Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Brandon J. Weichert, Senior National Security Editor at 19FortyFive, delivers a scathing post-mortem of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. Dubbed the "Little Crappy...
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The Witkoff-Kushner shuttle between Moscow and Kyiv ended, predictably, without a breakthrough — and Andrew Michta argues the failure reveals something deeper than bad...
The US and Canada have 3 unsettled maritime disputes: the Beaufort Sea, the Northwest Passage, and a rock in the Bay of Fundy. None...
The CIA director went to Moscow in August to tell Vladimir Putin his position was hopeless. Fresh US intelligence says Putin thinks the opposite...
Lockheed Martin says a new US Army contract will triple PAC-3 MSE production by 2030, from roughly 600 interceptors a year to about 2,000....
German Foreign Minister Wadephul's fourth Kyiv visit — two days before Ukraine's Independence Day — capped an accelerating shift: Berlin is becoming Ukraine's principal...
The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative emerged from US Army Europe and Africa and NATO's Allied Land Command as a concept for restoring deterrence by...
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...
An Iowa-class battleship's 16-inch guns threw a 2,700-pound shell about 24 miles. In the 1980s the US Navy pulled out four 5-inch mounts and...
Ukraine flies 2 Western fighters today, the F-16 and the Mirage 2000, with Gripens and Rafales to follow. At the Kielce arms show, Ukrainian...
The Rafale entered service in 2001 and by any normal measure should be aging out. Instead it is in the middle of the largest...
"You're never beaten until you admit it." George S. Patton said it, and Sicily is where it was tested — two slapped soldiers in...
"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has,...
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has unveiled Operation Economic Outcast: secondary sanctions across five sectors and more than sixty targets, with no relief attached. Iran's...
Rezaei's threat goes beyond the strait: no oil leaving the Gulf by any route if neighbors cooperate. In practice that would mean strikes on...
Of the 1.5 billion barrels in emergency stocks, the IEA cannot order the commercial half released, leaving governments under a billion. The American reserve...
Splitting Russia into 4 or 5 states would be neither unprecedented nor strange. There are more than 20 Arab countries. Somalis live across 5....
Wars rarely win elections. George H.W. Bush ended the Cold War, won the most decisive American military victory in modern history, and lost in...
Speaking in Baghdad on August 20, Iran's parliament speaker warned that military power counts for nothing if the people are hungry. Four days later...
American forces struck Iranian positions preparing to fire mine-carrying missiles into the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran answered with a handful of missiles that reportedly...
American doctrine promises that any North Korean nuclear attack will end the Kim regime. The Iran war has just tested that assumption. The United...
Trump ordered Ulchi Freedom Shield cut from eleven days to five before Kim Jong-un had agreed to anything in return. Kim Yo-jong dismissed the...
As President Trump downsizes the Ulchi Freedom Shield war games after South Korea declined to help with Iran, one uncomfortable fact goes almost completely...
Russia has used North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine since late 2023. The early shots missed by kilometers. Later ones did not. That combat...
Brandon J. Weichert, Senior National Security Editor at 19FortyFive, delivers a scathing post-mortem of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program. Dubbed the "Little Crappy...
Jack Buckby, a New York-based defense researcher and analyst, evaluates the "electromagnetic resurrection" of the U.S. Navy’s railgun program. After the program was officially...
Dr. Brent M. Eastwood, a former U.S. Army Infantry officer and expert in military AI, evaluates the strategic "bunker-busting" mystery surrounding the GBU-57B Massive...
Jack Buckby, a New York-based defense researcher and analyst, evaluates the "transparency of stealth", following claims by Chinese AI firm Jingan Technology. During the...
Brandon J. Weichert, Senior National Security Editor at 19FortyFive, evaluates the Zumwalt-class (DDG-1000) as a "technological white elephant" of the post-Cold War era. While...
