Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Iran Upgrades Kilo-Class Submarines As U.S. Naval Presence Grows Iran has completed a modernization of one of its Russian-built Kilo-class submarines, according to open-source...
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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...
US Navy aircraft carriers have been out to sea longer and longer over the last year. USS Gerald R. Ford broke records and now...
Prewar estimates ranged from several thousand one-way attack drones to more than 10,000 Iranian Shaheds in storage. Those figures cannot be subtracted cleanly from...
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...
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...
Iran Upgrades Kilo-Class Submarines As U.S. Naval Presence Grows Iran has completed a modernization of one of its Russian-built Kilo-class submarines, according to open-source...
Summary and Key Points: Reuben F. Johnson, a veteran defense technology analyst and Casimir Pulaski Foundation director, scrutinizes the Pratt & Whitney XA103 adaptive...
Summary and Key Points: Stephen Silver, an award-winning national security journalist, analyzes the record-breaking deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). -Having transited...
Summary and Key Points: Dr. Andrew Latham, a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities, analyzes a high-stakes 2026 scenario: a kinetic Iranian missile strike on...
Summary and Key Points: Christian D. Orr, a Senior Defense Editor and former Air Force Security Forces officer, analyzes the biography of General George...
