Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Summary and Key Points: Julius Caesar’s claim that “experience is the teacher of all things” becomes a meditation on how combat, risk, and reflection...
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Dr. Michael Rubin argues that Israel's targeted killing campaign against Palestinian militants a quarter of a century ago ultimately produced two decades of relative...
More economic pressure by itself is unlikely to break Iranian resistance, because whether Iran can be made to fold turns less on how much...
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...
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...
Seventy-nine F-14 Tomcat jets arrived under the Shah in 1974. After the revolution cut the supply line, Iran turned the fleet into a parts...
Earlier this year, in April, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told reporters that the US Navy anticipates making a final decision on...
The contract was signed in 1986 for six boats. Sections built in Sweden arrived with bad welds, the hull had to be reshaped to...
The Iran Missile Deal: Weinberger opposed it. Shultz opposed it. Reagan, McFarlane and Casey went ahead anyway. Three hostages came home and three more...
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...
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...
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,...
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: Julius Caesar’s claim that “experience is the teacher of all things” becomes a meditation on how combat, risk, and reflection...
Summary and Key Points: Napoleon understood that even the best campaigns can unravel under the fog of war—bad weather, shaky logistics, human error, and...
Summary and Key Points: Lockheed Martin is in high-level talks with the Department of Defense over a “Ferrari” F-35 concept—an upgraded Lightning II meant...
A $22 Billion Trump-Class Battleship? Inside the BBG(X) Debate In December 2025, President Donald Trump unveiled plans for a new type of “battleship” which...
Summary and Key Points: The proposed Trump-class battleship is intended to restore “mass” in naval firepower as the U.S. Navy faces a fleet-size gap...
