Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
The 2026 defense landscape is defined by a brutal tug-of-war between legacy carrier-based ambitions and the "all-in" prioritization of the Boeing F-47. While the...
Hi, what are you looking for?
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...
Iran took delivery of about 460 American M60s and 894 British Chieftains before the 1979 revolution. It had also ordered 125 Shir Iran 1...
The F-4 Phantom set 16 world speed and altitude records between 1959 and 1962, which prompted the Vietnam veteran Dick Anderegg's line that it...
Iran signed contracts for three Kilo-class submarines in 1988, while the Soviet Union still existed. The USSR dissolved three years later. The Russian Federation...
US Navy aircraft carriers have been out to sea longer and longer over the last year. USS Gerald R. Ford broke records and now...
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 2026 defense landscape is defined by a brutal tug-of-war between legacy carrier-based ambitions and the "all-in" prioritization of the Boeing F-47. While the...
The A-12 Avenger II, famously dubbed the "Flying Dorito," remains one of the most expensive and ambitious failures in the history of naval aviation....
The T-95 (Object 195) remains the "greatest tank Russia never built." While the T-14 Armata currently captures headlines for its absence from the Ukrainian...
The rise of China’s Xian H-20 strategic stealth bomber represents more than just a new airframe; it is the culmination of a "manufacturing colossus"...
Summary and Key Points: Russia and China both want next-generation stealth bombers—China with the H-20 and Russia with the PAK DA—but both programs are...
