Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
Key Points and Summary – Russia is again promising the Su-75 “Checkmate” will fly in early 2026, after slipping from 2023 to 2024 to...
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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...
Key Points and Summary – Russia is again promising the Su-75 “Checkmate” will fly in early 2026, after slipping from 2023 to 2024 to...
Key Points and Summary – The Air Force’s F-47 NGAD could cost as much as $300 million per jet—far above the “F-35-like” price leaders...
Key Points and Summary – America’s Ohio-class submarines are giants—and a big chunk of their punch is about to retire. -Four converted SSGNs that...
Key Points and Summary – China’s A2/AD bubble is forcing the Air Force to bet on the B-21 Raider as the only bomber built...
Key Points and Summary – Russia’s S-500 Prometheus is billed as a new upper-tier air-defense and missile-defense system, designed to complement S-400 batteries. -Moscow...
