War on the Rocks

As Adversaries Integrate, U.S. Partners Bypass Washington

Ariane Tabatabai — Fri, 08 May 2026 07:30:53 +0000

The drones hitting Gulf Arab states daily since the United States and Israel launched large-scale military operations against Iran in February are not merely Iranian. They are originally Iranian, yes. But these designs and production processes were improved and refined by Russia through years of battlefield testing against Ukrainian defenses. So, they were returned to Tehran from Moscow. Confronted with a threat that Ukraine has spent four years learning to counter, the United States found itself in unfamiliar territory. It was one of 11 countries requesting Ukrainian counter-drone assistance to defend against Iran’s attacks, despite the American president’s assertion that

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Could Russia Follow the “Hormuz Playbook” in the Baltic and Black Seas?

Miro Sedlák — Fri, 08 May 2026 07:15:22 +0000

On the eve of the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, 56 tankers sailed through the Strait of Hormuz. Two days later, Lloyd’s List, the maritime industry’s journal of record, counted just seven tankers and a single gas carrier — all small and three of them shadow-fleet vessels — with hundreds more drifting in the Gulf of Oman. One of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints had not been mined, blockaded, or seized by a navy. Rather, it had been priced shut by a handful of drone strikes and the insurance market.Within two days of the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28,

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The Pentagon Needs a Playbook for Munitions Surge Production

Bryce Loidolt — Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:13 +0000

The Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles the U.S. military fired during Operation Epic Fury take months to put on contract and years to produce.Whether driven by U.S. military operations or support to partners, the challenge of quickly replenishing U.S. munitions is not new. Exquisite munitions often take an exquisite amount of time to manufacture and deliver. Defense officials, in turn, frequently want to compress that time as much as possible, seeking to restock fast and mitigate future risks.The Russo-Ukrainian War has illuminated the challenge of accomplishing this feat. It also offers lessons for how the U.S can accelerate munitions production timelines

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What 300 Emails Say About Americans and the Army’s Direct Commission Program

Ted Delicath — Thu, 07 May 2026 07:30:52 +0000

For nine months in 2024 and 2025, I had an additional duty — monitoring an inbox that connected potential direct commission candidates with the Army’s individual branches. I served on the Army Reserve’s senior leadership team, helping to stand up a brokerage between mid-career professionals and the decentralized branch pipelines that controlled direct commission slots.During that time, I personally reviewed over 300 inquiries from accomplished professionals — data scientists, logistics engineers, cyber specialists, and strategic communicators — all of whom wanted to serve their country in uniform. The experience taught me two main lessons. First, people either regret not serving

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The Army Needs to Build Better Command Posts

Justin Lynch — Thu, 07 May 2026 07:15:09 +0000

It would be odd to see a TOC Mahal in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Often spotted at U.S. Army Combat Training Center rotations or large home-station exercises, TOC Mahals are sprawling tactical operation centers (TOCs) made from a series of connected tents, vehicles, and generators. They typically have maps posted at entrances to help people find their way through a labyrinth of desks, chairs, television screens, and cables. Most division command posts, many brigade command posts, and truly exceptional battalion command posts meet the criteria of a TOC Mahal. At their best, these behemoths foster collaborative planning by co-locating command teams

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How Much Longer Can Russia Last in the War?

Collin Meisel — Wed, 06 May 2026 17:30:18 +0000

In 2025, Collin Meisel and Mathew Burrows wrote, “Russia Can Afford to Take a Beating in Ukraine,” where they argued Russia was able to absorb the blows Ukraine was delivering and could continue fighting for a while. A year later, we asked Collin and Mathew to revisit their assessments.Image: The Kremlin via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that due to its sheer size — in service-capable population, economy, and munitions production capacity — Russia can absorb more of a hit throughout this war than Ukraine can. After another year of combat, Ukrainian defense innovation, and even more Russian

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The Cop on the Corner Is Our First Line of Defense: Local Police and the Surveillance Detection Gap

Matt White — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:30:15 +0000

Just before midnight on Nov. 24, 2025, New Castle County police officers conducting a routine property check in Wilmington’s Canby Park spotted a white Toyota Tacoma parked after hours. What initially appeared to be a standard traffic stop uncovered a detailed terror plot. The suspect — a University of Delaware student — was found in possession of a converted machine gun, more than 100 rounds of ammunition, body armor, and a handwritten notebook mapping out a planned attack on the campus police department, including entry points, escape routes, and the name of a specific officer. When FBI agents interviewed him,

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Between Intent and Capability: Assessing the Lack of Iranian Attacks on the U.S. Homeland

Matthew Levitt — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:15:19 +0000

Three days into the Iran war, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the quiet part out loud: The Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force has long carried out plots around the world and now intended to deploy those capabilities against the U.S. homeland. The United States, a Qods Force statement carried on Iranian television warned, “will no longer be safe” as the Qods Force targets Americans within the homeland and abroad. “The enemy should know that their happy days are over and they will no longer be safe anywhere in the world, not even in their own homes.” U.S. authorities went on a nationwide high alert

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How the War with Iran Is Shaping U.S.-Chinese Competition

Zack Cooper — Tue, 05 May 2026 18:45:52 +0000

The war with Iran has once again raised questions about Washington’s ability to prioritize its interests in East Asia and particularly to manage intensifying competition with Beijing. Furthermore, the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have presented American and Chinese leaders with new challenges and potential opportunities, as they respond to the war’s global impacts. We asked five experts to address how the war is shaping competition between Washington and Beijing.Read more below.Zack CooperSenior Fellow at the American Enterprise InstituteBoth sides may be taking different lessons from the Iran War. Beijing appears to see it as another

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Acquisition Reform Needs Its Own Wargame

Stephen Bittner — Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:52 +0000

One number buried in the Pentagon’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request reveals a decade of acquisition decisions in a data point: The U.S. Navy is requesting 785 Tomahawk cruise missiles. In 2025, Congress funded 55. That 1,200 percent jump is the cost of choices never stress-tested against the scenario unfolding today — a sustained air campaign against Iran while China watches the magazine drain.As a congressional staffer, I watch acquisition reform proposals grind through the legislative machinery every day. A proposal usually arrives with a clean rationale: streamline this contracting mechanism, expand multi-year purchasing authority for this munitions line, lower

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Practice Makes Deterrence: India’s Next Nuclear Challenge at Sea

Kunal Singh — Tue, 05 May 2026 07:30:16 +0000

When India’s third ballistic missile-carrying, nuclear-powered submarine — the INS Aridhaman — entered service on April 3, 2026, it marked a milestone decades in the making.With three boomers, India can now reliably always maintain at least one on deterrent patrol, thus completing the sea leg of its nuclear deterrent. Earlier, India successfully tested the capability to deploy multiple independently targetable warheads from a single missile. If it integrates multiple warheads into its sea-launched ballistic missiles, India further ensures it can cause unacceptable damage to an aggressor in response to an initial nuclear strike. With these capabilities, India now has the

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Abandoned and Ungoverned: Lebanon’s Palestinian and Syrian Populations and the Emerging Radicalization Landscape

Jack Schwartz — Tue, 05 May 2026 07:15:15 +0000

Inside Lebanon, the conditions for the next extremist uprising are quietly taking root.In the summer of 2007, the Lebanese Armed Forces fought Fatah al-Islam for three months inside Nahr al-Bared, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Fatah al-Islam was a Salafi-jihadist group that exploited the camp’s power vacuum to establish a strong recruitment base, drawing recruits from Palestinian, Syrian, and broader Arab networks. Once the dust settled, more than 400 people were dead, and the 30,000 residents of Nahr-Bared were displaced for a second time. The very same conditions that led to the Nahr al-Bared clash are reassembling now,

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Looking at Europe With a Sharper Eye

WOTR Staff — Mon, 04 May 2026 15:30:44 +0000

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 perspectives gathered here are varied, candid, and often surprising, together forming a more complete picture of Ukraine as it really is.Frontline and StrategyЕспресо —

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Cheap Missiles, Not Drones, Will Win the Next Air War

Vitaliy Goncharuk — Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:51 +0000

After four years of watching the war in Ukraine, NATO defense decision-makers are finally beginning to pour money into drones. The Iran conflict has drawn further attention to these investments. The assumption is that unmanned aerial systems will ensure a long-term advantage in conflicts requiring ground operations and infrastructure defense.But the battlefield in Ukraine is already pointing toward a different future. Russia is transforming slow, propeller-driven Shahed drones into cheap, missile-like systems by equipping them with turbojet engines. This has sharply complicated Ukrainian air defense, as the new platforms now fly two to three times faster (about 460 miles per

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The Illusion of Sovereignty: How International Law and Big Tech are Eroding the State

Mykhailo Andreichyn — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:30:38 +0000

Caught between two hammers — international law and technological dependence on the private sector — modern state sovereignty is in crisis. When a state attempts to act decisively against an adversary operating below the threshold of armed attack, it risks not only diplomatic sanctions and international condemnation but the loss of access to critical digital infrastructure owned by private corporations. In wartime, that loss is catastrophic, as we both experienced firsthand during Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.The classical understanding of state sovereignty is being challenged. States now must actively ask for permission to use private capabilities for defensive purposes. Two

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Why Kim Jong Un Won’t Pick Up the Phone and What to Do About It

Jonathan Corrado — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:15:30 +0000

Every American administration pledges to learn from the past when devising a strategy for contending with nuclear North Korea. And yet, few portfolios are so paralyzed by path dependency and resistance to learning. But now, confronted with the inescapable prospect that the legacy approach is actually creating risk rather than reducing it, the time has come to learn and pivot.The Trump administration should sharpen the choice for North Korea, making it enticing, raising the stakes, and being prepared to back it up. In service of this, the U.S. and South Korean governments could make the bold decision to put denuclearization

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Modern Combat Requires Warrior Medics Modeled After Machaon

Jeremy W. Cannon — Fri, 01 May 2026 07:30:02 +0000

Modern peer combat has blown apart the myth of protected combat medical units. On the battlefields of Ukraine, scores of medical personnel, shielded in theory by both international law and historic norms, now lie dead. To survive in this environment while rescuing others, medics ranging from junior enlisted caregivers to senior physicians need tactical experience under fire. Skipping this training leaves them vulnerable and turns them into a security risk — a losing formula in modern combat.Throughout the past four years, Russia has targeted Ukrainian aid stations, evacuation routes, and trauma teams. These attacks offer a grim triple advantage: killing

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Why Lebanon Is Nonnegotiable for Iran

Sajjad Safaei — Fri, 01 May 2026 07:15:02 +0000

As American and Iranian diplomats gathered in early April in Islamabad for Pakistan‑mediated ceasefire talks to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and its regional allies, including Hizballah, a sticking point emerged: whether the ceasefire was to include Lebanon. The United States and Israel initially rejected the notion that Lebanon had been part of the agreement, with President Donald Trump referring to Israeli operations there as a “separate skirmish.” Conversely, the Iranians signaled that Lebanon had been part of the agreement and threatened to unilaterally end the ceasefire if Israeli attacks continued against Lebanon.Although the ceasefire remains fragile, with Iran

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Economic Fury and Claims of Victory

WOTR Staff — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 19:30:45 +0000

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.***IranThree weeks since a ceasefire took effect, the United States and Iran have shifted from open hostilities to unsuccessful negotiations to economic brinksmanship. The Trump administration has been squeezing Tehran on two parallel fronts: A naval blockade physically subduing its maritime trade, complemented by increasing sanctions pressure against its oil and banking networks. The Iranian government was already in a weak financial position before the war, so additional sanctions as part of what the U.S.

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What a Post-Orbán Hungary Means for Hungarians and Europe

Sándor Ésik — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 15:28:21 +0000

Hungary has turned the page. After 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán, opposition leader Péter Magyar has emerged as the winner by a landslide. Ryan is joined by Sándor Ésik, the lawyer and writer behind the Hungarian Muse, to understand how Orbán built his “soft-authoritarian” system, how it failed to stave off Magyar’s challenge, and what comes next. Of course, Orbán was anti-Ukrainian, pro-Russian, and antagonistic towards the European Union, so they also discuss what a post-Orbán Hungary means on those fronts. And, as a bonus, Sándor shares the bizarre story of how Orbán’s son — an Army officer —

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Correcting Course in the Indo‑Pacific

Luke Collin — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:30:16 +0000

Last month, President Donald Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for a visit that captured both the promise and the shortcomings of America’s Indo‑Pacific strategy.In some ways, the meeting was a success: It produced a few commercial deals, reaffirmed the strength of the bilateral relationship, and — most importantly — demonstrated a visibly warm personal rapport between the two leaders (despite an awkward moment). But as has so often been the case during America’s fitful “pivot” to Asia over the past two decades, the visit was overshadowed by yet another conflict in the Middle East that is absorbing U.S.

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Rethinking Corporate Risk and Alignment in an Era of Economic Statecraft

Gen. (ret.) Timothy Ray — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:00:42 +0000

Editor’s note: This article is the eighth 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.In Sept. 2010, following a collision between a Chinese trawler and Japanese coast guard vessels near the Senkaku Islands, Chinese authorities halted shipments of rare earth minerals to Japan. The move disrupted supply chains for everything from consumer electronics to advanced

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The Trump Administration Hasn’t Forgotten America’s Backyard

Joshua Trevino — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 05:30:10 +0000

On Jan. 3, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and they are now imprisoned in the United States. That operation followed a buildup of U.S. military assets in the Caribbean and the launching of strikes against boats allegedly trafficking drugs. The latest National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy emphasize the importance of the Western Hemisphere to U.S. policy. After Maduro’s capture, the Trump administration increasingly appeared to look toward regime change in Cuba. However, when U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran began on Feb. 28, attention — and some military assets — shifted to the

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Human Geography: The Strategic Edge in a Complex World

Judd Devermont — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:30:58 +0000

In 2024, Judd Devermont wrote, “Human Geography Is Mission-Critical,” where he argued that the United States should focus on behaviors and attitudes informed by human geography to craft better strategy. Two years later, we asked Judd to revisit his arguments. Image: Samuel Lamptey via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2024 article, you argued that the United States needed to focus its attention on behaviors and attitudes informed by human geography to craft strategy that adequately navigates a more complex world and threat environment. Two years later, has the United States utilized human geography more as an indicator for foreign policy decisions? Can you give some examples

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Aligning the U.S. and Canadian Defense Industrial Bases

Christopher Zember — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:54 +0000

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 from the Defense Production Act to incentivizing private capital investments and even selective government equity stakes. Canada is undergoing a parallel

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Western Withdrawal, Jihadist Expansion: How the Sahel Became Ground Zero for Global Terrorism

James Paterson — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:30:34 +0000

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 be understood as the logical endpoint of a deteriorating security trajectory that Western governments have watched from an ever-increasing distance. The geographic scope of the attacks, the targeting of senior officials,

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The Mountaintop Mirage: Why Xi’s Military Purges Cannot Produce the Force He Wants

Christopher Nye — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:30:31 +0000

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 the Chinese military’s General Logistics Department.Five years later, that same officer commanded the regiment tasked with the main assault at the Battle

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The Strange Rise and Fall of Russia’s Crowd Sourced Defense Industry

Samuel Bendett — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:15:50 +0000

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. Then he finally got in touch: “We need combat boots, sleeping bags, cigarettes, raincoats, and most importantly, Baofeng radios.”While some elements of

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Confronting the Past and Present, Lessons from Chornobyl

WOTR Staff — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:46:16 +0000

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From Slogan to Standard: How the Pentagon Should Define Affordable Mass

Mike Benitez — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:51 +0000

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 exquisite” with the “affordable and plentiful,” and the Pentagon is requesting $54 billion to dramatically expand autonomous drone warfare efforts. The Air Force calls

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Beijing’s United Front and the Quiet Transfer of Western Technology

Cheryl Yu — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:30:58 +0000

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 technology feel urgent and concrete. The united front — a system of political influence, co-optation, and mobilization — sounds abstract.Yet the Chinese Communist Party’s objective has always been political. Its military

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The Importance of the Battle of Savo Island

John Severini — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:15:26 +0000

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 displacement. On paper, the result should have been straightforward.Thirty-three minutes

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Airwaves of Power: Why the Pentagon Should Shift to a Commercial-First Spectrum Model

Roslyn Layton — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:32 +0000

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 much larger commercial, allied, and strategic returns.The Pentagon understandably views spectrum through a national security lens, but the current allocation reflects less strategic optimization than a legacy of policy choices

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Presence or Capacity? The Coast Guard Can Have Both Through Small Boat Stations

Craig Johnson — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:30:17 +0000

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 ports, migration pressures, and increasingly severe storms. Yet the hearing repeatedly returned to a far more local subject: the Coast Guard units in senators’ backyards.Coast Guard

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Why Do Many Western Defense Tech Firms Struggle in Ukraine?

Michael Kofman — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:07:47 +0000

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 podcast was recorded. Image: ArmyInform via Wikimedia Commons

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A Formal Defense Pact in the Indo-Pacific Is the Wrong Answer

Ryosuke Hanada — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:30:25 +0000

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 region lack an integrated command and control structure and the collective responsiveness required to credibly deter China in a high-intensity conflict.

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Seeing the Cyber in Economic Statecraft

Jason Blessing — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:00:45 +0000

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 economic losses. Private sector losses to malicious cyber activity regularly exceed $200 billion in a given year. Alongside criminal groups, state-sponsored hackers are increasingly targeting America’s pocketbook.

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Europe Might Sit Out In An Indo-Pacific War — But It Can’t Escape the Fallout

Paul van Hooft — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:30:31 +0000

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 Taiwan would inevitably draw in and weaken Europe, even if European states try to stay on the sidelines militarily. How does Europe’s recent

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When the Rules Fail: Tax Incentives and Defense Sustainment

Kevin Consedine — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:56 +0000

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 when the organic industrial base is well-positioned to perform it. When the organic industrial base is deprived of work, it

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Resilience Without Capacity: The Fatal Flaw in America’s New Cyber Strategy

Jesse Humpal — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:30:15 +0000

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 resilience. And it understands that offensive cyber action, paired with other tools of national power, should be part of any serious

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Why Iran Metabolizes the Pressure that Broke Venezuela

Rashed M. Aba-namay — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:15:27 +0000

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 where religious legitimacy underwrites a sprawling economic system. At its center are the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and parastatal

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How the War in Iran Is Affecting Its Northern and Eastern Neighbors

Laura Linderman — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:30:41 +0000

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 not immune to the risks — and opportunities — that the war poses. We asked five experts to assess the impact of the

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The United States Is Repeating Its Silicon Mistake with Gallium Nitride

Pradyot Yadav — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:13 +0000

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 pioneered and scaled modern silicon semiconductor infrastructure. A significant reliance on international manufacturing and the loss of domestic silicon

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I’m Sorry, Dave. I’m Afraid I Can’t De-escalate: On (AI) Wargaming and Nuclear War

Ankit Panda — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:30:50 +0000

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 subsequent tactical nuclear use occurring in 95 percent of games and strategic nuclear threats in 76 percent. The study’s author describes the results as “sobering” and frames them as a

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What the War Against Iran Means for the U.S.-South Korean Alliance

Jihoon Yu — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:15:33 +0000

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 production, and economic confidence. For Seoul, this is not someone else’s regional crisis — it is a direct test of South Korean national resilience.

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When Identity Means Everything

WOTR Staff — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:00:08 +0000

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The F-35 Is a Masterpiece Built for the Wrong War

John G. Ferrari — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:36 +0000

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 Program in history. The United States plans to purchase thousands of them. Meanwhile, modern conflict, from Ukraine’s drone war to naval

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Iran and the Indispensable Broker: How Pakistan Outmaneuvers India on the World Stage

Farah Jan — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 07:30:06 +0000

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 outmatched conventionally by its larger neighbor, has once again positioned itself at the center of a consequential security

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Ceasefires and Communications

WOTR Staff — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:30:32 +0000

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. First came a resumption of negotiations mediated by Pakistan. With the presence of Vice President J.D. Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, it marked the highest in-person engagement between the two sides

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How to Counter the Houthis Without Strengthening Them

Erin K. McFee — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:30:01 +0000

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 strategy. Officially known as Ansar Allah (“Partisans of God”) and referred to here as the Houthis for ease of reference, the group is a Zaydi revivalist political-military

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Winning in the Donbas: What Russia’s 2014–2015 Campaign Reveals About Modern War

Amos Fox — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:15:59 +0000

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 degree, they would be employed.The continued relevance of land forces in the 21st century is a

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Anthropic’s Nuclear Bomb

Naveen Krishnan — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:22 +0000

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 previously unknown vulnerabilities in virtually every major operating system and web browser on Earth, without human supervision. My threat model, seemingly alarmist at breakfast, was

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A Fragile Ceasefire with Iran and the Price of Ending the War

Federico Manfredi Firmian — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:30:46 +0000

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 in direct talks with Lebanon in Washington. The two-week ceasefire with Iran is

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Rethinking Security Cooperation in the Age of Commercial Tech

Jarrett Lane — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:30:07 +0000

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. Congress also reinforced efforts to prioritize commercially available solutions in Section 1214 of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.Commercial technologies are also a driving factor behind increasingly rapid evolutions in

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The End of Managed Escalation in the Gulf

Robert Mason — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:15:01 +0000

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 against its limits, investing in missile defense and selective partnerships. There were rules, even if unwritten.That world is breaking down. The two-week ceasefire announced

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Operationalizing Economic Statecraft: A New Imperative for the Pentagon

Anita Kellogg — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:00:57 +0000

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 the first shot is fired. That reality is already taking shape, as adversaries use export controls, sanctions, and supply chain leverage to shape outcomes on the

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Bonus In Brief: Choke Point: The Risks and Realities of America’s Iran Blockade

Emma Salisbury — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:53:46 +0000

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 more. We asked five experts to assess the practicalities of enforcing a blockade, its legality, Iran’s likely response,

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Examining the Cracks and the Cement in the Sino-Russian Relationship

John Stanko — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 17:30:20 +0000

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 two countries a possibility. Two years later, have any new tensions emerged between the two countries? Are Russia and China stronger partners than they were

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Why Booz Allen is Partnering With One of the World’s Most Important VC Firms

Matt Cronin — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:58 +0000

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 into government hands is still harder than it should be.Image: Midjourney

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Silent Killers, Not Signals: Why States Use Poison in Assassinations

Naomi Rio — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:30:15 +0000

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 Operation Eric Fury and in the assassinations of prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the assassination norm has collapsed. The norms against chemical

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The Demise of Strategic Planning in Israel

Shimon Arad — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:15:45 +0000

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 minister and the leaders of the Mossad and the Internal Security Agency (Shin Bet). He has become increasingly dependent on extreme coalition partners who constrain the parameters of

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Hungary Turns a New Page

WOTR Staff — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:00:06 +0000

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 economy, and align more closely with Europe.We asked five experts to assess how the election results will shape Hungary’s role in Europe and its relationships

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The Bromine Chokepoint: How Strife in the Middle East Could Halt Production of the World’s Memory Chips

Alvin Camba — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:09 +0000

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 chemical suppliers produce semiconductor-grade hydrogen bromide gas, the etch chemical that South Korean fabs use to carve the transistor

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Tactical Success, Strategic Failure? Washington Walks the Path to Defeat in Iran

Ryan Evans — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:30:36 +0000

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 purpose whenever the instrument produced inconvenient results.As our country’s most senior uniformed military leader, standing beside our

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Strategy Without Hubris: How China Rose by Managing America’s Reaction

Luis Simón — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:15:47 +0000

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 crises but rarely exploding into decisive pushback. The United States remained engaged economically, its alliances held but were not quite mobilized to balance Chinese power, and many countries hedged rather than chose sides.One explanation for the

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Bankova, Budapest, and Bunnies

WOTR Staff — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:00:00 +0000

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Can a New Bridge Finally Save the Pentagon’s Best Ideas?

Isobel Porteous — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:43 +0000

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 times the requirement. Rickover’s own engineers fought him, arguing that the basic challenge of building a nuclear reactor

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A Closed Strait of Hormuz Risks a Global Food Security Crisis

Morgan D. Bazilian — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:30:12 +0000

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 global food security.While the recent U.S.-Iranian ceasefire may have paused or limited hostilities, it already shows signs of breaking apart,

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Regime Change in Iran, Underpants Gnomes, and the Phase II Problem

Denis Prieur — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:15:59 +0000

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 underpants gnomes — you know, the episode where Stan, Kyle, and

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The Future Soldier Loadout: Smarter Gear or Dead Weight?

Brian Cummings — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 08:00:45 +0000

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 Huynh via DVIDS.

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Disperse to Survive: The Logic of French Forward Deterrence

Frank Kuhn — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:30:43 +0000

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 proposal to deploy French nuclear forces on allied territory may appear similar to the forward deployment of U.S. non-strategic nuclear weapons and NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements. But the

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Iran’s Other Front: The War Over the Internet

Sara Bazoobandi — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:15:40 +0000

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 adversaries aimed at military installations, capabilities, and senior political and military leadership. The internet blackout was imposed by the government, aimed at the Iranian people.

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Update from the Battlefield: Drones, Distance, and Diminishing Returns for Russia

Michael Kofman — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:43:25 +0000

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 via Wikimedia Commons

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What is Strategic Rivalry? Why Should We Care?

Antulio J. Echevarria — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:30:49 +0000

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 strategic competition, and strategic competition without acknowledging the essential difference between a competition and a rivalry. Nor does the

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Iran’s Asymmetric Counterair Campaign: Attacking the U.S. Air Force’s Nests and Eggs

Maximilian K. Bremer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:15:20 +0000

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 pattern, part of a deliberate counterair campaign waged through asymmetric means in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Prior to the

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How NATO’s Air Defense Future Is Unfolding

Shaan Shaikh — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:30:01 +0000

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 developing its air and missile defense capabilities. Two years later, amidst alliance tensions and ongoing conflicts in

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How This Precision Weapon Reengineered Modern War

Jeffrey Stern — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:00:44 +0000

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 underdiscussed weapon. Why tell this story? I wanted to tell this story in part because Paveway is so underdiscussed. The big

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The Campaign Ends at the Breach: Lessons from Ukraine on Why Armies Fail

Michael Carvelli — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:30:34 +0000

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 capacity can decide whether a land force ever gets to test the rest of its campaign design. Much of the serious work

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The Iran War’s Widening Impacts in the Middle East and North Africa

Gregory D. Johnsen — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:09:43 +0000

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 affecting other parts of the region, highlighting that the conflict will have wide-ranging and long-standing effects. We asked five experts to assess the impact so far

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The Hidden System Turning Chinese Tech Companies into Military Suppliers

Charles Sun — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:00:02 +0000

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 over 60 percent of the global quadruped robot market by unit sales. Its investors included Sequoia China, Meituan,

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Closing the Air and Missile Defense Gap in the Indo-Pacific

Christopher J. Watterson — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:30:22 +0000

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 25 percent of its total stockpile — or 150 percent of annual global production at current production rates (though production increases are anticipated). The

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Iran’s Anti-Access and Area Denial Strategy Is Cruder Than China’s But Still Dangerous

Brigadier Anil Raman — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:15:10 +0000

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 underscore the point. The path to the battlefield is the battlefield. No longer a prelude.This is by

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Reopening the Strait of Hormuz & Saving Downed Pilots

Jamie Foggo — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:12:05 +0000

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 (of course) the strategy. Hours before this was recorded, news had broken that a U.S. Air Force F15E

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Are Perceptions the Reality?

WOTR Staff — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 15:30:46 +0000

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The Age of Unlearning: How Democracies Lost Their Grip on Strategic Time

Beniamino Irdi — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:30:35 +0000

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 provide the Department of Defense with independent, long-term comparative assessments of U.S. and adversary military capabilities. On paper, its dismantling was framed as an exercise in streamlining. In practice, it

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Sharpening Signals and Reducing Noise for Better Defense Budgets

Mark Mitchum — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:15:02 +0000

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 warfighting. They reflect a basic reality: Military power does not exist in isolation. It is built, sustained, and ultimately limited by America’s economic capacity and the system that translates

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The Limits of Trump’s Regime Capture Strategy from Venezuela to Cuba

Charles Larratt-Smith — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:30:42 +0000

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 regional adversary into something Trump can present as a vassal state virtually overnight, the administration has sought to replicate this success in other revisionist states, most

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How the War with Iran Ends

Omar Mohammed — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:15:40 +0000

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 middle of my country’s eight-year war with Iran — another war that also involved this same regime. Forty years later, I find myself watching what

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The Global Ripple Effect of the War in Iran

WOTR Staff — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:30:56 +0000

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 Israel and Gulf allies, and its threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz are putting a significant strain on the global economy. Meanwhile, there seems little to

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A 250-Year Arsenal of Innovation: A Call for Articles on American Defense Technologies

Cogs of War Staff — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 08:00:37 +0000

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. For more than two centuries, these efforts have shaped how the United States and the rest of the

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From Filament to Firepower: 3D Printing’s Impact on Warfare

Travis Veillon — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:30:27 +0000

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 considered an insurmountable barrier, is increasingly possible. This revolution in how arms and ammunition are manufactured has yielded resilient and decentralized supply chains that can endure both

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The Iran War and the Energy Lesson We Failed to Learn

Emily Holland — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:15:21 +0000

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 natural gas passed through the strait. Now, five weeks into the conflict, attacks

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From Theory to Reality: Evaluating the U.S.-Ukrainian Minerals Deal

J.C. Ellis — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:30:34 +0000

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 control and allied access to its massive storehouse of critical minerals. A few months after your article was written, the United States and Ukraine

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The Folly of Seizing Kharg Island

Bilal Y. Saab — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:53:09 +0000

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 response to U.S. and Israeli attacks, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has closed the strait

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China’s AI Is Spreading Fast. Here’s How to Stop the Security Risks

Ryan Fedasiuk — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:00:43 +0000

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, open-source marketplace, which is starting to power everything from Indian academic research to America’s most elite technology startups.Though they are open-weight and

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The Most Important Deterrent That NATO Needs Is Creativity

W. Ethan Eagle — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:30:55 +0000

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 innovation is a transferable skill between people. The alliance needs to speed up the rate of transfer so that

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The Arsenal as the Battlefield: The War on Iran and the Return of Counter-Industrial Targeting

Tyler Hacker — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:15:06 +0000

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 the challenges that Washington might confront in a fight with Beijing. Facing an even bigger and better-armed rival, the United States is likely to find that

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Holding Water Hostage

Ed Cullinane — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:30:25 +0000

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 and desalination site in Kuwait. Iran has warned that it could

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The U.S. Military Risks Letting Contractors Define How It Sees the Battlefield

David Kamien — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:00:10 +0000

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 back, one damaged B-52 cannot receive the recall message and successfully drops its bomb, triggering the Soviets’ secret doomsday machine and bringing about

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The Trump Administration Had No Plan for the War with Iran

Sen. Ruben Gallego — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:30:08 +0000

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 roads, mortars in the middle of the night, and random rocket propelled grenades fired

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