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.***IranA month after negotiators met for historic high-level talks in Pakistan, Washington and Tehran seem closer t…
This week, Israel and Lebanon are holding their third round of unprecedented direct talks on crucial issues, including borders, the disarmament of Hizballah, and ongoing Israeli military action. The United States, which is clearly driving these talks, views them expansively as seeking a “comprehensi…
On this Memorial Day, American servicemembers remain deployed across the world. Many are in harm’s way. This simple fact makes the day less abstract, more real. Memorial Day is not only about wars filed away in history, but also about lives lost in service to the nation and the obligations those los…
On April 1, 2026, Russian officials announced the liberation of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic — for the third time. The first announcement came under then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in July 2022. The second one, in July 2025, came from the “republic’s” own head. By that point, Shoigu h…
Ryan sits down at the Cogs of War mic for the last time to introduce Jonathan Panter, the new host and executive editor of Cogs of War. Jonathan shares his background, from naval officer to scholar. They discuss major defense tech issues, and Jonathan shares what he hopes to accomplish at the helm o…
The phone rang at 3:45 pm on a Friday afternoon. We were winding down for the weekend when the caller ID lit up — it was the counterterrorism analyst in our office we affectionately called “CT Brian.” When he called, it was never good news. An al-Qaeda-affiliated group seized an American aid worker.…
Modern air and missile defense is approaching a structural limit. The model that protected forces over the past two decades remains effective, but only within a narrower envelope than current threats demand. A new approach is required, built on fire-control-level integration, disaggregated survivabl…
In 2016, Ben Friedman wrote, “The Trump Administration Will be Hawkish,” where he argued that despite Trump’s non-interventionist campaign rhetoric, structural forces, hawkish appointees, and an entrenched foreign policy bureaucracy would push him closer toward conventional military interventionism.…
In May 2025, as Indian BrahMos missile strikes hit Pakistani air bases — targeting runways, parked aircraft, and critical infrastructure — Islamabad faced a choice. It had the capability to respond with its own long-range systems, but it chose not to. Pakistan deliberately withheld the Babur cruise …
An old adage claims a marine’s career came down to the “two or three minutes of a promotions brief.” Turns out that was a little optimistic. In practice, the Marine Corps promotion system decides the institutional worth of a 20‑year career in about 12 minutes of board attention.Imagine the National …
On May 4, 2026, a South Korean vessel came under fire in the Strait of Hormuz, leading President Donald Trump to urge the government in Seoul to join the U.S.-led operation to secure the waterway. The South Korean government politely replied it would “review” the American proposal. The event crystal…
On April 28, the United Arab Emirates announced that it would leave OPEC, effective May 1 — ending nearly six decades as an OPEC member. In terms of oil production, it is the most significant country to leave the group. While multiple factors drove the decision to leave, the timing is notable — as t…
During Congressional testimony from Department of Defense leadership last week, Representative George Whitesides asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, “How does canceling a command-initiated review support a culture of accountability?” But before the secretary could answer, Whitesides instead dec…
The Department of Defense does not primarily have a cyber recruiting problem — it has a cyber talent management problem. The military already possesses serious qualification frameworks, scholarship programs, credentialing systems, and selection tools. What it still lacks is a system tying assessment…
This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Catarina Buchatskiy, the co-founder and director of analytics at the Snake Island Institute, a Kyiv-based defense analytics center, and Viktoriia Honcharuk, the institute’s director of defense technologies. We asked them to share their views on how Ukrain…
Gen. Frank Donovan, commander of U.S. Southern Command, sat down with Ryan to discuss the vision behind the command’s new Autonomous Warfare Command and what it signals for the future of military operations in the Western Hemisphere. Donovan explains how SOUTHCOM aims to move drones and autonomous s…
Italy may finally be about to publish its first-ever national security strategy, a striking development for the only G7 country that has never had one.For decades, a mix of government instability, competition between institutions, a relatively permissive international environment, and the perceived …
What happens when the Arctic starts to look like the South China Sea?Historically, a neutral region where cooperation prevailed, the Arctic is quickly becoming a contested space. This is no more evident than in the increasing scope and volume of Russian and Chinese lawfare affecting the region. Thro…
Every time reports emerge about a potential reduction of U.S. forces or capabilities in Europe, the old continent falls into the same cycle of anxiety and panic. The same applies to announcements about delayed or suspended deployments, planned rotations, or broader force posture reviews.A brief hist…
Gaza did not have to look the way it looks. That is not a moral claim. It is an operational one.Claims of necessity are invoked to explain the scale of civilian harm, but they founder in the face of operational logic. Supporters of Israeli methods argue that Gaza’s urban battlefield — tunnels, rocke…
China’s diplomats are on an “AI governance” offensive. At a May 5 United Nations meeting, China’s vice minister of science and technology championed China’s role in shaping U.N.-led frameworks that determine how the technology should be built and used. Just a week earlier, two top Chinese AI experts…
Editor’s Note: This article contains frank descriptions of battlefield conditions, including accounts of soldiers dying by suicide following injury. Western battlefield casualty evacuation doctrine is built on assumptions forged during the “Global War on Terror.” Central among these is the belief th…
Talk of war in the Middle East abounds on social media, but not just about the one with Iran. A small, but significant, portion of this chatter relates to a conflict that has not begun. For more than a year now, pundits and politicians have warned of a potential clash between Israel and Turkey. Driv…
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 …
In 2025, Choong-Koo Lee wrote, “Putting the Screws on the Partnership Between North Korea and Russia,” where he argued that the United States and South Korea should work together to weaken Pyongyang and Moscow’s military relationship. A year later, we asked him to revisit his arguments.Image: The Kr…
What if the next decisive intelligence advantage isn’t a recruited insider but a nation’s ability to model entire societies from its digital exhaust? Salt Typhoon’s multi-year cyber campaigns against U.S. telecommunications networks and critical infrastructure demonstrate China’s unparalleled focus …
Maintaining deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and around the world requires the U.S. Navy to change what it builds and how it fights. Sen. Roger Wicker observed in 2024 that the United States’ approach to fleet design and ship construction is “too small and too old.” The current model of naval power ca…
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 …
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 …
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 driftin…
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 bat…
Since its proclamation of independence from Somalia in May 1991, Somaliland has sought international recognition for the territories under its control. Despite functioning as a de facto independent state for years, it lacked any formal recognition on the international stage until recently, when Isra…
When the U.S. military launched its war against Iran in Feb. 2026, it did not just dismantle Iranian military capabilities. It shattered the illusion that the United States would consult with its closest allies and that an ally’s refusal to grant base access can stop an American war in motion. Rathe…
From May 14 to 15, U.S. President Donald Trump held a summit in Beijing with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In addition to pageantry, the summit featured discussions about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, Taiwan, and bilateral trade. Both Washington and Beijing emphasized a relationship based on “construc…
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 …
Western airpower debates are increasingly driven by grim math. Analysts tally missile inventories, strike ranges, and sortie-generation capacity against a small number of critical runways, fuel systems, and aerial refueling aircraft. The prevailing conclusion is that U.S. and allied airpower could b…
In 2006, the U.S. Army’s 25th Combat Aviation Brigade deployed to Iraq, where it paired Task Force ODIN (Observe, Detect, Identify, and Neutralize) with an Apache battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division — a first-of-its-kind teaming of attack helicopters with drones. These units combined manned an…
For nearly a century, America’s defense industrial strength yielded a subtle benefit: influence as the world’s security guarantor of choice. But the system that once anchored partner access to U.S. weaponry is now an obstacle. Modern statecraft — the interplay of industry, diplomacy, and defense — r…
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…
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 scenari…