Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
With Operation Epic Fury (hopefully) on pause for two weeks in Iran, we need to step back and evaluate what we have witnessed from...
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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...
The US and Canada have 3 unsettled maritime disputes: the Beaufort Sea, the Northwest Passage, and a rock in the Bay of Fundy. None...
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...
Poland ordered 250 M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams in April 2022, weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in a $4,750,000,000 package that also included 17...
The US Navy put about $500,000,000 into an electromagnetic railgun and effectively ended the program in 2021, defeated in large part by rails that...
The Global Combat Air Programme is meant to give Britain, Japan and Italy a sixth-generation stealth fighter by 2035. Japan allocated $1,270,000,000 to it...
"I am convinced that much more emphasis should be placed on history," Patton wrote near the end of his life — and then the...
"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...
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 forces struck Iranian positions preparing to fire mine-carrying missiles into the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran answered with a handful of missiles that reportedly...
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...
With Operation Epic Fury (hopefully) on pause for two weeks in Iran, we need to step back and evaluate what we have witnessed from...
China has remained relatively quiet during Operation Epic Fury. Beijing hasn’t issued any loud threats, limiting itself to calling for a ceasefire and peace...
The Psychology of Fear That Surrounds the Strait of Hormuz: The Strait of Hormuz remains at the center of the conflict in Iran. Breaking...
Operation Epic Fury Was Worth It: Despite the online furor, there was never much doubt that Iran would in some way meet the 8...
The Iran Ceasefire Might Not Hold: For the moment, we have a ceasefire between Iran and the United States. At around 7 pm on...
