Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Steve Balestrieri, a former U.S. Army Special Forces NCO and National Security Columnist, evaluates the transformative integration of the MBDA Meteor beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile...
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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...
"You're never beaten until you admit it." George S. Patton said it, and Sicily is where it was tested — two slapped soldiers in...
In September 2013 the American attack submarine USS Dallas got inside the protective screen around the Royal Navy carrier HMS Illustrious in the Gulf...
The F-22 Raptor was built so that American pilots could kill enemy fighters before those pilots ever saw them, at nearly $143,000,000 per aircraft....
The EA-18G Growler is a modified F/A-18F Super Hornet, and the airframe alone runs about $67,000,000. What makes it a Growler is bolted on...
"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...
Steve Balestrieri, a former U.S. Army Special Forces NCO and National Security Columnist, evaluates the transformative integration of the MBDA Meteor beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile...
Steve Balestrieri, a former U.S. Army Special Forces NCO and National Security Columnist, evaluates the 1997 "secret deal" that prevented the Islamic Republic of...
Brandon J. Weichert, a senior national security editor and author, evaluates the end of the U.S. Navy’s "era of impunity" in the Indo-Pacific. The...
The U.S. Marine Corps is reasserting its independence in 2026 by formally declining the Army’s M7 Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) in favor of...
Dr. Brent M. Eastwood, a former U.S. Army Infantry officer and defense expert, evaluates the widening "experience gap" between the PLAAF and the U.S....
