Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture."

– Thomas Paine

"We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening the people, and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of our government."

– Thomas Jefferson

"To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am."

– Bernard Baruch

1. US military prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, but Trump has yet to make a final call, sources say

2. Iran Is Getting Ready for War With the U.S.

3. Exclusive | U.S. Arms Sale to Taiwan in Limbo Amid Pressure Campaign From China

4. Opinion | Xi Tries to Bully Trump on Taiwan

5. Ukraine’s Neighbors Threaten to Cut Off Energy Supplies

6. U.S. Gathers the Most Air Power in the Mideast Since the 2003 Iraq Invasion

7. In First Since WWII, Navy to Hire Company to Oversee Shipbuilding Project

8. China's SDV sub exporting gray-zone warfare to the Gulf

9. The Perils of Militarizing Law Enforcement

10. What America Must Learn From Ukraine: Will Washington Repeat Moscow’s Mistakes?

11. Regular or Unleaded? Differentiating Irregular Warfare

12. Where Power Begins: The Strategic Return of the Homeland

13. AI Racing Drone Beats Human Controlled FPV Racing Drones on Aerial Racetrack: An Overlooked ‘AlphaGo Moment’ with Future War Implications

14. State Department is gearing up to ‘roll out agentic AI’

15. Are We at an AI Precipice?

16. Tokyo’s strategic US investment surge puts China on edge

17. China gives Lithuania punishing silent treatment over Taiwan

18. Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front

19. A Worrying Military Build-up in the Western Balkans?

20. US thwarted near-catastrophic prison break of 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria

21. Army captain struggles with decision to restore Confederate names

1. US military prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, but Trump has yet to make a final call, sources say

Summary:

CNN reports the US military is prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, but POTUS has not made a final decision. The White House has been briefed that forces could be ready after recent air and naval buildups in the Middle East, while POTUS has argued both for and against action and consulted advisers and allies. Indirect US Iran talks in Geneva produced “guiding principles” but no resolution, with more Iranian detail expected in coming weeks. Rubio is expected to visit Israel Feb. 28. Iran is fortifying nuclear sites per satellite analysis. Timing may be shaped by the Olympics, Ramadan, and the State of the Union.

Comment: The buildup plus public ambiguity looks like pressure as much as preparation. This appears to be coercion by posture, not just planning. The mixed signals risk adversary narrative capture. “Ready to strike” without stated objectives invites Iran to define US intent for regional and domestic audiences. The calendar talk suggests perception management is in play. Perception is a battlefield, because timing can signal respect, restraint, or contempt even before the first weapon is launched.

What is the strategic objective if POTUS “has not said what precisely his objectives would be,” and can military readiness substitute for political clarity?

If diplomacy is called “the first option” while strike readiness is emphasized, who is the primary audience of that message: Iran, allies, Congress, or the American public?

US military prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, but Trump has yet to make a final call, sources say | CNN Politics

CNN · Kristen Holmes, Kevin Liptak · February 18, 2026

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/18/politics/military-strike-trump-us-iran?bt_ts=1771460368618&bt_ee=

Tracking the US military buildup near Iran

2:03 • Source: CNN

Tracking the US military buildup near Iran

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The US military is prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, though President Donald Trump has yet to make a final decision on whether he’ll authorize such actions, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The White House has been briefed that the military could be ready for an attack by the weekend, after a significant buildup in recent days of air and naval assets in the Middle East, the sources said. But one source cautioned that Trump has privately argued both for and against military action and polled advisers and allies on what the best course of action is. It was not clear if he would make a decision by the weekend.

“He is spending a lot of time thinking about this,” one source said.

The US’s readiness to strike by the weekend was first reported by CBS News.

Iranian and US negotiators passed notes for three-and-a-half hours Tuesday during indirect talks in Geneva, though they departed with no clear resolution. Iran’s top negotiator said both sides had agreed upon a “set of guiding principles,” though an American official said “there are still a lot of details to discuss.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Iran was expected to provide more details on its negotiating position “in the next couple of weeks,” but she wouldn’t say whether Trump would hold off on military action within that timespan. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to travel to Israel on February 28 to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and update him on the Iran talks, a State Department official told CNN Wednesday.

“I’m not going to set deadlines on behalf of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.

She added that while “diplomacy is always his first option,” military action remains on the table.

“There’s many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran,” she said, adding Trump was relying on counsel from his national security team “first and foremost.”

The opaque statements have fueled increasing fears of military conflict between the two nations — even as officials ostensibly hold out hope for diplomacy. The USS Gerald Ford — the most advanced carrier group in the US arsenal — could arrive in the region as soon as this weekend, after a flurry of other military buildup. US Air Force assets based in the United Kingdom, including refueling tankers and fighter jets, are being repositioned closer to the Middle East, according to sources familiar with the movements.

For its part, Iran is fortifying several of its nuclear facilities, using concrete and large amounts of soil to bury key sites amid US military pressure, according to new satellite imagery and analysis from the Institute for Science and International Security.

A number of calendar events could play a role in the timing of an attack. The Winter Olympics — traditionally a moment of global unity — conclude on Sunday; some European officials said they believed no strike would occur before then. Meanwhile, Ramadan began Wednesday; some officials from US allies in the Middle East — which have lobbied against an attack, fearing regional destabilization — said an attack during the Muslim holy month would convey American disrespect. And Trump is delivering his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday; aides have said it was likely to act as a kickoff for Trump’s midterm year message on domestic issues. It wasn’t clear whether the president was taking any of those events into account as he weighs his options.

Trump, in his statements on Iran over the past weeks, has done little to gain buy-in from the American public or Congress for a large military operation in the country. He has hinted at a desire for regime change, and insisted Iran not obtain a nuclear weapon, but has not said what precisely his objectives would be in ordering an attack.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Jennifer Hansler and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

CNN · Kristen Holmes, Kevin Liptak · February 18, 2026

2. Iran Is Getting Ready for War With the U.S.

Summary:

The article says Iran is preparing for war while still pursuing a nuclear deal. Tehran is deploying forces, dispersing decision authority, hardening nuclear sites, and tightening domestic crackdowns because leaders fear regime survival is at stake. US regional deployments include two aircraft carriers and other ships and aircraft. Iranian concessions were presented, but Vice President JD Vance said they do not meet US red lines aimed at denying Iran the ability to make a nuclear weapon. Iran is reviving “mosaic defense” to reduce decapitation risk, signaling it can disrupt oil flows and hit US interests. Satellite imagery suggests reinforced tunnels and structures at key sites, while arrests and lethal repression expand amid unrest.

Comment: Iran has studied the playbook. Iran is building redundancy in command because it expects the first blows to target leadership, and it wants the system to keep fighting even if the head is cut off. The regime is pairing external deterrence with internal fear, which suggests it sees domestic legitimacy as a center of gravity that an outside strike could shatter. This is also a narrative fight: Iran wants “ready but reluctant” to be believed, so it can frame any conflict as imposed, justify repression, and strain US alliances through oil and escalation risk.

When Iran disperses decision authority and revives mosaic defense, does that make deterrence steadier, or does it raise the chance of autonomous escalation in the Strait of Hormuz?

If crackdowns are meant to prevent strikes from triggering unrest, what does that imply about the regime’s true vulnerability: military capacity, or popular consent?

Iran Is Getting Ready for War With the U.S.

WSJ

Confronting its biggest threat in decades, the regime in Tehran is trying to boost its odds of survival if diplomatic talks fall through

By Margherita Stancati

, Laurence Norman

and Benoit Faucon

Feb. 18, 2026 10:18 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/as-iran-negotiates-it-is-preparing-for-war-with-the-u-s-d0aa48fa?mod=hp_lead_pos1

Iran hopes that flexing its military muscle will send a warning to the U.S. Vahid Salemi/AP

Iran’s leaders want to reach a nuclear deal with the U.S., but they are also rushing to prepare for war in case talks between the countries fail.

Tehran is deploying its forces, dispersing decision-making authority, fortifying its nuclear sites and expanding its crackdown on domestic dissent. The moves reflect its leaders’ belief that the survival of the regime itself is at stake.

Domestically, the Islamic Republic is more vulnerable than it has been in decades. Its leaders are facing widespread popular discontent over the worsening economic picture and the mass killing of protesters last month. Meanwhile, the U.S. has deployed two aircraft carriers and a host of other warships and jet fighters to the region in preparation for a possible attack.

“Iran is facing its worst military threat since 1988,” when the eight-year war with Iraq ended, said Farzan Sabet, an analyst on Iran and Middle East security at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland. “Iran is preparing for strikes by putting its security and political leadership on high alert to prevent decapitation and to protect its nuclear facilities.”

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is taking part in military drills in the Persian Gulf. SEPAHNEWS HANDOUT/EPA/Shutterstock

Iranian officials have presented some concessions in pursuit of a nuclear deal, but Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday the offers have fallen short of the red lines set by the U.S., which wants Iran deprived of the ability to make a nuclear weapon. While Iran’s foreign minister publicly said the talks had made progress, the government now fears that the gap between what Tehran is willing to offer and what Washington is willing to accept may be unbridgeable, an Iranian official said.

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s National Security Council, said while Iran doesn’t want war, it is ready if one starts.

“We reviewed our weaknesses and addressed them,” he said in an interview aired Sunday on Al Jazeera. “If war is imposed on us, we will respond.”

Iran’s leaders are preparing for an attack that could disrupt its chain of command. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier this month announced plans to revive its so-called “mosaic defense” strategy, which gives commanders the autonomy to issue orders to their units. The strategy is designed to make the Islamic Republic more resilient to foreign attacks.

Military deployments

Iran is flexing its military muscle as best it can, sending the message that its armed forces have the capability of disrupting the global oil trade and of hitting U.S. interests across the Middle East.

Naval units of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard were deployed this week to the Strait of Hormuz. The strategic waterway connects the Persian Gulf to the wider Indian Ocean and around a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through it.

Footage aired on state-linked Iranian media showed cruise missiles being launched from trucks along the coast and from boats as an oil tanker sailed in the background. The waterway is now under constant surveillance, Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s navy, said in remarks published in state-run media on Monday.

A Russian warship arrived at the Strait of Hormuz and docked at the Iranian port town of Bandar Abbas ahead of a military exercise planned for Thursday, according to Iranian and Russian state-run media.

The exercises are taking place not far from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which is sailing off the coast of Oman.

“More dangerous than the American warship is the weapon that can send it to the bottom of the sea,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, said Tuesday.

WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains the massive U.S. military presence in the Middle East as President Trump amps up pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

Israel’s 12-day war in June exposed Iran’s military inferiority and the limits of regional militia allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. But it also gave Iran the opportunity to test and refine its war tactics, improving the hit rate of its longer-range missiles as the war went on.

Tehran has an estimated 2,000 midrange ballistic missiles that can strike as far as Israel. It also has significant stockpiles of short-range missiles capable of reaching U.S. bases in the Gulf and ships in the Strait of Hormuz, along with significant stockpiles of antiship cruise missiles and torpedo boats.

Iran has tested its air-defense systems in a recent series of drills focused on responding to possible drone and missile attacks on sensitive locations, including the nuclear sites, according to state-run media.

Tehran’s municipality has identified metro stations, parking lots and other locations that could serve as bomb shelters, Ali Nasiri, a crisis management official, told state media in late January. Iranians have criticized the government for failing to shelter them last June.

Hardening nuclear sites

Iran has also been conducting work at its nuclear sites to better protect them from strikes, according to satellite imagery published and analyzed by the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank based in Washington.

The satellite images show that Tehran has been hardening and strengthening tunnel entrances at its Isfahan site—where Iran is believed to have kept much of its highly enriched uranium and which was heavily damaged by U.S. and Israeli attacks last June—and at a deep underground tunnel complex in what is known as Pickaxe Mountain.

The Pickaxe tunnels, which Western officials say Iran has been working on for years, weren’t targeted by the U.S. or Israel last summer. Western and Israeli officials believe Iran was developing the tunnels to carry out undeclared nuclear work, including possible enrichment of uranium. The images at Pickaxe show movement of vehicles including dump trucks, cement mixers and cranes at the site to pour concrete, rock and soil on the tunnel entrances.

The work is designed to “dampen any potential airstrikes and also make ground access in a special forces raid to seize or destroy any highly enriched uranium that may be housed inside difficult,” the institute said in a report.

The institute also found that Iran recently built a concrete shell over a building at its Parchin military site, where Iran had conducted nuclear-related work. Israel bombed the site in 2024.

Stifling dissent

Iran’s leaders want to rule out the possibility that U.S. strikes could trigger a new wave of disruptive antigovernment unrest.

The Revolutionary Guard and intelligence forces have set up around 100 monitoring points around Tehran to block potential insurgents or foreign forces, Guard commander Hossein Nejat said in comments published by the state-linked Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated to Iran’s security forces.

Security forces are also continuing to hunt down people who participated in last month’s protests, including by searching for them in schools and by asking hospitals for health records with the identities of those treated for protest-related injuries, according to rights groups and residents.

The USS Abraham Lincoln is sailing off the coast of Oman. Zoe Simpson/U.S. NAVY/AFP/Getty Images

Dissidents, including activists and reformist politicians who criticized the government’s bloody suppression of the protests, are being arrested. Political detainees have been subject to harsh treatment and often denied access to lawyers, according to rights groups. Among them is Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, who was recently physically abused in prison, according to the foundation run by her family members. Mohammadi was beaten and dragged on the floor by her hair, the foundation said.

More than 53,000 people have been arrested since the start of the protests, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran. The U.S.-based group has so far confirmed the deaths of more than 7,000 people since the demonstrations began in late December.

The killings have fueled a second wave of popular anger. Many Iranians shout antigovernment slogans from their windows at night. Traditional mourning ceremonies have become occasions for friends and families of victims to show their opposition to the regime.

In the central city of Abdanan, a large crowd on Tuesday chanted “Death to Khamenei” during an outdoor memorial ceremony at the local cemetery, according to footage verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. Security forces responded by opening fire on the mourners.

Margherita Stancati is a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal based in Rome. She has reported from over a dozen countries for the paper and was previously posted in the Middle East, Afghanistan and India. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflict, politics, energy and social change.

Margherita was part of a reporting team whose coverage of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting. The Society of Publishers in Asia in 2022 gave Margherita and her colleagues its breaking news award for their coverage of the fall of Kabul. Her work was also a runner-up in SOPA's award for excellence in reporting on women's issues.

Laurence Norman is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Benoit Faucon is a Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He focuses on the geopolitics of oil, Iran, and Russia's involvement in Africa and the Middle East. He also has strayed into investigative stories such as pharmaceutical counterfeits, sanctions, money laundering and terror finance.

His work was part of an award-winning package at the Overseas Press Club of America in 2017 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

A four-time winner of the William Clabby awards, Benoit was also part of a finalist team for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for stories on the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The team also earned recognition at the New York News Publishers Association Award that year.

He has written or co-written five books, Including "West Bankers" (Mashreq Publishing, 2010) on the financial history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, "A Cartel Named Daech" (First Editions, 2017, with Clement Fayol) and an upcoming book on crisis entrepreneurs.

He joined Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal in 2002 after three years at French dailies Le Figaro and les Echos.

WSJ

3. Exclusive | U.S. Arms Sale to Taiwan in Limbo Amid Pressure Campaign From China

Summary:

US arms sales to Taiwan are in limbo as the White House weighs Chinese pressure and POTUS’s planned April visit to Beijing. Xi urged caution in a Feb. 4 call. Officials worry approval could disrupt the summit and threaten a trade truce. Congress has not been notified, though the package was expected to include Patriot interceptors. Beijing calls Taiwan the most important issue in relations and seeks tariff relief, export control easing, and other concessions. The administration is delaying actions that could provoke China. The defense strategy stresses a denial defense along the First Island Chain while maintaining longstanding ambiguity on whether the US would defend Taiwan.

Comment: We must not allow the PRC to successfully execute political warfare against us (URW and Three Warfares). China is testing whether pressure works. Taiwan sits at the center of the narrative fight. What is the acceptable durable, and attainable political arrangement that will serve, protect, and advance our interests vis vis Taiwan and the broader Asia-Indo Pacific?

Exclusive | U.S. Arms Sale to Taiwan in Limbo Amid Pressure Campaign From China

WSJ

Some U.S. officials are worried that greenlighting the weapons deal would derail Trump’s coming trip to Beijing

By Alex Leary

, Lingling Wei

and Michael R. Gordon

Feb. 18, 2026 11:38 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/u-s-arms-sale-to-taiwan-in-limbo-amid-pressure-campaign-from-china-d228f912?mod=hp_lead_pos6

President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a bilateral meeting in South Korea in October. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

WASHINGTON—A major U.S. arms-sales package for Taiwan is in limbo following pressure from Chinese leader Xi Jinping and concerns among some in the Trump administration that greenlighting the weapons deal would derail President Trump’s coming visit to Beijing, according to U.S. officials.

In a phone call earlier this month with Trump, Xi urged caution on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island that China claims as part of its territory. Trump wants to avoid antagonizing China ahead of his visit, set for the first week of April, the officials said.

Asked on Monday whether he planned to send more weapons to Taiwan, Trump said he had discussed the issue with Xi. “I’m talking to him about it. We had a good conversation, and we’ll make a determination pretty soon,” he told reporters.

“We have a very good relationship with President Xi,” Trump added.

Beijing was already angered over the $11.1 billion in arms sales for Taiwan that the U.S. unveiled in December. U.S. officials had been discussing approving additional sales when Xi pressed Trump about the issue during the Feb. 4 phone call.

Trump’s advisers are vacillating on the decision, according to a U.S. official familiar with the arms package, who insisted that, while Xi was adamant, Trump wouldn’t be pushed around by China. Trump wants to preserve a trade truce with Xi, a second U.S. official said, so the timing of an arms-sale decision is being carefully considered behind the scenes, the person said.

In response to a request for comment, a U.S. official said the arms sales are working their way through the administration’s internal process.

The U.S. Congress hasn’t officially been notified of new arms sales, but a congressional aide said it had been expected to include Patriot antimissile interceptors and other weapons.

U.S. support for Taiwan has long been a source of friction with Beijing, which has said it is prepared to seize the island by force if necessary. An official Chinese statement on the Trump-Xi call said that Taiwan “is the most important issue in China-U. S. relations” and that the U.S. “must handle the issue of arms sales to Taiwan with prudence.”

Though President Joe Biden repeatedly said that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if China attacked, Trump has stuck to the longstanding policy of ambiguity about whether Washington would take military action to stop a Chinese invasion of the island. That stance is intended to deter Beijing, while also dissuading Taipei from declaring formal independence.

Washington remains Taiwan’s most important security backer. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act obligated Washington to provide the island with arms for its own self-defense.

A Taiwanese navy assault boat during a military exercise off Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in late January. An Rong Xu/Bloomberg News

Ahead of Trump’s anticipated April visit to Beijing, both sides are looking to start formal negotiations over “deliverables”—the tangible outcomes that will determine whether the summit is a substantive reset or merely high-stakes political theater.

While a formal agenda has yet to be completed, the recent phone call between Trump and Xi is expected to trigger a round of high-level preparatory meetings between U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.

Beijing’s primary objective is stability through a “truce extension” that moves beyond the current one-year trade framework, according to people close to the Chinese government. Chinese negotiators are likely to push for a rollback of existing tariffs and a reprieve from the export controls on advanced artificial-intelligence chips that have throttled China’s tech sector, the people said.

In exchange, the White House likely will demand large quantities of purchases by China, specifically targeting orders of soybeans, Boeing aircraft and American energy exports to slash the persistent bilateral trade deficit, according to industry executives who have recently spoken to administration officials.

The people close to the Chinese government said Beijing was considering a reciprocal reopening of the Houston and Chengdu consulates, which were closed in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in China and spread to the rest of the world. This move is being floated as a low-cost, high-visibility deliverable to signal a return to diplomatic normalcy, the people said.

However, the core friction point remains Taiwan.

Some Chinese policy advisers have discussed internally that a much larger economic package—potentially including significant U.S. Treasury purchases—could be on the table in exchange for a more proactive U.S. stance against Taiwanese independence. It is unclear whether such proposals are being seriously considered by Chinese negotiators led by Vice Premier He.

For now, the White House is giving priority to stability, moving to sideline policy decisions that could incite retaliation from China or derail the summit. The administration has delayed a proposed ban on routers from TP-Link—the world’s largest provider of consumer Wi-Fi routers, which accounts for a sizable share of the U.S. home-networking market—and held off on further restrictions against China Telecom’s U.S. operations.

With the summit around the corner, the Pentagon’s new national defense strategy struck a conciliatory tone toward Beijing. The document, released in January, stressed the need to establish “a decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under.”

That strategy didn’t specifically mention Taiwan but included a more general statement that the U.S. military will “erect a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain.” That string of islands includes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

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The Pentagon recently executed an abrupt about-face regarding its list of Chinese military companies that the U.S. believes are aiding Beijing’s military modernization. The updated list was briefly published in the Federal Register on Friday before being pulled, with the Pentagon offering no further clarification. The revised list was notable for its aggressive scope, adding Chinese tech and biotech giants such as Alibaba, BYD, Baidu and WuXi AppTec. While inclusion on the list doesn’t trigger immediate sanctions, it acts as a red flag for investors and would result in a ban on listed companies receiving U.S. defense contracts

“The clear signal coming from the Trump administration is that it simply wants to maintain the current status quo ahead of April’s summit and avoid an escalatory cycle,” Beacon Policy Advisors, a Washington research firm, said in a Monday report.

Appeared in the February 19, 2026, print edition as 'Chinese Pressure Risks U.S. Arms Sale To Taiwan'.

Alex Leary is a White House reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He previously worked for the Tampa Bay Times.

Lingling Wei is the chief China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and author of the award-winning WSJ China newsletter. She covers China's political economy, focusing on the intersection of business and politics, and U.S.-China relations.

Born and raised in China, she has a master's in journalism from New York University, got her start covering U.S. real estate, and has won many awards for her China coverage. She was among a team of reporters and editors whose work was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2021. She was also on the team that produced the Journal’s “Missing Minister” investigative podcast series, which won the New York Press Club’s national podcast award in 2025. Lingling is co-author of the book "Superpower Showdown."

Michael R. Gordon is a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He has covered seven wars and reported on the State Department and the Pentagon. He is the author of “Degrade and Destroy: the Inside Story of the War Against the Islamic State, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump.” He is also the co-author, along with the late Lieutenant General Bernard E. Trainor, of three definitive histories of U.S. wars in Iraq: “The Endgame,” “Cobra II,” and “The Generals' War.”

He previously worked for 32 years for the New York Times, where he was posted in Moscow, London and Washington.

WSJ

4. Opinion | Xi Tries to Bully Trump on Taiwan

Summary:

The WSJ editorial board argues Xi is trying to pressure POTUS to block further US defensive arms sales to Taiwan ahead of an April summit. It cites leaked US accounts that Xi was adamant on a recent call. The piece says the US announced an $11.1 billion sale in December and another is being prepared. It claims Taiwan needs arms as China increases military pressure, with naval exercises that resemble blockade preparation, and says Xi has told his military to be ready by 2027 to retake Taiwan by force if needed. It warns yielding would signal US unreliability under the Taiwan Relations Act.

Comment: Xi is using summit optics as a lever. That is coercion dressed as diplomacy. If US officials leak the pressure, they are likely shaping the information space to harden resolve and preempt blame for escalation. The board frames arms sales as alliance credibility. In cognitive warfare terms, the decisive target is trust, not hardware.

If Taiwan is framed as a test of US reliability, what is the cost of delay in the perceptions of Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines?

If China/Xi concludes POTUS can be intimidated, what actions most credibly deny that conclusion without forcing a crisis?

Opinion | Xi Tries to Bully Trump on Taiwan

WSJ · Xi Tries to Bully Trump on Taiwan

China’s boss wants the U.S. to stop a sale of defensive arms to Taipei.

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 18, 2026 5:17 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-xi-jinping-taiwan-arms-sales-china-summit-7ed6b279

Chinese President Xi Jinping Li Xiang/Xinhua/ZUMA Press

The April summit between President Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is turning out to be a high stakes affair long before they meet. The Chinese President is trying to bully Mr. Trump into walking back planned sales of arms to Taiwan.

Opinion: Potomac Watch

Marco Rubio Speaks to Europe in a Different Tone Than JD Vance

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offers tough love to U.S. allies in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, in contrast to Vice President JD Vance last year. Will this be the GOP's choice once Donald Trump leaves office? Plus, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets tripped up on Taiwan, and another U.S. aircraft carrier nears Iran.Read Transcript

U.S. officials are leaking that Mr. Xi was adamant in a recent phone call that Mr. Trump block further arms sales to the democratic island of some 23 million people. The U.S. announced an $11.1 billion arms sale in December and another is in the works.

Taiwan needs the arms for self-defense as China ramps up military pressure on the territory. China’s navy has staged exercises that look to U.S. officials as preparation for what could be a blockade of Taiwan, which supplies most of the world’s advanced semiconductors. Mr. Xi has told his military to be ready by 2027 to retake Taiwan by force if necessary.

Mr. Xi knows the U.S. President wants a successful summit in China, and the Communist Party boss is using that as leverage. Mr. Trump wants a stable Chinese relationship so the People’s Republic won’t again block the export of rare-earth minerals or refuse to purchase American farm goods, especially soybeans.

But giving in to Mr. Xi’s threats on Taiwan would send a dangerous signal about America’s reliability as an ally. The Taiwan Relations Act obligates the U.S. to supply defensive weapons to the island. If Mr. Trump abdicates on that obligation, China will immediately use it to tell the Taiwanese people that America can’t be trusted to defend them. Japan, South Korea and the Philippines will also get the message that Mr. Trump’s priority in the Pacific is China, not their mutual defense.

No one wants a war over Taiwan, but war is more likely if Mr. Xi concludes that President Trump can be intimidated for the sake of a smiling summit.

Journal Editorial Report: The week's best and worst from Kim Strassel, Bill McGurn, Allysia Finley and Dan Henninger.

5. Ukraine’s Neighbors Threaten to Cut Off Energy Supplies

Summary:

Hungary and Slovakia threaten to cut off diesel and electricity supplies to Ukraine over disruption of the Russian Druzhba oil pipeline that crosses Ukraine. Kyiv says a Russian attack near Brody in late January caused the disruption. Viktor Orban says Hungary will suspend diesel exports until the pipeline restarts. Robert Fico threatens to cut electricity, and Slovnaft may stop diesel exports. The two countries provided over 60% of Ukraine’s electricity imports in January. The dispute worsens Ukraine’s winter energy crisis as Russia has repeatedly struck power infrastructure. Hungary and Slovakia accuse Ukraine of delaying repairs to pressure EU accession support. Ukraine says it remains a reliable transit country.

Comment: The pipeline fight gives Russia a second-order win even if it did not plan it, because "neighbors" turn on each other while Ukraine freezes. This is a narrative contest, too. “Blackmail” versus “reliable transit” is a battle over blame, and blame shapes aid and cohesion.

If Russia can trigger "neighborhood" disputes by striking nodes near transit routes, how should Ukraine and the EU harden both infrastructure and alliance decision-making?

Ukraine’s Neighbors Threaten to Cut Off Energy Supplies

WSJ

Halting power and diesel from Hungary and Slovakia would compound the impact of Russian attacks

By Anastasiia Malenko

and Thomas Grove

Feb. 18, 2026 4:35 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraines-neighbors-threaten-to-cut-off-energy-supplies-e1345068

A snowplow clearing a street in Kyiv, Ukraine, after a heavy snowfall earlier this week. Gleb Garanich/Reuters

KYIV, Ukraine—Hungary and Slovakia threatened to cut off energy supplies to Ukraine in a dispute over an oil pipeline, potentially compounding a crisis that has left millions of Ukrainians without reliable power during the coldest months of the year.

The countries are fighting over a disruption to the Russian Druzhba, or Friendship, oil pipeline, which crosses Ukraine. Kyiv says that the disruption was caused by a Russian attack near the western town of Brody in late January.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Wednesday that his country would suspend diesel supplies to Ukraine until Kyiv restarts the pipeline. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico followed suit and threatened to cut off power supplies to Ukraine. His government said that the Slovnaft oil refinery would stop the export of diesel to Ukraine.

The countries accounted for more than 60% of Ukraine’s electricity imports in January. Ukrainians rely on diesel to power the backup generators that keep homes and businesses running during extended power cuts caused by Russian attacks and use it as fuel for the military.

Orban and Fico accused Ukraine of delaying the reopening of the pipeline to pressure the countries to accept its European Union bid. “The Ukrainians’ decision to block oil deliveries through the Friendship pipeline to Hungary is blatant political blackmail,” Orban said in a post on X.

Russian attacks on energy infrastructure have plunged much of Ukraine into darkness and cold. Reporter Nikita Nikolaienko shows WSJ what life is like in Kyiv without electricity. Photo: Nikita Nikolaienko

The dispute brings to a head long running tensions between Ukraine and the two countries. Hungary and Slovakia have both adopted more sympathetic policies toward Russia and continue to import its oil. Hungary has also dragged its feet on EU sanctions against Russia.

The row comes days after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio paid both countries a visit in a show of support for the two euroskeptic leaders.

Russia has relentlessly targeted Ukrainian power stations and electrical infrastructure this winter, crippling the country’s heating through the coldest months of the winter. Much of the population has had to survive with just a few hours of power during the day, Ukrainian officials say.

Ukraine says it notified Hungary of the disruption to the pipeline immediately after the attack and has remained in regular communication with both nations and the EU. Ukrainian state oil-and-gas company Naftogaz reported a fire at one of its facilities on the day of the attack without specifying the location, noting it was the 15th attack on their facilities in a month.

“Ukraine remains a reliable transit country and is fulfilling its obligations in accordance with existing agreements and the EU’s sanctions policy toward Russia,” said Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi.

Workers helped earlier this month in efforts to restore a power plant at an undisclosed Ukrainian location. Serhii Korovainy for WSJ

But he also noted that Ukraine hasn’t seen Hungary making efforts to wean itself off Russian oil as much of the rest of Europe has since the invasion. “Contrary to EU policy, there are attempts to remain on this needle for as long as possible, like drug addicts,” said Tykhyi.

Last week, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv expected Hungary to protest continued suspension of Russian oil transit through the pipeline. He posted a picture of emergency services battling the fire that disrupted the pipeline and suggested the Hungarians should show them to “their friends in Moscow.”

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Hungary has told the European Commission it wants a temporary exemption from the ban on purchasing seaborne Russian oil, European Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said on Tuesday. She said the Commission was looking into the impact of disruption and possible supply alternatives and staying in contact with Ukraine on the timeline for repairs.

Appeared in the February 19, 2026, print edition as 'Ukraine’s Neighbors Threaten to Cut Off Energy Supplies'.

Anastasiia Malenko is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal covering the war in Ukraine, focusing on how it has reshaped Ukrainian society. She is based in Kyiv. She previously covered the war as a breaking news correspondent for Reuters and a reporter for the Kyiv Independent, the leading English-language newspaper in Ukraine.

Anastasiia graduated from Stanford University with degrees in political science and economics.

Thomas Grove covers the confrontation between Russia and the West for The Wall Street Journal. He is based in Warsaw.

Before that Thomas covered Russia for more than a decade and he has traveled to Ukraine regularly since Russia's invasion. He writes on Russia's military, the arms trade and the Russian defense sector as well as great power competition.

He started his career in Istanbul with Reuters writing about the economy and the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP. Thomas has since reported from across Central Asia, the Caucasus region and the Middle East.

WSJ

6. U.S. Gathers the Most Air Power in the Mideast Since the 2003 Iraq Invasion

Summary:

The US is moving major air power to the Middle East, described as the largest buildup since the 2003 Iraq invasion, while POTUS weighs options for striking Iran. Deployments include additional F-35s and F-22s, command-and-control aircraft, air defenses, and a second aircraft carrier, alongside 13 Navy ships in the region and eastern Mediterranean. US and Iranian representatives met in Geneva, with the White House saying there was limited progress but big gaps and that Iran may offer more detail in coming weeks. Options briefed range from limited strikes on nuclear and missile targets to a weekslong campaign aimed at leadership and possible regime overthrow. Regional risks include Iranian missiles and Hormuz disruption.

Comment: This force package appears to be built for endurance, not a signal shot, and that widens the menu from punishment to compellence. The military must provide the CINC with options. The public uncertainty about aims invites Iran to wait out talks, because ambiguity can be read as hesitation even when aircraft are moving. In cognitive warfare terms, the buildup is a message to multiple audiences at once, but mixed messages dilute deterrence and feed adversary stories of US drift.

If the aims range from nuclear rollback to regime overthrow, what is the political end state that matches the military means described? (I.e., the acceptable durable, attainable political arrangement that will serve, protect, and advance US interests?)

If partners restrict airspace and coalition support is thin, what does that imply about sustainability and legitimacy of a weekslong air war?

If Iran can answer with missiles and Hormuz pressure, how does the US prevent escalation from becoming Iran’s chosen course of action?

U.S. Gathers the Most Air Power in the Mideast Since the 2003 Iraq Invasion

WSJ

President Trump is being briefed on military options for striking Iran, even as aides hold talks with its regime

By Lara Seligman

, Michael R. Gordon,

Alexander Ward

and Shelby Holliday

Feb. 18, 2026 8:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-gathers-the-most-air-power-in-the-mideast-since-the-2003-iraq-invasion-98ced89f

A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor during takeoff. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is sending significant numbers of jet fighters and support aircraft to the Middle East, assembling the greatest amount of air power in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Yet it still couldn’t be determined whether President Trump would order strikes against Iran—and if he did, whether the aim would be to halt Iran’s already-battered nuclear program, wipe out its missile force or try to topple the regime.

Over the past few days, the U.S. has continued to move cutting-edge F-35 and F-22 jet fighters toward the Middle East, according to flight-tracking data and a U.S. official. A second aircraft carrier loaded with attack and electronic-warfare planes is on the way. Command-and-control aircraft, which are vital for orchestrating large air campaigns, are inbound. And critical air defenses have been deployed to the region in recent weeks.

The firepower will give the U.S. the option of carrying out a sustained, weekslong air war against Iran instead of the one-and-done “Midnight Hammer” strike the U.S. carried out in June against three Iranian nuclear sites, U.S. officials said.

Representatives from the U.S. and Iran met in Geneva this week to negotiate a possible deal over Iranian enrichment of uranium. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there had been “a little bit of progress” in those talks, but added, “We’re still very far apart on some issues.” Iran is expected to offer a more detailed proposal to the U.S. in the next few weeks, Leavitt said.

Trump has received several briefings on his military options should he choose to strike, all of them designed to maximize damage to Iran’s regime and its regional proxies, U.S. officials said.

The options include a campaign to kill scores of Iranian political and military leaders, with the goal of overthrowing the government, U.S. and foreign officials said, as well as an air attack that would be limited to striking targets including nuclear and ballistic-missile facilities. Both would involve a potentially weekslong operation.

Trump hasn’t yet decided whether to order strikes against Iran, the U.S. officials said. His national-security advisers discussed Iran during a meeting in the White House’s Situation Room on Wednesday, according to a senior administration official.

Trump has signaled that he would prefer a diplomatic agreement that, if the U.S. got everything it wanted, would see Iran’s nuclear programs eliminated, regional proxy forces disbanded and ballistic missiles dismantled. Iran is seen as unlikely to agree to the last point, since it doesn’t have much of an air force and relies on missiles as its main deterrent. Trump has indicated that he mainly cares about the nuclear issue, telling reporters he would like Iran to stop enriching uranium.

Meanwhile, some advisers and foreign leaders, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are telling Trump that he should use U.S. military pressure to squeeze more concessions out of Tehran. Israel in particular wants to see an end to Iran’s ballistic-missile production, according to officials.

Not all of the weapons the U.S. could use to strike Iran are currently in the Middle East, nor even need to be. B-2 stealth bombers have long trained to carry out Middle East missions directly from the U.S., as they did in June against Iran’s nuclear facilities, or from the joint U.S.-U.K. base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Other long-range U.S. bombers can do the same.

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Trump wrote in a social-media post Wednesday that “it may be necessary for the U.S. to use Diego Garcia,” a U.K.-controlled island in the Indian Ocean, for an attack if Iran doesn’t make a nuclear deal. Trump also said the U.S. could use the Fairford air base in the U.K. during the operation.

The U.S. military, with its stealth technology and standoff precision weapons, has an overwhelming advantage over Iran, whose air defenses were battered by Israel last year.

Iran has some cards to play in a sustained campaign, including a still-sizable missile arsenal that could be directed at U.S. bases and allies in the region, and military forces that could try to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital sea lane for oil tankers.

Given the uncertainties, some former military officers said a diplomatic agreement could be preferable to war.

“Frankly, the best that could come out of this is that the dramatic increase in deployed forces will be significant enough of an indicator that Trump is not messing around with the use of force,” thus prompting Iran’s leaders to come to an agreement, said David Deptula, a retired three-star Air Force general who played a major role in the 1991 Desert Storm campaign against Iraq.

But U.S. and foreign officials are increasingly pessimistic that Iran will agree to the U.S.’s demands. Instead, they said, Tehran might only be willing to suspend its nuclear-enrichment activities for a short period—perhaps until Trump is out of office.

Iran hopes it can use negotiations to delay any U.S. attack, but it also realizes that Trump is likely to grow frustrated with prolonged talks and order strikes, according to foreign officials familiar with Tehran’s thinking.

Trump has repeatedly threatened an attack on Iran should negotiations fail. “I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” he told reporters Monday.

The U.S. Air Force has recently moved dozens of jet fighters and support aircraft to Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, according to flight-tracking data. These include additional F-35s, F-15s, F-16s, E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System and E-11 Battlefield Airborne Communications Node aircraft. More fighter aircraft are on their way.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy currently has 13 ships in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean Sea to support a potential operation, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and nine destroyers capable of defending against ballistic missiles, according to a Navy official. A second aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and the four destroyers in its strike group are on their way.

On the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea earlier this month. U.S. Navy/AFP/Getty Images

The USS Gerald R. Ford operating in the Caribbean late last year. Marco Bello/Reuters

The Pentagon has also moved additional land-based air defenses into place across the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

As formidable as the buildup appears, it is just a fraction of the assets the U.S. deployed for the 1991 Gulf War or the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For the former, the U.S. deployed six aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Ahead of that operation, the U.S. Air Force deployed entire wings of warplanes, instead of the squadrons that are being sent now, to carry out a six-week air campaign.

For Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the U.S. Air Force positioned 863 aircraft in the Middle East. Operation Desert Storm in 1991 included 1,300 U.S. aircraft from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, according to information from Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Today’s circumstances are different. The U.S. Air Force is far smaller now, and there are no U.S. and allied ground forces to support. Nor is there much of an international coalition, unless the Israeli air force joins the campaign.

Unlike in 1991, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have put their airspace off-limits for potential U.S. strikes. Many of the U.S. warplanes are concentrated in Jordan.

But military technology, including the ability to carry out precision strikes, employ stealth technology and use space, has improved.

The Trump administration is still unsure what might come after a bombing campaign. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in January that the U.S. has no clarity on who would assume power if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei fell. Many analysts believe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader would likely take control.

Antiregime Iranians, whom Trump promised to support during protests that government authorities violently suppressed in January, might revive demonstrations after a U.S. bombing campaign, sensing an opportune moment to increase public pressure on their rulers. This, however, could also present the U.S. with a dilemma on whether to prolong the air war if the regime were to crack down again.

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Eliot Cohen, who led a study of the use of air power in Desert Storm for the Air Force and is now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that a punishing air campaign might try to weaken Iran’s leadership in a way that surviving members of the elite would agree to a far-reaching accommodation with Washington.

“If what Trump really wants to do is affect the regime and set back its ability to use missiles to attack American bases, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, it would probably have to be an intense operation that would last weeks or possibly months,” he said.

Appeared in the February 19, 2026, print edition as 'U.S. Puts Most Air Power in Mideast Since ’03'.

Lara Seligman is a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, where she covers the White House and the Pentagon. She previously spent four years at Politico as a defense reporter.

Lara's reporting on the military and the defense industry has taken her around the world, with time spent covering geopolitics in real time in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Lara previously covered the Pentagon and national security for Foreign Policy. She also has written for publications including the Washington Post and Defense News.

He previously worked for 32 years for the New York Times, where he was posted in Moscow, London and Washington.

Alexander Ward is a national security reporter covering the White House and State Department for The Wall Street Journal in Washington. Alex’s reporting focuses in particular on the inner workings of the National Security Council and how top players in an administration formulate and execute foreign policy.

Alex was previously the White House and national security reporter at Politico, where he was also the first author of its "National Security Daily" newsletter. Before that, he was Vox's White House reporter covering foreign policy and worked at the Atlantic Council think tank covering national security and military affairs.

Alex has won numerous awards for his reporting and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist along with Politico colleagues for Supreme Court coverage.

In February 2024, Alex published his first book, "The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump." He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Shelby Holliday is a Wall Street Journal senior video and national security correspondent based in New York City. She primarily writes and produces pieces on geopolitical showdowns, military conflicts and defense issues. She also contributes to the Journal's livestreams, investigations and elections coverage.

In 2019, Shelby was part of the Journal team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Prior to joining the Journal, she was a correspondent for Bloomberg TV and an anchor for the CBS-partnered Channel One News. Her reporting has taken her to China, Guam, the Philippines, Myanmar, Rwanda, Kenya, Guantanamo Bay, Mexico and beyond.

WSJ

7. In First Since WWII, Navy to Hire Company to Oversee Shipbuilding Project

Summary:

The Navy will hire a private vessel-construction manager to oversee building the Marine Corps Medium Landing Ship, shifting an oversight role that has been government-only since World War II. Navy officials say the goal is to speed shipbuilding and curb chronic delays and cost growth. The article links the move to NAVSEA’s loss of technical expertise as experienced staff retire and after workforce reductions, including about 10% of its engineering workforce in the past year, though the Navy says the cuts did not drive this decision. If it works, the model could expand to other programs. The Navy will still inspect and accept completed ships. Bollinger Shipyards and Fincantieri Marinette Marine will build ships based on Damen Naval’s LST 100 design.

Comment: I will be interested in reading the assessments from Naval experts.

In First Since WWII, Navy to Hire Company to Oversee Shipbuilding Project

WSJ

The government typically handles the job, but delays and cost overruns prompted a search for new approaches

By Marcus Weisgerber

Updated Feb. 18, 2026 6:33 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/business/logistics/in-first-since-wwii-navy-to-hire-company-to-oversee-shipbuilding-project-57df7235

Fincantieri Marinette Marine, seen in 2024, will be one of the companies building the Marine Corps Medium Landing Ship. Mike Roemer/AP

The U.S. Navy plans to hire a private company to manage the construction of new Marine Corps landing ships, marking a shift in an oversight role exclusively performed by government officials since World War II.

The move is the latest attempt by the Trump administration and Navy to speed up the often slow and overbudget shipbuilding process by adopting practices more commonly used in the commercial sector, according to Navy officials.

Typically, Navy employees based at the top shipyards provide project oversight, contract administration, IT management and other functions. Now, a vessel-construction manager will assume that role, meaning the third-party company is in control of the shipyard’s performance.

The Navy command historically responsible for that oversight has lost technical expertise as seasoned employees have retired and, more recently, through governmentwide cuts pushed through by the Department of Government Efficiency, said Bryan Clark, a naval expert with the Hudson Institute.

“[Naval Sea Systems Command is] even less capable of doing the kind of technical management of a shipbuilding project than they were in the past,” Clark said.

The command lost about 10% of its engineering workforce over the past year, however the decision to use a vessel-construction manager for the new ship wasn’t because of those cuts, a Navy spokesperson said.

Navy shipbuilding projects have experienced years of delays and cost increases because of a mix of mismanagement and contractor performance. The Trump administration last year canceled an effort to buy new frigates because the Navy tinkered with a ship’s proven design so much that the project fell years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget.

If successful, the Navy could expand the private-company management arrangement to other programs, according to TD Cowen analyst Roman Schweizer. The third-party manager could be less tolerant of cost overruns and delays. The Navy will handle some functions, including inspecting and accepting the completed ships, the service spokesperson said.

“This could result in tougher penalties to shipbuilders for not meeting cost/performance targets in contracts,” Schweizer wrote in a Wednesday note to investors. “It could also benefit shipbuilders by preventing the Navy from making changes to designs or contract terms that increase schedule delays and costs.”

Under the new construct, the Marine Corps Medium Landing Ship will be based on the design of Damen Naval’s LST 100. The craft would carry Marines and their equipment directly onto the beach. Bollinger Shipyards and Fincantieri Marinette Marine will build the ships, the Navy said.

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The Navy began soliciting bids Wednesday for the vessel-construction manager that would oversee the two shipbuilders and decide the best strategy for buying additional landing ships.

“It’s a proven model,” Clark said. “The key will be for NAVSEA to keep its hands out of it and let the vessel construction manager do their job.”

The Navy hasn’t used the third-party approach to shipbuilding oversight since it produced thousands of Liberty cargo ships during World War II. Vessel-construction managers are more commonly used by cruise lines, which don’t have internal shipbuilding expertise, according to Clark.

But other parts of the government are already using the model with positive results. The Transportation Department’s Maritime Administration uses TOTE Services as the vessel- construction manager overseeing Philly Shipyard’s construction of training ships called National Security Multi-Mission Vessels.

“It’s been a big success by pretty much everybody’s account and has sped up the production of these multi-mission vessels and controlled costs, so they actually are getting done on time and on budget,” Clark said.

Marcus Weisgerber is a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, where he covers the Pentagon and defense industry. For nearly two decades, Marcus’ reporting has focused on the intersection of business and national security. He spent nine years as the business editor of Defense One, where in 2018 he won a Jesse H. Neal Award for his coverage of the Pentagon and defense industry.

Marcus also has written for Defense News and Inside Defense. He served as vice president of the Pentagon Press Association from 2015 to 2022. Marcus graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in English and Journalism.

WSJ

8. China's SDV sub exporting gray-zone warfare to the Gulf

Summary:

China is using the overseas display of its SDV-01 swimmer delivery vehicle in Saudi Arabia to market not just hardware but a gray-zone style of warfare. Citing a South China Morning Post report, it says CSSC showcased the SDV-01 at a Saudi defense expo, highlighting an export push for advanced naval systems. The SDV-01 is described as a frogman transport craft for combat diving, demolition, and reconnaissance, with scarce official detail and uncertain operational status. The piece links SDV logic to PLA special operations concepts for Taiwan and the South China Sea, and suggests exports could diffuse deniable, rapid fait accompli tactics into Gulf security dynamics.

Comment: China is selling capability and concept together. That is influence by procurement, because doctrine follows the tool. The value is ambiguity. Quiet insertion compresses decision time, and confusion becomes the opening move. Showcasing this in Saudi Arabia signals a bid to normalize China as a security partner, especially where US conditions and delays create frustration.

China's SDV sub exporting gray-zone warfare to the Gulf - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · February 13, 2026

SDV-01 frogman sub shows Beijing exporting a style of warfare built on ambiguity, deniability and rapid faits accomplis

by Gabriel Honrada

February 13, 2026

China’s low-key rollout of an underwater commando craft in Saudi Arabia highlights how it is linking special operations warfare with a global arms-sales push.

This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China’s state-owned shipbuilder China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) unveiled a rare overseas glimpse of a secretive underwater combat vehicle at a major defense exhibition in Saudi Arabia, underscoring a push to market advanced naval systems to Middle Eastern buyers.

The model on display, designated SDV-01, is a surface-to-subsurface “swimmer delivery vehicle” designed to transport multiple frogmen for missions such as combat diving, underwater demolition and reconnaissance, according to the report.

Its appearance marked a rare public debut for a platform whose operational details remain scarce, with earlier public confirmation limited to a brief 2018 Chinese state television segment showing a similar vehicle being launched from a submarine or surface ship.

The SCMP report linked the capability to China’s evolving special operations doctrine for Taiwan and the South China Sea, citing recent large-scale drills and past exercises by elite naval units, while noting it remains unclear which variant the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fields and whether the display model is operational.

Alongside the SDV-01, CSSC also showcased export-oriented amphibious and submarine models, underscoring a broader effort to present a more “systematic” naval export portfolio.

While official Chinese details remain limited, Naval News reported in November 2023 that the SDV-01 is a wet submersible designed to carry up to eight frogmen and their gear in an enclosed cabin with independent diver hatches and at least eight hours of air supply.

It measures 8.9 meters long, 1.5 meters in diameter, displaces no more than 4.5 tons, reaches up to 10 knots submerged, normally operates at depths of around 10 meters with a maximum of 40 meters and uses satellite, inertial and Doppler navigation with BeiDou and acoustic communications, with either manual or automatic control.

At the tactical level, the SDV-01 functions as a key enabler for clandestine maritime operations. Its utility lies in moving beneath surface surveillance during the brief interval between detection and engagement, enabling special operations teams to approach, insert or extract with reduced exposure to patrols and sensors.

Such platforms are designed less for decisive battles than for reconnaissance, sabotage, and targeting that create openings conventional forces can later exploit. That logic aligns with how Chinese special operations forces (SOF) are described in Western assessments.

John Chen and Joel Wuthnow wrote in a January 2022 China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) report that China’s SOF, including naval frogmen, are intended to play a preparatory role in a Taiwan seizure campaign by infiltrating ahead of the main landing force via special mission craft, submarines or helicopters to conduct reconnaissance, targeting, obstacle clearance and sabotage.

They explain that frogmen and other SOF would scout beaches and approaches, mark or clear obstacles, attack key targets such as ports, radar sites and command posts, guide precision strikes and conduct raids to disrupt defenders before and during the landing.

The same logic extends beyond Taiwan to the surrounding maritime geography. As outlined by Chad Machiela and other writers in an October 2025 Small Wars Journal article, PLA SOF could conduct rapid “micro-occupation” seizures of specific Philippine-held or claimed features to support a Taiwan campaign and expand control in the South China Sea.

Machiela and his co-authors argue that Mavulis Island could be seized within hours by PLA SOF to position sensors and missiles controlling the Bashi Channel, a critical chokepoint between the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea.

They add that heliborne or amphibious forces could take Itbayat and Batan (Basco) to create forward operating bases, and describe coercive takeover playbooks for Second Thomas Shoal, Scarborough Shoal and Sabina Shoal using maritime militia and follow-on forces to establish faits accomplis that secure flanks and chokepoints during a Taiwan contingency.

Beyond the South China Sea, similar anxieties shape Japan’s concerns over the Senkaku Islands. Reflecting those concerns, Kiyofumi Iwata mentions in a June 2025 SCMP article that China is laying the groundwork for a “landing and absorption” of the Senkaku Islands rather than merely posturing.

He argues that intensifying coast guard incursions, helicopter operations and expanding ship deployments point to preparations for an on-the-ground operation, with equipment upgrades and training focused on disembarkation missions.

A more gray-zone-focused scenario appears in Japanese policy analysis. Writing in June 2021 in the Japan Foreign Policy Forum, Watanabe Tsuneo argued that a Chinese takeover of the Senkaku Islands is most plausibly envisioned not as a conventional amphibious assault but as a gray-zone seizure by special forces or maritime militia to create a fait accompli.

Tsuneo warns that Chinese personnel could secretly land, raise the Chinese flag and refuse to withdraw, exploiting legal and response gaps to delay Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) while consolidating control.

Placed against this backdrop, the appearance of the SDV-01 in Saudi Arabia looks less like a niche product pitch and more like the export of a particular way of war—one that emphasizes stealthy insertion, deniable presence and the creation of faits accomplis before an opponent can organize a response.

Maritime security in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz is fragile, with recent Iranian tanker seizures and missile drills around the region underscoring why Gulf states might consider enhanced littoral and special operations tools to protect critical shipping lanes.

It also fits a broader pattern of China using arms sales not only to generate revenue but to expand political influence and normalize its systems and concepts in foreign militaries.

China’s sales push in the Middle East builds on years of efforts to woo regional clients with a widening range of systems, often highlighting fewer political strings attached than those of Western suppliers.

In that context, unveiling advanced technology such as the SDV-01 in Saudi Arabia can be read as an attempt to court the kingdom by expanding the menu of available systems, exploiting frustration with US conditions and delays, and positioning China as an alternative supplier for states that face restrictions on access to Western armaments.

None of this means the SDV-01 is destined to become a centerpiece of Middle Eastern navies. The system remains opaque, its operational status uncertain and its performance untested in public view. But its appearance matters because it shows what China is choosing to showcase: not just big-ticket ships, but the tools of gray-zone competition and special operations.

If China is serious about turning platforms like the SDV-01 into export staples, it will also be exporting a style of warfare built around ambiguity, deniability and rapid faits accomplis rather than decisive set-piece battles—raising the risk that rivals in both Asia and the Middle East will seek to harden defenses against exactly the kind of quiet, incremental moves such systems are meant to enable.

asiatimes.com · Gabriel Honrada · February 13, 2026

9. The Perils of Militarizing Law Enforcement

Summary:

The article argues that federally directed National Guard patrols in Washington, D.C. and attempted deployments to other major US cities signal a shift toward militarized law enforcement that can erode democratic institutions. Drawing on Latin American cases, it says “crime emergencies” tend to become normalized, expand executive power, weaken legislative and judicial oversight, and increase abuses because soldiers are poorly suited for policing. Examples include Mexico’s long war-on-drugs militarization, Brazil’s routine “law and order” decrees, Ecuador’s repeated states of exception, and El Salvador’s renewed suspension of rights. The author contends militarization rarely reduces crime long term and is hard to reverse once entrenched.

Excerpt:

Once militarized policing becomes normalized, efforts to demilitarize face broad resistance: from voters accustomed to displays of force, from security institutions hesitant to give up their expanded power and resources, and from leaders reluctant to relinquish their broadened authority. Every time troops are deployed to American communities for public safety reasons, even if temporarily and even if they seem to be contributing to reductions in crime, this central pillar of our democracy erodes. If Americans come to accept military patrols as a routine response to crime, the distinction that once protected U.S. democracy may fade quietly—without a dramatic rupture, but with lasting consequences.

Comment: Intelligent people learn from the mistakes and wise people learn from the mistakes of others.

This is power through optics. Troops on streets are a message. Fear is the channel. Consent is the target. “Emergency” language is a narrative weapon. Once it sticks, normal checks look like weakness, and oversight becomes politically costly. The hardest damage done is slow. Civilian police capacity decays, courts defer, and the public learns to expect force as governance.

The Perils of Militarizing Law Enforcement

Foreign Affairs · More by Gustavo Flores-Macías · February 18, 2026

Latin America’s Warning for U.S. Democracy

Gustavo Flores-Macías

February 18, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/americas/perils-militarizing-law-enforcement

The National Guard patrolling in Washington, D.C., November 2025 Nathan Howard / Reuters

Gustavo Flores-Macías is Dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and the author of Contemporary State Building: Elite Taxation and Public Safety in Latin America.

Latin America’s Warning for U.S. Democracy

Gustavo Flores-Macías

In August 2025, residents of Washington, D.C., awoke to a sight familiar in much of Latin America but rare in the United States: uniformed military troops patrolling city streets as part of a federally directed campaign against crime. Although violent crime in the country’s capital had fallen that January to its lowest point in over 30 years, on August 11 President Donald Trump signed an executive order that declared a “crime emergency” in the city, arguing that extraordinary measures were necessary to restore control. But the subsequent deployment of the National Guard—a military reserve force that can serve at both the state and federal levels in response to domestic crises or international conflict—signaled something beyond a wish to address a public safety concern. It represented a transformation in how the United States governs itself.

What unfolded in Washington was not an isolated episode. Over the course of Trump’s second term, his administration has sent or attempted to send units of the National Guard to major U.S. cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, and Portland, framing each case as a response to crime, unrest, or threats to public order. Together, these cases mark the gradual erosion of the long-standing boundary between civilian policing and military force.

For American observers, such a shift may feel unprecedented. In Latin America, however, it is a well-worn path. Across the region, politicians have deployed the armed forces to fight crime, promising that their presence will produce swift improvements in public safety and restore order. These policies often begin as temporary responses to emergencies, but they rarely remain so. Instead, military involvement in domestic law enforcement becomes normalized, power concentrates in the executive, civilian institutions weaken, and civil liberties erode. Democratic institutions hollow out, slowly but surely.

The United States has long resisted this temptation. The separation of civilian policing from military force, deeply ingrained in both U.S. law and custom, has acted as a bulwark for American democracy. But the National Guard deployments, as sustained policing under federal command, challenge that separation. State governors can and have used National Guard troops to address local emergencies, but such operations are typically limited to assisting with natural disasters, riots, crowd control, and guarding buildings rather than participating in sustained law enforcement missions. And once the line between soldier and police officer is blurred, it is extraordinarily difficult to redraw. This is a reality Latin Americans know all too well, and one Americans may soon come to learn.

COP OUT

The political logic behind militarizing policing is straightforward. Crime generates fear, and fear creates a demand for visible, decisive action. Militaries—which are often among countries’ most trusted institutions—offer executives a powerful symbol of order, discipline, and resolve. Deploying soldiers to the streets signals strength, even when the underlying drivers of crime remain untouched.

For leaders confronting insecurity, militarizing policing is politically expedient precisely because it is legible, dramatic, and immediate. Regardless of its effectiveness, it tends to be popular because it offers a seemingly simple and decisive solution. It reassures communities by conveying a sense of retaking lost control. But no matter how popular it may be, militarization has harmful consequences for democratic institutions. Crime emergencies—often called “states of exception” in Latin America—give executives opportunities to expand their powers, degrade legislative and judicial oversight, and marginalize opponents. Civilian police forces stagnate or weaken while soldiers take on policing functions for which they are poorly suited. Government forces’ accountability declines and human rights abuses rise as soldiers ill equipped to protect civilians operate without constraints.

The Latin American experience shows how easily the militarization of internal security can become entrenched. Consider Mexico: in the 1990s, presidents increasingly used the military for internal security, dramatically expanding deployments after President Felipe Calderón declared a “war on drugs” in 2006. Two decades later, homicide rates in the country remain high, and abuses by security forces—including extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances—have become widespread. Even left-of-center presidents who campaigned on demilitarization, such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who led the country from 2018 to 2024, have found it politically costly and institutionally challenging to reverse course. Once soldiers replaced civilian police in the fight against organized crime, the boundary between emergency and normal governance dissolved.

Once the line between soldier and police officer is blurred, it is extraordinarily difficult to redraw.

Brazil’s experience follows a similar pattern. Presidents have repeatedly sent troops into urban neighborhoods, including Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, to combat gangs and drug trafficking. Between 1992 and 2025, Brazilian executives have issued an average of about five decrees to “guarantee law and order” every year, and these military interventions have become normalized. Residents in certain areas have grown accustomed to periodic deployments involving patrols, searches, and arrests conducted by soldiers rather than police. The Brazilian armed forces’ excessive use of force in policing operations is well documented. But comprehensive statistics on abuse are hard to come by, and because soldiers’ actions during policing operations fall under military jurisdiction, victims cannot easily hold them to account for civil rights violations. Civilian nongovernmental organizations struggle even to scrutinize and document the extent of the abuse.

The military’s central role in Brazilian law enforcement is driven in part by the country’s legacy of military rule between 1964 and 1985. But the case of Ecuador illustrates how rapidly militarization can take hold even in a country without a long history of military rule. Beginning in the late 2010s and accelerating after a surge in organized criminal violence in 2021, successive Ecuadorian governments have increasingly turned to the armed forces for domestic policing. Presidents have declared repeated states of exception, authorizing soldiers to patrol streets, conduct searches without warrants, and assist police operations in urban centers and prisons. Although these measures were initially framed as temporary responses to extraordinary violence, they quickly became routine. Today, military deployments are no longer exceptional but an expected component of public safety policy. Although popular, such measures have done little to resolve underlying criminal dynamics. The country’s homicide rate, for example, increased more than fivefold between 2020 and 2025. Moreover, much-needed efforts to reform policing have taken a back seat as government funds are channeled toward military operations.

El Salvador demonstrates the end point of this trajectory. In 2022, President Nayib Bukele implemented a 30-day state of exception that suspended citizens’ rights of free association and assembly, due process, and access to legal counsel. His administration also established the government’s right to detain people indefinitely before trial, conduct trials in absentia, and sentence minors as adults. Because of a steady reduction in violent crime since 2018—the year before Bukele took office—and the measures’ popularity, that state of exception has now been renewed 47 times by the legislature, which Bukele’s party controls, transforming into a permanent governing framework. The crackdown has sharply reduced reported homicides, but it has also radically transformed El Salvador’s regime, creating a system that perpetuates mass incarceration, indefinite detention, and the dismantling of judicial independence. Elections still occur, but meaningful constraints on executive power have largely vanished.

These and other cases in the region differ in context and outcome, but they share a common arc. Militarized public safety blurs the civilian-military divide, expands executive authority, and weakens institutions designed to constrain it. Even when its effectiveness is limited and its costs to liberal democracy are clear, military involvement in domestic policing becomes difficult to unwind once it is normalized.

A CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?

This pattern raises an important question whose answer is often assumed rather than sought: Does militarized policing actually work? The popularity of military deployments, which enables their persistence, rests on the promise of restored order and reduced violence. Yet the empirical record is far less clear. In fact, existing research offers little support for the claim that military policing reduces crime over the long term. In the aftermath of Mexico’s militarization, its homicide rate more than tripled from nine to 29 homicides per 100,000 people between 2006 and 2019. Ecuador, for its part, went from being one of the safest to one of the most violent countries in the region; between 2020 and 2023, its homicide rate increased from seven to 44 homicides per 100,000 people. Although Brazil’s national homicide rate has gradually declined in recent years, the country’s Northeast has seen a surge in violent crime exacerbated, at least in part, by the government’s militarized response.

Studies have found that at best, troop deployments in Latin America might temporarily suppress violence but do not address the structural drivers of crime, from poverty and inequality to generalized corruption. Even worse, the measures can be counterproductive, possibly even increasing violence in the long term. Extensive evidence, including from research by political scientists Robert Blair and Michael Weintraub on Colombia and my own with Latin America scholar Jessica Zarkin on Mexico, suggests in fact that using soldiers in policing operations leads to more violence and human rights abuses than deploying civilian police does. Moreover, militarization often undermines civilian police forces by diverting their resources to the military, eroding public trust in them, and generating the perception that civilian institutions writ large are unable to solve society’s problems, all of which hinders accountability and much-needed reforms.

In the aftermath of Mexico’s militarization, its homicide rate more than tripled.

El Salvador’s drastic reduction of violent crime is often hailed as a successful case of militarization. After the country’s homicide rate peaked in 2015, the highest in the Western Hemisphere that year, El Salvador’s reported homicide rate is now the lowest in the hemisphere. Although the steep downward trend began before Bukele took office, this continued decline has earned Bukele sky-high popularity among Salvadorans—who had been desperate for solutions to insecurity—and, in 2024, a comfortable reelection to a second presidential term.

But Bukele’s path to his alleged success should be no example for a liberal democracy that prizes its citizens’ civil liberties and freedoms. The state of exception that paved the way for Bukele to get results on public safety has come through a suspended constitutional order in which anything goes. According to Amnesty International, thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process have taken place since the state of exception began. This is hardly an example for addressing crime in a democratic system in which checks against government abuse are paramount to that system’s survival.

The United States is unlikely to be immune to these dynamics. Although the National Guard has some key domestic roles, including providing disaster relief, addressing health emergencies, and controlling riots, units are not trained primarily for ongoing civilian policing. The military’s rules of engagement, organizational culture, and legal frameworks differ fundamentally from those of police departments. These mismatches raise the risk of rights violations while offering little assurance that public safety will improve.

NO ORDER IN THE COURT

The deeper impact of these deployments is not on crime statistics but on the constitutional order. Militarized policing strengthens the executive at the expense of all other levels of government. State and local governments, which often know the needs of their communities the best, are sidelined from essential decision-making in favor of military commanders, who are often disconnected from the communities that their policies affect.

Emergency declarations also make it difficult for other branches of government to check executive power. Afraid of coming across as soft on crime, legislators become less likely to question emergency measures, and legislative oversight weakens. Although courts are typically less sensitive to public opinion, the declaration of crime emergencies often restricts or eliminates habeas corpus—which prevents unlawful detention—and due process, making judicial review harder, raising the bar for legal challenges, and increasing judicial deference to both the executive and the military.

Using soldiers in policing leads to more violence and human rights abuses.

Latin America’s experience with militarization makes this clear. In Mexico, civilian courts have shown considerable deference to the armed forces. And even though constitutional changes in 2014 established that soldiers could be tried in civilian courts for crimes against civilians, in practice, military authorities often limit or block the ability of civilian prosecutors to access evidence and collect testimony from witnesses. According to the nonprofit organization Washington Office on Latin America, 97 percent of abuses by the armed forces that are investigated by the Mexican attorney general’s office go unpunished. Civilian police departments receive little funding, and the military has become increasingly involved in public life, including in building and managing infrastructure projects.

In Ecuador, organized crime groups are now considered “terrorist and belligerent non-state actors” following a January 2024 declaration of internal armed conflict, which limited citizens’ freedom of assembly and transit and expanded the military’s ability to conduct home searches without a warrant. President Daniel Noboa has consistently renewed states of exception, turning them into the norm. In El Salvador, Bukele’s party replaced every judge on the country’s constitutional court under the guise of protecting the president’s crime-fighting agenda. In Brazil, surveys during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, which lasted from 2018 to 2024, suggested that nearly half the population would have supported the military staging a coup to take power—a direct consequence of the military’s increasing involvement in public affairs and the erosion of faith in the ability of civilians to resolve society’s problems.

NO TURNING BACK

American democracy has long benefited from a clear institutional separation between civilian and military roles. This division has been a central tenet of U.S. governance since the founding of the republic, shared even by those with opposing political views. Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist, warned that military establishments undermine republican government, infringe on civil liberties, and lead to despotism. Brutus, an anonymous but widely read Antifederalist, expressed graver concerns that manufactured crises would serve as a pretext for attempts by the military to override civilians’ liberty. In 1807, Congress passed the Insurrection Act to clarify confusing prior legal frameworks that allowed the president to call on state militias in cases of violent revolts such as the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion. But in passing the act, the legislature was careful to limit the executive branch’s ability to deploy federal troops domestically: it can do so only when federal law cannot be enforced through regular channels or when state authorities cannot or will not protect citizens’ constitutional rights. Then, in 1878, Congress adopted the Posse Comitatus Act as a form of late institutional repair, an effort to address the founders’ early concerns about military abuse; it sought to prevent the military deployments that took place in the South during Reconstruction. The act expressly forbids the use of federal troops to execute domestic laws except under specific circumstances, such as the need to address an insurrection.

These normative and legal frameworks explain why Washington had historically gone to extreme lengths to avoid militarized policing. The Insurrection Act, for its part, has been invoked only in extraordinary circumstances, such as when President Dwight Eisenhower deployed federal troops to Arkansas in 1957 to enforce school desegregation. In the United States, a clear civil-military separation has always limited the president’s ability to govern by force instead of by law. Its erosion, even a partial or incremental one, risks reshaping the balance of power in ways that would outlast any single administration. It also risks undermining the public’s trust in civilian governments.

Militarized policing strengthens the executive at the expense of all other levels of government.

The United States still has options. Governors and mayors are engaging in legal fights to assert state and local control over public safety. The judiciary has served as a check against some deployments: in December, the Supreme Court allowed lower court rulings against the federalization of the National Guard in Chicago to stand. But these safeguards depend on political will and a generalized understanding of the negative consequences that come with blurring the line between soldiers and police. Although some may see the militarization of policing as a necessary evil to advance the agenda of a government they support, the use of these measures tends to outlive the leaders who adopt them, becoming available to future governments with very different visions.

Once militarized policing becomes normalized, efforts to demilitarize face broad resistance: from voters accustomed to displays of force, from security institutions hesitant to give up their expanded power and resources, and from leaders reluctant to relinquish their broadened authority. Every time troops are deployed to American communities for public safety reasons, even if temporarily and even if they seem to be contributing to reductions in crime, this central pillar of our democracy erodes. If Americans come to accept military patrols as a routine response to crime, the distinction that once protected U.S. democracy may fade quietly—without a dramatic rupture, but with lasting consequences.

Foreign Affairs · More by Gustavo Flores-Macías · February 18, 2026

10. What America Must Learn From Ukraine: Will Washington Repeat Moscow’s Mistakes?

Summary:

The authors argue Ukraine shows modern war is both old and new: trenches and attrition, but also decisive innovation using satellites, autonomous systems, AI, and commercial gear. They say the United States drew the wrong lesson from 1991 by betting on short wars and small numbers of exquisite platforms. Ukraine suggests wars can be long, mass matters, and success depends on producing and replacing large numbers of cheap, attritable systems while adapting at software speed. They urge more imagination about asymmetric threats, faster adaptation cycles, modular designs, realistic wargaming and red teaming, expanded manufacturing capacity, and supply chains that avoid dependence on Chinese drone components.

Excerpts:

Expanding productive capacity and creating supply chains ready to produce enough war materiel—especially drones and munitions—will almost certainly be a lengthy endeavor. The United States, after all, is starting far behind. Today, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force have only 300 ships and 5,000 aircraft, respectively, a shadow of what they had during World War II. The United States is set to produce less than a tenth as many drones as Russia and Ukraine will each make this year. Washington will thus have to make substantial investments in both domestic and allied-based drone component companies. (It must also stockpile drones, drone parts, and munitions to avoid running out of these goods when wars inevitably last longer than expected.) But with a $900 billion defense budget, Washington has the money to catch up. Today, only 20 percent of this budget goes to buying ships, tanks, planes, software, or any other kind of kit for troops. The government could up that percentage by reallocating some of the 17 percent of the budget currently dedicated to developing new exquisite platforms, which, as Ukraine has shown, are likely vulnerable to asymmetric attacks by the time they are fielded.

The United States can also speed up by adopting advanced manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, which better allow for replenishment and upgrades in the field. The country is already home to several startups that are building 3D-printed drone assembly systems that fit entirely within a 20-foot shipping container and reactors that can make hydrogen fuel on site with just a metal catalyst and seawater. These systems can help ensure that frontline soldiers and commanders get what they need quickly rather than waiting for weeks for supplies to come in. A damaged F-35, for example, might take months to fix, if it can be fixed at all, as the military waits for manufacturers to produce a new custom component. A modular drone can be repaired in a matter of days with parts sitting on a shelf, or less time if the parts can be printed.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was meant to last three days; instead, it has dragged on for four years. The United States needs to study why Moscow, previously thought of as a leading military power, failed and why Kyiv has performed so well. Washington must learn how weaker opponents can surprise stronger ones, prepare to iterate rapidly, and start producing large quantities of low-cost capabilities. These new paradigms of conflict are not easily or quickly internalized, which is exactly why adopting them requires urgency and large-scale focus.

What America Must Learn From Ukraine

Foreign Affairs · More by Michael Brown · February 17, 2026

Michael Brown and Matt Kaplan

February 17, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/what-america-must-learn-ukraine

U.S. soldiers at a training exercise in Salinas, Puerto Rico, United States, January 2026 Ricardo Arduengo / Reuters

MICHAEL BROWN is a Partner at Shield Capital and is the former Director of the Defense Innovation Unit at the U.S. Department of Defense.

MATT KAPLAN is an Associate at Shield Capital.

The war in Ukraine is, at once, a past and future conflict. On the one hand, Russia’s invasion resembles World War I, with static frontlines, trenches, and vast areas of no man’s land in which soldiers are quickly killed. On the other hand, the conflict has been defined by innovation and modern technology. There has never before been a war with such broad and effective use of satellites, autonomous systems, AI software, and other commercial gear.

For the United States, these trends should be deeply concerning. After scoring a quick and decisive victory in the 1991 Gulf War, American military planners concluded that future wars would also be short. They assumed that the key to success was no longer mass but large, expensive, high-tech systems. But Ukraine demonstrates the opposite. Wars can still be long conflicts of attrition. Small, poor states can surprise and overwhelm larger, wealthier ones. And success involves learning how to make and use huge numbers of cheap weapons, not simply small numbers of exquisite systems.

Unfortunately, it will be difficult for Washington to change in accordance. The U.S. military is a huge, staid bureaucracy. It has deeply engrained processes and traditions. In fact, some U.S. military leaders have downplayed how applicable Ukraine is to a future conflict in the Pacific. On the website War on the Rocks, the retired general David Barno and the political scientist Nora Bensahel warned that Washington risks “learning the wrong lessons entirely” from Ukraine should the conflict “threaten [the United States’] evolving new doctrine and expensive investments.”

It is true that not every tactical lesson from Ukraine is relevant for future wars. But it is simply undeniable that imagination, adaptability, and affordable, commercially available capabilities will be essential to tomorrow’s conflicts. American defense officials must therefore step out of their comfort zones and start rethinking Washington’s military doctrines. They need to begin envisioning how an adversary’s capabilities could neutralize the United States’ sophisticated defense platforms and tactics. They have to learn how to adapt their systems at the speed of software development, which means within hours and days instead of years. Finally, they must design cheap weapons that American manufacturers can quickly produce and replace, such that total mass—rather than just platform exquisiteness—becomes a significant warfighting factor. Otherwise, when the next conflict arrives, the United States may be shocked and set back, much as Russia was.

ANTICIPATION AND ADAPTATION

The first lesson the United States must internalize is the need for more imagination—specifically, the need to imagine what combinations of new technologies an adversary could employ to neutralize Washington’s advantages. In Ukraine, it is the tools that hadn’t been previously conceived of that have often been the most devastating. Since in a future conflict the United States might be in the position of Russia, Washington must dedicate resources to anticipate how an adversary might use asymmetric tools and tactics to disrupt U.S. operations.

Consider, for instance, the battle for the Black Sea. When the war began, Russia had a large fleet of warships stationed in the waters around Ukraine to blockade the country. Kyiv, meanwhile, had only one, tiny warship. As Russian ships began heading toward Odessa, Ukraine opted to sink the sole warship it had out of fear that Moscow might seize it. But over the next several years, Ukraine compensated for its lack of a traditional navy by using domestically developed missiles, uncrewed surface vessels, aerial drones, and good intelligence to either destroy or disable at least 25 Russian ships—or around a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. That included the Moskva, Russia’s flagship. Ukraine’s campaign ultimately broke Moscow’s blockade, allowing Ukrainian grain to again flow to foreign markets.

The sea is hardly the only place where Kyiv has used creativity to surprise its more sophisticated opponent. In the spring of 2025, after 18 months of planning, Ukraine smuggled 117 first-person-view drones into Russia in trucks positioned near five distant airfields. It then launched them at Russian strategic bombers across several thousand kilometers, damaging at least ten percent—and possibly as much as 30 percent—of the country’s long-range, heavy-payload aircraft. In addition to degrading Russia’s long-range missile strike capabilities, the attack inflicted a psychological blow, demonstrating that no Russian assets were out of reach. The drones Ukraine used cost, at most, a few thousand dollars each. But the damage to Russia’s fleet was $7 billion.

The American military has largely had the same programs and training for the last 30 years.

With these operations and others—including Ukraine’s first underwater drone strike, carried out in December against a Russian submarine—Kyiv consistently thought outside the box because it did not have the resources of a superpower. It had to be creative and improvise, and this led it to use commercial technologies in ways that offset some of Russia’s traditional strengths. Technologies that are advancing today will give states even more opportunities to gain asymmetric advantages in the future.

Although anticipating new forms of attack is critical, not everything can be predicted before a conflict begins. Because adversaries conceive of new ideas with every technological advance, the United States must also adapt faster. The importance of rapid adaptation is the second lesson Washington must learn. Although on display in many dimensions of the Ukraine conflict, rapid adaptation is most evident in the drone-counterdrone innovation cycle. At the beginning of the war, Ukraine pioneered using disposable, uncrewed vehicles to attack enemy positions. But by the end of 2022, Russia had learned to deploy jammers along the frontlines to disrupt Ukrainian signals when the drones got within several kilometers of their targets. Kyiv then adapted again by buying and using small, commercial, off-the-shelf computer vision models, which allowed frontline operators to lock drones onto targets outside the jamming range. But then, the Russians expanded the ranges of their jammers and deployed smokescreens to protect Ukraine’s targets. This cycle has since continued and even sped up. Today, tit-for-tat tactical improvements happen so fast that previous innovations can become obsolete within three weeks. Although war tactics have always adjusted in real time, this pace of frontline, software adaption is unprecedented.

Other countries are also innovating by taking advantage of rapid advances in commercially available technology. In November, for instance, the AI lab Anthropic released a report detailing how, for the first time, a Chinese state-affiliated hacking group orchestrated a powerful cyber-espionage operation against large U.S. enterprises almost entirely using Anthropic’s Claude AI tools. Those tools have become publicly available only within the last year, and Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and others have released even more powerful tools in the months since. The fact that AI capabilities improve so quickly means that state and nonstate actors alike might gain access to new ways to hack, build bioweapons, and orchestrate swarms of autonomous systems.

Ukrainian soldiers preparing a drone near Pokrovsk, Ukraine, January 2026 Reuters

The final lesson Washington must accept is the need to design low-cost systems, which allows for building at scale. Here, too, drones serve as an encapsulation. Ukraine’s use of large numbers of low-cost drones has become a hallmark of its warfighting approach. Even with Russian jamming, drones built for a few hundred dollars apiece allow Ukraine to offset Russian advantages in artillery, armor, and massed fires. They can deliver precision effects that previously required far more expensive munitions, such as precision-guided Excalibur shells, which can cost $100,000 apiece. Drones, in other words, have provided a more flexible form of precision firepower that can be flown by small teams close to the frontline.

For the United States, a low-cost design approach would be most effective as part of a strategy that combined a small number of high-end, exquisite platforms with large numbers of lower-cost, simpler, more “attritable,” or easily expendable, ones. Washington has already invested in exquisite platforms, but it is only in the early stages of procuring attritable assets, and it needs to catch up.

The United States can learn much from Ukraine about how to build and buy such systems. But it should not simply follow Kyiv’s template. Ukrainian drone production is still reliant on Chinese components, such as motors, flight controllers, navigation cameras, batteries, and thermal sensors. The irony of having Western and Ukrainian aid channeled through Chinese supply chains is that it ultimately supports Russian and Iranian drone production, given that Beijing is also an indispensable arms dealer to both those countries. This fact highlights why access to cheap, non-Chinese drone components is essential for the United States and its allies.

TRANSCENDING TACTICS

The U.S. military is still the most sophisticated armed force in the world. But it will struggle to adjust to these lessons—which go beyond specific technologies or tactics. There are several reasons why. For starters, the American military is an enormous bureaucracy, and it has largely had the same programs and training for the last 30 years. Such entities are never easy to change.

The country’s defense preparations provide a case in point. American defense officials have spent decades preparing for obvious attacks, such as strikes that could blind U.S. satellites or cyberattacks that could disrupt the country’s digital infrastructure. These plans are necessary, but American officials have not prepared for less apparent lines of attack or even considered what such lines of attack might be. This makes the American military vulnerable in the same way that Russia’s was when Ukraine—without a regular navy—attacked ships that Moscow assumed were out of reach.

The United States military will also struggle to adapt in part because of its commitment to exquisite systems, which are nearly impossible to quickly upgrade or build at a speed fast enough to replace losses. The F-35 fighter jet, for example, was in development for roughly 20 years. Aircraft carriers take ten years to construct. The B-21 bomber has been in development since the early 2010s, but it will not reach full operational capability for several more years. The first contracts for the navy’s Extra Large Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle were awarded in 2010; Boeing, the primary contractor, has still not delivered an operational vessel. Even innovations that the Pentagon celebrates for their speed proceed at a glacial pace by Ukrainian standards. When Iraqi insurgents began blowing up U.S. Humvees with improvised explosive devices in late 2003, the American military rapidly rushed to develop mine-resistant vehicles. The MRAP, as it was called, still took 20 months to produce.

These exquisite capabilities don’t just have long delivery cycles. They also have enormous budgets, with cost overruns that have become commonplace as delivery timelines stretch on. These overruns are further exacerbated by cost-plus contracting, in which suppliers are paid a fixed percentage of the total costs as profit margin. As a result, a single F-35 costs the government $80 million, and a Ford-class aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. These exquisite platforms are so expensive that the military cannot afford to lose them. The Pentagon could buy 13 million drones for the cost of an aircraft carrier, of which the U.S. Navy has 11 (and it plans to build more), which would supply nearly 100 drones for every U.S. Army and Marine infantryman.

Even if Washington began spending more on low-cost systems, it would be starting from a difficult position. Over the last 15 years, China has supplanted the United States as the global manufacturing powerhouse. It is able to scale up the production of ships, missiles, drones, and electronics far faster and at a lower cost than the United States can, which could give Beijing a decisive advantage in a prolonged conflict between the two countries. China’s shipbuilding capacity, for example, is 200 times that of the United States.

THE QUALITY OF QUANTITY

Washington does have experience in both envisioning how its adversaries can use asymmetric tactics and ramping up production for war. In the lead-up to World War II, the United States war-gamed so effectively that Admiral Chester Nimitz later commented that the only surprise was the kamikaze attacks that happened late in the conflict (although Washington also failed to anticipate Pearl Harbor). The United States also dramatically accelerated military manufacturing during the conflict, producing more than 5,000 ships and 300,000 aircraft. Quantity, officials discovered, does have a quality all its own.

The United States should learn from this history. Defense planners can start by mimicking their interwar predecessors and carrying out more war games. They should move beyond linear tabletop exercises with scripted vignettes of sequential moves to a more realistic environment that simulates the fog of war. These games should force planners to make rapid decisions with incomplete information, degraded command-and-control systems, constrained logistics, and political limits—just as Russia and Ukraine have to.

The Pentagon should also hire outside firms to engage in red teaming—or to think up situations it might otherwise miss. It should reconstitute the Office of Net Assessment, which provided independent, long-range military assessments that shaped U.S. strategy and investments but was disbanded without explanation in 2025. The Pentagon should require the Joint Force planning staff—planners from each military service who serve on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ staff—to brainstorm asymmetric strategies that U.S. adversaries might deploy. Military planners should develop ways for U.S. forces to keep fighting if opposing militaries degrade American communications, intelligence, and other systems—just as U.S. forces are planning to degrade adversaries’ systems. AI allows planners and strategists to run many more simulations of these scenarios than they could in the past.

The U.S. armed forces needs hardware that helps them adapt faster.

To prepare for the future, however, the Pentagon shouldn’t only have strategists do red-team drills. Soldiers themselves must do them—and treat each one as a laboratory for trying new tactics. American forces need frequent, realistic field exercises that stress test units in contested environments to improve their improvisational skills. Troops should also undergo exercises that are longer than the standard two weeks, so they can learn how to better resupply and overcome logistical hurdles. During these exercises, U.S. officials should mandate that the troops who are role-playing as the adversary develop and employ asymmetric tactics.

The army’s “transformation in contact” exercise, carried out this fall through the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, was a good step in this direction. Although this exercise was not long enough to fully test the U.S. military’s resupply capabilities, it did begin to emphasize the logistical and technological challenges that U.S. troops could face in the wars of the future. It also included all the services, not just the army, plus military personnel from seven allied countries. Many of its 75 experiments involved new technologies. Critically, the exercise placed soldiers in situations in which events did not proceed according to plan.

Exercises are essential to improving the military’s adaptability and forcing it to think through new scenarios. But to prepare for Ukraine-like wars, the U.S. armed forces also need new hardware that helps them adapt faster. The U.S. military, for example, must design and procure modular systems—or systems made up of commercially available components that can be easily replaced and upgraded. In theory, the Pentagon already requires a “Modular Open Systems Approach” for any new weapons program, when feasible. But in practice, the military has carved out overly broad exceptions because producing modular systems can initially be more costly and time-consuming than producing nonmodular ones. In the long run, however, modular designs save both money and time by reducing the costs of sustaining older systems. The military, for example, maintains older ships, tanks, and planes for decades. As a result, 70 percent or more of the lifetime cost of these systems is incurred after initial procurement.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was meant to last three days

Expanding productive capacity and creating supply chains ready to produce enough war materiel—especially drones and munitions—will almost certainly be a lengthy endeavor. The United States, after all, is starting far behind. Today, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force have only 300 ships and 5,000 aircraft, respectively, a shadow of what they had during World War II. The United States is set to produce less than a tenth as many drones as Russia and Ukraine will each make this year. Washington will thus have to make substantial investments in both domestic and allied-based drone component companies. (It must also stockpile drones, drone parts, and munitions to avoid running out of these goods when wars inevitably last longer than expected.) But with a $900 billion defense budget, Washington has the money to catch up. Today, only 20 percent of this budget goes to buying ships, tanks, planes, software, or any other kind of kit for troops. The government could up that percentage by reallocating some of the 17 percent of the budget currently dedicated to developing new exquisite platforms, which, as Ukraine has shown, are likely vulnerable to asymmetric attacks by the time they are fielded.

The United States can also speed up by adopting advanced manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, which better allow for replenishment and upgrades in the field. The country is already home to several startups that are building 3D-printed drone assembly systems that fit entirely within a 20-foot shipping container and reactors that can make hydrogen fuel on site with just a metal catalyst and seawater. These systems can help ensure that frontline soldiers and commanders get what they need quickly rather than waiting for weeks for supplies to come in. A damaged F-35, for example, might take months to fix, if it can be fixed at all, as the military waits for manufacturers to produce a new custom component. A modular drone can be repaired in a matter of days with parts sitting on a shelf, or less time if the parts can be printed.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was meant to last three days; instead, it has dragged on for four years. The United States needs to study why Moscow, previously thought of as a leading military power, failed and why Kyiv has performed so well. Washington must learn how weaker opponents can surprise stronger ones, prepare to iterate rapidly, and start producing large quantities of low-cost capabilities. These new paradigms of conflict are not easily or quickly internalized, which is exactly why adopting them requires urgency and large-scale focus.

Foreign Affairs · More by Michael Brown · February 17, 2026

11. Regular or Unleaded? Differentiating Irregular Warfare

Summary:

The article argues DoDI 3000.07 defines Irregular Warfare with criteria like indirect, non-attributable, and asymmetric activity, but those traits also appear in conventional war, so they do not reliably differentiate. This ambiguity complicates planning and approval. The authors propose a complementary differentiator: the level of state stewardship, meaning state authority, entitlement, and responsibility. Using the “present-in” test, irregular warfare is identified by the presence of irregular forces, such as militias, criminals, insurgents, and disenfranchised groups. They adapt Burrell’s spectrum model by replacing the direct versus indirect axis with state stewardship, to better align activity labels with doctrine, laws, and authorities, and to categorize mixed environments where conventional and irregular warfare can occur simultaneously.

Excerpt:

“Our language provides us with a set of percepts that serves as a code for other percepts.” Words, whether written or spoken, are icons or signs that represent ideas or concepts. Our ability to collaborate and coordinate our activities depends on our shared understanding of words. In any activity, from refueling a vehicle to sports, business, and warfare, the words we use help identify actions appropriate to the conditions and to apply the rules of the environment to achieve objectives. Labels like “Unleaded” helped drivers select fuel for their vehicles compatible with the vehicle’s equipment. Assessing the extent of state stewardship, recognition, and entitlement granted to combatants can help commanders identify the presence of irregulars and appropriately categorize their operations and activities. Recognizing the presence of irregular forces in a contest may allow commanders and staff to leverage the distinct laws, authorities, and procedures required to support or target non-state forces.

Comment: If “indirect” fits everything, then the label becomes a permission slip, and that invites gaming of authorities and approvals. State stewardship is a governance lens, not a tactics lens, so it can clarify legal and policy pathways when the real fight is over legitimacy. In cognitive warfare terms, naming the contest correctly matters, because the category shapes what commanders believe is allowed, expected, and effective.

If mixed warfare is normal, how should joint staffs prevent category confusion from slowing decisions when time is the scarce resource?

Regular or Unleaded? Differentiating Irregular Warfare

by Chad Machiela, by Seth Gray

02.19.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/19/regular-or-unleaded-differentiating-irregular-warfare/

Afghanistan 2010, Photograph by CW5 Chad Machiela.

Department of Defense Instruction 3000.07 defines Irregular Warfare with ambiguous criteria, including indirect approaches and asymmetric activities, which are also characteristic of conventional warfare. This lack of differentiating criteria complicates planning and approval processes. To provide a clearer distinction, this article proposes adding a complementary criterion, the level of state stewardship (state authority, entitlement, and responsibility), to differentiate state, or conventional, forces from irregular forces such as private militias, criminals, and disenfranchised groups. This model also proposes a model for visualizing and categorizing operations and activities within the spectrum of irregular and conventional warfare. Recognizing the presence of irregular forces in a contest will allow commanders to better apply the specific laws, authorities, and doctrines for supporting or targeting non-state forces.

In his work Cooperation in Change An Anthropological Approach to Community Development, Ward Goodenough explores the universal nature of cognitive structures, noting:

“Logic is in a formal sense a codification of the reasoning process, a set of rules of inference… In all societies, people not only reason, they judge one another’s reasoning as correct or incorrect. This means that in all societies there are generally accepted propositions about the manipulation of propositions. There is no society without a logic.”

Department of Defense Instruction 3000.07, Irregular Warfare (2025), provides commanders with definitions and policy guidance to conduct irregular warfare as a complement to other joint force activities, operations, and investments in competition and conflict. This instruction describes Irregular Warfare (IW) strategies and tactics as involving force or the threat of force for purposes other than physical domination over an adversary, and states, “IW is a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities.” This imprecise definition may be perceived as allowing commanders considerable flexibility in categorizing operations as irregular warfare. However, it also introduces significant ambiguity into the mission-planning and approval process. Indirect, non-attributable, and asymmetric approaches were common in warfare long before strategists began debating whether warfare was irregular or hybrid. Because these characteristics are present in both regular and irregular warfare, they cannot be used to distinguish between the two. Commanders and planners may complement the DODI’s description of irregular warfare by including an additional characteristic in mission analysis: the participation of irregular forces in conflict or competition.

After catalytic converters became standard equipment in new cars in 1975, drivers of new vehicles could no longer use gasoline that contained lead without damaging their vehicle’s engines. The introduction of “unleaded” gasoline rendered “gasoline” a retronym. To differentiate fuel types, refiners and vendors added “Unleaded” alongside their newly relabeled “Regular” gasoline. The labels categorized the fuel and simplified fuel selection for drivers. Either the vehicle had a catalytic converter and required unleaded gasoline, or it did not have one and could burn regular gasoline. To use Aristotelian categorization, lead was either “Present-in” the fuel, or it was “Not Present-In” the fuel. Drivers could rapidly choose the appropriate fuel and return to the road.

Characteristics in Common

The criteria used to identify irregular warfare, as provided by DODI 3000.07, “through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities,” do not distinguish between types of warfare because these characteristics are present in both conventional and irregular warfare. Fabius Maximus employed an indirect strategy against Hannibal in 216 B.C., cutting supply lines and destroying foraging parties after the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene to avoid direct conflict with Hannibal’s army. During the American Civil War, the Confederate Navy commissioned ships in Britain using false names, civilian crews, and shell companies, and attacked Union ships without attributing the action to the Confederacy. During the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, Germany’s 6th Panzer Army executed Operation Greif, sowing confusion behind Allied lines by altering rear-area road signs and spreading false orders. These efforts were considered warfare, neither conventional nor irregular.

People’s Liberation Army officers Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui describe “Unrestricted Warfare” as the use of armed and unarmed, military and civilian, and lethal and non-lethal means. Similarly, Lt. Col. Frank Hoffman, USMC Reserve (ret.) defines hybrid warfare as the simultaneous employment of conventional, irregular, and non-military tools to achieve strategic objectives, a world “in which machetes and Microsoft merge.” While both unrestricted and hybrid warfare are practical conceptual frameworks, neither is defined or even mentioned in the U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (DoD Dictionary) or Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Campaigns and Operations. This article will therefore focus on differentiating conventional and irregular warfare.

To leverage the panoply of instructions, directives, doctrine, field manuals, techniques publications, and case studies available to guide mission planning and operational art in both conventional and irregular war, commanders must first identify differentiating criteria that distinguish types of warfare. As both ancient and modern warfare include indirect, non-attributable, and asymmetric activities, these criteria do not differentiate between them. Commanders require additional criteria to distinguish irregular warfare from conventional war to the standard necessary to apply operational law and policies.

Distinguishing Characteristics

Naval Postgraduate School guest lecturer Chief Warrant Officer “Duc” DuClos summarizes in Defining the Indefinable: A Critical Analysis of Current Irregular Warfare Doctrine” an assessment of irregular warfare doctrine and proposes an actor-based differentiation: are irregular forces a significant component in the conflict? To categorize the type of warfare in an operational area, commanders and staff may assess the environment to determine the extent to which irregular forces are, or could, influence the achievement of strategic objectives. Because the presence of irregular forces provides a present-in differentiation criterion, commanders may subcategorize specific operations and activities based on whether units will work through, with, or against irregular forces.

The differentiation between conventional and irregular warfare is not merely academic. State forces generally hold a force advantage against irregular forces, but also an information disadvantage. State officials are incentivized to leverage their relative advantages to overcome the insurgents’ information disadvantage. The opposite is true for irregular forces. As irregular forces cannot match the state’s overall force level, they must leverage their information advantage to achieve a strategic, temporary local force advantage, apply their limited force asymmetrically, and prevent coordinated state responses by avoiding attribution for activities harmful to the contested population. These characteristics are integral to irregular warfare, but not exclusive to it. “The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgement that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking, neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.”

Systems theory (open or closed) approaches may further highlight the conceptual differences between irregular and regular or conventional warfare. Conventional warfare would most closely resemble a closed system, characterized by rigid hierarchical chains of command and low permeability to external system information beyond what is necessary for action. Behavior is internally determined by a closely followed doctrine; it is self-contained. Conversely, irregular warfare is an open system. For example, irregulars are part of the environment rather than an internal component of the conventional force. Open systems are characterized by complex self-organizing interactions. The historical examples above featured self-organizing agents pursuing sponsors’ objectives through adaptive behavior. The British goal of attacking American ships was achieved with self-organizing irregulars.

Modeling Conflict

University of South Florida Senior Research Fellow Robert Burrell, in “Resilience and Resistance: Interdisciplinary Lessons in Competition, Deterrence, and Irregular Warfare,” proposed a Full Spectrum of Conflict Design Model to differentiate conventional and irregular warfare, as depicted in Figure 1. This model plots the extent to which operations and activities employ a direct or indirect approach on the Y-axis, and the degree of conflict, ranging from peace to war, on the X-axis. The intersection of these variables categorizes activities into quadrants: deterrence, conventional warfare, competition, and irregular warfare. This model categorizes irregular warfare as the intersection of indirect approaches and war.

Figure 1. Burrell’s Full Spectrum of Conflict Design Model

Because indirect approaches are not exclusive to irregular warfare, the model cannot, in practice, differentiate activities that correspond to doctrinal descriptions. In Figure 2, this model is used to categorize the construction of a school in a remote Afghan village in 2013 by U.S. Army Civil Affairs personnel. Because operators employed an indirect approach during wartime, their operations are plotted in the irregular warfare quadrant in contrast to the DoD Dictionary’s classification of these activities as civil-military operations. In Israel on the 7th of October, 2023, Hamas’s raids (operations “to temporarily seize an area to secure information, confuse an enemy, capture personnel or equipment or destroy a capability culminating with a planned withdrawal) upon Israeli security positions employed a direct approach in either peace or war depending on one’s assessment of the state of conflict between Israel and Hamas on the 6th of October. This would plot the attacks on this model in either the Conventional Warfare or Deterrence quadrants. Because the U.S. Department of State has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, it defines these attacks as terrorism, not conventional warfare, despite Hamas’s employment of direct and asymmetrical approaches. The Military Information Support Task Force’s (MISTF) 2018 efforts in Afghanistan to influence public opinion in support of the elected government are modeled as Irregular Warfare, in contrast to the task force’s objectives.

Figure 2. Full Spectrum of Conflict Design Model in Application

To modify this model to differentiate regular from irregular warfare in a manner that plots activities in quadrants that match DoD Dictionary and doctrinal definitions, we can replace the direct/indirect approach of the Y-axis of the Full Spectrum of Conflict Design Model with the state’s level of authority, entitlement, responsibility, or state stewardship. Stewardship means the conduct, supervision, or management of something entrusted to one’s care. Stewardship denotes authority, responsibility, and the entitlement to perform duties commensurate with an office or position. Politicians assume authority upon taking office. A military officer has obligations under the oath sworn at commission and designated authority to execute their duties. Vested citizens have responsibilities associated with citizenship, such as paying taxes and responding to jury summons. Generally, as actors are granted more authority, more responsibility (and the public’s expectation of performance) follows. The level to which an individual is empowered or entitled by the state may be presented on a scale. Figure 3 illustrates a vertical scale of state stewardship, with state officials and officers at the top and reserve forces, city officials, and state employees in the upper middle. In the center are vested citizens and visa holders, often considered the “center of gravity” in irregular warfare. In the lower middle of the scale are undocumented immigrants and disenfranchised groups. At the bottom of the scale are criminals, insurgents, and foreign fighters, whose motives and actions may be counter to those of the state. Actors lower on the scale are granted fewer authorities and entitlements than those higher on the scale and are often less invested in and beholden to the state. They receive fewer of society’s benefits and therefore risk less when acting outside the community’s norms. In conflicts, combatants at the top of the scale are generally state-sponsored or “conventional” forces. Insurgents and resistance fighters from the bottom of the scale lack state sponsorship (or at least sponsorship from the nominally sovereign state) and are thus “irregular.”

Figure 3. Combatant State Stewardship

Figure 4 depicts this updated model again, using Civil Affairs, Hamas, and the MISTF in Afghanistan. When special operations Civil Affairs work with Afghan citizens to improve local infrastructure during war, these activities are conducted by state-sponsored combatants assisting vested citizens. They are, therefore, conventional civil-military operations despite the use of an indirect approach during active conflict. The MISTF’s attempts to sway the Afghan population to counter propaganda and support the Afghan government are also a form of conventional warfare, even when employing an indirect approach, non-attributable elements, and exploiting asymmetry between forces. Hamas’s attacks upon Israeli security outposts are not conventional warfare, despite their direct approach applied to a state-sponsored force, because Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State and lacks recognized state sponsorship. These attacks are therefore irregular warfare, competition, or terrorism, not conventional warfare or deterrence.

Figure 4. The Spectrum of Conflict Model, with Combatant State Stewardship as the Y-Axis

The elements that characterize a raid (i.e., temporarily seizing an area with a planned withdrawal) remain unchanged across different categories of forces. A guerrilla force raid on a government outpost constitutes irregular warfare, even when the raid employs direct methods, because irregular forces conduct the raid. A raid by state forces upon an insurgent command nexus is irregular warfare because the targets are irregular forces. The presence of irregular forces provides a present-in differentiation criterion for subcategorizing conflicts as conventional or irregular, complementing the use of indirect approaches, asymmetric techniques, and the avoidance of attribution.

A given operational area may feature more than one type of warfare simultaneously. Just as a task force may clear insurgents in one district, hold in another, and build governance structures in a third while supporting counterinsurgency, a task force commander may order one unit to pursue conventional lines of operation against an adversary’s state forces and a second unit to lead irregular forces in supporting attacks. Both units may execute both direct and indirect operations against the enemy. The presence of irregular forces in the second unit’s operations renders its warfare irregular.

Conclusion

“Our language provides us with a set of percepts that serves as a code for other percepts.” Words, whether written or spoken, are icons or signs that represent ideas or concepts. Our ability to collaborate and coordinate our activities depends on our shared understanding of words. In any activity, from refueling a vehicle to sports, business, and warfare, the words we use help identify actions appropriate to the conditions and to apply the rules of the environment to achieve objectives. Labels like “Unleaded” helped drivers select fuel for their vehicles compatible with the vehicle’s equipment. Assessing the extent of state stewardship, recognition, and entitlement granted to combatants can help commanders identify the presence of irregulars and appropriately categorize their operations and activities. Recognizing the presence of irregular forces in a contest may allow commanders and staff to leverage the distinct laws, authorities, and procedures required to support or target non-state forces.

Tags: Asymmetric Activities, Burrell’s Model, Civil-Military Operations, Cognitive Anthropology, conventional warfare, counterterrorism, DoDI 3000.07, Hybrid Warfare, irregular warfare, Military Doctrine, Mission Analysis, Operational Law, Psychological Operations, Spectrum of Conflict, State Stewardship, strategic deterrence, Systems Theory, Ward Goodenough

About The Authors

Chad Machiela
CW5 Chad Machiela (USA Retired) is a faculty research associate at the Naval Postgraduate School. He retired from the Army as a Special Forces warrant officer with over 30 years of special operations experience working throughout the Indo-Pacific, Central, and European Commands.
View all posts
Seth Gray
(M.A., M.S) is a faculty associate and PhD student in Information
Sciences at the Naval Postgraduate School where he has served for five years. He has 12 years of experience in the intelligence community in analytic and operational roles.

12. Where Power Begins: The Strategic Return of the Homeland

Summary:

The 2026 National Defense Strategy re-centers homeland defense as a primary, contested mission, because the homeland is no longer a sanctuary amid cyber intrusion, information warfare, and critical infrastructure threats. Using 19th-century campaigns of the 7th Infantry Regiment, it claims homeland defense has always been a persistent campaign requiring legitimacy, endurance, and protection of economic and infrastructural lifelines. Frontier operations show success measured in freedom of movement, trade continuity, and the gradual extension of civil authority under political scrutiny, where too much force harms legitimacy and too little invites disorder. The Mexican–American War illustrates that secure ports, logistics, and domestic cohesion enable expeditionary power, so interior security preserves strategic freedom of action.

Excerpts;

The strategic environment has changed dramatically since the 19th century. However, the underlying problem remains unchanged. A nation that neglects its interior security risks strategic paralysis, regardless of how capable its forces may be overseas. The frontier campaigns and Mexican–American War service of the Cottonbalers remind us that homeland defense has always been central to American military success when employed as an active, enduring campaign.

In reframing the homeland as a contested domain, the 2026 NDS acknowledges a reality that earlier generations of soldiers understood. Securing the homeland is not a retreat inward. It is about preserving the strategic freedom of action on which military power depends for success. Its emphasis on homeland defense is a return to American strategic tradition.

Comment: Legitimacy is treated as a combat multiplier at home, since enforcement that looks predatory can break confidence faster than any strike. If the homeland is contested, then power projection becomes conditional. You cannot sustain reach abroad if lifelines at home are brittle.

If homeland defense is a campaign, what does “success” look like when instability is managed rather than eliminated?

If legitimacy is central, how should forces apply restraint without creating gaps that invite disruption and political doubt?

If protecting infrastructure is a center of gravity, which nodes are truly decisive, and who owns their defense in practice across civil and military lines?

Where Power Begins: The Strategic Return of the Homeland

by Matthew Paul

02.19.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/19/where-power-begins/

Abstract: The 2026 National Defense Strategy reestablishes homeland defense as a primary and contested mission, reflecting historical lessons that a secure interior is the foundation of American power projection. Drawing on the 19th‑century campaigns of the 7th Infantry Regiment, this article demonstrates that homeland defense has always been a persistent campaign requiring legitimacy, endurance, and protection of economic and infrastructural lifelines. These historical insights show that securing the homeland is an enabling condition for global reach and sustained expeditionary operations in today’s competitive security environment.

The Strategic Return of the Homeland

The 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS) marks a consequential shift in American defense thinking. For the first time in decades, homeland defense has been elevated from an assumed condition to a contested mission, central to deterrence, resilience, and strategic endurance. In an era defined by great-power competition, cyber intrusion, information warfare, and attacks on critical infrastructure, the strategy recognizes that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary. It is an active domain of competition and campaigning. It is one where adversaries seek advantage below the threshold of armed conflict by targeting the foundations of national power rather than its forward-deployed forces.

This emphasis is often treated as a modern adaptation to new technology and emerging threats. However, the strategic logic underpinning the 2026 NDS is hardly new. It reflects an enduring American reality that a nation must secure its interior as a key and essential condition to sustain power abroad. This was learned early, repeatedly, and often painfully during the Army’s 19th-century campaigns to secure borders, enforce sovereignty, and enable national growth.

Few units illustrate this continuity more clearly than the 7th Infantry Regiment, known as the “Cottonbalers.” From persistent frontier operations to expeditionary campaigning in the Mexican–American War, this regiment’s experience demonstrates that homeland defense has never been a peripheral mission. It has always been the strategic foundation of American power projection.

These 19th century campaigns offer a useful historical lens for understanding why the new NDS refocuses on homeland defense. It is a reaffirmation of how the U.S has historically preserved strategic freedom of action.

The Cottonbalers are one of the oldest active infantry regiments in the U.S. Army, with continuous service dating back to 1812. The regiment earned its distinctive nickname when its soldiers used tightly packed cotton bales to reinforce defensive positions against British assaults during Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. The improvised defenses proved effective, and the image of infantrymen fighting from behind cotton bales became a lasting symbol of adaptability, endurance, and determination under pressure.

Distinctive Unit Insignia of the 7th Infantry Regiment “Cottonbalers”

Over the next two centuries, the Cottonbalers would serve repeatedly at the intersection of homeland defense and expeditionary warfare, from frontier campaigns and continental expansion to global conflicts. I served in the 7th Infantry Regiment from 2000 to 2003, a period characterized by this continuity and continuum. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the regiment supported homeland defense missions as the Army rapidly adapted to a newly contested domestic security environment. Less than two years later, those same soldiers deployed forward to participate in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That experience transitioning directly from homeland security to projecting combat power abroad mirrors the historical pattern that has defined the Cottonbalers and other U.S. military formations since 1815. Furthermore, it reinforces the central argument of this article that homeland defense and expeditionary warfare are mutually reinforcing missions.

These 19th century campaigns offer a useful historical lens for understanding why the new NDS refocuses on homeland defense. It is a reaffirmation of how the U.S has historically preserved strategic freedom of action. By examining frontier campaigns and the Mexican–American War as complementary case studies, the article highlights homeland defense as a continuous campaign, not a contingency. It is one that remains essential in today’s competitive security environment.

Frontier Campaigns: Homeland Defense as Persistent Competition

The U.S. Army’s mission in the 19th century mostly centered around securing contested interior space. Expeditionary warfare against peer states was nascent and rare. The frontier was often an ambiguous, fluid zone where federal authority, economic expansion, local populations, and non-state violence intersected. The Army’s greatest challenge was establishing and maintaining control over space critical to national cohesion through sustained, low-level campaigning and persistent engagement.

This balance between restraint and enforcement was a central strategic challenge, not a tactical inconvenience.

The Cottonbalers’ frontier service illustrates this reality. Companies of the 7th Infantry were routinely dispersed across vast distances, tasked with manning isolated forts, patrolling lines of communication, escorting commerce, and responding to localized violence that rarely resembled conventional warfare. Strategic success was often measured in freedom of movement, continuity of trade, and the gradual extension of civil authority. Large, decisive clashes between opposing forces were few and far between.

These operations demanded persistence rather than episodic deployment. Units remained forward for years, sometimes decades, operating in legally ambiguous environments under intense political scrutiny. Excessive force risked delegitimizing federal authority while insufficient presence invited disorder. This balance between restraint and enforcement was a central strategic challenge, not a tactical inconvenience.

The Seminole Wars and Strategic Endurance

The Cottonbalers’ participation in the Seminole Wars highlights the enduring difficulty of homeland defense campaigns. These conflicts were characterized by elusive adversaries, sanctuary terrain, unclear end states, and growing political fatigue. Tactical engagements were frequent, but decisive victory proved elusive. Instead, the Army was forced into a prolonged effort to deny adversaries uncontested space, protect settlements, and maintain federal credibility.

The strategic lesson was sobering. Homeland defense often involves managing instability rather than eliminating it. Tactical success did not guarantee strategic resolution. Political legitimacy, endurance, and coordination with civil authorities mattered as much as battlefield performance. These dynamics mirror modern homeland defense challenges including countering cyber threats, malign influence, border security, and asymmetric disruption. Total victory is neither realistic nor required, but persistent pressure is essential.

Economic Security and Strategic Assurance

Just as frontier forts safeguarded trade corridors and territorial claims, modern homeland defense focuses on preserving the systems that underpin national power.

Frontier deployments were frequently tied to the protection of economic nodes including river crossings, trade routes, settlements, and emerging infrastructure. These locations were strategically vital to national growth. By securing them, the Army functioned as a guarantor of economic security, ensuring that commerce and migration could proceed despite persistent threats.

This role has a direct modern parallel. The 2026 NDS emphasizes the protection of critical infrastructure with the recognition that ports, transportation networks, energy systems, and information architectures are strategic centers of gravity. Just as frontier forts safeguarded trade corridors and territorial claims, modern homeland defense focuses on preserving the systems that underpin national power. In both cases, protection is tactically important, but strategic assurance remains critical to convince adversaries that disruption will fail to reassure the population that the state remains capable and present.

Legitimacy as a Strategic Requirement

Perhaps the most enduring lesson from the Cottonbalers’ frontier service is the centrality of legitimacy. Security achieved without legitimacy proved temporary. Heavy-handed enforcement risked resistance and political backlash while absence invited disorder. Navigating this tension required discipline, restraint, and adaptability. These qualities are as relevant to modern homeland defense now as they were to 19th-century frontier operations.

The Army’s ability to protect communities without appearing predatory directly influenced stability, public confidence, and long‑term success.

The Cottonbalers’ frontier experience shows that legitimacy was often as decisive as firepower. Too much force risked eroding federal credibility, while too little presence invited instability. During the Second Seminole War, elements of the 7th participated in broader Army tactics such as destroying crops and seizing livestock. These tactics were meant to deny Seminole fighters sanctuary but often swept in noncombatants. These measures fueled political backlash and reinforced perceptions that federal authority was coercive rather than protective.

At other points, small detachments of the 7th adopted overly cautious postures, remaining close to isolated forts. Seminole bands exploited these gaps to raid settlements and disrupt trade, leading settlers and territorial leaders to question whether the Army could provide consistent security.

Both patterns underscored that legitimacy was not a moral extra; rather, it was a strategic requirement. The Army’s ability to protect communities without appearing predatory directly influenced stability, public confidence, and long‑term success. These same pressures echo in today’s homeland defense environment.

The frontier campaigns demonstrate that homeland defense has always been a campaign, not a contingency. It requires patience, persistence, and acceptance of ambiguity. Warfighting can take many forms. On the frontier, it was quiet work that enabled national consolidation and long-term power projection.

The Mexican–American War: Homeland Security as the Enabler of Expeditionary Power

If frontier campaigns illustrate homeland defense as persistent interior competition, the Mexican–American War demonstrates its complementary role. Together, these cases challenge the false dichotomy between defending the homeland and projecting power abroad. In fact, homeland security served as the enabling condition for expeditionary success.

Ports, borders, transportation networks, and economic lifelines within the United States had to remain protected for the campaign to succeed.

The Mexican–American War was the United States’ first large-scale expeditionary conflict beyond its immediate borders. It required amphibious landings, extended logistics, sustained operations deep inside sovereign territory, and the political will to prosecute war far from home. This operational audacity rested on the crucial assumption that the homeland was sufficiently secure to absorb risk in foreign territory.

Ports, borders, transportation networks, and economic lifelines within the United States had to remain protected for the campaign to succeed. If instability at home had threatened logistics, legitimacy, or domestic cohesion, the entire operation from Veracruz to Mexico City would have been at elevated risk. The outcome of the war itself may have been different. The Cottonbalers’ participation in this important campaign echoes the strategic imperative reflected in the 2026 NDS that power projection begins at home.

Victory and Vulnerability: How Expansion and Infrastructure Shaped Strategic Risk

The Mexican–American War is often remembered as a decisive military success, characterized by rapid maneuver and battlefield dominance. Its strategic legacy was more complex. Territorial expansion brought new governance challenges, internal political divisions, and long-term security obligations that extended well beyond battlefield victory.

That historical reality mirrors modern homeland defense priorities. The security of today’s ports, rail networks, energy grids, data centers, and cyber infrastructure is just as essential to sustaining expeditionary operations as interior logistics were in the 1840s.

For the Army, the war revealed the tension between operational success abroad and strategic sustainability at home. Victory transformed but did not eliminate risk. This mirrors modern concerns about escalation management, legitimacy, and post-conflict obligations in an era of great-power competition. The lesson here is that expeditionary warfare should be anchored to a resilient homeland capable of absorbing second and third-order effects.

One of the most overlooked aspects of the Mexican–American War is its reliance on interior infrastructure. Ports, depots, roads, and rivers within the United States formed the backbone of sustained operations. Without secure domestic logistics and economic continuity, expeditionary success would have been impossible. That historical reality mirrors modern homeland defense priorities. The security of today’s ports, rail networks, energy grids, data centers, and cyber infrastructure is just as essential to sustaining expeditionary operations as interior logistics were in the 1840s. The Cottonbalers’ experience reinforces that homeland defense prevents attack and preserves freedom of action.

Complementarity, Not Competition

Where frontier campaigns emphasized legitimacy, presence, and endurance, the Mexican–American War rewarded speed, maneuver, and decisive action. However, both depended on a homeland secure enough to sustain risk and support prolonged military effort. This contrast is instructive. Homeland defense and expeditionary warfare can be simultaneous and mutually reinforcing tasks. One does not necessarily need to happen before the other.

This insight challenges modern assumptions that prioritizing homeland defense necessarily constrains global reach. History suggests the opposite. The United States has often been most effective abroad when it invested deliberately in securing its interior politically, economically, and militarily. The clearest illustration came during World War II, when the United States’ rapid expansion overseas was only possible because of a homeland secured through industrial mobilization, coastal defense, and continental air surveillance. The “Arsenal of Democracy” enabled the U.S. to project decisive power abroad without fear of domestic vulnerability undermining its campaigns.

Conclusion: Implications for the 2026 NDS

The U.S. has finite resources and it pays a premium for the best military in the world. Positioning and deploying forces for campaigns at home and abroad are difficult choices that consume combat power. Inability to deploy sufficient forces forward limits strategic options and can fail to reassure important allies. This is a valid argument and concern. However, if the U.S. Military tries to be strong everywhere, it will be strong nowhere. Consequently, the 2026 NDS seeks to prioritize limited military resources on the home front. The alternative could mean a weaker power base at home, risking U.S. Military credibility and deterrence around the world.

Securing the homeland is not a retreat inward. It is about preserving the strategic freedom of action on which military power depends for success.

The 2026 NDS reflects a recognition that strategic competition increasingly targets the foundations of national power rather than forward-deployed forces alone. Cyber intrusion, economic coercion, information warfare, and attacks on infrastructure represent modern equivalents of 19th-century threats that could have crippled expeditionary campaigns had they gone unaddressed.

The Cottonbalers’ 19th-century experience offers enduring insights for contemporary homeland defense. First, homeland defense is a campaign, not a contingency. It requires persistence, legitimacy, and coordination across military and civilian institutions. Second, homeland security enables expeditionary power. Securing ports, infrastructure, and economic lifelines is a prerequisite for sustained operations abroad. Lastly, strategic actions at home often enable decisive action abroad. Neglecting interior security degrades deterrence, invites external pressure, and constrains strategic choice.

The strategic environment has changed dramatically since the 19th century. However, the underlying problem remains unchanged. A nation that neglects its interior security risks strategic paralysis, regardless of how capable its forces may be overseas. The frontier campaigns and Mexican–American War service of the Cottonbalers remind us that homeland defense has always been central to American military success when employed as an active, enduring campaign.

In reframing the homeland as a contested domain, the 2026 NDS acknowledges a reality that earlier generations of soldiers understood. Securing the homeland is not a retreat inward. It is about preserving the strategic freedom of action on which military power depends for success. Its emphasis on homeland defense is a return to American strategic tradition.

Tags: 7th infantry regiment, homeland security, Mexican-American War, National Defense Strategy, seminole wars

About The Author

Matthew Paul
Matthew C. Paul is an Army officer with a combined 27 years of service in infantry and acquisition assignments, including multiple combat tours in the Middle East. His career as a former infantry commander and current acquisition project manager spans leadership in ground combat and modernization efforts across the Army. Matt is co-author of Damn Fine Soldiers.

13. AI Racing Drone Beats Human Controlled FPV Racing Drones on Aerial Racetrack: An Overlooked ‘AlphaGo Moment’ with Future War Implications

AI Racing Drone Beats Human Controlled FPV Racing Drones on Aerial Racetrack: An Overlooked ‘AlphaGo Moment’ with Future War Implications

by SWJ Staff

02.19.2026 at 03:43am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/19/ai-racing-drone-beats-human-controlled-fpv-racing-drones-on-aerial-racetrack-an-overlooked-alphago-moment-with-future-war-implications/

AI Racing Drone Beats Human Controlled FPV Racing Drones on Aerial Racetrack: An Overlooked ‘AlphaGo Moment’ with Future War Implications

By: Dr. Robert J. Bunker of SWJ El Centro and Kaden K. Bunker

C/O Futures Weaponized Drone Research Note Series | 18 February 2026

“In April 2025 at the A2RL Drone Championship and Drone Champions League (DCL) competition in Abu Dhabi, an autonomous racing drone using neural network-based AI (artificial intelligence) control systems has—for the first time—beaten three human FPV (first person view) drone champions in a closed competitive aerial racing course. While this event with its head-to- head AI and human controlled drone knockout rounds has garnered little attention in the U.S. military and national security community, it is equivalent in some respects to the AlphaGo AI defeat of human Go champions in March 2016 and May 2017. The crossing of this former firebreak has implications for evolving war and conflict involving weaponized drone use on current and emergent battlefields globally.”

Download the analysis here.

14. State Department is gearing up to ‘roll out agentic AI’

Summary:

The State Department plans to “roll out agentic AI,” according to CIO Kelly Fletcher, building on StateChat and broader use of AI for translation, summarization, and other tasks. Fletcher links the shift to consolidating, standardizing, and simplifying “commodities” like devices and help desks to reduce administrative friction, with AI agents helping people do their jobs. The article notes agentic AI can act more autonomously than standard generative AI. A 2025 GAO report cited says current agents are still maturing, with one study finding the best agent completed about 30% of software development tasks end to end. State is training staff and expanding StateChat, including mobile access and custom GPTs, while also modernizing consular systems.

Comment: AI Agents are being pitched as a bridge over brittle legacy systems. That buys time, but it can also hide decay until a crisis tests resilience. In cognitive warfare terms, AI that reduces friction also compresses human deliberation. Faster work can mean faster mistakes if rules of the road lag adoption.

State Department is gearing up to ‘roll out agentic AI’

fedscoop.com · Matt Bracken

CIO Kelly Fletcher sees a future with agency consolidation and simplification, paired with AI agents that “make it easy for people to do their job” and “reduce administrative friction.”

Matt Bracken

February 13, 2026

https://fedscoop.com/state-department-agentic-ai-statechat-chatbots/

After successfully launching its own internal chatbot and normalizing the use of artificial intelligence tools for translation, summarization and other diplomatically beneficial uses, the State Department is eyeing the next step in its journey with the emerging technology.

“We’re going to roll out agentic AI,” State Department CIO Kelly Fletcher said Thursday during the FedScoop-produced GDIT Emerge event in Washington, D.C. “We’re going to continue to embed AI in our systems.”

The State Department has been a federal leader in AI adoption, reflected in robust use case inventories and a general embrace of the technology at its highest levels. Current tech leaders remain focused on trying to “democratize access to generative AI” throughout the agency, Fletcher said. That likely means that any shift toward agentic AI won’t come with a snap of the fingers.

Still, the department is currently looking to “consolidate and standardize and simplify around commodities,” she said, which could cover everything from end-user devices to help desks.

“It sounds really wonky,” Fletcher added, but “the more you can make it easy for people to do their job, to reduce administrative friction, the better off you’re going to be, right? Part of that is agents. Part of that is consolidation.”

Agentic AI systems are able to create content in the way generative AI can, but agents can take it several steps further by operating autonomously. Having autonomous capabilities means AI agents can complete more complex tasks and make decisions without direction from a human in the loop.

A September 2025 report from the Government Accountability Office’s Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics division noted that AI agents are currently used in areas such as software development and customer service. But there’s still plenty of maturing the technology has to do: Per the GAO, “a study found that the best performing AI agent tested was only able to autonomously perform about 30 percent of software development tasks to completion.”

Sarah Harvey, who authored the GAO report, said during an SNG Live event last month that it’s “pretty early to tell” how widespread agentic AI use is throughout the federal government, but the “opportunities are numerous.” She pointed specifically to operations and inventory management as areas of high potential for the technology’s usefulness.

Though the tech is in its relative infancy, there’s an expectation among some analysts that agentic AI could be built into a third of enterprise software applications by 2028. State’s 2025 use case inventory doesn’t explicitly list any agentic AI tools, but its workforce is growing increasingly comfortable experimenting with the tech in general.

“I love that people are building their own tools,” Fletcher said, “and they’re doing it in environments that are provisioned with safety, like security in place and with some amount of data available to them, and they’re building the tool that they need. So that’s sort of the overarching practice.”

For some department staffers, StateChat — the agency’s AI chatbot — may have been their gateway to artificial intelligence. State officials have worked toward a mobile version of the chatbot so employees can use it on their government-issued devices.

Fletcher said they’ve conducted training sessions at embassies to show diplomats how best to use the tool and what functionalities could be most useful for their work.

“We can look and see at that embassy, how does use of the tool change after that? And it grows by, you know, orders of magnitude,” Fletcher said.

At the January SNG Live event, a different State Department official revealed how StateChat has already leveled up after its late-2024 introduction. Isabel Rioja-Scott, the agency’s director for AI workforce enablement, said State had “just launched custom GPTs” for the chatbot.

“We’re seeing missions also kind of design their own solutions with these tools in hand,” Rioja-Scott said. “I think there are real challenges that we’re working through. … We need to write rules of the road to use this safely. It should also be enabling. It should be that balance so that we can use these tools effectively for our mission.”

As for Fletcher, she’s focused on other tech priorities for 2026, including the modernization of consular applications, such as visas, passports and an “underlying system” that “needs some work.” But she’s also focused on pushing generative AI adoption and setting the stage for the looming agentic AI revolution.

“My vision is that we’re going to slap AI agents on top of older systems to buy us some time, right?” Fletcher said. “We’re going to prioritize those systems that are, like, really expensive to maintain, lack resilience. We’re going to fix those first.”

Written by Matt Bracken

Matt Bracken is the editor in chief of FedScoop. Before joining Scoop News Group in 2023, Matt worked in various editing, reporting and digital roles at Morning Consult, The Baltimore Sun and the Arizona Daily Star. You can reach him on Signal at MattBracken.33 or email him at matt.bracken@scoopnewsgroup.com.

fedscoop.com · Matt Bracken

15. Are We at an AI Precipice?

Summary:

The debate over whether artificial intelligence is about to trigger mass human obsolescence reflects less a single forecast than a collision of intellectual traditions. Technologists tend to see exponential curves. Economists see frictions. Political thinkers see legitimacy risks. Social theorists see meaning crises. The viral essay that sparked the discussion functions as a catalyst rather than a conclusion. It captures a shift in mood among technologists who believe recent advances in coding agents and large models mark a phase change rather than steady progress. Yet the expert responses reveal a deeper truth. The real question is not whether AI is powerful. It is whether power translates into systemic transformation.

Comment: The viral X essay by Matt Shumer is very much worth reading and pondering. It is at this link: https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403

Are We at an AI Precipice?

thefp.com

A viral essay argues AI is about to make most human work obsolete. We asked Noah Smith, Andrew Yang, Tyler Cowen, Gary Marcus, and others to weigh in.

By The Editors

02.17.26 —

https://www.thefp.com/p/are-we-at-an-ai-precipice

A viral X essay ricocheted around the tech world last week. Written by a young tech founder named Matt Shumer and titled “Something Big Is Happening,” it told readers that “this might be the most important year of your career.” Shumer argued that AI was about to bring the world of work a disruption as sudden and dislocating as the shutdown at the onset of Covid—but even more comprehensive. And it would be permanent. The essay received more than 80 million views.

We are on the edge of a precipice, Shumer claimed, urging that anybody who wasn’t fully taking advantage of AI in their work needed to start doing so immediately—and that everyone should get their finances in order to prepare for the upheaval that is very quickly coming. His argument hinged not just on predictions of what was coming, but on the power that AI has already attained. If you’re not maximizing the use of AI, you will soon be obsolete. Or so Shumer says.

Shumer’s essay seemed to catch a big change in the mood of the tech world. That AI is transformative is no secret. But for those closest to the tech, the changes suddenly seem to be happening with lightning speed. Are we in fact on the edge of the great AI cliff? And perhaps more directly: Should we be terrified? We asked some of the best thinkers on AI—both believers and skeptics—a simple question: Is something big happening?

Noah Smith: People Needed to Hear This Warning

“Something Big is Happening” alerted a lot of people to the incredibly rapid progress being made in AI-enabled coding. For years we’ve been expecting AI to get good enough so that it starts displacing large numbers of people from their jobs, and this might finally be the moment. Of course, technology is always taking away various kinds of jobs—file clerks and data entry specialists don’t exist anymore. But there’s a real fear that this time is different—that the coming of a technology as flexible and powerful as AI will leave many people’s careers permanently devastated, as the advent of industrial technology left many craftspeople’s livelihoods devastated in the 1700s.

The fear is valid; there’s no guarantee that either the economy or people’s skill sets will be flexible enough to recover from a shock like the one AI may now be delivering. But beyond that, there’s a deeper fear—the worry that the coming of AI means that humanity in general has simply been superseded by something smarter, as humanity superseded the other animals. (You can read more about that here.)

That shift would be about far more than jobs, of course; it would affect our species’ very destiny, our future on this planet and others, our ability to protect ourselves, and potentially even our very survival as a species. AI doesn’t yet have the end-to-end automation of the digital and physical world that it would need in order to supplant humanity entirely, but engineers and researchers are hard at work on developing those capabilities even as we speak. Jobs may be the canary in the coal mine for that sort of general disempowerment—the end of the days when humanity was the smartest and most powerful thing on Earth.

Noah Smith is the writer of Noahpinion, a leading Substack about economics.

Gary Marcus: AI Is Big. So Is the Hype.

Shumer’s essay is a masterpiece of hype, written in the style of the old direct-marketing campaigns, with boldfaced callouts like “I know this is real because it happened to me first” and “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job.” It’s chock-full of singularity vibes. Shumer says he just tells an AI, “I want to build this app,” and it writes thousands of lines of code, allegedly near-perfect.

What’s missing from the discussion is data. The essay is weaponized hype that tells people what they want to hear but stumbles on the facts, especially with respect to reliability. Shumer gives no actual data to support this claim that the latest coding systems can write whole complex apps without making errors. Shumer cites a benchmark that says that AIs can now do programming tasks that take humans five hours but neglects to say that “passing” on benchmark means succeeding just half the time.

He also skips mentioning that the newest AI systems are more suited to coding (which can be independently verified) than to human cognitive tasks writ large. No AI system can reliably do every five-hour-long task humans can do without error, or even close, but you wouldn’t know that reading Shumer’s blog, which largely ignores all the hallucination and boneheaded errors that are so common in everyday experience.

And of course Shumer ignores the flood of research about AI reasoning errors. There is one thing that Shumer is right about: You can let the latest AI systems rip more, and they’ll deliver a lot of code. A friend skilled in programming pointed out to me that in the last couple of months it feels much more like you can give a description of what you want done and “let it go.” But that, my friend points out, makes it more dangerous. What you are getting is likely to be filled with errors, hallucinations, and insecure code. As my friend put it, “Generally, the closer these systems are to appearing right, the more dangerous they become because people become increasingly at ease just trusting them when they shouldn’t.”

Gary Marcus is an emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, and the founder of two companies. Known for his challenges to contemporary AI, he writes the widely read Marcus on AI newsletter.

Tyler Cowen: Progress Will Be Slower Than People Think

Strong artificial intelligence is going to change all our lives, and also our jobs. I already use large language models 20 or 30 times in the course of a typical workday. Their import will increase further as they are integrated into workflows rather than serving as “add-ons” used by freelancers on the side.

But progress (some would say regress) will be much slower than many people think. Artificial intelligence can invent all sorts of new drugs, or at least come up with new drug ideas. True, but FDA approval can take 10 years, and furthermore, our system of clinical trials is expensive and time-consuming. It will take a long time before there is a flood of effective new drugs, medical devices, and treatments on the market.

You think lawyers are going out of business? Well, top-quality AI models do know a lot about the law, but we are going to need a lot of new laws to govern the AIs themselves. I predict we will not entrust that task to the AIs, even though they will help us quite a bit. The demand for consultants will skyrocket, because few if any people know how to integrate AI models into their companies and schools. And so on.

White-collar employment is not going away anytime soon, even though most of us will have to learn how to work with AI models every day. In some very distant future, will all that work be done by the AIs? Maybe. In the meantime, the more the AIs advance, the more that human and institutional imperfections will constrain us and slow down the transformation of our world.

Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University, the faculty director of the university’s Mercatus Center, and a Free Press columnist. Earlier this month he wrote about the dramatic breakthrough in AI abilities.

Andrew Yang: The Social Contract Will Be Vaporized

As the guy who jumped up and down for the better part of three years saying, “AI is coming, it’s going to wipe out millions of jobs,” I ran for president in 2020 in part to prepare people for the displacement and destabilization that I saw coming. I know that we could and should be doing much more for the people and families of this country. In the absence of that kind of coming together, we are left with every-person-for-yourself in the face of the greatest technological transformation of our lifetimes.

These changes are happening faster than we thought. Do you sit at a desk and look at a computer much of the day? Take this very seriously. The social contract of “study hard, go to school, get a good job, live a decent life” is about to be vaporized. Upward mobility for most will be a thing of the past.

People are not going to take it well—particularly educated people who think that they deserve better. That’s an ingredient for revolt. There’s been a lot of talk this past year about how young people are lurching to the left, the growing popularity of socialism in the Democratic Party, and Zohran Mamdani as emblematic of the next wave of leaders.

Imagine what people are going to think when we all feel like serfs to AI overlords that have soaked up the white-collar work? The amount of money getting paid to human labor is about to go down. The value is going to get soaked up into the cloud. The K-shaped economy, where the rich enjoy the growth and keep spending while the bottom 80 percent or so are trying to tread water, will become all the more dramatic.

People and families are going to be left behind in large numbers. Of course, where financial ills and stresses increase, social ills follow in terms of broken relationships, addictive behavior, and despair. I’m sorry I don’t have better news here. But it’s going to get very rough out there for a lot of people. Make a plan. Be adaptable.

Andrew Yang is the CEO of Noble Mobile, co-founder of the Forward Party, a former presidential candidate, and author of Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?

Eric Markowitz: We Must Be More Than Our Tools

Over the last few hundred years, we began to see ourselves as separate from the natural world—masters of it, rather than participants in it. We built systems that prize speed above all else, and in doing so we lost the most fundamental lesson that nature teaches: Speed of growth makes you fragile. The tree that shoots up fastest is the first to fall in a storm. The ecosystems that endure—the ones that survive fire and drought and ice—are the ones that grew slowly, developed deep root systems, and built interdependence with the living things around them.

This is not about AI. I need to say that clearly, and I need you to hear it. This was never about AI. Every generation has faced a version of this moment. The printing press was going to destroy the church. The locomotive was going to destroy the human body. Electricity was going to destroy sleep. The assembly line was going to destroy craftsmanship. The internet was going to destroy truth. And every single time, the same question sat at the center of the panic, even if nobody quite said it out loud: Are we our tools, or are we something more?

The reason this moment feels so acute, so existential, is not because AI is uniquely powerful—although it is. It’s because AI has arrived at precisely the moment when we have already hollowed out so much of what makes work meaningful. I believe that the companies that survive the next era won’t be the ones that moved fastest. They will be the ones that moved with purpose. The ones that kept their people. The ones that chose meaning over margin, long-term resilience over short-term extraction, humanity over efficiency.

Eric Markowitz is managing partner and director of research at Nightview Capital and author of the forthcoming book Outlast.

Luis Garicano: Real Jobs Require Human Interaction

I believe AI is a huge deal and will radically change the world. But the world, and by extension many white-collar jobs, is messy: Automating the automatable tasks within them is not near to automating the job.

Let’s take the example of the housing crisis in London, as highlighted by the Financial Times earlier this week. London needs 88,000 new homes per year. In the first nine months of 2025, construction was started on just 3,248 private homes. Twenty-three of London’s 33 boroughs recorded zero new housing starts in the first quarter of 2025. Planning permissions have fallen to their lowest level since records began in 2006. Construction of new rental homes fell by 80 percent in a single year.

Does anyone think AI will fix this?

All the technology to design a building exists, and existed pre-AI. The bottleneck in London housing is human. AI can draft the paperwork demanded by the excessive bureaucracy, but that is a trivial issue. It cannot convince an environmental group to drop its lawsuit or persuade politicians or negotiate with the neighbors. Those who think that AI will destroy all jobs imagine that project managers are merely “sitting down at a computer” and dream of automating them. But the job of the planners is not to fill in forms but to negotiate and coordinate developers, residents, environmental groups, heritage bodies, and elected politicians who all have incompatible interests.

At other levels and in other jobs the same is true—radiologists spend only one-third of their time reading scans. Their job was supposed to be gone in 2017; in fact, the demand for radiologists is booming (employment and wages are sharply up). Yes, if you spend your day just doing PowerPoints, you will be replaced. But how many people do just that?

Organizations and managers resolve conflicts and deal with exceptions. Making a decision stick requires authority: being a person who can be blamed, sued, or fired. The manager resolves disputes about the rules, not just within them.

AI will make white-collar workers more productive. Some single-task, automatable roles will shrink and many tasks will be automated. The disruption of career ladders is a real concern. But claiming that most tasks would be fully automated in 18 months, as Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman recently did, is not a prediction. It is marketing, designed to sell enterprise subscriptions and justify capital expenditure. The real world is messy. The mess is not a bug. It is what happens when human beings with competing interests try to get things done together.

Luis Garicano is a professor of public policy at the London School of Economics and a former member of the European Parliament. His work studies the effect of knowledge and talent on economic growth.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

thefp.com

16. Tokyo’s strategic US investment surge puts China on edge

Summary:

Japan has begun a major investment wave into the United States after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s election win, starting with about $36 billion and framed as the first tranche of a potential $550 billion commitment tied to a prior tariff reduction on Japanese goods from 25% to 15%. It reports POTUS praised the deal and cited projects in Texas oil and gas, Ohio power generation, and Georgia critical minerals. Chinese commentators argue the deal could accelerate supply chain shifts away from China, reduce Japanese investment in China, and intensify competition in US and Japanese markets. The piece also describes China’s export controls and approvals affecting Japan-bound critical minerals after political tension linked to Taiwan remarks.

Comment: Japan is buying strategic time with capital. The tariff cut is leverage, and investment is the price of access. China reads this as containment by spreadsheet. Critical minerals sit at the center. Control of approvals and delays becomes a quiet weapon that shapes choices without open escalation.

Tokyo’s strategic US investment surge puts China on edge - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · Jeff Pao

Beijing quietly resumes rare‑earth exports to Japan, likely to avoid derailing warming ties with Washington

by Jeff Pao

February 19, 2026

https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/tokyos-strategic-us-investment-surge-puts-china-on-edge/

Japan has begun deploying the first tranche of what is expected to become a sweeping investment wave into the United States following the landslide election victory last week of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party.

The initial batch, worth about US$36 billion, is widely seen as the opening move in a much larger commitment that could eventually reach $550 billion, an amount Japan promised last July in exchange for Washington’s lowering of its “reciprocal” tariffs for Japanese goods from 25% to 15% last September.

“Our massive trade deal with Japan has just launched! Japan is now officially, and financially, moving forward with the first set of investments under its $550 billion commitment to invest in the United States of America,” US President Donald Trump says in a social media post.

He says the deal is a part of the United States’ historic trade deal to revitalize the American industrial base, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and strengthen the country’s national and economic security. He adds that the first batch of Japanese investment will include three major projects in strategic areas: oil and gas in Texas, power generation in Ohio and critical minerals in Georgia.

“The gas power plant in Ohio will be the largest in history, the liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in the Gulf of America will drive exports and further our country’s energy dominance, and our critical minerals facility will end our foolish dependence on foreign sources,” he says, without mentioning China’s dominance in global rare earth supply.

Chinese commentators say the shift signals a new phase in economic realignment, arguing that China will be indirectly hurt by a strengthening trade and investment tie between the US and Japan in several ways.

A Hunan-based columnist writing under the pen name Xu Sanlang argues that the US-Japan agreement could accelerate the shift of global supply chains away from China toward the US and its allies.

“Japan’s pledge to invest $550 billion and expand purchases of US cars and agricultural products will strengthen American manufacturing and farming competitiveness,” he writes. “Since 2010, Japan has steadily reduced its reliance on China and moved investment and supply chains to Southeast Asia, the US and Europe.”

He adds that US tariffs have further encouraged Japanese firms to relocate production.

Trump’s tariffs are pushing Japanese companies to move factories to the US or Southeast Asia,” he said, warning the shift could produce three consequences:

Japanese investment in China may decline;
Chinese exports to Japan could face stronger competition as Japan buys more American goods;
Chinese exports to the US may be squeezed by Japanese products facing much lower tariffs, especially in automobiles and electronics.

“The US trade deficit with China reached $279 billion in 2024, far higher than the $68.5 billion deficit with Japan,” Xu says, citing trade data to underline the pressure. “The US-Japan deal could further compress the room for China’s exports.”

“Cooperation on investment and LNG energy will also deepen the US-Japan strategic alliance,” he writes. “Washington is using tariffs to push allies to reduce trade with China, while Japan’s market opening and investment align with US policy. With US tariffs on Chinese goods at about 53.6% compared with roughly 15% on Japanese goods, it is clear that Washington is using differentiated tariffs to economically isolate China.”

A Jiangxi-based columnist writing under the pseudonym Wang Ye says the trade impact could emerge first.

“After the US-Japan trade agreement, Japan may adjust its trade policies toward the US, changing the competitive landscape with China in some sectors. For example, increased imports of US rice and other agricultural products could reduce Japan’s imports from other countries, including China,” Wang writes.

“If Japanese companies expand investment in the US, they may reduce investment and industrial transfers to China, affecting China’s import and export trade,” he says, adding that deeper US-Japan cooperation in key industries could marginalize China-linked supply chains and divert investment that might otherwise have gone to China.

Reciprocal tariffs

On April 2 last year, Trump announced new reciprocal tariffs of 25% on Japanese goods, as well as varying tariffs on other countries.

On July 23, the White House said the two countries had reached a trade deal under which Japan agreed to invest $550 billion in the US, while Washington would only impose a 15% tariff on imported Japanese goods.

Under the agreement, Japan promised to:

Immediately increase imports of US rice by 75% and expand import quotas;
Purchase $8 billion in US goods, including corn, soybeans, fertilizer, bioethanol and sustainable aviation fuel;
Expand US energy exports to Japan and explore an offtake deal for Alaskan LNG;
Buy US-made commercial aircraft, including 100 Boeing jets, and increase purchases of US defense equipment;
Lift long-standing restrictions on US cars and trucks and approve US automotive standards in Japan.

After the US and Japan moved to strengthen economic ties, a new incident heightened political tensions between China and Japan. On November 7 last year, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that any battleships or use of force against Taiwan could constitute a “survival‑threatening situation” for Japan, a legal threshold that could allow the country to activate its Self‑Defense Forces and potentially trigger US military support under the US‑Japan Security Treaty if Japan were attacked.

Beijing demanded that Takaichi withdraw the remarks, but she did not back down. On January 6, China announced tighter export controls on dual‑use items shipped to Japan. Media reports said China has imposed lengthy approval procedures on the shipment of critical minerals to Japan.

It is unclear whether Trump has put any pressure on Beijing, but Kyodo News reported on February 6 that China has approved several Japan-bound shipments. The approvals apparently came after Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone on February 4.

A Shandong‑based columnist says Beijing approved niche metal exports to Japan on February 5, as the ban was supposed to last 90 days from November 7, the day Takaichi made her pro-Taiwan remarks. He says exports for civilian use are acceptable, but China will continue to restrict shipments to Japanese defense contractors.

A Zhejiang‑based writer says in his column titled “Yuanheng Defense” that China should not rush to retaliate against Japan but instead maintain countermeasures and wait for the situation to change. He says Beijing may compromise with Washington on tariffs, debt and climate issues while waiting for the US to eventually stop supporting Japan’s right‑leaning politicians.

He adds that China’s scale in new energy, artificial intelligence and quantum computing could limit Japan’s room to maneuver. In his view, Japanese firms may struggle under China’s export controls and could eventually pressure Takaichi to soften her stance.

Read: China plays rare-earth card on Japan, but keeps it subtle

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

asiatimes.com · Jeff Pao

17. China gives Lithuania punishing silent treatment over Taiwan

Summary:

Lithuania’s 2021 decision to let Taiwan open a representative office in Vilnius under the name “Taiwan” triggered China’s response of “silence” rather than public threats. Beijing stopped engaging with Lithuania, its embassy presence thinned, and China applied quiet administrative pressure that effectively choked trade, erased Lithuania from customs systems, and signaled risks to European firms using Lithuanian components, leading some to drop Lithuanian suppliers. Freight routes were rerouted away from Lithuania, cutting rail volumes and revenue. The EU filed a WTO case in 2022; trade partially resumed and the EU withdrew the case in late 2025, while China continued non-engagement. The piece frames this as “cold-handling” diplomacy, where dialogue is the reward.

Comment: Silence is the message. China shows it can punish without a headline, and that makes retaliation harder to rally against. Network control is leverage. Customs codes, supply chains, and logistics routes become tools of coercion with plausible deniability. In cognitive warfare terms, the pressure targets confidence. It teaches firms and voters to self-censor before policy is even debated.

China gives Lithuania punishing silent treatment over Taiwan - Asia Times

asiatimes.com

Prime Minister Ruginiene likens China’s quiet but well-targeted retribution for engaging Taiwan to getting hit by a train

by Jan Krikke

February 18, 2026

https://asiatimes.com/2026/02/china-gives-lithuania-punishing-silent-treatment-over-taiwan/

When Lithuania challenged China over Taiwan four years ago, it expected argument or outrage. It got silence. What began as a bold stand for democracy and human rights collided head-on with China’s unyielding One China principle.

In 2021, Lithuania tested one of China’s most sensitive red lines. It allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius under the name Taiwan rather than the customary name of Taipei. The decision challenged China’s non-negotiable “One China Policy.”

Vilnius framed its decision in moral terms: a show of support for democracy and human rights in Taiwan. But it was not prepared for the consequences. China did not respond with threats, sanctions, or denunciations. It responded with silence and quiet “administrative” measures.

Without prior warning, China simply stopped engaging with the Lithuanian government. Beijing ignored requests for dialogue, and its embassy in Vilnius was largely vacated. The message was clear: there was nothing to discuss until Lithuania corrected its mistake.

In subsequent months, China applied quiet pressure on Vilnius through administrative channels. The name Lithuania vanished from Chinese customs systems. Trade between the two countries was largely choked off. Supply chains across Eurasia changed without public explanation, bypassing Lithuania.

By redirecting some of its trade, Lithuania partially recovered from the initial economic shock, but Prime Minister Inga e, elected in September last year, recently offered a striking mea culpa. She told the Baltic News Service, “I think Lithuania really jumped in front of a train and lost.”

Idealism meets realism

Lithuania’s challenge to China was fueled by idealism rather than realism. The asymmetry between the two countries could hardly be more pronounced. With a population of 3 million, Lithuania is one of the smallest countries in the world. China has over 50 cities with populations of more than 3 million.

The initial economic impact of China’s silent administrative measures was severe, affecting broad sectors of the Lithuanian economy.

Impact of China’s “administrative” measures on Lithuania during the first two years

In subsequent months, China signaled to European companies that goods containing Lithuanian components could face obstacles in the Chinese market. Major European manufacturers quietly dropped Lithuanian suppliers. For Lithuania, an export-oriented economy embedded in EU value chains, this amounted to systemic exclusion.

China’s response extended into infrastructure. Lithuania had positioned itself as a modest but strategically useful node in Eurasian rail networks linking China to Europe. After the diplomatic rupture, freight routes were quietly rerouted through neighboring countries.

Rail volumes through Lithuania fell sharply, depriving the national railway system and the port of Klaipėda of hundreds of millions of euros in revenue.

In January 2022, the EU launched a formal WTO dispute settlement case. It accused China of discriminatory and coercive measures against Lithuanian goods and EU products containing Lithuanian components.

The WTO case signaled European solidarity, and some trade flows gradually resumed. This allowed the EU to withdraw the case in late 2025. But China didn’t acknowledge wrongdoing and continued its broader strategy of diplomatic silence.

Core interest

Lithuania is not the first country to experience China’s silent treatment. After the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to dissident Liu Xiaobo in Norway, China froze high-level contact with Oslo for 6 years.

China did not react with formal measures, but Norway’s trade access narrowed and dialogue between the two countries ceased. Normalization of relations only followed after Norway issued a carefully worded statement acknowledging China’s “core interests.”

Australia faced years of diplomatic non-engagement and informal trade restrictions after calling for an inquiry into Covid-19’s origins amid accusations it either leaked from a lab or wet market in Wuhan, China, and tightening scrutiny of Chinese influence operations.

Australia’s dispute with China ended not through policy reversal, but through a change in tone and sequencing after Anthony Albanese took office in 2022. Albanese softened rhetoric and emphasized stabilization.

China responded incrementally: working-level contacts resumed first, then trade restrictions were quietly lifted and only later did high-level meetings and symbolic visits follow. This sequencing mattered. In China’s “cold-handling” diplomacy, dialogue itself is the reward, not the starting point.

China no longer needs to threaten or publicly punish states to enforce red lines. Control over networks, customs systems, supply chains, logistics routes, visa regimes and regulatory access enables quiet, persistent pressure with plausible deniability.

The diplomacy of silence is neither emotional nor improvised. It is a disciplined, calculated form of statecraft particularly suited to a multipolar environment. Influence is exercised through strategic absence, restraint and calibrated non-engagement rather than through overt action or declaratory confrontation.

Conceptually, this approach aligns with the ancient Chinese notion of wu wei, often mistranslated as “non-action,” but more accurately understood as highly informed restraint—acting through alignment, timing, and structural positioning instead of direct force.

Wu wei vs Idealism

In strategic terms, wu wei offers clear advantages in an interdependent world: overt confrontation invites escalation, coalition-building and reputational costs, whereas calibrated non-engagement allows pressure to accumulate quietly, minimizes blowback and preserves space for eventual normalization on the stronger actor’s terms.

Costly position

Ruginiene’s seeming admission that Lithuania had made a costly mistake in confronting China prompted a muted response at home.

The Lithuanian media largely treated it as a pragmatic acknowledgment of realities that had long been evident but seldom stated openly. Coverage moved away from moral defiance and toward a sober assessment of economic damage, supply-chain disruption, and diplomatic isolation.

While some commentators criticized the blunt phrasing, most interpreted it as a signal that the new government was prepared to reassess policy on strategic grounds.

Public reaction was divided but restrained. A core, strongly Atlanticist constituency continued to defend the Taiwan decision on moral grounds and viewed the statement as unnecessary. But a broader segment of society appeared fatigued rather than angry.

Business owners and workers affected by lost markets increasingly accepted that the costs of the confrontation had been underestimated. Polling and commentary suggested not a rejection of democratic values, but a declining appetite for symbolic foreign policy when it carries significant economic and material costs.

Lithuania’s experience shows China can project power through strategic withdrawal of engagement. Small states may act on values, but when they collide with what China considers its domestic affairs and core interests, the outcome is shaped by leverage, not the nobility of intent.

asiatimes.com

18. Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front

Summary:

Torrence frames Russia’s Baltic-Nordic pressure as a live-fire campaign in the electromagnetic spectrum. Civil flights divert from Vilnius as GNSS jamming and spoofing expand from Kaliningrad and the St. Petersburg region. NATO’s new Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest in Mikkeli treats degraded positioning, navigation, and timing as a standing condition, not an episodic “inject,” and pushes units back to maps, bearings, and time discipline. The point is strategic shaping: stress civilians, probe new NATO seams, and rehearse the reinforcement problem before anything turns kinetic.

Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · February 19, 2026

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/maneuver-under-a-lying-sky-russia-tests-nato-on-the-baltic-nordic-front/

Prologue: The Missed Approach

The first warning does not come from an intelligence summary. It comes from a missed approach over Vilnius. On the operations floor of the new Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest in Mikkeli, Finland, Captain Henrik Nyman watches a civil aviation display he is not supposed to care about. It lives in the corner of his screen as context, a way to judge how commercial traffic is flowing around military transit routes.

A Boeing on final approach to Vilnius drops through one thousand feet, hesitates, then claws its way back into the sky and bends west. A few seconds later the Lithuanian aviation authority pushes an advisory into the Eurocontrol feed. Suspected GNSS (global navigation satellite system) interference on final approach. Aircraft diverting to Warsaw. Nyman tags the incident in the ever-growing PNT log—the staff has a whole column for disruptions to positioning, navigation, and timing systems now. His cursor slides to another window, a heat map that overlays the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland.

Colored blotches show where receivers are losing lock, where ships and aircraft are reporting spoofed positions. The blotches have been getting larger for weeks. Tonight they pulse, especially along the Russian coast and around Kaliningrad. A small icon on his screen marks the suspected source of the worst interference near Kaliningrad. The intelligence section has given it a polite label: “probable long-range electronic warfare system.” Everyone just calls it the jammer.

Nyman adds a note to the log: “Suspected Russian GNSS jamming impacting civilian arrivals to Vilnius. Consistent with previous incidents.” He hits save and walks the printout across the operations floor to his boss.

Chapter 1: A New Northern Warfighting Headquarters

Brigadier Erik Halvorsen reads the line twice. He has watched similar reports stream across his desk for months. MCLCC-NW is NATO’s newest land headquarters. Officially it is Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest, subordinate to Joint Force Command (JFC) Norfolk. Unofficially it is the alliance’s experiment in running a land fight in the high north and the Baltic approaches with a Nordic-led staff.

The walls of the Mikkeli headquarters still smell of pine cleaner. Finnish Army Command used to live here. The coffee is still Finnish and strong enough to stand a spoon in. The national flag outside now shares a flag stand with NATO’s blue banner. Halvorsen walks to the main map board. On the board, the northern region is split into command seams. JFC Norfolk owns the northwestern regional defense plan, which now includes Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the United Kingdom, and the adjacent seas. JFC Brunssum handles the central region. JFC Naples watches the south.

Under JFC Norfolk, the maritime fight belongs to the naval component, the air campaign goes to the air component, and land goes to MCLCC-NW. That is the theory. In practice, the details are still being hashed out. Halvorsen looks up from the printout Nyman just brought him. “We have another diverted flight,” he says.

Nearby, the United States Navy liaison officer, Commander Nathan Lewis, looks up from his laptop. “Vilnius again?” he asks.

Nyman nods. “Suspected Russian jamming. Lithuanians reported loss of satellite approach guidance. Exact pattern matches last month’s spike.”

A large monitor on the wall shows the same heat map Nyman had viewed on his screen, and Halvorsen taps it. “Kaliningrad and the Saint Petersburg area,” he says. “Same Russian systems. Same aim. Make life harder for civilians and military alike. Make our planning harder.” He looks at Lewis. “Does JFC Norfolk still treat this as background noise?” he asks.

Lewis grimaces. “Norfolk is updating its assumptions,” he says. “The new regional defense plan annex assumes persistent PNT degradation over the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, and parts of Finland and Sweden in crisis. They expect land forces to treat Russian GNSS jamming as a standing condition.”

Halvorsen nods slowly. “Good,” he says. “Because this is starting to look less like weather and more like shaping fires.”

* * *

Two hundred kilometers northeast, an American battalion executive officer feels the effects long before anyone in Norfolk signs an annex. Major Elena Ruiz, United States Army, stands in a Finnish brigade command post with one hand on a paper map and one eye on the digital common operational picture. Her battalion is subordinate to the Finnish brigade and is the first US maneuver battalion operating under MCLCC-NW.

On the screen, blue force tracking icons drift. The sustainment company convoy moving along Route KARHU slides three hundred meters into the forest, then snaps back. The graphic for a Finnish engineer company duplicates itself and appears in two places at once before resolving into one. A drone feed tags a stand of birch trees with a coordinate that, on the printed 1:50,000 map, sits squarely in the middle of a lake.

The brigade operations officer, Major Jari Laaksonen, leans over. “Your system thinks our engineers can teleport,” he says. “I just spoke to their commander on the radio. He is at the crossroads near the old sawmill. Your satellite picture says he is straddling the river.”

“So Russian spoofing again,” Ruiz says.

“They have been working the spectrum over the gulf for weeks,” Laaksonen answers. “We have reports from civil aviation, from ferries, from truckers. Now they are leaning into it.”

The Finnish brigade commander took the reports seriously enough to update his guidance that morning. All subordinate units are to assume degraded PNT across the brigade’s area of responsibility in eastern Sodankylä. All units will include PNT status and GNSS interference incidents in their daily reports. Russian electronic warfare systems near the Russian-Finnish border and in the Kola Peninsula are named explicitly in the threat notes. Ruiz has the printed guidance folded in front of her. Underneath it she has written in capital letters:

PNT STATUS: GREEN / AMBER / RED

GNSS INTERFERENCE: EXAMPLE REQUIRED

On the big map projected into the white-painted wall, they shade a ring in dry-erase where Finnish authorities report the strongest jamming. The circle overlaps civilian trouble spots where airliners have abandoned approaches to small eastern airports and where ferries and other civilian vessels have complained about losing positional data. “We need to assume the Russians will keep the knob turned up,” Ruiz says. “Not just flick it on for exercises.”

Laaksonen nods. “They are testing us,” he says. “Testing Finland as a new ally. Testing Sweden. Testing our new commands. Seeing how we react before any tanks cross any borders.”

* * *

On the Baltic Sea, the Russian test feels like an invisible hand on the compass. The Swedish corvette HSwMS Härnösand runs a patrol east of Gotland, listening for any submarine that might decide to get familiar with cables and pipelines. The sensors officer, Lieutenant Sofia Tamm, flicks her gaze between the acoustic screens and a small display that shows GNSS integrity. The bars on the integrity display rise and fall. When the ship’s course takes them closer to the central shipping lanes, the bars falter more often.

“Jamming intensity increasing,” Tamm says. “Pattern consistent with emissions from Kaliningrad and the eastern gulf. Likely Russian Krasukha or similar long-range system.”

Commander Ingrid Björk, the captain, glances toward the island. Gotland is a low dark line on the western horizon. “Plot our position using radar ranges and depth soundings,” she says. “No decisions based on satellites alone tonight.”

The navigator acknowledges. Old skills come out. Bearings to lighthouses and radar reflectors, depth under keel, inertial navigation system checks.

When Sweden was outside NATO, Björk wondered whether the island would ever attract the attention it deserved. Since Sweden joined the alliance, Gotland has become an exercise magnet. American airborne brigades drop in on its airfields. Polish and British units practice amphibious landings. Staff officers from across Europe come to brief in front of large maps that show arrows stretching from the island toward the Baltic states.

Those same maps now carry new annotations—small icons for Russian electronic warfare units along the coast of Gotland, circles that show where their jamming should be strongest. Tonight those circles sit right under the Härnösand’s plotted track. Tamm watches the GNSS display flicker again. “Our civilian ferries are complaining,” she says. “They call it ‘ghost steering.’ Their autopilots try to compensate for fake positions. We keep telling them to trust their eyes and radar.”

Björk thinks of the NATO staff officers who use the same phrase. Trust your sensors, but know which ones the Russians can lie to. “Send our nav anomalies to the maritime operations center,” she says. “Flag them as likely Russian hybrid activity. And tell them land forces might want to know that their rail ferries and roll-on/roll-off ships will be navigating by eyeball.”

* * *

Thousands of kilometers away, at JFC Norfolk, another watch floor comes to life around the same interference pattern. JFC Norfolk is NATO’s newest operational-level headquarters, responsible for the security of the Atlantic sea lines of communication and, since the new regional defense plans, for the broader northwestern region that includes the Nordics and the Baltic approaches. It is across the ocean from MCLCC-NW, but the workflows crisscross constantly.

On the giant screen at the front of Norfolk’s operations center, the duty director brings up the Baltic overlay. Color-coded reports from aircraft, ships, and land units show where GNSS is being jammed or spoofed. The density of incidents over the Gulf of Finland and around Kaliningrad looks like someone spilled ink.

The duty director nods to the intelligence watch officer. “What’s the assessment?”

The intel officer steps forward. “Same Russian electronic warfare systems, sir,” she says, gesturing to the screen. “We see overlap with known 1RL257 Krasukha deployments and other theater systems. They’ve been probing since 2022. This is the heaviest pattern yet.”

The deputy commander, a British three-star, listens while his staff describes how civil aviation has diverted flights, how ferries and tankers are reporting positional anomalies, how the European Union has sent formal complaints about Russian hybrid attacks on navigation and safety. “Good. The complaints help bring this to our attention, but now we have to do something about it,” he says. “The problem we have to solve is what happens when reinforcement forces try to cross that sea and land in those ports under a contested spectrum.”

He turns to his land advisor. “How is MCLCC-NW incorporating this?” he asks.

“We just spoke to Brigadier Halvorsen,” the advisor says. “He is building PNT reporting into every land unit’s battle rhythm. He is treating Russian GNSS jamming as a constant, not a spike.”

“Good,” the deputy says. “We built these new commands to handle exactly this. New allies, new headquarters, new operating environment. This is our test run before things get kinetic.”

He looks back at the map, at the triangle formed by eastern Finland, Gotland, and Latvia.

“Make sure the maritime and air components are seeing the same PNT picture,” he says. “If land is treating these events as deliberate targeting, the rest of us need to as well.”

* * *

By evening, the pattern is clear enough that nobody at MCLCC-NW calls it coincidence.

The intelligence section brings an update to Halvorsen. “Russian jamming intensity has increased over the last twelve hours,” the senior analyst says. “Airliners diverted in Lithuanian and Estonian airspace. Swedish and Finnish maritime agencies reporting serious interference in the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland. Civilian GNSS receivers near the Kola Peninsula are showing similar anomalies.”

The analyst taps a second slide. “We assess with high confidence that Russian electronic warfare brigades in Kaliningrad, the Saint Petersburg region, and the Kola Peninsula are deliberately targeting GNSS as part of a hybrid campaign. Likely objectives are to intimidate civilian populations, stress critical infrastructure, and test NATO’s reaction in the Nordic and Baltic region.”

Halvorsen listens, then makes the decision that turns analysis into orders. “All right,” he says. “From this point forward, for all land units under MCLCC-NW, we will treat Russian GNSS jamming as a standing condition. Not an inject.” He looks at Nyman. “Draft a fragmentary order,” he says. “Directive one. All headquarters will incorporate PNT status into their routine reports. Directive two. All units will identify which of their systems are most vulnerable to Russian jamming and report mitigation measures. Directive three. Exercise analog navigation and time discipline in the next twenty-four hours.”

He pauses. “And make sure JFC Norfolk sees that we are acting on their assumptions, not waiting for perfect clarity.” The FRAGO races out over secure nets, riding systems that themselves depend on the same sky the Russians are poisoning.

Chapter 2: Trial by Jamming on the Baltic-Nordic Front

In the Finnish brigade command post, Ruiz hears the new guidance summarized over the divisional net. “MCLCC-NW assesses Russian GNSS jamming as persistent,” the voice from division reads. “All units will adjust plans accordingly. PNT status will be reported as routinely as fuel and ammunition.”

Ruiz flips to a fresh page in her notebook and writes as she listens. “PNT status line in SITREP,” she says. “Green, amber, red, with example. Explicit mention of Russian jammers. Command emphasis.”

Her US battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Samir Patel, nods. “We already knew this,” he says. “Now higher is admitting it.”

They gather the staff around the projected map. Ruiz shades their sector again, darker this time. “Inside this ring, we assume Russian jamming is active,” she says. “Their electronic warfare brigades in the Western Military District and Baltic Fleet are trying to make our own systems unreliable. We treat every GNSS-enabled device as suspect unless proven otherwise.” The staff moves quickly.

Staff members make changes to routes. They adjust movement plans so that phase lines align with geographic features and not just grid lines. Checkpoints are buildings and intersections, not anonymous waypoints. They write instructions in plain language: “Turn east at crossroads with three birch trees and a red barn on the northwest corner.”

They make changes to fires. The fire support officer marks systems that are most vulnerable to spoofing. Counterbattery radars that depend on precise timing. Tablets that calculate firing solutions based on target coordinates pulled automatically from a network. The staff members drill a simple rule: If a target comes only from a system that could be fed bad PNT by Russian jammers, they will confirm with a second method before engaging.

They make changes to communications. The signal officer builds a PNT-aware primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency communications plan. The staff notes which radios and waveforms depend on accurate time from satellites and which can operate on manual time hacks. Net operators rehearse time-of-day changes not by trusting their screens, but by taking time from one designated master clock in the tactical operations center.

On a handful of vehicles, the battalion runs an experimental assured-PNT kit—a black box bolted under the radios that fuses inertial sensors, wheel encoders, multiple GNSS constellations, and whatever civilian signals of opportunity it can hear, from cellular towers to broadcast transmitters. When GNSS degrades, the box dead reckons position and time well enough to keep fire missions and movement orders coherent. The signal officer jokes that it is a University of Texas professor’s revenge on the jammer belt around Kaliningrad, a nod to research that proved you could navigate by the city’s radio noise alone.

And they make changes to reporting. The battle captain updates the battalion situation report template. PNT status sits between ammunition and casualty lines.

The command sergeant major writes a new task organization on the whiteboard. “Platoon sergeants are now map instructors,” he says. “Tonight, every convoy and every dismount lane is run in ‘red PNT’ condition. No tablets. No phone nav. Wristwatches, compasses, eyes.”

* * *

Just after midnight, the invisible barrage peaks. In Estonia and Lithuania, pilots on approach call go-arounds when their GNSS-guided approaches show erratic behavior below one thousand feet. In Finland, regional carriers decide that it is safer to divert than to trust jumpy needles. Baltic maritime agencies issue urgent notices that warn of “serious positioning disturbances” in the Gulf of Finland and central Baltic Sea. Captains are told to rely on radar, depth, and visual marks. Ferries and tankers report ghost tracks, their instruments showing them miles from where they know they are.

Along the seabed, sensors attached to subsea cables between Sweden and Latvia, and between Finland and Estonia, record sharp spikes. One cable’s traffic drops suddenly. A second shows increased error rates. Whether dragged anchors or something more deliberate is to blame is unclear. In a headquarters near Saint Petersburg, a Russian electronic warfare brigade commander watches his own screens glow brighter as his systems push more power into the sky. He knows civil aviation authorities will complain. That is part of the point. He knows NATO’s new commands will have to react. That is the more interesting part.

The same signatures appear in three NATO headquarters at once. In Mikkeli, MCLCC-NW’s PNT display lights up. In Virginia, JFC Norfolk’s plots of GNSS reliability over the North Atlantic and the Baltic spike in red over the Gulf of Finland and Kaliningrad. At Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Germany, staff officers received increased reports from Combined Air Operations Centre Bodø of navigation problems on NATO air policing.

Secure chat windows bloom with messages. MCLCC-NW pushes an immediate update to subordinate land formations: “Russian GNSS jamming intensified over Baltic region and eastern Finland. All units execute ‘red PNT’ procedures. Provide PNT SITREP in two hours.”

JFC Norfolk sends guidance down to its components: “Treat Russian PNT interference as coordinated hybrid action. Maritime and air components adjust routing to account for degraded navigation. Land component to report impact on movements in Finland and the Baltics.”

Allied Maritime Command directs warships and maritime patrol aircraft to move closer to critical cable junctions and chokepoints. The Swedish and Finnish navies coordinate patrols to look for suspicious vessels and unusual anchor patterns. Allied Air Command adjusts air policing routes and tanker tracks to avoid the worst interference zones. Crews brief non-GNSS approaches and backup procedures for Baltic and Nordic airfields.

For the first time, all three components are reacting to Russian jamming as a shared operational problem rather than as isolated technical faults. The new commands, the new allies, and the new regional defense plans are being tested in contact. Halvorsen looks at the reports on his screen. “Get me a consolidated land PNT status report from Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic states,” he says. “And send our mitigation measures to JFC Norfolk. If this is a rehearsal, we need to show that the new structure can adapt.”

* * *

On the ground, the orders become friction. Patel’s battalion gets its tasking from the Finnish brigade at three in the morning. Secure a major rail junction and adjacent highway interchange that feed west toward ports and south toward the capital region. Be prepared to move onward to reception areas for allied reinforcements from Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The battalion’s lead company rolls out along forest roads before dawn. Platoon leaders use intersection counts, terrain association, and kilometer markers to track their progress. Tablets ride in rucksacks, ready for use when they can be trusted. “PNT status amber,” one company commander reports to the battalion headquarters at the first checkpoint. “Our icons are drifting up to one hundred meters. We are on route by terrain. One drone team reports target coordinates jumping when they cross Phase Line FOX. They are using terrain reference instead.”

“Report that as your example,” Ruiz says on the net. “Higher wants concrete cases of Russian effects.”

The sustainment convoy follows behind, its drivers unhappily familiar with the route from the previous night’s analog rehearsal. In the lead truck, a specialist slid his thumb across a dead screen like it might wake up, then gave up and held the paper map under a red light. “Feels like we trained for the eighties,” he said, because the blue dot was gone and the world had gone back to bearings, landmarks, and intuition.

The truck commander answered without looking over, telling him to “call the next intersection off the map, not the tablet.” A moment later, he added, more quietly, that the screen can come back when it wants, but the convoy still needs to reach its destination.

In a rail yard, civilian dispatchers stare at screens that show trains ghosting in and out of stations. Their own backup paper logs say something different. Patel assigns one liaison officer to sit with them and reconcile reality. “Treat Russian GNSS spoofing as enemy artillery,” Ruiz tells her. “These are the effects. You are the counterbattery.”

Chapter 3: Lessons from the Signal Storm

The next day, the external situation calms slightly. The GNSS interference levels drop from extreme to merely bad. Civil aviation authorities continue to divert flights around the worst areas but resume some approaches. Maritime warnings remain in effect. Cable operators keep extra eyes on sensor feeds.

Inside NATO, the crisis leaves a mark. JFC Norfolk convenes a secure video session with MCLCC-NW, Allied Maritime Command, and Allied Air Command. On the screen behind the JFC commander, the Baltic map shows three layers at once: Russian electronic warfare platforms, GNSS interference patterns, and NATO movements. “Russia just conducted a PNT live-fire exercise,” the JFC commander says. “They targeted civil trust, critical infrastructure, and our new command arrangements. We need to treat this like an after-action review, not a weather report.”

Halvorsen briefs from Mikkeli. “Land units that performed best were those that assumed Russian jamming from the start,” he says. “They built analog navigation into training, made PNT status a routine report, and fused civil interference reports with military ones. Units that treated interference as an exception struggled more.” Allied Maritime Command reports on how Swedish, Finnish, and allied ships adapted by reverting to visual and radar navigation and by increasing patrols around critical subsea infrastructure. Allied Air Command presents data from diverted flights and from NATO air patrols that had to adjust for spoofed signals.

As staff officers capture lessons, a colonel from the science and technology staff directorate briefs options for hardening navigation and timing: accelerated fielding of mounted assured-PNT systems that blend inertial navigation units, miniature atomic clocks, and signals from multiple satellite constellations and low-earth orbit PNT payloads; leveraging the results of experiments in the Nordic countries that use 5G and Internet of Things infrastructure as a giant, passive triangulation grid; and capitalizing on renewed European debates about employing terrestrial systems such as eLORAN, an enhanced version of the LORAN hyperbolic radio navigation system introduced during World War II, along the North Sea and Baltic coasts as a hard-to-jam backup layer.

The JFC commander looks at the overlay one last time. “Russia just tested our newest allies and our newest commands,” he says. “Finland and Sweden are living inside the contested electromagnetic environment we wrote doctrine about. MCLCC-NW and JFC Norfolk were designed for exactly this. The good news is that the structure held. The bad news is that this was only jamming. Next time it might be jamming plus something else.” He concludes with a task. “Within one week, I want updated PNT annexes from land, sea, and air,” he says, “based on what you just lived. This is not a technical issue. This is force employment.”

* * *

In central Finland, the crisis already feels like a preview instead of a climax. Patel’s battalion drops to a slightly lower readiness posture. The fuel trucks are full. The maps are worn at the creases. The young leaders are more comfortable saying, “I am at the red barn just north of the crossroads” than reading off a string of digits from a suspicious device.

Only a few vehicles carry the experimental assured-PNT boxes. Everyone else still lives on a mix of paper, habit, and skeptical use of digital systems. Ruiz and the signal officer make a note: If the kit proves its worth under real Russian jamming, the battalion will fight for more. Ruiz walks through the motor pool as the command sergeant major posts the next week’s training schedule.

“More no-GNSS drills?” she asks.

“More living like the Russians are still jamming us,” he answers.

One of the platoon leaders shakes his head. “Ma’am, it feels like cheating to turn the GPS off on purpose.”

“It is the opposite of cheating,” Ruiz tells him. “Russia is already doing that for you. We are just getting ahead of it.” She thinks of Mikkeli and Norfolk, of maritime patrols around Gotland, of air controllers juggling diverted flights over Vilnius.

“They are watching how we react,” she says. “They just saw that the newest allies and the newest commands can keep moving when the sky lies. That is a message.”

Lieutenant Colonel James J. Torrence, US Army, is the commander of the 39th Strategic Signal Battalion in Chièvres, Belgium. He holds an MS in strategic design and management, an MS in cybersecurity, a master of military art and science, and a doctorate in strategic security. Torrence is a LTG (Ret) James M. Dubik Writing Fellow. He has deployed twice to Afghanistan as a battalion communications officer and has served in various military leadership positions in the United States, Germany, Belgium, Korea, and Israel.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. Tom Lamb, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · James J. Torrence · February 19, 2026

19. A Worrying Military Build-up in the Western Balkans?

Summary:

Blerim Vela argues the Western Balkans are not sliding into war, but they are rearming in ways that can make crisis more likely. Serbia led a modernization surge after 2015, buying across suppliers and pairing capability growth with nationalist narratives tied to co-nationals in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. Neighbors respond unevenly: NATO members modernize for interoperability, while Kosovo and Bosnia move more cautiously under weaker guarantees. With deterrence signals less consistent and Ukraine reshaping assumptions, even “defensive” procurement can produce a classic security dilemma unless transparency and confidence-building measures improve.

A Worrying Military Build-up in the Western Balkans?

warontherocks.com · February 19, 2026

Blerim Vela

February 19, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/a-worrying-military-build-up-in-the-western-balkans/

Europe’s most fragile region is not sleepwalking toward war, but it is quietly recalibrating for it. Across the Western Balkans, military procurement decisions once framed as technical upgrades are evolving into something more consequential: a shifting balance of power unfolding at a moment when Europe’s security order strains under growing transatlantic tension.

These regional dynamics emerged unevenly, with Serbia clearly leading the way a decade ago. In response, neighboring countries have also modernized their militaries, though in different ways. NATO members such as Albania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia have focused primarily on meeting alliance capability and interoperability benchmarks. Fellow NATO ally Croatia’s modernization is similarly shaped by alliance requirements, but also by acute insecurity stemming from Serbia’s “greater state” ambitions and its rapid militarization. Meanwhile, non-NATO members Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are navigating more autonomous and regional sensitive calculations. The collective result is not imminent war, but a complex environment shaped by uneven capabilities, alliance asymmetries, and competing political narratives. These factors define the strategic context in which military modernization is now unfolding. While the region is probably not returning to the conflicts of the 1990s, a security dilemma is emerging without clear guardrails: Defensive measures by one state can inadvertently heighten insecurity for others.

This matters now because the conditions that once dampened escalation are weakening. External security guarantees feel less automatic, and deterrence signals are increasingly inconsistent. Russia’s war in Ukraine has unsettled assumptions about restraint, borders, and the costs of using force. In this environment, militarization does not require aggressive intent to become destabilizing. Misperception, asymmetric capabilities, and narratives that frame force as legitimate can trigger crises faster than political institutions can respond. NATO and EU leaders should therefore push for greater confidence-building measures and political transparency across the region.

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A Postwar Balkans in Transition

After the disastrous ethnic wars of the 1990s, the Balkans were defined by cautious disarmament and arms control, externally guaranteed peace, and reliance on international oversight. The wars left behind unresolved ethno-territorial disputes that continue to shape security perceptions. Most prominently, Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence, while Bosnia and Herzegovina remains internally fragmented along ethno-political lines under the Dayton framework. Although large-scale violence ended decades ago, disputes over sovereignty, minority protection, and borders persist, making military signaling unusually sensitive. These unresolved legacies mean that even defensive force development is often interpreted through the lens of past conflict rather than as purely technical modernization. Indeed, conflict history remains central to how regional states interpret military signals and assess risk.

Relations between Serbia and Kosovo remain complex more than two decades after the 1998 to 1999 war. While Serbia does not recognize Kosovo, the two countries have agreed to a dialogue facilitated by the European Union — although its implementation has been characterized by half-measures and violations. Periodic crises ranging from disputes over governance in northern Kosovo to violent incidents involving security forces have prevented full normalization. Despite the EU dialogue and NATO’s longstanding peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, relations remain fragile and prone to escalation.

Since the 1990s, most Balkan countries have prioritized economic recovery and institutional development over military capability. Full NATO integration became the principal security anchor for Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, shaping each country’s respective defense modernization within an alliance framework. For its part, Serbia navigated a more complex path, balancing regional dominance ambitions with ties to Moscow, Beijing, and later Europe. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo aspire to join NATO but face distinct structural and political constraints that limit the pace and scope of their modernization.

From 2000 to 2015, Serbia maintained significant latent capability, including heavy armor and air defense systems, inherited from the Yugoslav era. After 2015, Serbia shifted from latent capability to active modernization, largely unnoticed by outside observers. Indeed, despite steadily rising defense spending, European Commission annual country reports on Serbia did not acknowledge the upward trend until 2020, when Serbia’s military spending was noted to have increased by nearly 30 percent year-on-year and procurement from Russia and China was first explicitly referenced. Serbia’s approach emphasized legacy strength, selective modernization, and procurement diversification — a formula that positioned the country as the region’s first mover in military development.

Serbia: Strategic Buildup and Procurement Diversification

Serbian leaders frame this modernization as a response to a deteriorating regional security landscape. Official narratives frequently cite NATO’s expansion in southeast Europe, Kosovo’s alignment with Western security structures, and the long-standing presence of NATO forces in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina as evidence of strategic constraint. From Belgrade’s perspective, diversification of suppliers and investment in advanced capabilities are required to preserve autonomy and freedom of action.

Serbia’s buildup began around 2015 with increased investments in combat aircraft, air defense, armored vehicles, drones, and electronic warfare. Its defense budget exceeded two billion dollars annually by the mid-2020s, or roughly 2.5 percent of GDP. This acceleration occurred after key regional states had already joined NATO (Hungary in 1999; Romania and Bulgaria in 2004; and Croatia and Albania in 2009). Montenegro and North Macedonia joined NATO later (2017 and 2020, respectively), after Serbia’s trajectory was already underway. Importantly, Serbia’s National Security Strategy and Defense Strategy do not stipulate NATO enlargement in the Balkans as a primary reason for militarization. In fact, Serbia has maintained formal engagement with NATO through the Partnership for Peace program and an Individual Partnership Action Plan, underscoring a multi-vector effort rather than outright confrontation.

Serbia’s procurement strategy reinforced its intent to shape the regional military balance in support of its political goals. Serbia acquired Israeli precision-strike and surveillance technologies and French Rafale fighter jets, while maintaining Russian and Chinese systems. Unlike NATO members, whose modernization is largely guided by alliance interoperability requirements and collective defense obligations, Serbia’s approach reflected independent strategic priorities.

In parallel with military modernization, Serbian leaders have projected political narratives emphasizing the protection of co-nationals living abroad — mainly in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro — and historical grievances related to loss of territory and control. While signaling defensive intent domestically, such framing shaped regional perceptions and heightened sensitivity to Serbian military moves. This combination of public framing and growing capabilities made neighbors acutely aware that misjudging Serbia’s intentions could carry real risks.

Serbian political ambition and decisive action intersected in Sept. 2023, when heavily armed men crossed from into northern Kosovo, killing a police officer and leaving behind armored vehicles and weapons. Investigations traced equipment and training back to Serbia. This was not an isolated incident. It followed repeated increases in Serbian troop presence along the Kosovo border during periods of heightened tension, moves that repeatedly triggered regional and international concern. While Belgrade denied direct involvement, the incident illustrates how the margin for error has narrowed. Even minor miscalculations can escalate quickly, reinforcing the security dilemma that defines regional dynamics.

Neighboring States: Reactive Modernization

Serbia’s military buildup has prompted a series of nationally distinct military modernization responses across the region. These responses are not the product of collective planning or coordination, but of parallel national decisions shaped by various factors, including alliance status, domestic constraints, and differing threat perceptions.

Albania accelerated efforts to meet NATO capability benchmarks of investing 2 percent of GDP annually in defense by 2024, directly influenced by Serbia’s growing air and missile capacity. The country’s planners prioritized air defense, artillery modernization, and mechanized units capable of countering regional power asymmetries. Albania also hosts NATO investments and infrastructure upgrades, with modernization efforts designed to strengthen national defense readiness while remaining aligned with alliance capability and interoperability requirements.

Croatia has modernized within the NATO framework, acquiring Rafale fighters, Bradley infantry vehicles, and Black Hawk helicopters. The country has also has ordered Leopard 2 tanks, Bayraktar drones, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems. These acquisitions aimed to maintain parity in regional air and mechanized power, ensuring Croatia could match Serbia’s enhanced capabilities while remaining interoperable with NATO forces. Defense plans have emphasized readiness and operational flexibility, reinforcing credibility without destabilizing the region. Croatia’s defense modernization also aligns with broader EU security objectives, illustrating how alliance membership shapes procurement and planning.

Rather than large-scale modernization, both Montenegro and North Macedonia have focused on resilience — ensuring their forces can operate effectively within a NATO framework and under shifting regional conditions shaped by an emerging arms race. Montenegro has emphasized rapid reaction forces and joint training, while it has purchased two French patrol boats. North Macedonia has pursued modernization in line with alliance benchmarks, acquiring mechanized units and enhancing air surveillance capabilities. It has ordered U.S.-made joint light tactical vehicle and Stryker combat vehicles, Italian helicopters (four AW149 and four AW169M), Turkish 105 mm Boran howitzers, and the French short-range air defense system Mistral 3.

Kosovo, lacking NATO membership, has expanded the Kosovo Security Force under NATO supervision. The country has focused on building a credible, visible deterrent capable of rapid response to cross-border incursions. Planners explicitly considered Serbia’s military superiority when shaping Kosovo’s doctrine, training, and procurement. Kosovo has invested in drones and domestic ammunition production, enhancing strategic autonomy. Every decision — from unit size to equipment choice — reflected the idea that Serbia’s growing military power had narrowed Kosovo’s margin for error.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has responded more cautiously to defense surges in the region, increasing spending incrementally while prioritizing readiness, NATO interoperability where feasible, and training. Constrained by internal political fragmentation, the country has focused on command-and-control improvements and NATO-aligned exercises.

For the non-NATO states in the region, namely Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the military build-ups present a classical security dilemma: Defensive measures taken under uncertainty can heighten perceptions of insecurity for others in the absence of security guarantees. NATO members, by contrast, are embedded in a collective defense architecture and their modernization is driven primarily by alliance capability and interoperability requirements. That said, national force planning within NATO has increasingly factored in Serbia’s expanding air, missile, and armored capabilities and the resulting shifts in the regional military balance.

Defense Industry, Strategic Autonomy, and External Influence

Beyond force posture and procurement, the Western Balkans’ defense surge is increasingly shaped by the revival of domestic defense industries and the growing role of external suppliers.

National defense industries are reemerging as strategic tools. Serbia’s Yugoimport SDPR spans ammunition, artillery, armored vehicles, and unmanned systems, backed by state-supported exports and domestic investment. Croatia’s industry, though smaller, aligns with NATO standards, focusing on modernization, maintenance, and interoperability. Bosnia and Herzegovina specializes in ammunition and artillery production, signaling growth potential if political constraints ease. Albania, Kosovo, and Croatia have begun joint projects such as the Shota Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicle, reflecting a regional move toward selective self-reliance and sustainment capacity.

External powers shape the strategic environment. Russia, China, Turkey, and Gulf states offer arms and advisory services. Serbia retains strong ties with Russian and Chinese suppliers, while Albania and Kosovo benefit from NATO assistance and Turkish drone technology. These competing influences complicate interoperability, increase uncertainty, and reinforce the region’s security dilemma.

Industrial expansion can strengthen conventional deterrence while complicating signaling. Greater domestic production and procurement autonomy reduces vulnerability to external shocks, yet rapid militarization without transparency can escalate crises. These dynamics underscore that military modernization in the Western Balkans is no longer only a national matter. Managing its risks depends on deliberate policy choices about transparency, coordination, and external engagement that can either stabilize the region or allow misperceptions to harden.

Policy Implications and Strategic Choices

While a Western Balkans arms race is well underway, it reflects preparation, not panic. Serbia’s early militarization set the tempo. Non-NATO neighbors such as Bosnia and Kosovo responded cautiously to manage regional risk, while NATO members modernized according to distinct alliance benchmarks and interoperability standards.

A politics of restraint is required to break the cycle of military build-ups and reduce the risk of miscalculation and escalation. Concrete confidence-building measures including expanded military-to-military communication — specifically, advance notification of major exercises, participation in transparency mechanisms, and greater disclosure of procurement plans — could help. Moreover, NATO can play a role by reinforcing deconfliction norms with non-member states, while the European Union can use accession conditionality to incentivize transparency and restraint. Without such measures, military modernization, however defensive in intent, could continue to generate mutual suspicion and escalation risks in the region.

Both NATO and EU leaders have emphasized that normalization between Serbia and Kosovo is essential to long-term regional stability, particularly given the alliance’s presence in Kosovo and neighboring member states. The European Union wields political and economic leverage primarily through conditionality, linking Serbia’s integration prospects to normalizing ties with Kosovo while geopolitically and economically pivoting from Russia. For its part, Washington views Balkan stability as integral to broader European security, recognizing that misperception or unchecked militarization could create vulnerabilities exploitable by external powers.

Europe and the United States should maintain a clear understanding of Balkan military developments and how imbalances could affect stability. Accountability in this context means adherence to alliance standards for NATO members, transparency obligations for non-members, and restraint in political and military signaling across the region. Without these guardrails, modernization risks reinforcing insecurity rather than deterrence.

The Western Balkans will maintain stability only under disciplined transparency and measured military modernization. Otherwise, miscalculation and misinterpretation could generate new crises among old neighbors that could quickly spin out of control.

BECOME A MEMBER

Blerim, Vela, Ph.D., served as chief of staff to the president of Kosovo from 2021 to 2023 and was a member of Kosovo’s National Security Council. He holds a doctorate in contemporary European studies and writes on governance, defense, and security in southeast Europe.

Image: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com · Daisy Johnston · February 19, 2026

20. US thwarted near-catastrophic prison break of 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria

Summary:

Fox News reports U.S. officials feared chaos in northern Syria could overwhelm the Kurdish-led SDF and trigger a mass escape of nearly 6,000 ISIS detainees described as “the worst of the worst.” A senior intelligence official said ODNI assessed the risk months earlier, then coordinated daily interagency calls as fighting spread, with State Department diplomacy and CENTCOM lift capacity enabling a rapid transfer. The detainees were moved by helicopter and other means into Iraqi custody at a facility near Baghdad’s airport. FBI teams are now enrolling biometrics and supporting prosecutions. ISIS-linked families in camps like al-Hol were not moved, leaving a lingering security risk.

US thwarted near-catastrophic prison break of 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria

foxnews.com · Efrat Lachter , Trey Yingst Fox News

CENTCOM helicopters and diplomatic efforts moved detainees to facility near Baghdad as Syrian chaos threatened jailbreak

By Efrat Lachter , Trey Yingst Fox News

Published February 18, 2026 8:34pm EST

https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-thwarted-near-catastrophic-prison-break-6000-isis-fighters-syria

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ISIS could exploit Syria power shift, analyst warns

As Kurdish control collapses in northeast Syria, analyst Brian Carter explains how poor detention records and rushed releases could give ISIS a window to regroup during the transition.

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EXCLUSIVE: This was the kind of prison break officials say could have changed the region, and perhaps even the world, overnight.

Nearly 6,000 ISIS detainees, described by a senior U.S. intelligence official as "the worst of the worst," were being held in northern Syria as clashes and instability threatened the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the guards responsible for keeping the militants locked away and preventing a feared ISIS resurgence. U.S. officials believed that if the prisons collapsed in the chaos, the consequences would be immediate.

"If these 6,000 or so got out and returned to the battlefield, that would basically be the instant reconstitution of ISIS," the senior intelligence official told Fox News Digital.

In an exclusive interview, the official walked Fox News Digital step by step through the behind-the-scenes operation that moved thousands of ISIS detainees out of Syria and into Iraqi custody, describing a multi-agency scramble that unfolded over weeks, with intelligence warnings, rapid diplomacy and a swift military lift.

US MILITARY LAUNCHES AIRSTRIKES AGAINST ISIS TARGETS IN SYRIA, OFFICIALS SAY

ISIS wives and children remain in "fragile" Syrian detention camps under Damascus control while male fighters transfer to Iraq, leaving detention crisis unresolved. ( Santiago Montag/Anadolu via Getty Image)

The risk, the official explained, had been building for months. In late October, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard began to assess that Syria’s transition could tip into disorder and create the conditions for a catastrophic jailbreak.

The ODNI sent the official to Syria and Iraq at that time to begin early discussions with both the SDF and the Iraqi government about how to remove what the official repeatedly described as the most dangerous detainees before events overtook them.

Those fears sharpened in early January as fighting erupted in Aleppo and began spreading eastward. Time was running out to prevent catastrophe. "We saw this severe crisis situation," the official said.

U.S. ANNOUNCES MORE MILITARY ACTIONS AGAINST ISIS: 'WE WILL NOT RELENT'

A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. (Reuters Photo)

According to the source, the ODNI oversaw daily coordination calls across agencies as the situation escalated. The official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was "managing the day to day" on policy considerations, while the ODNI drove a working group that kept CENTCOM, diplomats and intelligence officials aligned on the urgent question: how to keep nearly 6,000 ISIS fighters from slipping into the fog of war.

The Iraqi government, the official said, understood the stakes. Baghdad had its own reasons to move quickly, fearing that if thousands of detainees escaped, they would spill across the border and revive a threat Iraq still remembers in visceral terms.

The official described Iraq’s motivation bluntly: leaders recognized that a massive breakout could force Iraq back into a "2014 ISIS is on our border situation once more."

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the official said, played a pivotal role in smoothing the diplomatic runway for what would become a major logistical undertaking.

Then came the physical lift. The official credited CENTCOM’s surge of resources to make the plan real on the ground, saying that "moving in helicopters" and other assets enabled detainees to be removed in a compressed timeframe.

"Thanks to the efforts… moving in helicopters, moving in more resources, and then just logistically making this happen, we were able to get these nearly 6000 out in the course of just a few weeks," the official said.

ISIS FIGHTERS STILL AT LARGE AFTER SYRIAN PRISON BREAK, CONTRIBUTING TO VOLATILE SECURITY SITUATION

A view of Hol Camp, where families linked to the Islamic State group are being held, in Hasakah province, Syria, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (Izz Aldien Alqasem/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The SDF, he said, had been securing the prisons, but its attention was strained by fighting elsewhere, fueling U.S. fears that a single breach could spiral into a mass escape. Ultimately, detainees were transported into Iraq, where they are now held at a facility near Baghdad International Airport under Iraqi authority.

The next phase, the official said, is focused on identification and accountability. FBI teams are in Iraq enrolling detainees biometrically, the official said, while U.S. and Iraqi officials examine what intelligence can be declassified and used in prosecutions.

"What they were asking us for, basically, is giving them as much intelligence and information that we have on these individuals," the official said. "So right now, the priority is on biometrically identifying these individuals."

The official said the State Department is also pushing countries of origin to take responsibility for their citizens held among the detainees.

"State Department is doing outreach right now and encouraging all these different countries to come and pick up their fighters," he said.

While the transfer focused strictly on ISIS fighters, the senior intelligence official said families held in camps such as al-Hol were not part of the operation, leaving a major unresolved security and humanitarian challenge.

ISIS EXPLOITING SYRIA’S CHAOS AS US STRIKES EXPOSE GROWING THREAT

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters pose for a photo with the American flag on stage after a SDF victory ceremony announcing the defeat of ISIL in Baghouz was held at Omer Oil Field on March 23, 2019 in Baghouz, Syria. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The camps themselves were under separate arrangements, the official said, and responsibility shifted as control on the ground evolved.

According to the official, the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian government reached an understanding that Damascus would take over the al-Hol camp, which holds thousands of ISIS-affiliated women and children.

"As you can see from social media, the al-Hol camp is pretty much being emptied out," the official said, adding that it "appears the Syrian government has decided to let them go free," a scenario the official described as deeply troubling for regional security. "That is very concerning."

The fate of the families has long been viewed by counterterrorism officials as one of the most complicated, unresolved elements of the ISIS detention system. Many of the children have grown up in camps after ISIS lost territorial control, and some are now approaching fighting age, raising fears about future radicalization and recruitment.

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Iraqi security forces pose with ISIS flag which they pulled from University of Anbar on July 26, 2015. Forces clashed with ISIS militants inside the compound. (Reuters)

For now, the official said, intelligence agencies are closely tracking developments after a rapid operation that, in their view, prevented thousands of experienced ISIS militants from reentering the battlefield at once and potentially reigniting the group’s fighting force.

"This is a rare good news story coming out of Syria," the official concluded.

Efrat Lachter is a world reporter for Fox News Digital covering international affairs and the United Nations. Follow her on X @efratlachter. Stories can be sent to .

foxnews.com · Efrat Lachter , Trey Yingst Fox News

21. Army captain struggles with decision to restore Confederate names

Summary:

A Black Army captain describes growing up at West Point under a landscape of Confederate names and monuments, even as the academy began honoring figures like Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. He and peers ran a 2017 forum that shifted minds, yet leaders said West Point could not move faster than the Army. Later he served at Fort Lee, learned his family’s Virginia roots and the legacy of racial terror tied to that geography, and felt pride when Fort Lee became Fort Gregg-Adams. The recent return to Confederate-linked names, he writes, feels like betrayal and an institutional choice that undercuts belonging.

Comment: A thoughtful and thought-provoking essay. It is great to see that we have officers with the intestinal fortitude to still speak their minds in public in the face of a manufactured culture war. Renaming fights are not about signage. They are about who the Army tells young soldiers counts as “our” heritage, and that story shapes trust and retention. The “heritage” defense can be sincere, yet it often functions as a permission slip to ignore the lived cost borne by troops asked to serve under symbols tied to white supremacy and rebellion. The reversion signals a broader political effort to roll back post 2020 reforms, even if framed as legality or tradition. I hope we can respect the struggles of Capt Lowe and others who face similar ones. We dismiss his views to the detriment of our military and nation.

Army captain struggles with decision to restore Confederate names

thewarhorse.org · Jack Lowe · February 18, 2026

https://thewarhorse.org/black-soldier-confederate-named-military-bases/?utm

During my junior year at West Point in 2017, I attended a ceremony honoring the namesake of the school’s newest barracks: Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. This was the first building at West Point named after an African American, and I glowed with pride knowing that the academy was finally celebrating a person who looked like me.

It was a meaningful, but ultimately insufficient, gesture: Less than 100 meters from Benjamin O. Davis barracks was one named for Robert E. Lee, one of almost two dozen Confederate monuments on West Point’s campus at the time.

Walking to class every day, I passed the plaque for the Lee Award for Mathematics in Thayer Hall, complete with the inscription, “Donated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.” After class, I often ran down Lee Road, through Lee Housing Complex, to Lee Gate. As I sat in the library on the weekends, a grand portrait of Lee in Confederate gray loomed over me, while a haunting depiction of a Black man in tattered clothes walked barefoot alongside Lee’s horse in the painting’s background.

The years I spent in the shadow of West Point’s Confederate monuments made me who I am today. My character development, the cornerstone of a West Point education, was forged by countless hours spent reading books, writing papers, and sitting in lectures about moral courage and West Point’s guiding values of duty, honor, and country.

The author with his grandparents at his change of command ceremony in 2025. (Photo courtesy of Jack Lowe)

But my understanding of actually living those values, being what we called “a leader of character,” was shaped in resistance to my alma mater’s Confederate idols and totems. I was not alone in my feelings of anger and dissatisfaction.

This collective feeling drove my friends and me to organize the “Hot Topics Forum” in 2017. At this event, likely for the first time since the Civil War, more than 200 members of the West Point community, including our commanding generals, gathered to discuss West Point’s memory of the Confederacy.

Speakers included those from both sides of the issue, including a white woman who shared how her Southern heritage shaped her understanding of and appreciation for Confederate monuments.

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She was followed by a white cadet named Rob, also from the South, who grew up having few friendships with people of other races. During his freshman year, he hung a Confederate battle flag, which he considered a symbol of honor and tradition, in his barracks room.

He later spoke with other cadets, many of them Black, who explained how the flag was a distressing symbol of a dark and painful history. These conversations broadened his understanding of what the symbols meant, leading him to remove his Confederate flag and encourage the school to do the same with their Confederate symbols.

Following the forum, several people shared how hearing those personal stories changed their minds about Confederate monuments. I challenged some of West Point’s senior leaders: “Now that your mind is changed, what will you do about it?”

Each time, I was told that they would not take any action because West Point “couldn’t get ahead of the Army,” which still had nine bases named for Confederate soldiers.

After graduating from West Point and commissioning as a transportation officer, I was sent to one of those bases, Fort Lee, Virginia, to begin training as an Army logistician. The move to Virginia led me to discover parts of my family’s roots.

Every time I called my great-grandma Stith, she would say, “You know, you got lots of cousins down there in Virginia!” Her husband, Carroll Stith, was born in 1916 in Sussex County, part of Virginia’s “Black Belt.” The following year, just 30 miles north of my great-grandfather’s birthplace, Camp Lee opened.

Jack Lowe and his great-grandmother Mildred Stith review a scrapbook of his great-grandfather’s military service. (Photo courtesy of the author)

Growing up with little knowledge of my family history, the South always felt distant. But when I learned about this historical intersection between my great-granddad’s childhood and the opening of Camp Lee, I thought back to a trip I’d made to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

There I gazed at dozens of steel coffins hanging overhead, each engraved with the names of a county where a lynching had occurred. I didn’t know it then, but above me hung the names of people lynched in the counties where my great-granddad was born and where I lived while serving at Fort Lee.

It is this legacy of racial violence that ties these two stories together. My great-grandfather and his brother fled north during the Great Migration, joining millions of refugees from the campaign of racial terrorism throughout the Postbellum South. As Black families were being driven from their homes, the U.S. Army decided to celebrate Robert E. Lee, the leader of a violent rebellion to maintain white supremacy and African slavery.

Like me, great-granddad Stith was an Army logistician. He was part of the extraordinary logistical effort during World War II to sustain a war on two fronts and on opposite sides of the globe, executed in large part by units of Black soldiers.

He deployed to the Pacific with a segregated unit to build airfields and roads, joining not only the Black truck drivers on the famous Red Ball Express, but also Black soldiers serving as engineers, quartermasters, construction workers, and supply troops that sustained the U.S. military around the world.

I never heard the stories of Black World War II veterans until I searched for stories about my great-granddad. Looking for those stories brought me to discover the soldiers from the 320th Balloon Barrage Battalion, who were among the first to land at Omaha Beach on D-Day.

As much as I was inspired by the heroism of Black soldiers like Waverly Woodson Jr., I was angry that their stories and so many other were not included in movies like Saving Private Ryan, in hundreds of pages of Stephen Ambrose books, and many more of the war’s most famous retellings.

By leaving out the contributions of women and people of color, storytellers sidestep the contradictions and complications their presence brings to this American story. But it was these contradictions that I found most compelling because I saw my own experiences in them.

The Black GIs fought what they called the Double Victory Campaign, seeking to defeat fascism abroad and racism at home. Many of their stories took me back to Virginia.

The bases where I served were where many segregated units trained before deploying to Europe and the Pacific. Before landing on the beaches of Normandy, some of the soldiers who later joined the 320th Balloon Barrage Battalion trained at Fort Eustis, Virginia, where I served for almost three years as a lieutenant. I can still remember feeling chills run through my body as I read the words of a soldier from New York: “I never knew what discrimination was until I went to Fort Eustis.” At the same time, Black soldiers training at then-Camp Lee recalled being slapped, threatened, and called racial slurs daily.

One of the Black soldiers during that period was Arthur Gregg. When Gregg served as a second lieutenant at Fort Lee in 1950, he was banned from the segregated officers’ club.

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In 2023, I watched from the audience as then-94-year-old retired Lt. Gen. Gregg walked to the podium on the day Fort Lee was redesignated to Fort Gregg-Adams, part of a congressional effort to bar military installations from honoring Confederate leaders. He stood in front of that very same officers’ club and watched as his name was hung in front of the door.

Retired Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg thanks all those present at the newly named Gregg-Adams Club in 2023. The base, which was also renamed, reverted to Fort Lee two years later. (Photo by Terrance Bell/U.S. Army)

The ceremony carried the unmistakable mood of a family reunion. Dozens of Black women, descendants of the women who served in the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion with Lt. Col. Charity Adams, were in attendance, showing off their matching white T-shirts with Gregg and Adams’ faces printed on the front, and the words “From Lee … To Gregg-Adams” written on the back.

I was so excited that the place where my soldiers would learn our craft would be named after people we could be proud of. And more than that, people who would finally represent the diversity of the men and women who served there, past and present.

As I drove through the gate that day and saw banners with Gregg and Adams’ faces prominently displayed on every light pole, I felt a weight lift. I no longer had to carry the resentment toward the fact that the same symbols that intimidated my great-grandfather and his community were still standing as a barrier to inclusion for me and other soldiers.

After twice serving at the base near Petersburg, once while it was named Fort Lee and again after it was redesignated as Fort Gregg-Adams, I took command of a company of Army logisticians. Today, people of color make up the majority of the logistics branches; Black servicemembers represent exactly 50%. In the transportation company I command, almost half my soldiers are Black and more than a quarter are Latino.

Every single one of them starts their Army career at the Sustainment Center of Excellence, which, after the 2025 decision to restore former base names, is located at a place once again called Fort Lee.

When I first learned about the reversion to Confederate base names, my bewildered frustration quickly led towards despair. So many of my assumptions about the world and how to better it were turned upside down. There was a good faith assumption behind Hot Topics. We believed that if we could connect with people, we could change their minds, and through that, change policy.

Christian Maynor, an Acelution contract carpenter, replaces the Lee Boulevard street sign with the Victory Boulevard sign at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, June 26, 2023. (Photo by Airman Anna Nolte/Joint Base Langley-Eustis)

The decision to remove Confederate names was proof that our stories were finally heard. And because of this, the reversal to Confederate names felt like open mockery.

Compounding the hurt, some of the people around me eagerly embraced the change. They laughed as it was all torn down. In a meeting with fellow commissioned and noncommissioned officers in my battalion, a chorus of smiling white men shouted almost in unison, “It’s called Fort Bragg now!” at their first chance to start using Confederate names again. I waited for someone around me to express the same outrage and betrayal I was feeling. But it never came.

One afternoon, I got a call from my granddad. When I answered, he skipped the pleasantries and asked, “How can you keep putting up with this?” I could sense the anger and concern in his voice. He then moved directly to Confederate base names, saying, “They are dismantling everything that people like you and your friends fought to correct.”

That comment knocked the wind out of me. Normally, my grandparents overflow with pride when they talk about the Army. My grandma wears my West Point necklace religiously, as my granddad does with his West Point baseball cap. They jump at any chance to talk about their West Point grandson, even introducing me to their neighbors as “Capt. Jack Lowe.”

But even all the love of a proud grandparent could not stop them from being filled with shame and disappointment in the Army I now represent. Even as I continue to put on the uniform, I share many of my grandparents’ feelings.

But from the stories of Black soldiers who came before me, I learned that I’m not the first to feel this way, and unfortunately, I won’t be the last. The Double Victory Campaign continues.

The author is writing this essay in his personal capacity, with no association to any official military position. The views expressed are those of the individual only and not those of the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

thewarhorse.org · Jack Lowe · February 18, 2026

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

https://www.upi.com/Korea-Regional-Review/

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

US military prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, but Trump has yet to make a final call, sources say | CNN Politics

Iran Is Getting Ready for War With the U.S.

Confronting its biggest threat in decades, the regime in Tehran is trying to boost its odds of survival if diplomatic talks fall through

Military deployments

Hardening nuclear sites

Stifling dissent

Exclusive | U.S. Arms Sale to Taiwan in Limbo Amid Pressure Campaign From China

Some U.S. officials are worried that greenlighting the weapons deal would derail Trump’s coming trip to Beijing

Opinion | Xi Tries to Bully Trump on Taiwan

China’s boss wants the U.S. to stop a sale of defensive arms to Taipei.

Ukraine’s Neighbors Threaten to Cut Off Energy Supplies

Halting power and diesel from Hungary and Slovakia would compound the impact of Russian attacks

U.S. Gathers the Most Air Power in the Mideast Since the 2003 Iraq Invasion

President Trump is being briefed on military options for striking Iran, even as aides hold talks with its regime

In First Since WWII, Navy to Hire Company to Oversee Shipbuilding Project

The government typically handles the job, but delays and cost overruns prompted a search for new approaches

China's SDV sub exporting gray-zone warfare to the Gulf - Asia Times

The Perils of Militarizing Law Enforcement

Latin America’s Warning for U.S. Democracy

Gustavo Flores-Macías

COP OUT

A CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?

NO ORDER IN THE COURT

NO TURNING BACK

What America Must Learn From Ukraine

Michael Brown and Matt Kaplan

ANTICIPATION AND ADAPTATION

TRANSCENDING TACTICS

THE QUALITY OF QUANTITY

Regular or Unleaded? Differentiating Irregular Warfare

Characteristics in Common

Distinguishing Characteristics

Modeling Conflict

Conclusion

About The Authors

Where Power Begins: The Strategic Return of the Homeland

The Strategic Return of the Homeland

Frontier Campaigns: Homeland Defense as Persistent Competition

The Seminole Wars and Strategic Endurance

Economic Security and Strategic Assurance

Legitimacy as a Strategic Requirement

The Mexican–American War: Homeland Security as the Enabler of Expeditionary Power

Victory and Vulnerability: How Expansion and Infrastructure Shaped Strategic Risk

Complementarity, Not Competition

Conclusion: Implications for the 2026 NDS

About The Author

AI Racing Drone Beats Human Controlled FPV Racing Drones on Aerial Racetrack: An Overlooked ‘AlphaGo Moment’ with Future War Implications

State Department is gearing up to ‘roll out agentic AI’

Are We at an AI Precipice?

Tokyo’s strategic US investment surge puts China on edge - Asia Times

China gives Lithuania punishing silent treatment over Taiwan - Asia Times

Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front - Modern War Institute

A Worrying Military Build-up in the Western Balkans?

US thwarted near-catastrophic prison break of 6,000 ISIS fighters in Syria

CENTCOM helicopters and diplomatic efforts moved detainees to facility near Baghdad as Syrian chaos threatened jailbreak

Army captain struggles with decision to restore Confederate names

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