On April 25, armed groups launched near-simultaneous attacks against military installations and key strategic sites across Mali. Claimed by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, a jihadist group, and conducted in coordination with Tuareg separatist forces from the Front de libération de l’Azawad, the attacks targeted multiple nodes across the country’s security architecture simultaneously, from the capital Bamako to Gao, Mopti, and Kidal.While the attacks themselves were a shock, they should…

The United States and Canada are both racing to rebuild their defense industrial bases, recognizing that future conflicts will be determined not only by military capability, but by the ability to produce at scale. But they cannot succeed alone — and importantly, they do not need to start from scratch.After decades of reliance on globalized supply chains for everything from consumer products to critical defense technologies, the United States is reasserting a more active industrial policy, using tools ranging…

In the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, much that could go wrong did for the Russian military. As one volunteer organization called KatyaValya recalled:We called all our military friends in (Russian-held) Donetsk, but no one could really explain or say anything. Three or four days later, Katya’s husband (who served with Donetsk militia) disappeared from communications. We searched for him every day through the commandant’s office to make sure everything was alright.…

During the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, a 26-year-old company commander’s unit was pinned down by a fortified hilltop. After frontal assaults failed, the junior officer made an extraordinary request: an entire battalion, four times the size of his own unit, for a jungle flanking maneuver. The regimental commander agreed. The surprise assault broke the Vietnamese defense. This company commander’s pedigree was as formidable as his tactics: His father was a founding general who had just retired as head of…

On the night of Aug. 9, 1942, an Allied fleet of 17 warships guarded the approaches to Guadalcanal. The fleet was newer, larger, and better equipped than the Japanese force bearing down on it. It had six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and nine destroyers. It carried radar, a technology that should have detected the enemy long before any lookout could spot a ship through the darkness. By the numbers, the Allied squadron was on average 10 years newer and outweighed its opponent by more than 85 percent in total…

The term “affordable mass” entered public defense discourse in 2021 as a munitions concept, which the Air Force adopted in 2023 to describe its effort to field large numbers of lower-cost, semi-autonomous aircraft to complement crewed fighters. The term has since spread in defense reporting, think-tank commentary, service initiatives, and even on War on the Rocks.The Air Force, Army, and Navy are all pursuing low-cost, high-volume buying efforts to augment the force of the “few and…

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The…

The military modernization and technological ambitions of the People’s Republic of China dominate headlines in Washington. Hypersonic missiles, AI breakthroughs, and an expanding navy are the visible symbols of competition with the Chinese Communist Party. But if the United States is serious about long-term competition, it should prioritize — or at least pay equal attention to — the Chinese Communist Party’s other weapon: united front.  Understandably, military power and advanced…

Closing small boat stations has proven difficult. Leaving them unchanged is operationally inefficient. These units are enduring parts of the Coast Guard’s force structure, yet their full potential is not always realized. This article proposes a model to better align their mission with national priorities.During the recent Senate confirmation hearing for the next commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, senators raised a wide range of global maritime concerns, including Arctic competition, cyber threats targeting…

The U.S. military is firing million-dollar missiles at Iranian drones that cost a tiny fraction as much — a striking example of the kind of overmatch modern warfare punishes.The Department of Defense’s approach to electromagnetic spectrum policy follows a similar logic, occupying prime mid-band frequencies for vital but relatively low-throughput national security uses — including radars, satellite communications, navigation, and electronic warfare — even as those same bands could generate…

Michael Kofman joined Ryan at a live event earlier this year to discuss the performance of American defense technology in Ukraine and why it often falls short. They examine the challenges of fielding and iterating systems in combat, from poor implementation and weak feedback loops to deeper mismatches between design and battlefield reality. They also explore what it takes to succeed in this environment and what it means for future conflicts. Thanks to Leonid Capital Partners for hosting the event at which this…

Editor’s note: This article is the seventh in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.Americans lost nearly $21 billion to cybercrime in 2025, a new record for cyber-enabled…

The debate over how best to deter China in the western Pacific has reached a new level of ambition. Ely Ratner, a former senior defense official in the Biden administration, proposed a “Pacific Defense Pact” — a legally binding multilateral treaty among the United States, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. This reflects serious concerns over China’s rise and its potential future use of force along the first island chain. The underlying diagnosis is sound: Existing U.S. alliances in the…

The reality that regime change is not going to happen as a result of this war seems to have settled in at the White House. When American policymakers reflect and wonder why Iran did not react like Venezuela under pressure, they will not just be misreading Iran — they will be misreading how coercive pressure works. Iran’s resilience rests on internal and external pillars that a Venezuela comparison completely misses. Internally, the Supreme Leader’s authority is anchored in a theocratic order…

In the 1986 World Cup, Diego Maradona scored his infamous “Hand of God” goal — an obvious handball that went uncalled, because the referee did not have the tools to see it. Today, soccer has addressed that vulnerability with sensors and video review, ensuring the game is adjudicated fairly. U.S. defense industrial policy faces a similar challenge. In America’s defense industrial base, the issue is not a lack of oversight, but distorted incentives that steer work toward private vendors even…

What happens when a country develops a cyber strategy that depends on the capabilities it is actively cutting?The White House’s new cyber strategy offers exactly that kind of contradiction by pairing a strong vision for resilience and competition with policy choices that pull in the opposite direction. On the merits, it gets several important things right. It treats cyberspace as a domain of sustained strategic competition rather than a compliance problem. It puts unusual and welcome emphasis on national…

In 2024, Paul van Hooft and Tim Sweijs wrote, “Two-Theater Tragedy: A Reluctant Europe Cannot Easily Escape a Sino-American War Over Taiwan,” where they argued a war in the Indo-Pacific would likely draw in and weaken Europe, even if European states try to remain on the sidelines. Two years later, amidst heightened tensions in both theaters, we asked Paul to revisit their arguments.Image: U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. Sixth FleetIn your 2024 article, you argue a U.S.–Chinese war over…

South Korea’s security is no longer confined to the peninsula. That is the real lesson from the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz. And if decision-makers in Seoul didn’t understand this before, they surely understand this now.The U.S.-South Korean alliance was built to deter North Korea, defend South Korea, and stabilize Northeast Asia. That mission remains indispensable, but a serious disruption in the Strait of Hormuz now hits South Korea directly through energy imports, shipping, industrial…

China controls 99 percent of the world’s primary gallium, a critical mineral and semiconductor crucial for building the microchips of the future. In 2023, it placed export controls on gallium to retaliate against American restrictions on the export of advanced chips to China. In December 2024, China escalated to an outright ban on gallium exports to the United States. The U.S. National Defense Stockpile had zero gallium reserves when that ban landed.The United States has been here before. The United States…

Recent experiments placing large language models in simulated nuclear crises have produced alarming headlines. “Bloodthirsty” AI systems escalate conflicts, threaten nuclear strikes, and behave erratically under simulated pressure. A recent set of experiments presented in a pre-print paper from Kenneth Payne at King’s College London finds that across 95 percent of simulated games across 21 match-ups between three frontier models, at least one side engaged in nuclear signaling — with…

When the U.S.–Israeli war with Iran began on Feb. 28, there were immediate impacts on the countries to Iran’s west — as Iran struck multiple Gulf Arab states and Jordan, Iraq absorbed direct attacks while facing renewed risks of internal stability, Israel launched intensive airstrikes and ground operations in Lebanon, and other countries and territories in the region struggled to cope with short-term and potential long-term ripple effects. However, Iran’s neighbors to its north and east are…

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The…

Think of a violin made by a master craftsman: beautiful, precise, capable of extraordinary performance, but impossible to produce quickly or cheaply. It takes time, rare expertise, and materials that cannot be sourced at scale. You would not equip an entire orchestra with instruments like that. Yet that is essentially what the United States has attempted with its tactical air fleet.The F-35 program’s total lifetime cost is projected to exceed two trillion dollars, the most expensive Major Defense Acquisition…

In Sept. 2025, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact, formalizing what decades of quiet cooperation had already made real. The defense pact signed in Riyadh was presented in official communiqués as a natural deepening of bilateral ties. It was that, but it was also something larger: The latest installment in a pattern that has persisted for half a century and that continues to confound the logic of power politics. Pakistan, a state dependent on International Monetary Fund bailouts and…

It is clear that the U.S.-Israeli decapitation, airpower-centric, and precision strike campaign are again not enough to bring about the two countries’ strategic goals. The United States still finds itself potentially having to commit land forces into its war with Iran, yet many unknowns lurk, including a fragile ceasefire and a U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Setting aside the question of whether U.S. land forces will be committed to the war, the question that remains unknown is how, and to what…

If the United States is drawn into another round of military action in Yemen, it ought to avoid the mistakes of the last decade. From about 2015 to last year, successive administrations backed Saudi‑ and Emirati‑led military campaigns, arms sales, and naval blockades that devastated civilians, deepened Yemen’s fragmentation, and perversely strengthened Houthi power and legitimacy instead of containing it.Instead, Washington should treat force as one tool within a broader political and economic…

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.*IranIn the space of less than 11 hours on April 7, President Donald Trump went from warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight” to announcing a two-week ceasefire with Iran. That whiplash-inducing turn was just a taste of the twists that would follow over the coming week.…

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has exposed a reality many policymakers long preferred to avoid: The deterrence model that governed the Gulf for decades is no longer working as intended.For years, the region operated in the gray zone — covert strikes, proxy warfare, and carefully managed escalation. Iran built a strategy around missiles, regional partners, and nuclear latency.The United States underwrote Gulf security without direct war. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors relied on that umbrella while hedging…

Commercial technologies are enabling the U.S. military and militaries around the world to operate with greater efficiency, speed, precision, and lethality. The benefits of commercial capabilities can be particularly impactful given the defense industrial base’s struggles to produce at the speed and scale needed to outmatch China, Russia, and other aligned adversaries. It is largely for these reasons that President Donald Trump mandated the Department of Defense to preference commercial solutions.…

Editor’s note: This article is the sixth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.The next major war the United States fights could be decided by supply chains long before…

A few hours before Anthropic announced the launch of its newest model, Claude Mythos Preview, on April 7, I had just completed a six-month analysis of AI-enabled cyberattacks. My research traced Chinese state-sponsored cyber campaigns against U.S. critical infrastructure and found that the barrier between nation-state-level hacking and everyone else was eroding far too fast.By the time I closed my laptop that afternoon, Mythos had shattered that barrier. This new model could theoretically autonomously exploit…

After failing to reach an agreement in the first round of talks in Islamabad, the United States and Iran are set to resume talks in the coming days. Via Pakistani mediation, U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reportedly made progress toward a framework agreement, though significant gaps remain and a deal is far from guaranteed. In the meantime, President Donald Trump has imposed a blockade on Iranian ports, while Israel is pressing ahead with its assault on the Lebanese border town of Bint Jbeil, even as it engages…

What happens when one of the defense industry’s leading technology integrators partners with one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture firms? Bryce Pippert of Booz Allen and Matt Cronin of Andreessen Horowitz join Ryan to unpack their new partnership and discuss how the United States is trying to tap into the tech ecosystem. The conversation gets into venture capital’s growing role in national security, how this partnership is supposed to work in practice, and why getting real technology…

What happens when a country at war stops seriously debating its own strategy and goals?In Israel today, that scenario is no longer theoretical. In the aftermath of Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, Israel’s strategic decision-making ecosystem has been progressively undermined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political associates.Netanyahu has surrounded himself with pliable officials and supportive voices, including the defense…

The recent news that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death was caused by epibatidine — a South American frog toxin — has reignited interest in state use of poisons and toxins in assassinations. Although state use of such compounds has a long history, the erosion of the norms prohibiting assassinations and chemical and biological weapons increases the likelihood of future assassinations using poisons and toxins. As demonstrated in the recent targeting of the Iranian leadership in…

In 2024, John Stanko and Spenser Warren wrote, “Russian Threat Perception and Nuclear Strategy in its Plans for War with China,” where they explained some of the potential tensions between Russia and China that could make armed conflict between the two countries a possibility. Two years later, we asked them to revisit their arguments. Image: Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2024 article, you explained some of the potential tensions in the Sino-Russian partnership that could make armed conflict between the…

On April 13, the U.S. military began a “blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports.” The move came after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 12 that the United States would begin a blockade after American and Iranian negotiators were unable to reach an agreement during a meeting in Islamabad.The announcement of a blockade immediately raised questions about how a blockade would work, how it fits into a broader U.S. strategy, its impacts on the global economy, and…

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, now in an unstable ceasefire, has exposed a structural failure in the global semiconductor memory supply chain, and it is not the one analysts seem to be tracking. The story receiving attention is helium: Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility went offline, a 45-day inventory clock started running, and spot prices doubled within days. The story receiving almost no attention is bromine, and it is potentially the more dangerous one. Bromine is the raw material from which specialized…

Six weeks after the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran, what was the political object? Not the military means and objectives — those are the hammer, not the nail. The nail is: What condition in the world, what durable change in Iran’s relationship to the United States and its neighbors, were these strikes meant to produce? That question was never answered, because it was never seriously asked. The Trump administration confused the instrument for the purpose and then changed the…

Oriana Skylar Mastro, Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oxford University Press, 2024)Why didn’t China’s rise trigger containment sooner?For three decades, Beijing’s economic weight expanded dramatically, its military modernized at speed, and its diplomatic footprint widened across every region. Structural theories of power transition would lead us to expect sharper and earlier confrontation as capabilities converged. Instead, the U.S.-Chinese rivalry deepened gradually, punctuated by…

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in a parliamentary election on April 12, ending his 16 years in power, after his Fidesz party lost its majority in parliament. The center-right Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, won and is projected to have a two-thirds supermajority. Orbán has been a prominent right-wing populist, with close ties to the Trump administration in Washington and warm relations with Moscow. Magyar campaigned on promises to address corruption, improve the…

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the Iran war off with a bang — not just the bang of bombs and rockets, but the rhetorical bang of declaring their intent to spur the Iranian people to overthrow the Islamic Republic.As a ceasefire pauses more than a month of combat, and failed talks lead to a planned blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, what has happened to their dreams of regime change? They seem to have fallen prey to the magical thinking of South Park’s…

In May 1953, in the desert west of Idaho Falls, a crew powered up the world’s first naval nuclear propulsion system. What made it possible was daringly aggressive innovation: Adm. Hyman Rickover insisted that the Submarine Thermal Reactor Mark I be built to exactly the specifications that would later be required inside a submarine. This meant hundreds of pounds of simulated sea pressure per square inch, shock resistance tested to the standards of a depth-charge attack, and air conditioning sized at three…

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The…

The war in Iran has done more than rattle energy markets. It has exposed an ordinary farm input as a strategic commodity. Urea is a concentrated, easy-to-transport nitrogen fertilizer that increases the yields of many crops, especially staple grains like corn, rice, and wheat. These small white pellets are essentially natural gas in solid form, bound with nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere through the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process. They are literally a building block of the Green Revolution and critical to…

The tech soldiers carry will shape their performance in combat, missions, safety, and health. If you care about any of those things, you will love this episode. The next generation of American soldiers will operate with systems that blur the line between human and machine, but that future is still being worked out in real time. In this episode, three former servicemembers turned industry leaders look ahead to how frontline capabilities may evolve over the next decade and what will constrain them.Image: Sgt. Thiem…

For a long time, the Iranian government has treated free internet access as a privilege that is extended by the state to those willing to carry its message and withheld from everyone else. Around four hours after Israeli and American strikes began, internet traffic collapsed by 98 percent — a near-total blackout. Iran’s communications infrastructure was deliberately dismantled by the government and internet traffic was completely halted. The strikes were made by the Iranian government’s…

In his long-awaited nuclear deterrence speech, French President Emmanuel Macron laid out his new doctrine of “forward deterrence” (dissuasion avancée) and — for the first time in history — offered to deploy the French Strategic Air Forces to European countries. “In the same way that our strategic submarines dilute naturally in the oceans,” the French president said, “our strategic air forces will also be able to be spread deep into the European continent.”The…

The states most likely to draw America into its next major crisis or war are not unknowns. They are the usual suspects: The same handful of states that have threatened the United States repeatedly across decades. Interstate rivals have caused roughly 80 percent of history’s wars and the odds of any given rivalry ending peacefully are little better than a coin toss. Yet America’s key strategy documents since the 2017 National Security Strategy have used phrases like great power competition, interstate…

Michael Kofman joins Ryan to unpack the current state of the Russo-Ukrainian War after his recent trip to the front. They examine how drone warfare has transformed the battlefield into a dispersed contest over a vast kill zone, why Russian infiltration tactics have failed to produce meaningful gains, and how Ukraine is working to close gaps in its strike capabilities. They also explore the growing pressure from Russian long-range strikes and how the war in Iran is beginning to shape the conflict.Image: ArmyInform…

On March 27, Iranian drones and missiles struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, destroying an E-3 Sentry, an airborne command center for U.S. operations in the region, and damaging multiple KC-135 tankers. It was not the first strike. Earlier in the month, an Iranian attack had already damaged five KC-135s at the same base. In the history of these aircraft, no enemy had ever achieved such a hit until Iran did both — within two weeks.These strikes are the latest in a broader…

Somewhere behind the Novodarivka breach point in June 2023, Ukrainian armored formations sat staged and ready. The ammunition was there. The fuel was there. The original concept of operations called for 12 brigades to push through roughly 30 kilometers of frontage, isolate Tokmak within days, and drive south before Russian forces could consolidate. They never moved. The engineers could not open the lane. Without the lane, none of the rest of it mattered.Against prepared defenses, breaching and gap-crossing…

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Jeffrey E. Stern, an award-winning journalist and author of the newly released The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare, which details the development of Paveway, the precision-guided bomb. We asked him to share his thoughts on the bomb’s history and its role in air campaigns, and the relationship between government, science, and industry. You spent years researching and writing this book about Paveway, a relatively…

In 2024, Shaan Shaikh wrote, “Three Visions for NATO Air and Missile Defense,” where he laid out three potential scenarios NATO could take in the next few years to further its air and missile defense capabilities. Two years later, amidst alliance tensions and ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, we asked Shaan to revisit his arguments. Image: Sgt. Mariah Gonzalez via DVIDSIn your 2024 article, you laid out three potential directions NATO could take in the next few years for further…

The war with Iran has had ripple effects across the Middle East and North Africa. The Gulf Arab states, Iraq, and Jordan have suffered direct attacks from Iran, and Iraq also faces violence from Iranian-aligned militias. In response to an attack from Hizballah, Israel has intensively bombed parts of Lebanon and launched an expanded ground invasion in the south.While those countries coping with the direct impacts of the war receive — and deserve — attention, the war is also…

In October 2022, Unitree Robotics joined Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, and three other firms in signing an open letter pledging not to weaponize their machines and to review customers’ intended applications. This Chinese startup based in Hangzhou had earned its place in that group. Founded in 2016 by a 26-year-old engineer named Wang Xingxing, who quit his job at the drone maker DJI during his probationary period, Unitree set out to build affordable quadruped robots. It worked. By 2023, the company held…

In past wars, commanders worried about what would happen after crossing the line of departure. Today, the concern is whether they can cross it at all. Surely this is a concern as the United States considers sending a Marine expeditionary unit into the Persian Gulf. Before they enter, whether by air or sea, the fight will already be underway. Meanwhile, closed shipping routes are increasing the costs of shipping, America’s Gulf partners are under continued pressure, and the Houthis fired a missile to…

During last summer’s 12-day war between Iran, Israel, and the United States, the U.S. military supported Israeli air and missile defense operations by utilizing its regionally deployed air and missile defense assets to intercept Iranian missiles and drones. By the time the shooting had stopped, CNN reported that the United States had expended 100 to 150 upper-tier, terminal-phase missile interceptors against Iranian missiles. This means that, in 12 days of fighting, the United States expended approximately…

The past several years have produced a quiet but consequential shift in how the United States understands, and fails to understand, time. American strategy has gradually weakened through bureaucratic cuts, institutional downgrades, and political incentives that privilege immediacy over endurance and partisanship over long-term statecraft. The temporary elimination of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment last year is particularly emblematic. Established during the Cold War, the Office was designed to…

Editor’s note: This article is the fifth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. Debates over defense budgets and economic statecraft are not a distraction from…

Two retired U.S. admirals with deep experience at sea and in the air joined Ryan to discuss the military challenge of reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Adm. (ret.) Jamie Foggo and Vice Adm. (ret.) John “Fozzie” Miller unpack how Iran has been able to throttle one of the world’s most important waterways and what it would actually take to restore freedom of navigation. The conversation explores mines, drones, missiles, escorts, air strikes, how a Marine expeditionary unit might raid Kharg Island, and…

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The…

Since the beginning of the year, President Donald Trump has enthusiastically reinstated regime change as a key tool of U.S. statecraft, despite previously campaigning against the military excesses of former presidents. This drastic foreign policy reversal owes much to his administration’s dramatic capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a successful raid and arrest on Jan. 3. Clearly encouraged by the apparent ease with which this act of leadership decapitation converted a one-time…

Three weeks into the joint American-Israeli military operation against Iran, a pressing question occupies Washington: What will ultimately follow these strikes? The attacks themselves are already degrading Tehran’s military capacity, but the more crucial focus is the aftermath — specifically, whether the pressures now weighing on the theocracy point to a negotiated settlement, prolonged attrition, or the collapse of the Islamic Republic from within.This month, I turn 40. I was born in Iraq, in the…

How many energy crises will it take before we stop betting our economies on a fragile oil market?The U.S. and Israeli war with Iran quickly morphed from a regional conflict into a global energy shock. Oil and gas markets have been volatile since the start of the war, with Brent crude oil prices rising 59 percent since Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. In the first half of 2025, about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquified…

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.*IranAs the war with Iran extends into a second month, the White House is publicly bullish on both its military achievements and diplomatic prospects. The former are considerable, though not definitive. While the Iranian regime’s instruments of hard power have been degraded, it remains capable of striking…

While much ink has been spilled over how 3D printing has enabled intense drone-on-drone warfare in Ukraine, the U.S. defense and intelligence communities have overlooked a stealthier development: Additive manufacturing is revolutionizing how guns are produced, fielded, and sustained in armed conflicts, especially by non-state actors. What once required a web of smuggling networks, foreign sponsors, and captured stockpiles can now be made with digital files and off-the-shelf parts. Even ammunition production, once…

On July 4, 2026, the United States turns 250. At Cogs of War, we plan to mark the occasion the way we know best: by examining how Americans have built, adapted, and fought with technology in war.From David Bushnell’s Turtle submarine to the Gatling gun, nuclear warhead, GPS, and AI, American defense innovation has always been more about people working at the edge of constraint to deliver advantage in war — improvising, scaling, and sometimes breaking institutions — than any singular invention.…

What if the next war is decided not by drone swarms, hypersonic missiles, or AI — but by good, old-fashioned human creativity? We have undervalued the mindset dimension that is critical to innovation yet it is the cornerstone of defense organizations’ adaptability and very difficult to scale. We cannot buy (military) innovators.One of the most important shifts happening inside NATO today is not a drone platform, a software suite, or a breakthrough in AI — it is the growing recognition that…

The war with Iran is into its fifth week, and despite much of its military power being destroyed by U.S. and Israeli strikes, Tehran has yet to give in or show any signs of external vulnerability or internal destabilization. If anything, it is increasingly convinced that whenever the guns fall silent, it will come out on top.The main source of Iran’s confidence is its upper hand in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints and aortic valves of globalized production.In…

America’s war against Iran has sparked heated debates over U.S. strategic priorities, military objectives, and defense industrial capacity. It has also fueled speculation about how a hypothetical clash between the United States and the People’s Republic of China might unfold. Tehran’s ability to launch salvo after salvo of simple attack drones reflects current thinking about how the proliferation of cheap, easily producible precision weapons is changing the character of war, and previews some of…

In 2025, J.C. Ellis wrote, “Trump Needs a Plan on Ukraine’s Buried Treasure,” where he argued that Washington should enact a strategy for Ukraine that ensures Ukrainian control and allied access to its storehouse of critical minerals. A year later, after a critical minerals investment plan for Ukraine has been established, we asked J.C. to revisit his original argument.Image: MidjourneyIn your 2025 article, you argued that Washington should enact a strategy for Ukraine that ensures Ukrainian…

In late 2024, Chinese models accounted for one percent of global AI workloads. By the end of 2025, that figure had surged to 30 percent. Alibaba’s Qwen family now boasts over 700 million downloads, making it the world’s largest provider of “open-source” AI systems that are publicly released and capable of being downloaded and run locally. A constellation of Chinese AI labs — DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax chief among them — are increasingly popular fixtures of a global,…

In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, an emergency war plan called “Plan R” allows an unhinged U.S. Air Force commander, Jack Ripper, to launch a nuclear strike without presidential authorization. Once the president, the joint chiefs, and the Soviet ambassador convene in the war room, the bombers are already airborne. Only Ripper knows the three-letter prefix needed to recall them, until his aide, Lionel Mandrake, reconstructs it from Ripper’s notes. Although nearly all planes are turned…

Editor’s Note: War on the Rocks is running “for” and “against” articles on the war with Iran by legislators with military backgrounds. You can find the other article here.21 years ago, I was a Marine infantryman in Anbar province, western Iraq, carrying so much gear that I could barely feel my legs. My job was to go town to town, search houses, and try to stop insurgents before they stopped us. Every day, someone was trying to kill us — improvised explosive devices buried in the…

Editor’s Note: War on the Rocks is running “for” and “against” articles on the war with Iran by legislators with military backgrounds. You can find the other article here.The view from a C-130 during a combat mission in the Middle East provides clarity that is often lost in the sanitized briefing rooms of Washington. As an Air Force medical crew director, I have looked into the eyes of young servicemembers being medevacked out of theater, and I lived through what decades of strategic…

Parts of the Middle East — especially around the Persian Gulf — rely on desalinated water. Worst-case scenarios for war in the region have often included attacks on desalination facilities, and the war with Iran that began on Feb. 28 has raised the potential for such a scenario. So far, there have been reports that a U.S. strike on Qeshm Island damaged an Iranian desalination plant and that an Iranian drone had hit a desalination plant in Bahrain. On March 30, an attack damaged a building at a power…

Marines and sailors splashing ashore from landing boats has become a defining image of the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. It happened for the first time at the town of Nassau in the British colony of the Bahamas on March 3, 1776. While the operation itself was a tactical success, its impact on the broader war for American independence was marred by inexperience and poor judgment. Despite this, the raid of Nassau offers important insights for contemporary naval forces, including the challenge of command and…

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The…

For four years, analysts and policymakers have warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot afford to lose” in Ukraine. Increasingly, some argue he cannot afford peace either. In this view, the war is existential for his regime. Defeat would shatter Putin’s legacy and potentially end his rule. Trapped between humiliation and collapse, inviting comparisons to the fate of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, Putin is portrayed as having no viable off-ramp from an unwinnable war.These…

Over the past decade, the Department of Defense has tested internal software development through efforts like the Air Force’s Kessel Run, the Army Software Factory, and the Marine Corps Software Factory. Those efforts showed that military personnel can build useful software when given the right tools and infrastructure.In its push to make better use of data, the Army fielded powerful digital platforms as a service across the force, such as Palantir’s Army Vantage and the Department of Defense’s…

In the second week of March, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to be “helpful” in the Middle East. More recently, in a spat with the E.U. foreign policy chief over America’s diplomatic stance on Russia and Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly snapped “We are doing the best we can to end the war” and indicated the United States would be happy to stop if Europe thought it could do better. Admittedly, in diplomacy it is…

In 1918, the U.S. Supreme Court held that government contractors could be sued for patent infringement even if their products were manufactured specifically for the U.S. government. Franklin D. Roosevelt, then acting secretary of the Navy, wrote an urgent letter to Congress warning that contractors were hesitant to build equipment for the Navy that could expose them to expensive litigation. Congress responded swiftly, amending federal law to shield contractors from patent suits when they were manufacturing…

It is 2029. General Secretary Xi Jinping has given the order for the People’s Liberation Army to forcibly take Taiwan. Hundreds of Chinese warships begin to cross the Taiwan strait, supported by fighter jets and protected by an umbrella of electronic jamming. 80 kilometers from Taiwan’s coast, the first blow comes from below. Autonomous underwater vehicles lurking on the seabed detonate against the hull of troop transports, scattering formations and forcing destroyers to divert to antisubmarine…

Recent developments indicate that the United States has begun redeploying critical missile defense assets — including elements of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and Patriot batteries — from South Korea to the Middle East. As Washington navigates an increasingly volatile global security landscape, the need for “strategic flexibility” is understandable. South Korea remains a committed partner in the Indo-Pacific and recognizes the gravity of the threats facing our…

A U.S. submarine recently sank an Iranian warship in one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. Many overlooked the incident’s significance. Others misunderstood what had occurred.The sinking of the IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean, roughly 40 nautical miles off Sri Lanka’s southern coast, was a graphic reminder of the brutality of war on the high seas. Footage of the ship’s stern exploding and images of Sri Lankan Navy personnel rescuing survivors quickly circulated online, prompting…

Last May, NATO invited 10 Ukrainians to act as an opposing force during Hedgehog 2025, one of NATO’s largest exercises in the Baltics. The Ukrainians successfully simulated the destruction of 17 armored vehicles and conducted 30 strikes in half a day, effectively neutralizing two NATO battalions before dinner. One observing commander summed up the broader implication in three words: “We are finished.” Ominously, the exercise occurred without American forces.The Western debate on Ukraine is…

Somewhere in a defense ministry, someone is drafting a policy on whether to permit AI-assisted software development in defense procurement. The sentiment is understandable, but the policy is unfortunately unenforceable because the code is already there.In April 2025, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella told an audience that 20 to 30 percent of code in some Microsoft repositories is now AI-generated. The figure cannot be independently verified — as multiple analysts have observed, there is no…

Early in the ongoing war against Iran, the Trump administration and its ally, Israel, believed they could foment a popular uprising to topple the Iranian regime. Part of that plan involved arming Kurdish fighters to infiltrate Iran from their locations in Iraq.The idea had intuitive logic. Kurdish fighters have built a reputation as capable battlefield partners of the U.S. military in recent years, particularly in the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria. Kurdish groups already maintain networks along the…

In 2025, Jack Roush wrote, “Russia’s War in Ukraine Has Brought Iran and Belarus Closer Together,” where he argued that a closer security partnership between Belarus and Iran could have devastating consequences for Ukraine. Now that Iran is involved in a war with the United States and Israel, we asked Jack to revisit his arguments.Image: khamenei.ir via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that if the security partnership between Belarus and Iran deepens, it could provide a…

Editor’s note: This article is the fourth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. What if the real battlefield of great-power competition is the global flow of money?The…

In 2019, Gen. David Berger, the 38th commandant of the Marine Corps, issued his Commandant’s Planning Guidance, which announced the service’s force planning initiative to prepare for conflict in the modern era. Berger identified wargaming as critical to the Marine Corps’ efforts and direction was issued to improve games in both quality and quantity. Twenty major wargames and several smaller games were executed in the first two years to support what became Force Design 2030. This drew deep lessons…

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The…

The nuclear non-proliferation regime is a global framework of norms, practices, and diplomatic agreements — underpinned by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The regime has had both failures and successes over the decades. Perhaps the biggest challenge in recent years came from Iran. The country’s nuclear activities raised international concern, prompting diplomatic, economic, and covert efforts to constrain it. Iran is a signatory to the…

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Eric Chewning, the executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII. As HII is America’s largest and one of its oldest military shipbuilders, we asked him to share his thoughts on maritime startups, reindustrialization policy, and more.Shipbuilding has been slow to adopt AI and other automated tools in comparison to other manufacturing industries. What cultural shifts inside a century-old yard are the hardest to drive when adopting new…

Beneath the surface of Polish-German alignment within NATO lies an unresolved problem with growing strategic weight: Almost 70 percent of the Polish public believes that Germany has not made amends for the destruction it wrought on Poland during World War II. As a U.S.-Chinese great power rivalry intensifies, American engagement in Europe becomes less assured, and Berlin aspires to lead on European security, this unfinished ledger is no longer a purely historical or legal matter. It increasingly conditions how…

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he would likely delay his planned state visit to Beijing by “a month or so” to focus on the war with Iran underscores the fragility of the U.S.-Chinese truce that has held since October. Expectations of a U.S.-Chinese thaw had resurfaced in recent months as both sides worked toward a summit, reduced tariffs and carried out a series of good-faith measures like delaying implementation of export controls. But Trump’s March 15 call for China to help…

When the United States and Israel struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June last year, the operation caught many observers off guard — the planning was tightly concealed. By contrast, when Operation Epic Fury started in the early hours of Feb. 28, much of the world was staying up refreshing their screens, waiting for it to begin. Open source analysts tracked the usual indicators of escalation: satellite imagery, repositioning of carrier strike groups, and cryptic statements from officials. Intelligence…

On this special, crossover episode of our members-only armed services podcasts, some of our hosts sat down to discuss their experiences with indirect fire and bombardment. With the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, they rehash some of their own personal stories, provide context on today’s threat environment, and share some advice for troops both downrange and at home.Image: Sgt. Albert Juarez via DVIDS The post What It Was Like to Be Under Incoming Fire from the War on Terror to Today appeared first on…

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.*IranOn March 17, Israel announced — and Tehran later confirmed — the killing of Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. If eliminating Ali Khamenei on the opening day of the U.S.-Israeli offensive struck down the regime’s supreme leader, Larijani’s…