Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
The tactical success of Operation Epic Fury in March 2026 has underscored a growing strategic vulnerability: the U.S. Air Force’s reliance on an aging...
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Iran's strategy is to drag the war out. James Jay Carafano argues that protraction is the only card the IRGC holds, and that Trump...
More than 42 US military aircraft have been damaged or destroyed during the war with Iran, including aircraft caught on the ground at air...
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,...
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...
Moscow claims it downed 456 drones across sixteen regions and calls the attack terrorism — while never quite admitting the refinery was hit. Its...
Warned off and refusing to turn, the Kaman-class missile boat Joshan fired her remaining Harpoon at the American task group. It was an American...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The tactical success of Operation Epic Fury in March 2026 has underscored a growing strategic vulnerability: the U.S. Air Force’s reliance on an aging...
Summary and Key Points: Dr. Brent M. Eastwood, a defense analyst and author, evaluates the U.S. Air Force’s transition toward a “Super” and “Sixth-Gen”...
The strategic decapitation of the Iranian leadership in Operation Epic Fury represents the culmination of four decades of failed diplomacy. As of March 3,...
The recent high-profile mission in Caracas—where Delta Force reportedly captured and exfiltrated Nicolas Maduro—highlights the unparalleled surgical precision of the U.S. Army's most elite...
The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) is currently facing an existential reckoning. As of March 3, 2026, the ongoing U.S.-Israeli air campaign,...
