Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Key Points and Summary – The Navy’s aircraft carrier dilemma isn’t just about new tech—it’s about time. As Ford-class ships face delays and shipyards...
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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...
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...
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 M10 Booker completed live-fire and operational testing, but no Army battalion received an enduring fielded capability. A conservative public accounting reaches at least...
The Brink of War: Jared Harris is convincing as the last Soviet leader, but Jeff Daniels' Reagan impression comes and goes — occasionally he...
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...
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...
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,...
The maximalists wanted regime change, the minimalists wanted nothing, and the doubters see only waffling. Carafano's answer: the victor gets to define victory —...
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...
Key Points and Summary – The Navy’s aircraft carrier dilemma isn’t just about new tech—it’s about time. As Ford-class ships face delays and shipyards...
Key Points and Summary – Omar Bradley’s blunt maxim—professionals study logistics—underscores the unglamorous truth of war: victory depends on fuel, ammo, food, maintenance, medical...
Key Points and Summary – The Pentagon’s latest China Military Power assessment argues Beijing is modernizing fastest in the air and at sea—while using...
Key Points and Summary – Estonia’s foreign intelligence chief, Kaupo Rosin, strikes a notably less alarmist tone than NATO leaders, warning Russia could attack...
Key Points and Summary – Public glimpses of China’s carrier-launched, sixth-generation Shenyang J-50 suggest a paradox: a B-2-like “lambda wing” and tailless planform that...
