Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
As Operation Epic Fury enters its second week, Iran is pivoting to a "Hezbollah blueprint" of asymmetric defiance to counter the destruction of its...
Hi, what are you looking for?
A US intelligence assessment reported by the Wall Street Journal on 6 August describes a range of ways Putin might test NATO between this...
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 —...
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...
B-2 Spirits flew in support of Operation Epic Fury and the air campaign against Iran. In July, two of them deployed from Whiteman Air...
Canada planned to buy 88 F-35As, holds a firm order for 16, and confirmed long-lead payments for 14 more in February 2026 — 30...
The F-22 Raptor entered operational service in 2005, designed to destroy advanced Soviet fighters beyond visual range. It went nearly eighteen years without an...
The Navy commissioned USS Sioux City in November 2018 and decommissioned her in August 2023, four years and nine months later. The $362 million...
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...
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...
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...
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...
As Operation Epic Fury enters its second week, Iran is pivoting to a "Hezbollah blueprint" of asymmetric defiance to counter the destruction of its...
As of March 6, 2026, the U.S. Navy is facing a "magazine depth" crisis. Operation Epic Fury has consumed a massive number of Tomahawk...
The S-500 Prometey, Russia's most ambitious air and missile defense project, is designed to push the boundaries of terrestrial defense into the realm of...
The strategic landscape of Operation Epic Fury has shifted from a search for a "moderate" successor to a confrontation with a decentralized military dictatorship....
The current phase of Operation Epic Fury has sparked a high-stakes debate: is destroying hardware enough, or is the 2026 conflict the ultimate moment...
