Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Summary and Key Points: A new Mitchell Institute report argues current Air Force procurement plans risk leaving China with operational “sanctuaries” during a Taiwan...
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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...
The expense of transitioning experimental hypersonic weapons technology into systems that can be meaningfully scaled has presented its own set of problems for widespread...
The Navy has spent or committed $1.4315 billion to inactivate, store and dismantle USS Enterprise. While the bill is massive, the work that needs...
Israel's latest public fleet count is 48 F-35I Adirs, with 75 under firm order and a fourth squadron moving toward contract. The fighter's Israeli...
The Army's fiscal 2027 documents state that battalion-and-below unmanned aircraft will be purchased on soldier demand, with a base quantity of 590 systems.
The Houthis have no warships. It doesn't need any. A blockade holds if shipowners and insurers decide the passage is not worth the risk,...
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...
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...
Summary and Key Points: A new Mitchell Institute report argues current Air Force procurement plans risk leaving China with operational “sanctuaries” during a Taiwan...
Summary and Key Points: The B-52J isn’t a new bomber so much as a systems reset: new Rolls-Royce engines, modern AESA radar, updated avionics,...
Synopsis: The X-43D was a program that could have seen Mach 15, but it never occurred. NASA’s Hyper-X program proved air-breathing hypersonic flight was...
Summary and Key Points: Boeing’s X-32 was built around a clear idea: keep the JSF affordable, simple, and highly common across Air Force, Navy,...
The Navy’s flirtation with a carrier-based Advanced Tactical Fighter sprang from a late–Cold War problem: replacing the F-14 with something stealthier, longer-ranged, and optimized...
