring the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser. Each ship carries 122 Vertical Launch...
Is a coup against Russia's president Putin possible? One expert gives us what the evidence might look like as the war in Ukraine goes...
The B-52's survival in a 2026 high-threat environment is entirely dependent on its Standoff Range. By launching stealthy cruise missiles from outside the enemy's...
The decision to retain the USS Nimitz is a symptom of a deeper industrial and strategic malaise. While the Ford-class was intended to revolutionize...
