Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Summary and Key Points: Despite anxiety over the scheduled 2026 retirement of the USS Nimitz, Dr. Andrew Latham argues that decommissioning the 50-year-old carrier...
Hi, what are you looking for?
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...
More than 42 US military aircraft have been damaged or destroyed during the war with Iran, including aircraft caught on the ground at air...
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...
Iran is estimated to have completed about 20 Ghadir-class midget submarines. One was lost in 2014 and one destroyed in July 2026, leaving 18...
The F-5E Tiger II cost about $2.1 million when new, and Iran was the first foreign operator — the United States pulled the delivery...
Canada's 2023 agreement to buy 88 F-35As is valued at C$27.7 billion. Washington has threatened 50 percent tariffs on roughly US$20 billion of Canadian...
The US Navy has confirmed that one Virginia-class Block V nuclear submarine will receive a specialized configuration, although it has not publicly identified which...
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...
Oil futures are signaling that traders expect prices to fall over the coming months, despite the war and the disruption around Hormuz. The bet...
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: Despite anxiety over the scheduled 2026 retirement of the USS Nimitz, Dr. Andrew Latham argues that decommissioning the 50-year-old carrier...
Summary and Key Points: General George Patton’s famous quote, “Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory,” exemplified his aggressive...
Summary and Key Points – A Supercarrier Crisis? : Anti-ship missiles like China’s DF-26 drive the argument that carriers are too big and too...
Summary and Key Points: A coalition of European F-35 operators could assemble a 200-plus jet, networked force, with projections of roughly 600 European F-35s...
Summary and Key Points: The U.S. Navy is currently facing a severe shipbuilding crisis described as a “doom loop,” characterized by 82% of construction...
