Smart Bombs: Military, Defense and National Security
The Littoral Combat Ship was pitched to Congress as an affordable, mission-swapping warship at $220 million per hull. The real price hit $500 million...
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Carafano argues Iran has lost its nuclear option, its missile mass, its proxy network, and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz all at...
Trump is stuck. He started a war with Iran he expected to end quickly; six months on, the central point of contention is control...
The United States can hit almost anything Iran places near the Strait of Hormuz. It cannot hit the strait itself. That distinction is the...
Nazi Germany's Horten Ho 229 was the world's first flying-wing jet aircraft, and its triangular shape looks uncannily like a modern stealth plane. That...
For all the talk of spending targets, the Ankara NATO summit's real work happened elsewhere. Europe is being handed responsibility for NATO's conventional defense...
Western analysts fixate on North Korea's missiles. The real danger is speed — a mass artillery-and-missile salvo in the war's first hours, backed by...
The second Trump administration is reviewing America's military footprint in Europe, and the worst-case outcome is a full withdrawal. Andrew Michta argues that would...
The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding is being judged on whether it cools tensions in the Persian Gulf. Strategic-studies scholar Andrew Michta argues that's the...
The Lada-class was Russia's entry into fourth-generation submarines and the planned replacement for the Cold War Kilo-class. Twenty-eight years in, the program counts three...
On December 22, 2025, President Trump announced a new class of battleships bearing his name. In May, the Navy's 30-year plan made it a...
The Admiral Kuznetsov has been out of service since 2017. Its dry dock sank beneath it, a 70-ton crane fell onto the flight deck,...
The Mobile Protected Firepower program began with a clear mission: give the 82nd and 101st Airborne protected direct fire support that could deploy on...
U.S. gas prices rose for the first time in eight weeks — 'Iran is the reason why,' per GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan — while...
Washington and Tehran can't agree whether the Strait of Hormuz is open — Trump declared it open under a new U.S. 'guardian' regime, while...
A single Ukrainian drone forced Russia's largest refinery, in Omsk, to halt operations, knocking out units that make roughly 75 percent of its output...
Iran is moving to charge ships for passing through the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway that carries a fifth of the world's oil...
Ukrainian drones set two major Russian refineries ablaze overnight — including Salavat in Bashkortostan, the last gas refinery untouched in 2026 — while Russia...
A Ukrainian drone strike killed three people in the Moscow region over the weekend as Kyiv's deep-strike campaign — now reaching as far as...
U.S. forces hit dozens of Iranian targets in fresh strikes, including the first combat use of one-way attack sea drones, after Iran struck a...
National security expert James Jay Carafano argues that although the fighting grinds on, the war in Ukraine is strategically over — and Putin has...
Last year North Korea's newest destroyer rolled over at its own launch, and the world assumed the program was finished for years. Instead Pyongyang...
The KN-23, North Korea's version the Russian Iskander missile, showed up to fight in the Ukraine war. And it isn't the same platform as...
On May 21, 2025, a brand-new North Korean destroyer rolled over and partially capsized at its own launch ceremony — with Kim Jong Un...
Fake Russian IDs, Orders Never to Be Captured, and 50% Casualties: Inside North Korea’s Secret War in Ukraine The Russian Army has sustained nearly...
The Littoral Combat Ship was pitched to Congress as an affordable, mission-swapping warship at $220 million per hull. The real price hit $500 million...
Congress has set aside $40 million to put the Bullseye cruise missile in U.S. Marine Corps hands. Built by General Atomics from Rafael's Ice...
The Columbia-class nuclear missile submarines will cost hundreds of billions of dollars over their lifetime at sea. And they are already late when time...
Modern American weapons programs have a reputation: the Ford carrier ran billions over, the Zumwalt was cut from 32 ships to three, the F-35...
The USS Zumwalt has been rebuilt at extraordinary cost into the Navy's first hypersonic strike ship, and the number at the center of that...
