Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Summary and Key Points: Amid rising tensions in January 2026, Iran has renewed threats to “close” the Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime chokepoint...
Hi, what are you looking for?
In April 1997, President Roman Herzog told Germany it needed a Ruck — a jolt — to break out of national lethargy and undertake...
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...
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...
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 RAH-66 Comanche promised a stealthy armed scout able to find targets for Apaches under hostile air defenses. The Army spent $6.9 billion, completed...
The First Sea Lord warned in 2023 that the Royal Navy had spent eighty years getting smaller and now had to grow. Docks are...
The Pentagon's own drone program expects to have ordered just under 200,000 aircraft by February 2027. Ukraine is producing roughly half a million small...
HMS Vanguard's overhaul was originally scheduled for about three years and ran past 2,700 days. The contract was not fixed-price, and the final bill...
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: Amid rising tensions in January 2026, Iran has renewed threats to “close” the Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime chokepoint...
Summary and Key Points: USS Gerald R. Ford remains a high-demand supercarrier after supporting a time-sensitive Venezuela operation and continuing a long deployment since...
All four Iowa-class battleships saw action during the Korean War, using 16-inch gunfire to hammer coastal targets, support ground forces, and pressure Communist supply...
Dr. Michael Rubin argues that Washington’s repeated abandonment of partners is no longer an exception but a defining feature of U.S. policy. He points...
The U.S. Army has officially canceled the M10 Booker program as of May 2025, citing "requirements creep" and excessive weight gain as the primary...
