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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The curious, on-again-off-again US-Iran war of 2026 is a remarkable geopolitical outcome. For all its hard power, the US has been unable to force...
Since Khamenei took over in March, Iran's Supreme National Security Council has had three secretaries. Ali Larijani was killed in an airstrike a few...
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...
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...
Iran's air defenses are old and obsolete. They had no chance to defeat US Air Force or Israeli warplanes flying overhead.
A fleet of Russian-build Su-35 Flanker fighters could make the United States work harder and force the acceptance of somewhat greater risk — but...
Iran is estimated to have completed about 20 Ghadir-class midget submarines. One was lost in 2014 and one destroyed in July 2026, leaving 18...
The F-5E Tiger II cost about $2.1 million when new, and Iran was the first foreign operator — the United States pulled the delivery...
Washington redirected 55 commercial vessels away from Iranian ports as of Sunday, up from 35 a week earlier, while the Kpler intelligence firm counted...
Supply boats bring food and water. Wages arrive late or not at all. A union leader likens it to imprisonment, and one Indian sailor...
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...
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 war began on 28 February with little public explanation. The administration did not make a full case to Congress or to the country,...
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...
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.
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 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,...
