Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Summary and Key Points: China is ramping up stealth aviation, fielding hundreds of J-20s and moving the newer, twin-engine J-35A toward production. -That sets...
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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...
A US intelligence assessment reported by the Wall Street Journal on 6 August describes a range of ways Putin might test NATO between this...
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...
Coverage of Chinese support for Russia focuses on what one retired US intelligence official calls MDO — missiles, drones and oil. What Moscow is...
Satellite imagery shows Russia installing large overhead anti-drone nets across submarine berths at the Rybachiy nuclear submarine base on the Kamchatka Peninsula — the...
When looking at the combined decline of the Ohio-class SSGNs and the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, that’s 1,316 missile-launch positions taken off the board without any...
The physical realities of life at sea—the rigorous conditions and exposure to the elements—mean that these vessels have finite shelf lives. The Ticonderoga-class was...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Summary and Key Points: China is ramping up stealth aviation, fielding hundreds of J-20s and moving the newer, twin-engine J-35A toward production. -That sets...
Summary and Key Points: Building two stealthy sixth-generation fighters in parallel—F-47 and F/A-XX—would strain a U.S. industrial base that has consolidated into a handful...
Synopsis: China’s newly revealed J-35A stealth fighter appears to blend familiar design cues with unanswered questions. -Externally, it shows classic low-observable shaping and a...
Summary and Key Points: The Army’s future M1E3 aims to keep the Abrams relevant against the threats reshaping modern ground combat—especially drones, top-down missiles,...
Summary and Key Points: China’s carrier program is accelerating fast, with the Fujian already in sea trials and reporting suggesting a fourth “supercarrier” could...
