Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Summary and Key Points: The SR-71 Blackbird remains the benchmark for manned speed and altitude, designed to survive Cold War air defenses by outrunning...
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On 8 July at the NATO summit in Ankara, Mark Carney confirmed Canada as the sixth nation to buy Kongsberg's Joint Strike Missile, a...
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...
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...
Iranian missiles and drones did not hit a US carrier during Operation Epic Fury. They did not need to. The threat alone pushed the...
Algeria remains the only publicly confirmed Su-57 export customer, with reports placing the order at 12 to 14 aircraft and the value between roughly...
While the US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet was increasingly called upon to intercept modern drone threats, the jet was still used in its more...
Russia and Iran held talks years back over a possible $10 billion military package that included T-90 tanks, artillery, aircraft, and helicopters.
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...
Summary and Key Points: The SR-71 Blackbird remains the benchmark for manned speed and altitude, designed to survive Cold War air defenses by outrunning...
The 2012 Red Flag exercises in Alaska remain one of the most discussed chapters in modern air combat history, famously pitting the F-22 Raptor...
Russia markets the Su-57 as a fifth-generation stealth fighter, but critics argue its stealth is overstated. The piece highlights claims that Sukhoi documentation places...
A large concentration of U.S. stealth fighters is described as forming in the Middle East, including as many as 12 F-22 Raptors in Israel...
Summary and Key Points: Eleven U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors have reportedly arrived at Ovda Air Base in southern Israel, a rare forward deployment...
