Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”

– Thomas Paine

“You should not be afraid of someone who has a library and reads many books; you should fear someone who has only one book; and he considers it sacred, but he has never read it.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

“You do not have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to sort reading them.”

– Ray Bradbury

1. OSS Reimagined: The Case for a 21st-Century Strategic Integration Force

2. How the Houthis Rattled the U.S. Navy—and Transformed Maritime War

3. U.S. Is Redirecting Critical Antidrone Technology From Ukraine to U.S. Forces

4. The Future of War Is Happening Right Now in Ukraine

5. Ukraine’s Attack Exposed America’s Achilles’ Heel

6. Ukrainian drone strikes show up Australia’s out-of-date defences by Mick Ryan

7. Ex-FBI boss reveals sleeper threat: 'It could lead to the next 9/11'

8. The Ukrainian Spy Agency Behind the Stunning Strike on Russia’s Bomber Fleet

9. Inside Operation Spider’s Web: What Ukraine’s audacious drone attack on Russian airfields revealed about modern warfare.

10. Trump names nominees to take over Middle East, Africa commands

11. Trial by fire: Chinese laser weapon reputedly in Russian service

12. Former Green Beret nominated to top Pentagon position to oversee special ops

13. Namibia At The Crossroads: Strategic Stake In The America-China Trade War

14. Trump must resist WHO’s pandemic power-grab

15. US troop presence in Syria will be reduced to a single base, envoy says

16. Confirmed Losses Of Russian Aircraft Mount After Ukrainian Drone Assault

17. ‘We need your creative, innovative, patriotic, and diabolical minds': Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine

18. Army leaders need to show their 'homework' for transformation plans, lawmakers say

19. Sustaining an Indo-Pacific Fight: The Contested Logistics Triad

20. World won’t forget Tiananmen Square, US and Taiwan say on 36th anniversary of massacre

21. Why Some U.S. Military Advising Missions Succeed—and Others Don’t

22. Notes from History for Surviving the Trade War

23. Turning the Lens Inward: A New Frame for Great Power Competition

24. Special Operations & Intelligence—A Strategic Convergence

25. Small Craft, Big Impact: Ukraine’s Naval War and the Rise of New-Tech Warships

26. Strategic Humility — The New Pentagon Doctrine

27. Europe Doesn’t Have a China Card

28. America and Israel Follow the Same Old Script

1. OSS Reimagined: The Case for a 21st-Century Strategic Integration Force

OSS Reimagined: The Case for a 21st-Century Strategic Integration Force

Day 4, Ep.6: A historical argument for future force design.

https://compoundsecurityunlocked.substack.com/p/oss-reimagined-the-case-for-a-21st?utm

Isaiah Wilson III

Jun 04, 2025

A historical argument for future force design

“The OSS didn’t just gather intelligence. It created strategic effects. It was SOF before SOF. Intel before the IC. Influence before InfoOps. It was convergence—before we had a word for it.”

— Dr. Isaiah “Ike” Wilson III

Origins of a Hybrid Genius

In 1942, the U.S. created something wholly new: a wartime entity combining paramilitary action, intelligence gathering, psychological warfare, and guerrilla operations under a single, agile, flat structure. Led by General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) served as the direct ancestor to both CIA and U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets).

It was small, messy, unconventional, and brilliant.

The OSS built “Jedburgh Teams” to partner with resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. It launched covert sabotage missions in Burma, Vietnam, and North Africa. It ran disinformation campaigns, built cultural expertise, and recruited polymath operatives—from Ivy League historians to Hollywood screenwriters.

Its essence? Integrated action and ideas. Strategic intelligence not in support of operations but embedded in them.

Why It Still Matters: The OSS DNA in Today’s SOF-IC Ecosystem

The OSS was disbanded in 1945. But its genetic imprint endures.

The CIA absorbed its human intelligence and covert action branches.
The U.S. Army Special Forces, born formally in 1952, inherited its unconventional warfare tradecraft and its ethos of partnership and autonomy.
Later, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and Task Force Orange (aka Intelligence Support Activity) would refine its convergence model in the shadows.

Yet despite this legacy, the institutional fusion that defined the OSS has never fully returned.

In the age of bureaucracy, we've created silos: between action and analysis, between strategy and operations, between intelligence and influence.

And as the Fourth Age dawns—with its compound threats, ambient conflict, and narrative-centric warfare—we now confront a new strategic truth:

The future requires a force that reintegrates cognition, culture, capability, and consequence.

The Argument: We Need a 21st-Century OSS

This is not a nostalgic appeal. It’s a design proposal.

We need a modern Strategic Integration Force—a cross-domain, hybrid entity empowered to:

Conduct information-enabled unconventional operations
Shape strategic effects through campaign design, not episodic raids
Fuse SOF, IC, diplomatic, and commercial tools under unified planning
Operate ethically in ambiguous, gray zone environments
Manage narrative, legitimacy, and influence across time and space

This is not about centralization. It’s about coherence. About crafting an agile, strategic effects force for the world that is—not the world that was.

It would be a standing capability—not a wartime contingency. A capability built for an age where peace is porous, and where influence is power.

Design Considerations

What would this look like?

A low signature, high-access organization—small, networked, and forward-deployed
Comprised of operators, strategists, analysts, technologists, and behavioral scientists
Reporting jointly to SOCOM, CIA, and NSC under a strategic integration mandate
Operating with compound authorities, modular task organization, and narrative synchronization
Embedded within key regional hubs and cross-functional campaigning teams

It would not replace SOF or IC. It would knit them together—at the seams where today’s conflicts unfold.

Strategic Legitimacy and Risk

Of course, such a force would require rigorous oversight and clear ethical guardrails.

We are not proposing unchecked covert power. Quite the opposite.

We are proposing intentional integration—with rules, with accountability, with the ability to shape modern competition without defaulting to kinetic escalation.

It’s about strategic responsibility, not strategic risk.

Conclusion: History as Blueprint, Not Relic

The OSS was never meant to be permanent. It was a prototype—a glimpse of what hybrid power could look like.

We now live in a world that demands we evolve that model.

Not to fight WWII again.

But to shape a world where the next conflict is just as likely to begin with a deepfake, a supply chain breach, or a failed water governance regime, as it is with a missile.

The OSS was the First Age’s answer to total war.

A modern integration force must be the Fourth Age’s answer to total complexity.

Historical Case Studies – Supplemental Segment

1. OSS JEDBURGH TEAMS (WWII)

What: 3-man teams (SOF, intelligence officer, radio operator) parachuted behind enemy lines in France, Belgium, Holland
Mission: Organize, train, and lead local resistance; conduct sabotage and reconnaissance
Why it matters: This was the blueprint for today’s Foreign Internal Defense, partner force enablement, and combined unconventional warfare
Relevance today: SOF-IC pairing in Ukraine, Taiwan, and West Africa echoes the Jedburgh model

2. MACV-SOG (Vietnam War)

What: Military Assistance Command – Studies and Observations Group
Joint SOF-IC task force conducting deep cross-border recon, psychological ops, and black operations
Why it matters: It pioneered joint SOF-IC plausibly deniable operations and high-risk reconnaissance
Relevance today: Mirrors the cross-border complexity of today’s transregional hybrid warfare

3. TASK FORCE ORANGE / ISA (Post-9/11)

What: Elite intelligence-support SOF unit under JSOC
Specialized in signals and human intelligence, tactical targeting, and mission prep for high-value operations
Why it matters: Most refined modern echo of the OSS model—deep fusion of collection, action, and assessment
Relevance today: Shows that elite fusion can scale, but remains fragmented across authorities and stovepipes

2. How the Houthis Rattled the U.S. Navy—and Transformed Maritime War

Please go to the link to view the interactive website and maps and graphics.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/navy-houthis-maritime-war-5517a127?st=G8vh62&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

How the Houthis Rattled the U.S. Navy—and Transformed Maritime War

Persistent bombardment in confined waters pushed sailors to the edge in a costly battle that ended in stalemate

By Stephen Kalin

and Shelby Holliday

June 4, 2025 9:00 pm ET

The evening of May 6, an F/A-18 Super Hornet was coming in for a landing on the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the Red Sea. An onboard mechanism to slow down the fighter jet failed, and the $67 million aircraft slid off the carrier’s runway and into the water.

It was the third fighter jet that the Truman had lost in less than five months, and came hours after President Trump surprised Pentagon officials with the announcement that the U.S. had reached a truce with the Houthis in Yemen. The Truman had arrived at the Red Sea in December 2024 to battle the Iran-aligned militants—joining a campaign filled with heavy exchanges and close calls that strained the U.S. Navy.

Officials are now dissecting how a scrappy adversary was able to test the world’s most capable surface fleet. The Houthis proved to be a surprisingly difficult foe, engaging the Navy in its fiercest battles since World War II despite fighting from primitive quarters and caves in one of the world’s poorest countries.

The Houthis benefited from the proliferation of cheap missile and drone technology from Iran. They fired antiship ballistic missiles, the first-ever combat use of the Cold War-era weapon, and they innovated how they deployed their weaponry. The latest technologies have transformed maritime warfare, much the way they have rewritten the script for land wars in Ukraine—forcing militaries to adapt in real time. The U.S. is developing fresh ways to intercept the newest drones and missiles but still relies largely on expensive defense systems.

Houthi supporters at a rally in San’a, Yemen, in May. Photo: yahya/epa/shutterstock

Some 30 vessels participated in combat operations in the Red Sea from late 2023 through this year, around 10% of the Navy’s total commissioned fleet. In that time, the U.S. rained down at least $1.5 billion worth of munitions on the Houthis, a U.S. official said.

The Navy was able to destroy much of the Houthis’ arsenal—but it has yet to achieve the strategic goal of restoring shipping through the Red Sea, and the Houthis continue to regularly fire missiles at Israel.

Military and congressional leaders who have begun scrutinizing the campaign for lessons worry about the strain of such grueling deployments on overall force readiness. The Pentagon is also investigating the lost planes and a separate at-sea collision—incidents that all involved the Truman strike group—with results expected in the coming months.

Central Command—also known as Centcom, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East—declined to comment on ongoing investigations or on the campaign’s performance and impact.

The effects of the deployment will be felt for years. It drew resources from efforts in Asia to deter China and pushed back maintenance schedules for carriers. That could create critical gaps in the second half of the decade, when the giant warships will have no choice but to dock for service.

Despite the wear and tear, Navy officials said the fight with the Houthis offered invaluable combat experience, and the Red Sea conflict is viewed inside the Pentagon as a warm-up for a potential “high-end” conflict with China.

Caught off guard

The Houthis have gained considerable power since the group—combatants in Yemen’s long-running civil war—conquered much of the country a decade ago. They later fought off a campaign led by Gulf powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to roll them back.

At the start of the war in Gaza, the Houthis, who chant “death to America, death to Israel” and cast themselves as defenders of the Palestinians, began attacking Israeli cities as well as ships transiting the Red Sea.

The USS Carney destroyer was in the Red Sea when the Houthis launched their first barrage of drones and missiles on Oct. 19, 2023, catching the sailors aboard off guard. By the end of the 10-hour engagement, the crew had endured the most intense combat a U.S. Navy warship had seen in the better part of a century, shooting down more than a dozen drones and four fast-flying cruise missiles.

The USS Carney destroyer launching land attack missiles in February 2024. Photo: U.S. Navy/Zuma Press

With the Houthis pledging to intensify attacks, U.S. military officials scrambled to solve a logistical problem: Destroyers like the Carney were out of the fight for as long as two weeks as they traveled to and from the Mediterranean to rearm, and nearby countries were wary of themselves becoming Houthi targets. The Pentagon eventually secured access to what one official called a “game-changing” port in the Red Sea that allowed warships to reload without leaving the theater.

In December of that year, Biden cobbled together a multinational coalition to protect one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and then launched a U.S.-led campaign of airstrikes. For much of the campaign, the Pentagon kept two carrier groups in the region, each comprising at least five ships and around 7,000 sailors.

Throughout 2024, the Houthis launched dozens of attacks on commercial shipping, and the U.S. struck back in Yemen to prevent imminent attacks or degrade the militants’ arsenal. In February, a British-owned bulk carrier was struck and later sank with its cargo of fertilizer. Three people were killed on board a Barbados-flagged ship after it was struck in March. Two more ships were abandoned in June after being struck by Houthi missiles.

The Rubymar cargo ship off the coast of Yemen after being struck by Houthis in March 2024. Photo: KHALED ZIAD/AFP/Getty Images

The pace of operations took a toll on sailors, who were constantly within range of the Houthis and needed to remain vigilant around the clock. The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier made just one short port call during seven months of fighting.

On a particularly busy day last November, Navy ships defeated at least eight one-way attack drones, five antiship ballistic missiles and four antiship cruise missiles launched by the Houthis, without incurring any injuries or damage.

At a recent naval symposium, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of U.S. military command in the Middle East, described one night late last year on the USS Stockdale. As the destroyer sailed through a chokepoint in the southern Red Sea, the crew switched off the lights, charted a zigzag course and braced for attack.

Just past midnight, the Houthis launched four ballistic missiles. The 509-foot destroyer accelerated and fired surface-to-air missiles in defense. One Houthi missile, traveling at nearly 4,000 miles an hour, was so close when it was intercepted that falling debris had to be shot down as well.

Ten minutes later, the Houthis fired an antiship cruise missile, which was taken out by fighter jets from a nearby aircraft carrier. Jets downed another cruise missile and multiple drones loaded with explosives, while the carrier struck Houthi targets inside Yemen.

Around 2 a.m., another Houthi drone was picked up flying low and slow directly at the Stockdale. The only option was to open fire with an automatic artillery gun mounted on the deck. When the drone dropped into the sea, the crew erupted in cheers and high-fives.

The USS Gettysburg conducting operations against Houthis in March. CREDIT: CENTCOM

‘A sitting duck’

The battlefield favored the militants. In the Red Sea’s confined waters, barely 200 miles at the widest point, large ships have limited ability to maneuver and spend long periods in view of the coastline, where Houthi spotters can help target ships.

Crews usually only picked up drone and missile launches a minute or two before impact and had to decide how to respond within about 15 seconds. They intercepted hundreds of attacks by the Houthis.

“You make it a sitting duck out there and within range of Houthi weapons,” Bryan Clark, a former Navy strategist and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said of deploying a carrier to the area.

The Navy is used to operating in a similar environment in the Persian Gulf, where the Iranians are at close range. But militias like the Houthis are harder to deter than a regular government—and such groups have become more dangerous with the proliferation of antiship ballistic missiles and attack drones.

“We used to be able to operate close to shore like this, because the expectation was that adversaries would not attack a carrier out of concern for the repercussions,” Clark said.

Sailors often had radar systems tuned to high sensitivity to give them time to intercept drones and missiles. Reviewing and refining radar settings to avoid picking up false positives while still spotting threats at a useful range was one of the most difficult tasks and a key source of stress for shipboard operators, according to an officer who spent six months in the Red Sea.

The Trials of the USS Truman

The USS Truman’s three lost fighter jets are now under investigation by the Pentagon. “It’s unprecedented,” said a Navy official. “Perhaps it’s just pure coincidence or bad luck—or there are some underlying issues.”

Two Navy SEALs, or sea-air-land special-operations forces, were lost at sea early last year while boarding a boat at night that officials said was carrying ballistic and cruise missile components from Iran to Yemen. One of the SEALs fell into the water while trying to climb into the boat and the other one jumped in after him. The Navy searched for them for 10 days before declaring them dead. The fatalities occurred off the coast of Somalia in the Arabian Sea, hundreds of miles from Yemen’s shores.

“Over the past year, the Navy has operated under intense and sustained combat conditions in the Red Sea—the most active maritime conflict zone in a generation,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R., Calif.), who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on defense, said at a hearing on May 14. “But this persistent operational tempo comes at a cost. Ships and crews are being pushed hard, deployments are being extended, and readiness for other global contingencies is being strained.”

Changing tactics

While the Houthis never successfully hit a U.S. vessel, they did get better at tracking moving targets.

Early on, the Houthis would often fire one or two missiles and drones at a time at relatively high altitude, which the Navy was capable of intercepting, Navy officials said. Later, the militants launched attacks at night and sent projectiles skimming just above the waves, making them harder to trace. They also mixed up missile and drone strikes in changing patterns.

The Houthis were also able to down more than a dozen U.S. Reaper drones, each worth around $30 million.

When the Houthis began attacking Red Sea shipping in 2023, senior officials at Centcom wanted to act aggressively to degrade their capabilities, according to a U.S. official, but the Biden administration was wary of escalation. By the time strikes were approved, the Houthis had changed tactics or moved their assets, and U.S. officials often found their planning and intelligence outdated, the official said.

After Trump took office, he gave Gen. Erik Kurilla, the head of Centcom, authority to approve strikes, enabling the U.S. to act more quickly on targeting intelligence for missile launchers and drones. Centcom declined to comment on presidential decisions.

The U.S. poured resources into the effort in mid-March, launching an operation dubbed Rough Rider, including a second U.S. aircraft carrier, half a dozen B-2 bombers, a squadron of advanced F-35 fighters and a host of destroyers armed with guided missiles.

Centcom forces attacked Houthi positions in Yemen in March. CREDIT: CENTCOM

An area hit by a U.S. airstrike in San’a, Yemen, in March. Photo: mohammed huwais/AFP/Getty Images

After 53 days of bombardment, the Houthis were battered but not broken. U.S. airstrikes killed hundreds of fighters, including several senior officials, and destroyed a critical fuel port and large stocks of weapons and war materiel. The Houthis failed to hit any U.S. ships.

Hundreds of Yemeni civilian casualties were reported after the U.S. intensified strikes, according to the Yemen Data Project, an independent monitoring group. Centcom said it was conducting an inquiry into the claims of civilian casualties in Yemen.

A week before the truce was announced, an officer familiar with Houthi operations expressed amazement at the militants’ resolve and ability to adapt. “Their missiles are getting more advanced, which is crazy,” he said. “So far the U.S. Navy is batting a thousand [on interceptions], and I expect that to continue, but for how long?”

Ultimately, Trump settled for a cease-fire on the most basic terms: The Houthis would stop shooting at American ships, and the U.S. would pause its bombing. As the Truman transited the Suez Canal and steamed out of the Mediterranean, the Houthis kept lobbing ballistic missiles at Israel.

Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com and Shelby Holliday at shelby.holliday@wsj.com

3. U.S. Is Redirecting Critical Antidrone Technology From Ukraine to U.S. Forces

Excerpts:

The Senate Armed Services Committee is looking into ramping up production of components for the counterdrone system, including through the current reconciliation bill, said one congressional aide. He praised the Pentagon for promptly notifying lawmakers of its decision to redirect the fuzes to U.S. so the Congress could take it into account in its budget deliberations.

But a Democratic congressional aide was critical. “Denying Ukraine desperately needed weapons at this critical point in the war is unthinkable,” he said. “Failing to explain the necessity of this move suggests that it may be punitive.”

U.S. Is Redirecting Critical Antidrone Technology From Ukraine to U.S. Forces

Move underscores Trump administration’s waning commitment to providing military aid to Kyiv

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/us-halts-ukraine-anti-drone-russia-ce0b5b75

By Michael R. Gordon

Updated June 4, 2025 9:07 pm ET

A firefighter worked in a Kharkiv, Ukraine, industrial zone that was hit in a Russian drone strike this spring. Photo: violeta santos moura/Reuters

Key Points

What's This?

The Trump administration is redirecting Ukraine-earmarked antidrone tech to U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Fuzes for ground-based rockets used to down Russian drones are being allocated to the U.S. Air Force.
Pentagon cites urgent need to protect U.S. personnel in the Middle East from drone attacks.

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is redirecting a key antidrone technology earmarked for Ukraine to American forces, a move that reflects the Pentagon’s waning commitment to Kyiv’s defense.

The Pentagon quietly notified Congress last week that special fuzes for rockets that Ukraine uses to shoot down Russian drones are now being allocated to U.S. Air Force units in the Middle East.

The move comes as President Trump said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him in a phone call that Moscow would have to respond forcefully to recent Ukrainian attacks, dampening the prospects for a halt in the war that began in early 2022.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skipped a meeting Wednesday at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters with European defense ministers on coordinating military aid to Ukraine.

Hegseth has warned that European allies must provide the overwhelming share of future military assistance to Kyiv while casting the western Pacific as the Pentagon’s “priority theater.”

The defense chief went further in an internal memo last month. In it, he authorized the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell, a Pentagon office that ensures commanders’ weapons needs are met, to provide the fuzes to the U.S. Air Force, even though they were initially bought for Ukraine.

and can cause significant damage to Russia

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WSJ Ukraine bureau chief James Marson explains the clandestine Ukrainian drone attack, known as Operation Spider’s Web, against Russia’s air force. Photo: Maxar Technologies

The Pentagon told the Senate Armed Services Committee in the previously undisclosed message that the U.S. military’s need for the fuzes was a “Secretary of Defense Identified Urgent Issue.” The Pentagon declined requests for comment.

The decision to redirect the component illustrates the scarcity of crucial defense items as Ukraine steels itself for more Russian drone and missile attacks, while U.S. Air Force units in the Middle East prepare for a possible conflict with Iran or renewed fighting with Houthi militants in Yemen.

Supporters of the move say the Pentagon has the flexibility to take such an action under the emergency military-spending bill passed last year. But the move had prompted concerns among Ukraine’s supporters in Congress, who say that the Pentagon hasn’t explained what effect the move would have on Ukrainian defenses or whether the Air Force need is urgent.

“This capability is urgent and vital to Ukraine’s layered air defense against Russian attacks,” said Celeste Wallander, who served as a senior Defense Department official during the Biden administration. “But there is also an urgent requirement to protect U.S. personnel and bases in the Middle East against Houthi and potentially Iranian drone attacks.”

The Biden administration arranged to send the fuzes along with numerous other weapons systems under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which authorized the spending of billions of dollars in U.S. government funds to buy weapons and components from American defense companies.

Though the funds for the program have been expended, deliveries are scheduled to reach Ukraine this year and next unless the Trump administration diverts more systems to fill the U.S. military’s inventories.

The Trump administration inherited the authority to send Ukraine as much as $3.85 billion in weapons from the Pentagon’s stocks but refrained from doing so. It hasn’t asked for more funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.

The fuzes are intended for the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System. The U.S. has provided that technology to Ukraine for a couple of years, and the Ukrainians have used it in a ground-to-air rocket system for defending against Russian drones. The Pentagon has touted its effectiveness. A critical component is the “proximity fuze,” which detonates explosives when the rocket nears a drone.

The Air Force has adapted the rockets so that they can be fired by F-16s and F-15E jet fighters against drones. The system is cheaper than Sidewinder and AMRAAM missile air-to-air missiles. A photo of an F-15E equipped with the rocket pods was recently posted by the U.S. Central Command.

The Senate Armed Services Committee is looking into ramping up production of components for the counterdrone system, including through the current reconciliation bill, said one congressional aide. He praised the Pentagon for promptly notifying lawmakers of its decision to redirect the fuzes to U.S. so the Congress could take it into account in its budget deliberations.

But a Democratic congressional aide was critical. “Denying Ukraine desperately needed weapons at this critical point in the war is unthinkable,” he said. “Failing to explain the necessity of this move suggests that it may be punitive.”

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

Appeared in the June 5, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Set To Shift Antidrone Tech From Ukraine'.

4. The Future of War Is Happening Right Now in Ukraine

Excerpts:

As the missile defense expert Tom Karako recently put it to me, “People talk about a ‘Cyber’ Pearl Harbor, and a ‘Space’ Pearl Harbor. I worry about a ‘Pearl Harbor’ Pearl Harbor.” Pearl Harbor itself and bases in the first island chain would obviously be vulnerable to China, as would American ships at quayside in San Diego and even Norfolk, Virginia, not to mention American B-2s in Missouri. There are a lot of shipping containers in America sitting on the backs of trucks and aboard cargo vessels. We will never know what is in them. Such attacks could occur simultaneously with other, more traditional kinds of strikes at targets far from the primary theater of conflict—which is to say, we may need to rethink what we are talking about when we speak of military theaters. The special significance of Sunday’s raids is to settle beyond question that the time for accepting the emergency nature of such threats is past. Meanwhile, the time for preparing adequate countermeasures could run out at any moment.

We also should not ignore the obvious. Sunday’s strikes emphasize, for all their newfangled employment of modern technology to solve cutting-edge problems, the essential role of surprise. This is perhaps counterintuitive in an era of bloodletting defined by the widespread proliferation of sensors and precision-strike technology, the net effect of which would seem to be to render surprise extremely difficult. But, if anything, the consequence of the visible battlefield and the widespread employment of sensor-strike complexes (first used in their modern sense by the United States in the Gulf War, later imitated by the Chinese to create their A2/AD bubbles in the Western Pacific, and now available even to para-state groups like the Houthis) has been to make surprise even more important—a virtually necessary precondition of successful maneuver in any form.

...

To cheer on the defeat of an invaded country fighting for its own survival certainly seems morally perverse—but the realists and advocates for MAGA International are quick to counsel us that such moralizing is what has caused all the trouble in American foreign policy in the first place. As yet undemonstrated is how conceding Eurasia to Sino-Russian dominance would in the long run enhance prospects for American freedom and prosperity.

The Future of War Is Happening Right Now in Ukraine

Ukraine’s strikes into Russia illustrate the historic role of surprise in battlefield success. They also test the country’s fragile relationship with the fractious leadership of the United States.

By Aaron MacLean

06.03.25 — International

https://www.thefp.com/p/future-of-war-is-now

Sunday’s strikes emphasize, for all their newfangled employment of modern technology to solve cutting-edge problems, the essential role of surprise. (Dmytro Smolienko via Alamy)

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If what the Ukrainian security service has told the public is even half true, their long-range strikes against the Russian air force on June 1 were an operational success on a grand scale. The Ukrainians say that they damaged or destroyed roughly a third of Russia’s strategic cruise-missile carriers, striking targets at bases from the Arctic Circle in Murmansk all the way to the far end of the Eurasian steppe along the Mongolian border in Irkutsk. Russia’s vast depths failed to contribute to their customary strategic advantage.

The raids also demonstrated that the future of war is now. To overcome Russia’s advantage in distance and evade its air defenses, the Ukrainians infiltrated cheap drones in trucks, launched them remotely in close proximity to their targets, and apparently leveraged local telecom networks for control, though reportedly using some degree of autonomy as well—the details are not clear. Some of the targeted aircraft are no longer in production and are thus likely irreplicable. The Ukrainians say the tab in damaged or destroyed equipment for the Russians is in the vicinity of $7 billion. The cost of the attack was certainly orders of magnitude less than that—just as the effective demolition of Russia’s Black Sea fleet cost much less than the destroyed assets themselves. We knew that an “anti-navy” was a feature of the modern battlefield; logically an “anti-air force” was just as plausible.

The dramatic variation in price tags continues a trend notable in other theaters. For instance, in America’s recent tangle with the Houthis in the Red Sea, multimillion-dollar interceptors and munitions were regularly expended against much cheaper Iranian-axis drones and targets, with the Houthis living to tell the tale and continuing to threaten shipping. (This is one of many dimensions where what’s new is quite old—10-rupee jezails [long Afghan rifles] have been providing “asymmetric” advantages to weaker forces for a very long time.) But the operation was also a dress rehearsal for a nightmare scenario already much on the mind of some analysts, where the West’s under-defended major assets could be wiped out in sudden attacks in the opening moments of a direct great-power conflict: for example, American assets during a war with China over the future of Taiwan.

As the missile defense expert Tom Karako recently put it to me, “People talk about a ‘Cyber’ Pearl Harbor, and a ‘Space’ Pearl Harbor. I worry about a ‘Pearl Harbor’ Pearl Harbor.” Pearl Harbor itself and bases in the first island chain would obviously be vulnerable to China, as would American ships at quayside in San Diego and even Norfolk, Virginia, not to mention American B-2s in Missouri. There are a lot of shipping containers in America sitting on the backs of trucks and aboard cargo vessels. We will never know what is in them. Such attacks could occur simultaneously with other, more traditional kinds of strikes at targets far from the primary theater of conflict—which is to say, we may need to rethink what we are talking about when we speak of military theaters. The special significance of Sunday’s raids is to settle beyond question that the time for accepting the emergency nature of such threats is past. Meanwhile, the time for preparing adequate countermeasures could run out at any moment.

We also should not ignore the obvious. Sunday’s strikes emphasize, for all their newfangled employment of modern technology to solve cutting-edge problems, the essential role of surprise. This is perhaps counterintuitive in an era of bloodletting defined by the widespread proliferation of sensors and precision-strike technology, the net effect of which would seem to be to render surprise extremely difficult. But, if anything, the consequence of the visible battlefield and the widespread employment of sensor-strike complexes (first used in their modern sense by the United States in the Gulf War, later imitated by the Chinese to create their A2/AD bubbles in the Western Pacific, and now available even to para-state groups like the Houthis) has been to make surprise even more important—a virtually necessary precondition of successful maneuver in any form.

Surprise was the necessary ingredient in Hamas’s operational success on October 7, 2023, in which a brigade-level assault was loaded and launched from a tiny intelligence petri dish upon an unsuspecting first-rate military, only because of a highly sophisticated multiyear deception campaign. Israel repaid the favor to Hezbollah the following autumn, when it dismantled its northern adversary, long feared to be capable of devastating the Jewish state’s population and economy with massive barrages of missiles. But Hezbollah’s leaders were already dead or maimed before they had a chance to push the button. The use of intelligence, the brilliant supply-chain leadership strikes through beepers and walkie-talkies, precision itself, and finally the killing of Hassan Nasrallah—the whole Israeli campaign relied on ambiguity, deception, intellectual manipulation—what we once would have called stratagems. Maneuver and the offense more broadly can succeed in warfare in 2025, and not only through the brute application of attritional mass—but through trickiness.

Operational successes need to serve bigger strategic ideas, which themselves need to make sense. Hamas’s successful attacks of October 7 have in the long run been all but suicidal. On the other hand, Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah contributed to a decisive defeat in Lebanon and, as a bonus, the fall of the Assad regime. It is too soon to say what the strategic effects (if any) of Sunday’s raids will be, though we can hazard some guesses.

The most concrete consequence will be to diminish, at least at the margins and possibly to a more significant extent, the potency of Russia’s ongoing strategic air campaign against the Ukrainian state, population, and economy. The destroyed and damaged bombers were part of Russia’s nuclear deterrent against America and the West, but they were also frequently employed to launch cruise missiles in the Ukraine war—difficult weapons to intercept, capable of delivering devastating payloads.

Reducing the number of such strikes seems a good day’s work in and of itself, as does the blow to Russian morale and the demonstration of capability to allies. But what will the broader impact of the raids be on the ongoing talks in Istanbul to settle the war, and on Ukraine’s relationship with the United States? One plausible theory is that they are unambiguously helpful—Russian president Vladimir Putin is not serious about stopping the war, as evidenced by the terms he has been demanding of the Ukrainians (in the words of Frederick Kagan, “surrender”). Showing the Russians that their continued prosecution of the war risks painful ongoing costs should plausibly contribute to greater Russian seriousness in the diplomatic process. Ideally, such efforts would be coordinated with robust American support to ensure maximal pressure and thus maximal incentive to reach an acceptable settlement.

But this is not the only theory, and we do not live in an ideal world. A number of voices in the broader Trump administration orbit in Washington reacted to the Ukrainian operation with concern and criticism. The raids, given that they targeted elements of Russia’s nuclear deterrent, were escalatory and risked a broader war. Rather than contribute to the seriousness of the diplomatic process, they seemed timed to spoil it. (Never mind that Russia has in recent days launched the largest air raids of the war against Ukraine.) According to these arguments, the Ukrainians need to show greater restraint or risk losing (more) American support. At the time of writing, President Donald Trump and other senior members of the administration have been silent on the issue.

What are the risks for Ukraine in the face of such sentiment—and are they in any practical way avoidable?

The tent of Trump’s political support is large enough to include numerous attitudes toward Ukraine, ranging from traditional Republican antipathy toward Russia and support for invaded American partners, to “realists” who have long called for warmer relations with Moscow in deference to a rational calculus of power politics, to those who enthusiastically wish for Ukraine’s outright defeat. The latter two groups form their own operational coalition on the question of Ukraine. Why would some Americans enthusiastically seek Ukraine’s defeat? Because (in the view of this third group) America’s liberal grand strategy since 1945, and especially since the end of the Cold War, has propped up a world system inimical to its values. Ukraine is an outpost of an essentially unjust and oppressive liberal imperium; Russia, meanwhile, is a potential partner in an anti-liberal concert that could maintain world order, perhaps even in coalition with China itself. The hostility to liberalism is the overarching idea, and Ukraine is but one question in a broader exam for humanity.

Such views do not appear to preoccupy Trump himself, who seems genuinely to want peace and is also frustrated that it is not forthcoming more quickly. He is his own sui generis strategic thinker, a mercantilist to an extent unusual in the modern era and, as his vision of Gaza’s future indicates, far from an isolationist. Such views are also not particularly popular in the United States, which is probably why one does not hear them expressed openly all that much. Dramatic outcomes like the fall of Kyiv would be as damaging for the current administration as the fall of Kabul was for Biden’s.

To the extent that Sunday’s raids might upset Trump and empower those around him who are especially hostile to Ukraine, they come at a risk. But to argue that the targeting of assets that are bombing Ukrainian targets should be avoided because it is escalatory is the same thing as saying that self-defense itself is escalatory. The natural American position would then be to actively seek Ukraine’s surrender. Washington has not arrived there yet and, again, Trump’s political instincts are keener than those around him with greater ideological fervor.

To cheer on the defeat of an invaded country fighting for its own survival certainly seems morally perverse—but the realists and advocates for MAGA International are quick to counsel us that such moralizing is what has caused all the trouble in American foreign policy in the first place. As yet undemonstrated is how conceding Eurasia to Sino-Russian dominance would in the long run enhance prospects for American freedom and prosperity.

This article was originally published by Engelsberg Ideas (www.EngelsbergIdeas.com).

Aaron MacLean is the host of the School of War podcast and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

5. Ukraine’s Attack Exposed America’s Achilles’ Heel

Excerpt:

The most technologically advanced fighting force that the world has ever known — the same one that ushered in the age of drone warfare with its missile-firing Predators and Reapers at the turn of the century — has been slow to adopt this technology. The irony won’t escape many in the Pentagon. Let’s hope Ukraine’s attack inside Russia on Sunday motivates America’s war planners to address the nation’s stark vulnerability to similar threats and its own pressing need to increase its fleet of small drones.

Opinion

Ukraine’s Attack Exposed America’s Achilles’ Heel

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/opinion/ukraine-attack-russia-us.html?utm

June 4, 2025

Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

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By W.J. Hennigan

Mr. Hennigan writes about national security, foreign policy and conflict for the Opinion section.

It turns out Volodymyr Zelensky did have another card to play.

Ukraine’s astonishing drone attack on military airfields and critical assets deep inside Russia on Sunday blindsided the Kremlin, destroyed at least a dozen strategic bombers and marked a seismic shift in modern warfare.

The mission, called Operation Spider’s Web, was a fresh reminder to leaders of the world’s most advanced militaries that the toughest threats they face today are not limited to their regular rivals with expensive gear. Instead, swarms of small, off-the-shelf drones that can evade ground defenses can also knock out billions of dollars of military hardware in an instant.

What happened in Russia can happen in the United States — or anywhere else. The risk facing military bases, ports and command headquarters peppered across the globe is now undeniably clear.

We don’t yet know if the operation will affect the Trump administration’s push for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, but it nonetheless delivered a tactical defeat to Russia’s military and will put pressure on President Vladimir Putin to respond. And what is almost certain is that the innovative use of inexpensive technology will inspire other asymmetric attacks that inflict serious damage against a well-heeled adversary.

Mr. Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, called the attack, which was planned by Ukraine’s Security Service, his country’s “longest-range operation.” By smuggling more than 100 explosive-laden quadcopter drones across the border in cargo trucks, Ukraine managed to evade air defenses and then fly the drones undetected above four Russian bases, where they damaged or destroyed what Ukrainian officials said were more than 40 high-value aircraft used in the assault on Ukrainian cities. Those involved with the attack left Russia before it began, Ukrainian officials said. The operators could watch live video and hover the aircraft above their targets before steering them into a nosedive.

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The extent of the attack — and the choice of targets — opens a new chapter in how drones are used in modern warfare, one that was improbable even a decade ago. The widespread availability of technology in the intervening years has empowered Ukraine to have mostly free rein in the skies above its larger, wealthier enemy, despite having a limited traditional air force.

The U.S. military understands Russia’s vulnerability firsthand. Although American pilots have managed to control the skies where they operate since the Korean War, U.S. troops in recent years have come under greater danger from drones. Militant groups have used the aircraft, which are a small fraction of the size of U.S. warplanes, to target American positions in the Middle East, dropping crude munitions that have maimed and killed American service members.

The U.S. military has globe-spanning technology to detect, track and shoot down ballistic missiles, but — so far — its multimillion-dollar systems remain helpless against the drone threat. The Pentagon has tried to develop technologies and defensive tactics, but results have been spotty at best. So-called hard-kill tactics to blast the drones out of the sky, or soft-kill methods to electronically disable them, haven’t proved to be silver bullets. The unmanned aircraft typically fly low to the ground and don’t always transmit their positions. Current radar systems are engineered to spot larger flying objects.

American commanders increasingly realize that forces stateside are just as exposed. Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, the head of Northern Command, told Congress in February that there were some 350 detections of drone overflights above 100 military installations in the United States last year. Those small drones appeared to be more of a nuisance than a threat, but Spider’s Web exposed the risk of not taking them seriously.

The Federal Aviation Administration has licensed more than a million drones in the United States. Most fly by the rules, but sightings of drones making illegal flights are on the rise. The F.A.A. reports there are now 100 drone sightings around airports each month, despite federal law that requires them to avoid flying near airports in controlled airspace without authorization.

Military bases and aircraft hangars should be hardened to guard against the worst. Congress is poised to set aside about $1.3 billion this fiscal year for the Pentagon to develop and deploy counter-drone technologies. This is a good start. But the Pentagon’s most ambitious and expensive plans fail to address the threat.

President Trump unveiled plans last month for his $175 billion antimissile shield, called Golden Dome, which aims to shoot down all manners of ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles. The program, which is under development, wouldn’t protect the United States from the types of small drones Ukraine used in Spider’s Web.

The United States has spent millions of dollars to help Ukraine manufacture and fine-tune its drones but has not pushed American contractors to do the same. The Pentagon has been slow to procure the smaller, cheaper, less advanced brand of drones that are omnipresent over the battlefields in Ukraine. In August 2023 it did announce a project to field thousands of autonomous systems. The billion-dollar initiative, called Replicator, was inspired by lessons learned in Ukraine to manufacture inexpensive drones and make them widely available by this fall. The Pentagon has said vanishingly little about the effort’s systems and programs since Mr. Trump took office, though.

The most technologically advanced fighting force that the world has ever known — the same one that ushered in the age of drone warfare with its missile-firing Predators and Reapers at the turn of the century — has been slow to adopt this technology. The irony won’t escape many in the Pentagon. Let’s hope Ukraine’s attack inside Russia on Sunday motivates America’s war planners to address the nation’s stark vulnerability to similar threats and its own pressing need to increase its fleet of small drones.

From the comments

The best defense is peace. People are always going to find guerrilla tactics to thwart the most advanced billion dollar military projects.

@Mochi Mochi It’s hard to argue with that. And even after new defenses are erected, people engineer novel ways to circumvent them. I wrote about that cat-and-mouse aspect when Trump issued his executive order on Golden Dome. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/27/opinion/thepoint#iron-dome-america-missile-defense

W.J. Hennigan writes about national security, foreign policy and conflict for the Opinion section.

6. Ukrainian drone strikes show up Australia’s out-of-date defences by Mick Ryan

Excerpts:

I have seen how frontline Ukrainian units employ drones and how their Unmanned Systems Forces use them for long-range strikes. I have interviewed air defence commanders in Ukraine about defending against thousands of drone attacks per month and interviewed those who have developed world-leading drone interceptors. The Australian government has worked hard to ignore these hard-earned lessons and these cheaper military solutions, while building a dense bureaucracy in Canberra that innovative drone-makers in Australia cannot penetrate in any reasonable amount of time.

Every couple of months the Ukrainians deploy an entirely new class of long-range strike drone. The Ukrainians (and Russians) are adapting their drones weekly and monthly, a pace that is incomprehensible to risk-intolerant Australian public servants and politicians. As the Ukrainians demonstrated on the weekend, fortune favours those who take strategic risks with capability development and the employment of their forces. And as they also showed, failure awaits those who are too slow and too arrogant to learn and adapt.

The problem isn’t a shortage of innovative spirit among the people of the ADF or Australian industry. The problem is a government indifferent to defence issues, a lack of leadership from the part-time defence minister and a process-obsessed bureaucracy that pays no price for the inevitable military failures to come if we remain on our current path.

Ukrainian drone strikes show up Australia’s out-of-date defences

Mick Ryan

Military leader and strategist

https://archive.is/wAOnH#selection-3363.0-3729.1

June 4, 2025 — 4.15pm

Over the weekend, Ukraine provided a demonstration of something that has been largely misinterpreted by the many “pop-up” war experts that have emerged here and elsewhere in the past three years. What the audacious Ukrainian strikes showed was not a new way of war nor new drone capabilities. Both have been on display for more than three years – for those who have noticed.

Ukrainian troops prepare to launch a Kazhan heavy drone in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.Credit:AP

What the Ukrainians actually provided on the weekend was a lesson that has two sides: On one side, they showed what can be done when politicians and military leaders take risk and free up their people to exercise creativity. The other side of the lesson is that Ukraine showed what happens to those who do not pay sufficient attention to the lessons of war, and whose learning and adaptation culture and systems are inadequate.

Unfortunately, the Australian defence department and its part-time minister have shown no indication they have learned the first lesson but have demonstrated a full measure of the second.

Australia’s defence force is slowly but surely being degraded in size and capacity by being denied funding, due to a focus on submarines that will arrive too late to deter China’s rapid military build-up and aggression. The 2 per cent of GDP being spent on defence has been recognised by every credible defence expert in this country as insufficient for normal defence needs, let along running a defence force and paying down the nuclear submarines as well as paying the exorbitant salaries of the hundreds of AUKUS bureaucrats who are travelling the world, writing briefs and producing nothing.

The Ukrainian drone strikes on the weekend are another “foot-stomp” moment for Australia. They demonstrated that taking risks and being innovative can result in the development of a long-range strike capability that does not just have to build on the small number of exquisite and expensive systems Australia is procuring. And unlike these big expensive systems, which once lost are gone forever, drones can be produced in mass quantities by Australian industry in case we are involved in a sustained war.

The expensive and exquisitely “focused” defence force we are building is designed for 20th century war. It will also take decades to deliver because of the zero-risk procurement policy of the defence department. We need to shift to a balanced force that balances crewed and uncrewed systems, expensive and cheap systems – designed for 21st century war. And we need to speed up and delegate down authorities to procure more relevant equipment that can be upgraded regularly.

Drones are not just an aerial asset – land and maritime drones have proven their utility in Ukraine and this has been ignored in Canberra. And with the latest developments, which include uncrewed naval vessels that carry strike drones and uncrewed aerial vehicles that carry smaller attack drones, Australia has an opportunity to learn from Ukraine and develop new kinds of high-tech deterrents to Chinese aggression.

The second lesson of the weekend is that those who are slow to learn and adapt pay the consequences. The Russians, who have had their airbases attacked regularly in the past two years, have been slow to upgrade their defences and paid the price on the weekend. Australian military bases and critical infrastructure are totally defenceless against these kinds of drone attacks. That has been clear from three years of war in Ukraine ,and yet, this government has done nothing to protect Australian soldiers from such threats. Not only have budgets for drone defences not materialised, but an extraordinarily dense air safety bureaucracy has also prevented units from using drones and experimenting with new ideas like the Ukrainian military has throughout the war. Few soldiers see drones on training exercises these days.

I have seen how frontline Ukrainian units employ drones and how their Unmanned Systems Forces use them for long-range strikes. I have interviewed air defence commanders in Ukraine about defending against thousands of drone attacks per month and interviewed those who have developed world-leading drone interceptors. The Australian government has worked hard to ignore these hard-earned lessons and these cheaper military solutions, while building a dense bureaucracy in Canberra that innovative drone-makers in Australia cannot penetrate in any reasonable amount of time.

Every couple of months the Ukrainians deploy an entirely new class of long-range strike drone. The Ukrainians (and Russians) are adapting their drones weekly and monthly, a pace that is incomprehensible to risk-intolerant Australian public servants and politicians. As the Ukrainians demonstrated on the weekend, fortune favours those who take strategic risks with capability development and the employment of their forces. And as they also showed, failure awaits those who are too slow and too arrogant to learn and adapt.

The problem isn’t a shortage of innovative spirit among the people of the ADF or Australian industry. The problem is a government indifferent to defence issues, a lack of leadership from the part-time defence minister and a process-obsessed bureaucracy that pays no price for the inevitable military failures to come if we remain on our current path.

Mick Ryan is a retired major-general who served in the ADF for more than 35 years. He is the senior fellow for military studies at the Lowy Institute. He is the author of the 2024 book The War for Ukraine.

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7. Ex-FBI boss reveals sleeper threat: 'It could lead to the next 9/11'

Excerpts:

Some analysts say white supremacist terrorism is more prevalent than Islamist and anti-Israel violence, and describe the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters as an armed act of insurrectionist terrorism.

Immigrant advocacy groups argue that foreigners are often painted as violent criminals by conservatives, when in reality immigrants, even those who are in the US illegally, are less likely to commit crimes than the local population.

Swecker, however, says the bigger dangers come from overseas, the loose border policy, and a growing population of people within America who are not on board with the country's founding ideas and values.

'There's a large population of people who are here from Middle East countries, that tried to make a go of it. And they're not happy. They're not making it and they developed a deep resentment for this country and its culture,' he says.

'The terrorist ideology has built on the hate and resentment to activate these types of people. And they know that there are quite a few of them here.'

Ex-FBI boss reveals sleeper threat: 'It could lead to the next 9/11'

Daily Mail · by JAMES REINL · June 5, 2025

A former FBI boss has warned of the biggest terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11 from a sleeper cell of militants who slipped into the country during the 'open borders' of the Biden era.

Chris Swecker, an assistant FBI director in the 2000s, says Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups likely snuck sleeper agents into the US when the southern border was swamped with migrants.

Much like the al-Qaeda militants who spent months in the US before the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people, they may have seemingly ordinary lives.

That does not mean the aren't preparing for mayhem and bloodshed in a desperate bid to further a radical ideology, he says.

His comments come in the wake of the outrage in Boulder, Colorado, where illegal Egyptian immigrant Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, threw petrol bombs into a rally in support of Israeli hostages, injuring a dozen people.

The nightmare scenario, said Swecker, would be if a handful of terrorists who crossed the southern border during the Biden administration 'activated' and wrought havoc with assault rifles and homemade bombs.

Likely candidates include Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Islamist paramilitary group, or Hamas, the Palestinian Sunni Islamists, he said. Both groups oppose Washington's support for Israel, their shared mortal foe.

'What terrorist organization would not take advantage of that access to this country without having to go through airports and any type of screening whatsoever, and not be here in a sleeper capacity?' said Swecker.

Al-Qaeda militants spent months in the US before the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,977 people

Chris Swecker, the assistant director who led the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division in the 2000s, fears sleeper agents could mount another huge attack

'If they're not doing it, they're a pretty poor terrorist organization.'

Those groups may not be able to recreate as complicated an attack as 9/11, given the greater security at airports and other likely targets nowadays, says Swecker, but a strike could still be catastrophic.

'They were motivated enough to put together 9/11. Granted, we haven't had anything like that since, but I can see a two- or three-person cell activating here in this country. And we know what kind of damage they could cause, just with shoulder weapons and IEDs.'

Swecker's description recalls the November 2015 terrorist attack on Paris, when Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers attacked crowds at a football match, shops, and the Bataclan theater, killing 130 and injuring hundreds more.

During Joe Biden's presidency, Republicans and security hawks repeatedly warned about the danger of terrorists entering the US during surges in immigrants, many of whom were waved into the country with minimal screening.

Under Biden, border patrol agents registered some 8 million 'encounters' on the southwest land frontier with Mexico. But this figure did not account for the 'gotaways' who entered undetected.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents apprehended members of Hezb-e-Islami, al Shabaab, and other foreign terrorist groups amid the surge. Some 400 suspected terrorist group members were known to have entered the country, according to official data.

According to Swecker, many more militants could have entered the country without being seen by ICE.

The Egyptian illegal immigrant who's accused of burning pro-Israel protestors in Colorado highlights the threat of foreign terrorists on US soil, says Chris Swecker

Terrorists intent on striking the US homeland may have already infiltrated America, hidden among more than 10 million illegal immigrants who entered the country on Biden's watch, says Swecker. (Above) Migrants breach barriers set up on the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas on March 21, 2024

'I was warning about this two years ago, when people were just streaming across the border. Now we've got up to about 1.8 million gotaways,' says the former head of the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division.

'We don't have any idea who they are or if they have a terrorism background.'

In his reelection campaign, Donald Trump said the Biden-Harris administration had 'allowed 21 million illegals to pour in from all over the world,' though this number has been contested.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has launched a crackdown on illegal immigration, resulting in far fewer encounters at the border and a sharp rise in deportations for foreigners without papers.

The type of terrorist attack Swecker envisages, a coordinated mass-casualty involving several militants and orchestrated by a broader political movement, would mark a return to a dark moment in America's history.

Terrorism strikes in recent years have typically been carried out by a lone attacker, often one who has been radicalized by online activists, radical clerics, and alarm over Israel's war with Palestinian militants.

They appear to include Soliman, who faces hate crime and attempted murder charges for the Colorado attack, and Elias Rodriguez, 30, the Chicago man who allegedly gunned down two Israeli embassy staff members outside a Jewish museum in Washington, DC earlier this month.

Coordinated terrorist strikes remain a threat across Western Europe and Russia, where ISIS-K members raided the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow on March 22, 2024

Some analysts say white supremacist terrorism is more prevalent than Islamist and anti-Israel violence, and describe the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters as an armed act of insurrectionist terrorism.

Immigrant advocacy groups argue that foreigners are often painted as violent criminals by conservatives, when in reality immigrants, even those who are in the US illegally, are less likely to commit crimes than the local population.

Swecker, however, says the bigger dangers come from overseas, the loose border policy, and a growing population of people within America who are not on board with the country's founding ideas and values.

'There's a large population of people who are here from Middle East countries, that tried to make a go of it. And they're not happy. They're not making it and they developed a deep resentment for this country and its culture,' he says.

'The terrorist ideology has built on the hate and resentment to activate these types of people. And they know that there are quite a few of them here.'

Daily Mail · by JAMES REINL · June 5, 2025

8. The Ukrainian Spy Agency Behind the Stunning Strike on Russia’s Bomber Fleet

Please see the interactive website and graphics at the link below.

Excerpts:

The SBU has steadily increased the range of its explosive drones, which now regularly target Russian military and industrial facilities inside Russia.

The security service has pulled off daring assassinations on Russian territory. It used an exploding scooter to kill a Russian general in Moscow and a bomb hidden inside a statuette to take out a Russian war blogger in St. Petersburg. The agency has also been active in Ukraine hunting down spies and saboteurs.

As a result of the successes, the SBU’s reputation has soared among the Ukrainian public. Trust in the agency stood at 73% last September, according to a survey by Kyiv-based pollster Rating, compared with 23% in 2021. Ukraine’s postal service has released a special stamp to celebrate the SBU’s operations.

The Ukrainian Spy Agency Behind the Stunning Strike on Russia’s Bomber Fleet

Ukraine’s SBU security service has carried out some of the most spectacular attacks of the war

https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-spy-sbu-russia-drone-attack-f78f9713?st=GS8Au7&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By James Marson

, Jane Lytvynenko and Brenna T. Smith

June 4, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Key Points

What's This?

The SBU security service has transformed into the sharp tip of Ukraine’s spear, targeting Russia with covert operations and drone attacks.
Under Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, the SBU has embraced new tech, striking Russian military and industrial facilities with long-range drones.
The SBU’s reputation has soared among Ukrainians, with trust in the agency rising to 73% due to its recent successes.

KYIV, Ukraine—With its devastating drone assault on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, Ukraine’s SBU security service pulled off the kind of spectacular operation that has long fed the mystique of top spy agencies like Israel’s Mossad.

The SBU has transformed during the three-year war into the sharp tip of Ukraine’s spear after decades of being maligned as corrupt, shot through with traitors and more focused on chasing political opponents than security threats.

Under the leadership of Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, the agency has taken the fight to Russia with the killings of alleged traitors and Russian military officers as well as with the use of long-range explosive drones that have targeted Russian military-production plants and oil facilities. It has also revolutionized naval warfare by deploying naval drones that forced the Russian Black Sea Fleet to largely abandon its home port in occupied Crimea.

Maliuk, a burly 42-year-old who worked his way up through the ranks of the SBU, has built a reputation as a hands-on leader with a tough streak. In February, Maliuk personally detained a senior officer of the agency who was allegedly spying for Russia.

The SBU’s drone attack on Sunday, dubbed Operation Spiderweb, was 18 months in the planning and damaged 41 Russian warplanes at four airfields deep inside Russia, according to the SBU. The agency released fresh drone footage on Wednesday, which showed dozens of drones targeting planes across four Russian airports.

Drones landed on two A-50 planes, which provide early warning of potential threats as well as command and control of the battlefield.

VIDEO: SBU

It isn’t clear whether there was an explosion from each drone, as the detonation of the drones also cuts the video feed. The A-50s didn’t have engines on them, calling into question whether the planes were operational, according to Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. One of the planes was no longer present in satellite imagery of the air base on Monday.

IVANOVO AIR BASE

June 1: Footage from drone

June 2: Satellite image

Drone lands

on A-50

A-50 missing

Sources: SBU (drone footage); Planet Labs (satellite image); Sam Lair, research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (aircraft analysis)

The new video proves that the strike caused more damage than previously revealed through satellite images and videos posted online. It shows that dozens of warplanes were attacked, though it doesn’t confirm damage to all of the 41 the SBU says were hit in the operation.

“Operation Spiderweb will go down as one of the most effective intelligence-driven special-operations missions in history,” said Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense. “The clandestine development of a platform to conduct this, the operational security being able to be maintained to protect it and the skill and expertise necessary to execute were exceptional.”

President Trump said Wednesday that he had spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin for over an hour, including about the Ukrainian assault. “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” Trump wrote on social media.

SBU operatives smuggled Ukrainian drone parts into Russia and assembled them at a secret location before dispatching them toward air bases concealed in wooden containers on the back of trucks. A Ukrainian law-enforcement official said Kyiv tracked Russian plane movements ahead of the operation to increase the chance of success when they were dispersed across several airports.

Satellite imagery shows the movement of Tupolev Tu-95 bombers, Soviet-era aircraft vital to Russia’s long-range missile campaigns, in the days ahead of the attack.

OLENYA AIR BASE

May 29

May 26

11 Tu-95s

3 Tu-95s

BELAYA AIR BASE

May 24

May 31

No Tu-95s

6 Tu-95s

Sources: Planet Labs (Satellite images via CNS); Sam Lair, research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (Aircraft analysis)

Jemal R. Brinson/WSJ

The operation took advantage of a moment when the targeted planes were evenly distributed across Russian air bases to “maximize the effectiveness of their drones,” said Lair, who first identified the plane movements.

On Sunday, as the trucks were close to four Russian airfields, the roofs were opened remotely and 117 drones flew out and zipped toward their targets. An SBU official said the drones were guided manually by pilots but, in a sign of how the agency is at the forefront of technological advances, artificial intelligence took over when some of the craft lost their signal, automatically piloting the drones to strike their targets along preplanned routes.

Ukrainian officials quickly lavished praise on the SBU for the operation, stressing that it was planned and executed by Ukrainians using homegrown equipment.

“We are grateful to our partners, but this operation was conducted by the Ukrainian side alone,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Monday.

May 22

June 4

In the days after the Russian invasion in February 2022, the SBU was in disarray. Several senior officers had allegedly betrayed their service by assisting the Russians. They were later detained.

The SBU emerged from its Soviet predecessor, the KGB, after Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The KGB and its forerunners had relentlessly targeted Ukrainians who promoted independence. As Ukraine took an authoritarian turn in the late 1990s, the SBU pursued pro-democracy activists and political opponents and shook down businesses.

After Russia invaded and seized Crimea and covertly sent paramilitaries into eastern Ukraine in 2014, dozens of SBU officers switched sides to Russia. After that invasion, Moscow continued to recruit moles inside the agency.

In July 2022, Zelensky removed the then-chairman of the SBU, his childhood friend Ivan Bakanov, and replaced him with Maliuk, who had led operations to root out Russian agents.

In February, the SBU’s leader, Lt. Gen. Vasyl Maliuk, personally detained a senior officer of the agency who was allegedly spying for Russia. Photo: SBU

Under Maliuk’s leadership, the SBU quickly became a feared and creative agency that targeted Russian military installations, equipment and military and pro-war figures in a series of brazen attacks.

Maliuk is respected in the agency, in part because he wasn’t a professional politician parachuted in by the country’s president, as were several previous leaders. Before running the agency, he worked for years in regional SBU offices and fought against Russia after the 2014 invasion.

“He knows every fighter by name, he’s always open for honest conversation,” said one SBU officer, who said Maliuk frequently travels to the front lines of the war.

An SBU naval drone on display in Kyiv. Photo: Emanuele Satolli for WSJ

He has embraced new technology, particularly drones, and is adept at spotting Russian weak points and striking there with spectacular results, officers said.

In an October 2022 attack planned and executed by the SBU, a truck loaded with explosives detonated on the Kerch Bridge linking mainland Russia to Crimea. The explosion ignited tanker wagons in a passing cargo train and damaged the bridge, a project feted by Putin and critical to his military’s logistics.

Explosive naval drones developed by a special unit of the SBU have struck at least 11 Russian ships, according to the agency’s numbers, forcing Russia to withdraw much of its Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea. A naval drone was also used to strike the Kerch Bridge again in 2023, severely damaging a support pillar. The officer in charge of the SBU’s sea drone program said Maliuk’s trust and support during its infancy were critical to its success.

Outmatched in labor and equipment by its giant invader, Ukraine has relied on the SBU to find ways to strike deep inside Russia using long-range drones and covert operations.

Inside Operation Spider’s Web

What Ukraine’s audacious drone attack on Russian airfields revealed about modern warfare.

2025-06-04T06:00:10-04:00

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

natalie kitroeff

From “The New York Times,” I’m Natalie Kitroeff. This is “The Daily.”

[THEME MUSIC]

Today, the story of Operation Spider’s Web, an audacious sneak attack by Ukraine that caused billions of dollars in damage to Russian warplanes, with drones that cost as little as $600. My colleague, Marc Santora, explains why this strike is already being seen as a defining moment in the evolution of modern warfare.

It’s Wednesday, June 4.

Marc, we’re coming to you because you are one of the correspondents who has been on the ground for the longest in Ukraine. You’ve been reporting from the front lines, embedding with the Ukrainian military. And we now know what happened this past Sunday was unlike anything we have seen so far in this war.

You and a team of reporters have been working to uncover exactly what went down, how it went down. And I want to get to those specifics here today. But first, can you just take us through the events as you experienced them on Sunday?

marc santora

Sure. So you get used to a lot of reports of explosions every day here, whether it’s here in Ukraine or something going on in Russia.

[AIR RAID SIRENS]

But on Sunday, around 1:00 o’clock, we started to get these really strange reports of explosions at airfields 3,000 miles from Ukraine.

[EXPLOSION]

First, we saw reports of explosions at an airfield all the way in Siberia.

speaker

[SPEAKING UKRAINIAN]:

marc santora

And as they started to come in, we started to get videos of how these attacks were being conducted.

speaker

[UKRAINIAN]:

marc santora

And it was really weird looking, because we’re used to long-range Ukrainian drone strikes going after Russian targets inside of Russia. But here —

speaker

[SPEAKING UKRAINIAN]:

marc santora

— we saw these trucks parked on the side of the road and then these small, little quadcopters rising up from the trailer and taking off. And then —

[EXPLOSION]

— cut images to burning planes and airfields. And so it quickly became apparent that in terms of how this strike was executed, in terms of its ambition, in terms of what it might mean for the war going forward, that this was something different, this was a signal event in this war.

natalie kitroeff

OK, so a very big deal. Attack carried out in what seems to be a pretty sophisticated way. How did this happen, Marc? How did Ukraine pull this off?

marc santora

Well, this is Ukraine’s answer to a problem that has bedeviled them throughout this war, which is, how do you stop massive, long-range, Russian missile bombardments? And these are launched from planes flying deep in Russian territory. They’re missiles fired from ships and submarines out at sea, from land-based systems far inside of Russia. So basically, out of the reach of the Ukrainians.

And these bombardments have become so routine in Ukraine that people can actually time when they want to go to the shelter by what’s happening. For instance, a Russian bomber will take off from an airbase deep in Russia. And you’ll get a warning saying that the bombers are at the starting line.

natalie kitroeff

A warning like on your phone?

marc santora

Yeah, a warning on your phone. It’ll say, Russian bombers Tu-95 at the starting line. So that means you have about two hours till they get to the launch point.

You’ll get an alarm, missiles have been launched. Then if you’re in Kyiv, say, and depending on where the launch is from, you have two, three hours for a cruise missile.

natalie kitroeff

Wow. It’s like a countdown to an attack on your phone live.

marc santora

Yeah, so these bombers, everyone in Ukraine is intimately familiar with now, the Tu-95. And it’s kind of gone in waves in the war. The more US support they got with Patriot missiles and other things, the more secure people in some cities felt.

As American support has faded, some of that feeling of security has faded with it, because there’s only a few really advanced weapon systems that can go after Russia’s most advanced missiles. And Ukraine never had enough of them. But as America pulls back, they have even less.

natalie kitroeff

So it sounds like the Ukrainian government looks at this problem and says, OK, this is what we need to solve. How do we stop these long-range missile attacks from these Russian bombers?

marc santora

100 percent. So the Ukrainians do what they’ve done throughout this war. They have to adapt. They have to innovate. They have to find a low-cost solution.

And so what they do is they turn to drones. Drones are the things that Ukraine has turned to time and again in this war to survive against an enemy that outnumbers them, that has a vastly bigger arsenal. I mean, honestly, it’s kind of hard to imagine how Ukraine would have survived without drones.

And going to the front line over the last three years, you’ve just seen how they’ve transformed the battlefield. I mean, every time now, if we go out to a front line position with the Ukrainians, you have someone riding on the front seat with a shotgun, because really, that’s one of the only defenses against some of these kinds of smaller drones. So they’re able to use these drones to hold defensive positions with fewer people than they might otherwise need.

natalie kitroeff

But, Marc, how does this strategy, while successful on the front lines, get at that original problem we were talking about, which is striking Russia, where it hurts in Russian territory, hitting these bombers?

marc santora

So first of all, all these guys on the front line, they’re watching every day as Russian missiles and bombs are hitting the towns and cities where their families live. So they, just like everyone else, are desperate to find a way to do something about this.

[PENSIVE MUSIC]

And so Ukraine begins another kind of drone program, which is to make long-range drones, not these small, sort of little quadcopters, but drones that can fly hundreds of miles and carry powerful payloads of explosives. So Ukraine, for the first time, strikes a Russian airfield all the way back in December 2022. But Russia, obviously, starts to adapt to this new capability Ukraine has.

They’ve got robust air defenses. But also, they start taking other measures. They build fortifications around fuel depots at airports. They build decoys at the size of fighter jets to confuse the Ukrainians as to what’s where.

They put tires on the wings of planes, in the hopes that if there is an explosion at the airport, the shrapnel doesn’t do damage. They do a number of steps that taken together, make it exceedingly hard for the Ukrainians to strike a blow that will do more than glancing damage.

natalie kitroeff

So again, the solution isn’t there yet.

marc santora

Right. So about a year and a half ago, the Ukrainians decided they needed to try something different. And they come up with this very secret plan. So secret the Ukrainians say they didn’t even tell the Americans.

They try and find a way to bring these small drones, the ones that have been so effective on the front, into Russia, close to these air bases where these bombers are based in the hopes that they can use them to catch the Russians by surprise.

And maybe at least slow the Russian bombardments down and give them more of a fighting chance. And they call this Operation Spider’s Web.

natalie kitroeff

We’ll be right back.

OK, Marc, take us inside this operation, Operation Spider’s Web.

marc santora

So there’s a lot we don’t know, and we’re still working to piece it together. But what we do know is that this operation was so high profile that President Zelensky himself oversaw it. We know it was so secretive, they didn’t even tell the Americans. And we know the goal was to secret these drones into Russia and close to these air bases, so they can hit these bombers.

So Ukraine has to do two things for this operation to be pulled off successfully. They have to hide the drones and they have to train the drones. And let’s start with the hiding.

[SUAVE MUSIC]

They start with thinking to themselves, what is the most common, ubiquitous thing you see on the roads? And it’s shipping containers, these nondescript, hulking metal boxes that you see going up and down highways every day, and you don’t give a second thought. They make a decision that they’re going to turn those containers into a much more sophisticated weapons delivery system.

natalie kitroeff

And what does that look like?

marc santora

Well, think of a Russian nesting doll, where you have the big doll inside the big doll and a smaller doll in a smaller doll. So you have this container with a roof that can be popped off by remote control. But then inside of that container, we have another container.

And that container holds the drones. And beneath the drones, chargers for those drones. And the roof of that smaller container can also pop off, at which point, the drones can take off into the sky and launch their attack the minute they get the signal to go.

And what makes it even crazier — and we’re not a hundred percent sure where each piece of this puzzle was assembled. But President Zelensky said they set up their main headquarters to pull off this operation right across the street from the FSB, which is the Russian internal security services.

natalie kitroeff

Wow.

marc santora

They’re orchestrating this whole thing from inside of Russia at a secret base that’s with a stone’s throw from the Russian secret police, according to the Ukrainians. So you have people involved in every step of the way. You have the agents who snuck into Russia to help pull this off. You had the pilots who were going to fly these drones from a very far, remote location back in Ukraine. Each step along the way, you have spies and soldiers and drone pilots involved in executing this.

natalie kitroeff

OK, so you said, step 2 was training the drones. What did that look like?

marc santora

So their primary target is going to be these bombers. And so they want to teach the software how to hit these bombers to do the most damage that they can. And they happen to have some of these Soviet-era bombers in a museum in Central Ukraine, back from the day when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union. Long ago mothballed, but turned out to be quite useful in this mission.

So what they do is they take some of the most sophisticated new machine-learning artificial intelligence algorithms that they’ve been testing and expanding throughout the war, and they train these drones to basically go after the most vulnerable spot on these bombers, which is where the fuel is kept, basically.

Just clearly an enormous amount of tradecraft went into this. Yeah, I mean, I think obviously, one of the big questions the Kremlin is wrestling with is, how in the world could Ukraine have penetrated so deeply for so long to pull this off? And I think we don’t know the answer to that.

natalie kitroeff

OK, so once they have these drones trained up, they have them hidden, they’re in the country, what’s the next step?

marc santora

It’s time to attack. On Sunday around 1:06 PM, they get the order. The roof of these containers pops up. The roof containing the drones pops off. And the drones start to take to the air.

[APPREHENSIVE MUSIC]

And then we start to see explosions, clouds of smoke rising up from airfields. And at the same time, drones rising from containers are going and attacking airfields across Russia. And then we start to get from our intelligence sources, direct video views from these drones on their attack mission.

There’s one really compelling one where you see from the drones vantage point, the same thing the drone pilot would see, it flying over an airfield as two, three bombers are on fire, and it dives in to hit another one. And so you start to see these just wildly dramatic images coming out. And the attack is underway.

natalie kitroeff

Yeah, I’ve seen these videos. We’ve published them. It really starts to look, at this point, like a movie, like some sort of scene from “Mission Impossible” or something. I mean, this moment is just remarkable to watch in real time.

marc santora

Yeah, it’s really one of the kind of incredible things about this war that I don’t even think we’ve fully understood, which is just how much of it has unfolded before the cameras. But videos, they can lie and not tell the whole story. So our colleagues on visual investigations basically set to work right away to try and piece together both the videos coming from Ukrainian intelligence, but also Russian civilians, as well as satellite images, which are still coming out, to try and understand, OK, they were able to orchestrate this attack, but what effect did it have?

And where we are now I think, 48 hours after the attack unfolded, is we can say with confidence that more than a dozen Russian bombers and planes suffered damage, quite extensive in many cases. The Ukrainians say that the number could be as high as 41. And that amounts to, if the Ukrainian account is correct, $7 billion in damage done by drones that cost a few thousand dollars a piece.

Even if it’s half as much as Ukraine’s said and it’s closer to the Western estimates, that’s still $3.5 billion in damage. And you have to recall that this is Russia’s strategic nuclear-bombing fleet. So we’ve been talking about how Russia’s been using these to launch conventional weapons at Ukraine, cruise missiles. This is also a key element of its strategic nuclear deterrence.

And Russia is not thought to have more than a hundred of these totally. And they’re not making any more right now. So the loss of 10 or 20 would, itself, be really significant. If it’s as high as the Ukrainian number, that’s a third of that fleet. So we’ll see what that tally comes to. But undoubtedly, the attack put a big dent in the fleet.

natalie kitroeff

It’s just remarkable to imagine these tiny, cheap, little drones having that kind of an impact. But, Marc, as you’ve said, we’ve seen drones being used in this conflict for a long time now. What’s different about this time?

marc santora

Yeah, so I mean, aside from just the boldness of this attack, it is sort of an evolution and a revolution. In the revolution of drones, for anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, I think this attack should drive that home, how it can both affect what militaries think about, in terms of their force protection, what they choose to invest in.

It’s kind of like if you were to think about other moments in wars where a new weapon comes to life, the weapon might have existed a bit, but then it’s just used to great effect. So in World War II, for instance, had the Germans using the V-1 and V-2 rockets to bombard London. It would be some time, but that augured in the era of the missile.

And we’ve seen how missiles transformed how countries fight or think about fighting or plan for fighting. And I think when it comes to drones, they’ve been around a while. Obviously, what’s happened here in Ukraine is it’s gotten supercharged. And just the amount of adaptation and evolution that we’ve seen over the course of three and a half years has forced everyone, who’s paying attention, to rethink some of those doctrines that were long held about what does it take to both win on the battlefield and also to prepare for the next fight.

natalie kitroeff

I also feel like there’s another reason this attack is really important, and that’s just the timing of it. It comes just a few months after Trump sat with Zelensky in the Oval Office and said, Ukraine was not in a good position in its negotiations with Russia over peace, that it didn’t have any cards. And now Zelensky and Ukraine have orchestrated this pretty advanced attack after a long stretch where Russia was dominating the battlefield.

It’s like he’s saying, Zelensky’s saying, no, wait, we actually do have some cards. Here they are. And so I’m wondering, Marc, how this affects the ongoing talks between Russia and Ukraine?

marc santora

So first of all, we talked about how this was a year and a half in the planning. So while President Zelensky was in the Oval Office being berated, he knew that this plot was being cooked up. So in any case, he knew he had some cards in his back pocket.

natalie kitroeff

Right.

marc santora

I think, we talked a lot about, what was Ukraine’s goal with this operation? And obviously, a central goal was to slow down these bombardments. But there was a secondary goal, which was to raise the cost of this war for the Kremlin.

The Ukrainian theory of, how do you stop this war, is you have to force the Russians to stop. Diplomacy has so far failed. So the only way Ukraine sees this war ending is if there is enough pressure and cost on the Kremlin to end their war. So this attack was a part of that.

And then we saw today, another remarkable covert operation, which was a third attack on the bridge that crosses from Crimea into Russia. Now, again, this one just happened literally this afternoon. We don’t know the damage. We don’t know how successful it was.

But it shows you what Ukraine’s strategy here is, which is they’re never going to have more people than Russia. Russia is willing to lose tens of thousands of soldiers every month. Ukraine has been most successful when they’ve used their ability to act quickly and whether it’s surprise, deception, adaptation. That’s where they’ve had the greatest success in this war. And so this operation, going after these Russian bombers, going after the Crimean bridge again, these play to Ukraine’s strengths.

natalie kitroeff

At the same time, Putin obviously has been really resistant to pressure this whole time. And I have to wonder whether even with the latest successes, this has any chance of working, of forcing him to the table in a really earnest way.

marc santora

I have no idea. All I know for sure is that nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. They want this war to be over. But none of us really know what will force Putin to stop this invasion and really either engage in good faith negotiations or agree to the immediate ceasefire that everyone, quite frankly, Ukraine, the US, the Europeans all want. And what we have instead, since this diplomatic push has sort of kicked into high gear after Trump took office, is no closer to peace, but more violent week after week.

natalie kitroeff

In other words, Operation Spider’s Web might end up having more of an effect on how we think about and conduct warfare in general than it will have on this actual war.

marc santora

Yeah. I mean, obviously, everyone is always looking for that thing that will be the moment that turns the war or that leads to the end of the war. But the honest truth is, this is total war. And in total war, it’s everything together that matters.

So this operation will help people if it even lessens the bombardments to some degree. That’s thousands of people in a city or town who might not have to face a missile bombardment that otherwise would have come their way. But yeah, at the end of the day, I think the Ukrainians are under no illusions.

This is their only strategy, which is to fight back, to increase the cost on the Kremlin, and just hope at some point, between their own actions, their own fight and then Western support, that that pressure becomes enough where Russia decides, OK, enough.

[PENSIVE MUSIC]

natalie kitroeff

Marc, thanks for being here and stay safe.

marc santora

Thank you.

natalie kitroeff

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Tuesday morning, Israeli soldiers opened fire near crowds of Palestinians who were walking toward a food distribution site in southern Gaza. The Red Cross said that 27 people were killed in the attack.

The Israeli military said it had fired near a few people who had strayed from the designated route to the site and who didn’t respond to warning shots, saying they had, quote, “posed a threat to soldiers.” A senior administrator, at a hospital a few miles from where the shootings took place, said that many of the victims were children aged 10 to 13.

And the Trump administration is proposing a deal to allow Iran to continue enriching uranium at low levels, while the US and other countries work out a plan to eventually block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, in exchange for giving it access to fuel for nuclear power plants. The proposal is seen as a bridge for now between the current situation of Iran rapidly producing near bomb-grade uranium and the American goal of Iran enriching no uranium at all. This was the first indication since Trump took office that the US and Iran might be able to find a compromise over Tehran’s ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. Officials in Tehran indicated that a response would come in several days.

And finally, on Tuesday afternoon, Elon Musk lashed out against the ambitious Republican bill that’s intended to enact Trump’s domestic policy agenda and that’s been backed by the president. Musk posted on X that the measure, which the White House has called the Big, Beautiful Bill is, quote, “a disgusting abomination,” saying it was, quote, “massive, outrageous, pork-filled” and would, quote, “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit.”

Musk also hinted that he might support efforts to unseat lawmakers who backed the bill in the 2026 midterm elections, saying, quote, “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.” While Musk directed his ire at Congress, the comments amounted to his biggest public break with Trump since the two joined forces during the campaign.

[THEME MUSIC]

Today’s episode was produced by Olivia Natt, Caitlin O’Keefe, and Anna Foley. It was edited by Devon Taylor and Chris Haxel, with help from Mike Benoist, contains original music by Pat McCusker, Rowan Niemisto, and Elisheba Ittoop, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Natalie Kitroeff. See you tomorrow.

10. Trump names nominees to take over Middle East, Africa commands

Trump names nominees to take over Middle East, Africa commands

militarytimes.com · by Lolita Baldor · June 4, 2025

President Donald Trump is nominating Vice Adm. Brad Cooper to take over as the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, the Pentagon said Wednesday. If he is confirmed, it would mark just the second time that a Navy admiral has held the job.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement that Trump also is nominating Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson to head U.S. Africa Command. Anderson would be the first Air Force general to lead the command, which was created in 2007.

Hegseth backs Air Force three-star Grynkewich for top Europe job

On the Joint Staff, Grynkewich has helped direct U.S. forces around the world in a year marked by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and China’s rise.

Cooper is currently deputy commander of U.S. Central Command and has extensive experience serving and leading troops in the Middle East. The current head of the command, Army Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, is slated to retire after more than three years in the post.

It is a crucial role as the region has been shaken by conflict, with the Trump administration pushing to broker a ceasefire deal after 20 months of war in Gaza and pressing for an agreement with Iran in negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

A 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Cooper commanded naval forces in the Middle East for close to three years as the head of the Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain. He left in February 2024 to take over as deputy at Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and is based in Tampa.

Army and Marine generals have largely held the Middle East job since it was created in 1983. And two of the recent leaders — former Army Gen. Lloyd Austin and former Marine Gen. Jim Mattis — went on to serve as defense secretary. Central Command covers 21 countries across central and south Asia and northeast Africa and has overseen the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Syria and Yemen.

Trump is nominating Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson to head U.S. Africa Command. Here, Anderson, then-commander of the U.S. military's special forces in Africa, speaks in Thies, Senegal, on Feb. 25, 2020. (Cheikh A.T Sy/AP)

The only Navy officer to ever lead Central Command was Adm. William Fallon, who resigned after a year and retired. At the time, Fallon said he was stepping down due to press reports that suggested he was opposed to then-President George W. Bush’s Iran policies. He said the reports were wrong but the perception had become a distraction.

Cooper is a surface warfare officer and served on guided-missile cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. He commanded a destroyer and a cruiser.

During his time leading the 5th Fleet, Cooper set up the Navy’s first unmanned and artificial intelligence task force, and he led naval operations against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. He also oversaw the Navy’s role in Operation Prosperity Guardian, the U.S.-led coalition created in late 2023 to counter Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.

He previously served as commander of Naval Surface Force Atlantic and commander of U.S. Naval Forces Korea. Cooper is the son of a career Army officer and got his master’s degree in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University.

Anderson, nominated to lead operations in Africa, is a pilot who has flown the KC-135 tanker, the C-130 transport aircraft and the U-28A surveillance aircraft used largely by special operations forces. He has flown more than 3,400 flight hours, including 738 in combat.

He is currently serving as the director of joint force development on the Joint Staff.

According to the Air Force, he commanded a special operations squadron, an expeditionary squadron, an operations group and a special operations wing. He also led the task force that coordinated the repositioning of U.S. forces from Somalia and headed Special Operations Command, Africa, from 2019 to 2021.

Africa Command is the newest of the Pentagon’s geographic commands and covers the bulk of the African continent. Much of the U.S. military’s efforts there have focused on combatting extremist groups and training local forces.

Anderson would be the seventh general to head Africa Command. To date, four of the previous leaders were Army generals and two were Marines.

Anderson is from Ypsilanti, Michigan, and graduated from the ROTC program at Washington University in St. Louis.

11. Trial by fire: Chinese laser weapon reputedly in Russian service

Excerpts:

A January 2025 Defense News report stated that while the Replicator initiative has received bipartisan support, concerns persist over funding, scalability, and long-term viability. The report states that industry leaders argue that without increased investment, Replicator will fall short of its goal to field thousands of autonomous systems rapidly.

While Defense News notes that congressional aides expect modifications rather than cancellation, the program’s trajectory hinges on changes in leadership at the US DOD. It mentions that analysts warn that without sustained momentum, Replicator may struggle to deliver the transformative impact envisioned at its launch.

China is taking the threat seriously. Defense One reported in May 2025 that aside from the Shen Nung 3000/5000 anti-drone laser, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) has developed the LW-30 and LW-60, which offer vehicle-mounted interception with AI-driven automation.

Additionally, Defense One reports that China has developed a breakthrough cooling system, which enables continuous laser operation by eliminating heat buildup—a longstanding challenge to the effectiveness of laser weapons.

The report states that these advancements underscore China’s commitment to reducing its reliance on costly missile interceptors while enhancing precision and operational efficiency.

By testing its lasers in foreign wars, China is quietly mastering the weapons it may one day unleash in the Taiwan Strait.

Trial by fire: Chinese laser weapon reputedly in Russian service - Asia Times

China’s possible export of laser weapons to Russia isn’t just arms sales—it’s live-fire rehearsal for a showdown over Taiwan

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · June 4, 2025

China’s battlefield lasers have arrived in Ukraine and may soon shape a drone-saturated future war over Taiwan.

Last month, The War Zone (TWZ) reported that Russia has reportedly deployed a Chinese laser weapon system to counter Ukrainian drones, according to pro-Russian Telegram sources.

A video posted this May shows a system resembling China’s Shen Nung 3000/5000 anti-drone laser, previously supplied to Iran.

The footage depicts Russian troops operating the system from a vehicle, followed by its deployment and engagement of aerial targets, including drones visibly catching fire midair.

The Nomad special forces unit is reportedly utilizing the system, with Russian analysts deeming it a significant advancement over previous counter-drone technologies.

While the exact specifications remain unclear, experts suggest that the system is a variant of the Low-Altitude Laser Defending System (LASS) manufactured by China’s Academy of Engineering Physics.

The incident underscores deepening military cooperation between Russia, China and Iran, raising concerns over China’s expanding arms exports amid ongoing conflicts. China has denied direct involvement and claims neutrality.

The video’s emergence comes amid broader developments in laser air defense technology, including Israel’s Iron Beam system, deployed against Hezbollah drones.

The effectiveness of laser-based weapons remains debated due to environmental limitations and operational challenges, but their increasing field use signals ongoing adaptation in modern warfare.

Looking at the promise of laser weapons, Ian Boyd mentions in a March 2024 article for The Conversation that laser weapons promise speed-of-light engagement, precision targeting, and an “infinite magazine” as long as power is available.

Boyd highlights their advantages, including low cost per shot, minimal logistical footprint, and adaptability across land, sea, air, and space platforms. However, he also points out their drawbacks, such as high power demands, cooling requirements and environmental limitations, including fog, rain and smoke.

Those advantages could have been decisive in US operations against Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. Lara Seligman and Matt Berg note in a December 2023 Politico article that the US has used multi-million, hard-to-replace interceptor missiles to intercept Houthi suicide drones that cost US$20,000 at most.

In that situation, they point out that the cost-benefit analysis favors the Houthis, with high interceptor missile costs, long missile production times and limited ship magazines all working against the US.

Further, laser weapons might have mitigated some of the damage in Ukraine’s recent audacious drone swarm attack on Russian airfields and bombers.

While Russia deployed countermeasures, such as blast walls, decoys, air defense systems and improvised defenses, including placing tires on bomber wings to confuse image-matching systems, these have yielded mixed results at best.

Building hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) may not have been an option for Russia, given the size of its bomber aircraft, and that doing so could spark a nuclear miscalculation between the US and Russia.

While Russia has suspended its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 3), it still complies with its terms in practice by keeping its bombers out in the open, allowing for US satellite and inspection-based verification.

While US airbases in the Pacific lack hardening, the US hardening its airbases could be interpreted by Russia or China as preparation for nuclear war or a more aggressive nuclear posture, with negative implications for strategic stability.

Lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine War could inform China’s doctrine in deploying laser weapons during a Taiwan Strait conflict.

Highlighting the possibility of drone swarms being used against China, US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said in a July 2024 Washington Post interview that he intends to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned “hellscape” to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” he said. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

According to USNI News in January 2025, the US Department of Defense’s (DOD) Replicator initiative is advancing toward its August 2025 milestone, aiming to deploy lethal swarms of unmanned vehicles linked by integrated software.

The report states that the first tranche of the Replicator initiative, initially launched in 2023, focuses on surface and subsurface drones and loitering munitions to deter a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. It says that the second tranche, announced in 2024, prioritizes counter-drone capabilities.

As to how the US could use Replicator drone swarms to defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Stacie Pettyjohn and other writers mention in a June 2024 Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report that swarms of low-cost, long-range suicide drones can overwhelm Chinese naval forces and disrupt amphibious landings.

Pettyjohn and others say that these autonomous systems when paired with advanced surveillance drones, would rapidly close kill chains by identifying targets and guiding precision strikes. They add that pre-positioned drones in Taiwan could accelerate early response, while layered counter-drone defenses would blunt China’s swarms.

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A January 2025 Defense News report stated that while the Replicator initiative has received bipartisan support, concerns persist over funding, scalability, and long-term viability. The report states that industry leaders argue that without increased investment, Replicator will fall short of its goal to field thousands of autonomous systems rapidly.

While Defense News notes that congressional aides expect modifications rather than cancellation, the program’s trajectory hinges on changes in leadership at the US DOD. It mentions that analysts warn that without sustained momentum, Replicator may struggle to deliver the transformative impact envisioned at its launch.

China is taking the threat seriously. Defense One reported in May 2025 that aside from the Shen Nung 3000/5000 anti-drone laser, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) has developed the LW-30 and LW-60, which offer vehicle-mounted interception with AI-driven automation.

Additionally, Defense One reports that China has developed a breakthrough cooling system, which enables continuous laser operation by eliminating heat buildup—a longstanding challenge to the effectiveness of laser weapons.

The report states that these advancements underscore China’s commitment to reducing its reliance on costly missile interceptors while enhancing precision and operational efficiency.

By testing its lasers in foreign wars, China is quietly mastering the weapons it may one day unleash in the Taiwan Strait.

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · June 4, 2025

12. Former Green Beret nominated to top Pentagon position to oversee special ops

Former Green Beret nominated to top Pentagon position to oversee special ops

Derrick Anderson led a team in Afghanistan that was involved in a friendly fire incident. A public investigation found he was one of several who shared blame. A second inquiry cited technical issues.

Patty Nieberg

Published Jun 4, 2025 5:15 PM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Patty Nieberg

A former Army Special Forces officer who was in charge of a team involved in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan was nominated as the Pentagon’s head of special operations.

Derrick Anderson was nominated Monday by President Donald Trump to serve as assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, according to a notice on Congress.gov. His nomination was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee for consideration.

If confirmed to the largely bureaucratic position, Anderson would oversee administrative and policy issues that apply to special operations and irregular warfare units and advise the secretary of defense and other senior civilian leaders on issues like equipment, readiness and training for the force.

While a captain in the Army in 2014, Anderson was the commander of a Special Forces team in Afghanistan from the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. On June 9, 2014, his team and allied Afghan soldiers engaged in a firefight with the Taliban that ended in a wayward American airstrike that killed five U.S. soldiers and one Afghan. A U.S. Central Command investigation found that miscommunication and a lack of proper protocols among Anderson, his tactical air controller and the crew of the B-1B bomber that dropped the bombs led to the friendly fire.

In a later interview with 60 Minutes about the incident, Anderson disputed that his leadership was at fault in the strike. A classified report on the strike obtained by 60 Minutes found that a central cause was the inability of the B-1’s sensors to detect the strobe lights worn by the Green Berets on their equipment — an issue that neither the bomber’s crew nor the ground team were aware of.

“I’m the commander of this team. This is my team. I miss my guys tremendously. But at the end of the day there’s nothing that myself or my Team Sergeant did that day or failed to do that day that caused that incident to happen,” he told 60 Minutes. “We made the decisions that we thought were best at the time on the ground for the guys that were getting shot at.”

In 2024, Anderson also ran for a Congressional House seat in Virginia as a Republican but lost to Democratic candidate Eugene Vindman.

Anderson grew up in Virginia and attended Virginia Tech on an Army ROTC scholarship, according to a Special Operations Association of America bio page. He went on to become an infantry officer, went to Ranger School and became a platoon leader in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division. He served on a 13-month tour during the 2007 “Iraq surge.” He also oversaw burial and memorial ceremonies with the 3rd Infantry Regiment in Arlington National Cemetery. After leaving the military, he attended law school at Georgetown University and clerked for three federal judges, according to his LinkedIn page.

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Patty is a senior staff writer for Task & Purpose. She’s reported on the military for five years, embedding with the National Guard during a hurricane and covering Guantanamo Bay legal proceedings for an alleged al Qaeda commander.

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13. Namibia At The Crossroads: Strategic Stake In The America-China Trade War

Excerpts:

Over the next thirty-six months, China will face another presidential transition and may escalate its military posture toward Taiwan. In light of this, I believe that the Department of Energy (DOE) must use this timeframe to move past corporate middlemen and lease Namibia’s uranium fields directly. There is historical precedent for this at a domestic level with the DOE directly leasing uranium mines through its Uranium Leasing Program (ULP), managed by the Office of Legacy Management. By cutting out middlemen and empowering the Department of Energy, we strip away the risk of private companies falling to foreign acquisition. We deny China the backdoor it seeks into Africa’s minerals. America’s promise must be direct and unyielding—never for sale, and never compromised by silent, invisible hands.

In return, we shall build desalination plants and great underground aqueducts—reviving parched farms, as Libya once did with their Great Man-Made River project (GMMR) ushered in by Muammar Gaddafi. The GMMR transports Sahara aquifer water to Libya’s arid communities for domestic, industrial, and agricultural use. While Namibia’s regional aquifers are drying up, partly due to climate change, it could still manage a major irrigation project using desalination plants stationed along Namibia’s long coastline, which could draw salt from the sea and feed lifelines to the barren interior by man-made routes. Communities outside Windhoek and Walvis Bay, long strangled by drought, will see green fields rise again. Farming villages will endure, water shortages will fall, and a new prosperity will bloom. Desalination plants have proven to be critical to other arid nations, and by supporting the construction of several facilities, the US could help resolve the freshwater crisis Namibia is facing in the wake of dried-up aquifers, which has only worsened in the wake of climate change.

Should these efforts prosper, America can begin to plan out a timeline for mingling our naval capabilities with those of Namibia. The US military could begin to offer joint naval drills with Namibian forces around Walvis Bay, exchanging discounted older vessels and free U.S. Navy training for greater port access. Specifically, the United States could transfer Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates, as we have with other regional allies like Taiwan. These frigates, entrusted to Namibian hands, could guard Walvis Bay when American ships are absent—ensuring the security of both nations and strengthening a military friendship born not of conquest, but of common cause. While these ideas are merely hypothetical for now, I firmly believe that policies such as these, which bond our militaries together while uplifting Namibia’s agriculture and American mining interests, could be the start to outcompete Chinese influence and potential censorship in the region within several years.

International engagement is not charity; it is strategy. When America invests in Namibia’s ports, offers transparent trade, supports democratic institutions, and provides fair military cooperation, we do not merely uplift Namibia. We fortify ourselves. Namibia’s people deserve better than to be pawns in Beijing’s game or proxies in Moscow’s ambitions. America has both the moral obligation and strategic imperative to offer an alternative. It is time to return to Africa, not with condescension, but conviction. Increased American investment, expanded military cooperation, robust diplomatic presence—these are not optional. They are essential. Namibia stands at the crossroads. The question is whether Washington will meet her there.

Namibia At The Crossroads: Strategic Stake In The America-China Trade War

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/05/namibia-at-the-crossroads/

by Christopher Jefferson Jensen

06.05.2025 at 06:00am

Introductory Context

In the long arc of history, there are moments when small nations stand at the nexus of global conflict, where decisions made within their borders shape the destinies of distant powers. Today, Namibia—rich in natural resources and positioned strategically along the Atlantic coast—stands at such a juncture. As the United States and China clash over trade, influence, and military primacy, Africa in general, and Namibia in particular, has become an unlikely yet critical theater in this new Cold War. Far more than a quiet African republic, Namibia holds in its soil the uranium that fuels nuclear futures, in its ports the gateways to Southern Africa’s economy, and in its networks the conduits of global intelligence. Increasingly, however, its sovereignty is being eroded—not by force, but by debt, dependency, and surveillance. China’s relentless march through Namibia’s industries, ports, and telecommunications signals not mere partnership, but quiet domination. America’s absence here is not neutrality—it is abdication. This essay explores Namibia’s entanglement in the US-China contest, from its uranium mines to its shifting alliances, and argues that America’s strategic interests—and moral obligations—demand renewed engagement in this pivotal nation.

Namibia’s Economic/Infrastructure Exposure, Debt Diplomacy & The Walvis Bay

Namibia’s economy is driven by its vast wealth in natural resources. Uranium, diamonds, beef, and fish comprise the bulk of its exports, much of which flow eastward to China. Beijing, as Namibia’s largest trading partner, wields outsized influence over Windhoek’s economic stability. However, this dependency binds Namibia’s fate to China’s economic whims, particularly as the US-China trade war disrupts global demand and supply chains. Any reduction in Chinese consumption of Namibian commodities—whether caused by tariffs, internal slowdowns, or shifting Chinese policies—directly undermines Namibia’s revenue streams. The fragile dependence leaves Namibia vulnerable to foreign pressures and unable to leverage independent economic strategies.

The US, meanwhile, has allowed its own commercial ties to Namibia to languish. Washington’s failure to offer viable alternative markets or investments leaves Namibia increasingly isolated from Western economies, driving it deeper into China’s embrace. Without deliberate American re-engagement, Namibia risks becoming a vassal state in China’s broader economic empire. China’s presence in Namibia extends beyond trade. It is etched into the concrete of Namibia’s highways, the scaffolding of its public buildings, and the towering cranes of Walvis Bay’s port. Under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese banks and construction firms have financed and built Namibia’s critical infrastructure.

The loans attached to Chinese projects are often opaque and come with conditions that can compromise Namibia’s financial sovereignty. As debt accumulates, Beijing gains leverage, threatening to claim stakes in key national assets if repayment falters. This is the quiet strategy of modern imperialism: conquest not by armies, but by credit. For America, the pattern is clear. Inaction leaves space for Beijing to draw Namibia further into its sphere. Strategic investments by the US, offering fair terms and transparent partnerships, could restore balance. Instead, China writes the blueprints for Namibia’s future while Washington remains absent. Walvis Bay is more than a port; it is a lifeline for landlocked neighbors and a critical node in Southern Africa’s trade network. Positioned along the Atlantic’s vital maritime routes, Walvis Bay opens the heart of the continent to global markets. It is also, increasingly, a geopolitical prize.

China’s investments in upgrading Walvis Bay’s container terminal have expanded its capacity and efficiency, but with them come dual-use concerns. The same infrastructure that facilitates commerce could be leveraged for naval operations, military logistics, or intelligence gathering. Were Beijing to militarize Walvis Bay, it would shift the balance of maritime power in the South Atlantic and challenge US freedom-of-navigation interests. Washington’s response thus far has been tepid, limited to occasional naval cooperation and diplomatic overtures. Yet, failure to ensure open access and prevent military exploitation of Walvis Bay risks ceding a strategic corridor to authoritarian control. Namibia’s port, if left unchecked, may soon fly not just the flags of commerce, but the banners of foreign militaries.

Telecom Ties To BRICS, Nuclear Nexus, and Surveillance Risks

While Namibia builds outward, modernizing ports and highways, she is also being wired inward by Chinese hands. Huawei, China’s telecommunications giant, has entrenched itself in Namibia’s digital infrastructure. It controls much of the nation’s 4G network and is poised to dominate the rollout of 5G technologies. It’s important to note that 5G isn’t merely faster internet services but rather, it’s the backbone of the next industrial leap. With ports being modernized and highways extended, 5G enables the integration of smart logistics, automated systems, and real-time data transfer critical to trade, defense, and infrastructure management. These partnerships provide cheap, efficient connectivity, but the hidden cost is security. Huawei’s opaque ties to the Chinese state create the very real possibility of surveillance, data interception, and intelligence vulnerabilities. Huawei is subject to the 2017 Chinese National Intelligence Law, whereby all Chinese companies are registered to comply and cooperate with state intelligence efforts whenever compelled. Because of this, Huawei is structurally part of the Chinese national intelligentsia. When a foreign power like China, through control of Huawei, controls a country’s digital infrastructure, it doesn’t just mean faster internet. It means control over the pipes through which all national communication, data storage, surveillance, and sensitive government or military transmissions flow. This creates dependency on foreign hardware, software, and technical support, potentially exposing Namibia’s internal affairs to outside monitoring or manipulation. With control over telecommunications systems, China (or Namibia’s government under Chinese pressure) could monitor phone calls, text messages, emails, and internet activity. This enables the tracking of dissidents, activists, or journalists, limiting the civil liberties and freedom of the press in this young and vulnerable democracy. After all, Huawei’s systems could allow for content filtering, site blocking, or real-time surveillance, all tools that are commonly used in China to suppress dissent. Namibia’s government, military, and private sectors now rely on networks that Beijing could exploit. America’s warnings have come, but without viable alternatives. Washington must offer not only concerns but solutions such as support for indigenous tech infrastructure, cybersecurity cooperation, and clean network initiatives. Without intervention, Namibia’s digital sovereignty will be another casualty of unchecked Chinese expansion.

Namibia, since its independence, has carefully cultivated a policy of non-alignment—steering clear of military entanglements and global power blocs. Yet, in recent years, subtle shifts reveal a quiet erosion of that neutrality. Chinese military cooperation has steadily increased: Beijing supplies training, equipment, and defense infrastructure, weaving itself into Namibia’s security framework. Concurrently, the US has limited its military engagement to counter-terrorism training and regional naval exercises. But as China deepens its defense footprint, Namibia will face mounting pressures to formalize alliances, potentially sacrificing autonomy in exchange for military support.

This creeping influence extends not just to material defense ties but to doctrine, personnel, and political loyalty. Should Washington continue its hands-off approach, it risks waking to find China entrenched within Namibia’s military, its officers trained in Beijing, its policies aligned with authoritarian priorities. At the helm of Namibia’s government stands newly elected President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, a leader whose formative years were shaped far from Western capitals. Educated in Moscow during the height of Soviet influence. Her worldview is sympathetic to socialist principles and skeptical of Western prescriptions, especially given her long-time association with the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), which is openly a Marxist/Leninist-aligned political movement. It’s noteworthy that SWAPO had been backed by the Cuban and Soviet governments during the Cold War and remains aligned with communist and socialist principles into the current era.

Her ideological leanings are no longer mere personal history—they now steer national policy. Under her leadership, Namibia has signaled interest in deeper integration with BRICS. Already, Windhoek flirts openly with the BRICS Bank, alternative trade mechanisms, and non-Western development financing. This alignment offers Namibia quick capital, fewer governance conditions, and solidarity with nations that eschew liberal democratic norms. But it comes at a price: binding Namibia’s future to the whims of autocratic regimes, and alienating the Western allies who value transparency, accountability, and sovereignty.

For the US, Namibia’s political shift should be a clarion call. Failure to re-engage leaves the door wide open for Russia, China, and their proxies to mold Namibia’s policies—and the region’s balance of power. Aside from that, China bankrolls loans for Namibia’s infrastructure—ports, buildings, digital skeletons—under the sugarcoated promise of ‘development partnership.’ But these loans are laced with fine print that looks suspiciously like handcuffs. The BRI, pitched as progress, quietly morphs into pressure: vote with us, trade with us, don’t criticize us. It’s not conquest by boots or bayonets but by balance sheets and bullet points. And the real kicker? Most of it happens behind closed doors, leaving the public—and, arguably, the government—staring down the barrel of dependency with no easy exit. Projects become overleveraged. Sovereign debt spirals. Local labor is displaced by Chinese contractors. Environmental safeguards get waived. Arbitration clauses shift disputes to foreign courts. And political criticism—once domestic and free—is dulled by the chilling knowledge that infrastructure now comes with ideological strings. It’s sovereignty, yes—but sovereignty with a silent partner holding the receipts, thereby allowing China to leverage more influence in Namibia’s government. American investment, while imperfect, typically includes transparency, local labor provisions, and legal recourse—supporting sovereignty and democratic norms without hidden clauses, surveillance risk, or authoritarian strings disguised as development aid. For example, the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) compact with Namibia emphasized education and infrastructure without indebting the nation or demanding political alignment—proving that partnership can exist without coercion. The MCC is a US government foreign aid agency that funds development projects promoting economic growth, transparency, and good governance in partner countries, and in 2014, the US cut a $304.5 million deal, not a handout, not a bribe, but a compact, to help Namibia develop its infrastructure. The idea: reduce poverty without the usual donor ego or fine-print trapdoors. It wasn’t about buying influence; it was about building capacity—schools, roads, systems that don’t implode after a ribbon-cutting. And tucked into it, quietly revolutionary, was this long-view ambition: to transform Namibia’s parched, sun-hammered interior into viable farmland, not by magic, but by investment in water infrastructure, climate-adapted agriculture, and training actual Namibians—not consultants—to manage it. A future written in irrigation ditches instead of interest rates. Deals like the MCC, which was a 5-year-long agreement, have the upside of foreign investment without the downsides of the corrupt entanglement and forfeiture of sovereignty that comes from Chinese investments.

Beneath Namibia’s deserts lies the fuel of the 21st century: uranium. The third-largest uranium producer globally, Namibia’s mines at Rossing, Husab, and Langer Heinrich are among the most coveted in the world. But these are not neutral assets. Rossing is majority-owned by China National Uranium Corporation; Husab is run by China General Nuclear Power Group; Langer Heinrich has significant Chinese investment. This is no accident—it is Beijing’s deliberate strategy to control the resources that will power its nuclear ambitions. Namibia’s uranium exports are critical to China’s drive for energy independence and geopolitical clout. In July 2019, the world’s second-largest mining company, Rio Tinto, completed the sale of its 68.62% stake in Namibia’s Rössing uranium mine to China National Uranium Corporation Limited (CNUC). The transaction included an initial cash payment of $6.5 million, with a contingent payment of up to $100 million based on uranium spot prices and the mine’s net income over the following seven years. CNUC is a subsidiary of the state-owned CNNC, which plays a major role in China’s nuclear energy sector. In essence, by acquiring access to a Namibian uranium mine, the Chinese government has caused Namibia to surrender control over one of its most valuable strategic assets, binding its economy to Chinese interests and exposing itself to external manipulation.

For Western powers, the challenge is stark. Continued Chinese dominance in Namibia’s uranium sector risks tilting global nuclear energy leverage towards authoritarian regimes. America must provide competitive investments, strengthen non-proliferation partnerships, and support Namibia in reclaiming agency over its resources. If America stays on the sidelines, China doesn’t just win a mine, it rigs the energy future. Uranium isn’t corn or copper; it’s the stuff that powers cities and deterrence strategies. And Namibia, bright-eyed and post-colonial, gets nudged or economically strong-armed into a long-term entanglement that looks like partnership but smells like dependency. This isn’t Cold War redux; it’s more subtle. If the US actually shows up—with transparency, actual oversight, no spyware hidden in the routers—it could offer Namibia something rare in geopolitics: strategic investment that doesn’t come shrink-wrapped in silence and strings.

America’s Moral Obligation and Strategic Interest in Namibia

There is something quietly revolting in watching a young nation like Namibia, forged from the fires of colonialism and struggle, drift into the orbit of powers who offer not liberty, but subtle servitude. China, Russia, and their BRICS allies cloak themselves in the language of partnership—but beneath their glittering infrastructure projects and easy credit lies something darker: the slow erosion of sovereignty, the tightening of strategic chains.

Namibia’s uranium, its ports, its digital networks—each has become a brick in the edifice of authoritarian expansion. Chinese corporations extract Namibia’s wealth to fuel Beijing’s ambitions. Huawei wires its data to distant servers. Military officers, trained abroad, return home bearing doctrines alien to freedom. And yet, what is most damning is not what these regimes have offered—but what America has neglected. For too long, Washington has treated Africa as an afterthought, a distant stage on which others perform. While Beijing’s checkbooks and weapons write Namibia’s future, America has lagged behind, offering rhetoric without commitment. But Namibia matters. It holds the keys to minerals, ports, and alliances that will shape the balance of power in the 21st century. If America continues to cede ground here, it cedes its standing as the defender of liberty, prosperity, and peace—not just in Africa, but everywhere.

Over the next thirty-six months, China will face another presidential transition and may escalate its military posture toward Taiwan. In light of this, I believe that the Department of Energy (DOE) must use this timeframe to move past corporate middlemen and lease Namibia’s uranium fields directly. There is historical precedent for this at a domestic level with the DOE directly leasing uranium mines through its Uranium Leasing Program (ULP), managed by the Office of Legacy Management. By cutting out middlemen and empowering the Department of Energy, we strip away the risk of private companies falling to foreign acquisition. We deny China the backdoor it seeks into Africa’s minerals. America’s promise must be direct and unyielding—never for sale, and never compromised by silent, invisible hands.

In return, we shall build desalination plants and great underground aqueducts—reviving parched farms, as Libya once did with their Great Man-Made River project (GMMR) ushered in by Muammar Gaddafi. The GMMR transports Sahara aquifer water to Libya’s arid communities for domestic, industrial, and agricultural use. While Namibia’s regional aquifers are drying up, partly due to climate change, it could still manage a major irrigation project using desalination plants stationed along Namibia’s long coastline, which could draw salt from the sea and feed lifelines to the barren interior by man-made routes. Communities outside Windhoek and Walvis Bay, long strangled by drought, will see green fields rise again. Farming villages will endure, water shortages will fall, and a new prosperity will bloom. Desalination plants have proven to be critical to other arid nations, and by supporting the construction of several facilities, the US could help resolve the freshwater crisis Namibia is facing in the wake of dried-up aquifers, which has only worsened in the wake of climate change.

Should these efforts prosper, America can begin to plan out a timeline for mingling our naval capabilities with those of Namibia. The US military could begin to offer joint naval drills with Namibian forces around Walvis Bay, exchanging discounted older vessels and free U.S. Navy training for greater port access. Specifically, the United States could transfer Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates, as we have with other regional allies like Taiwan. These frigates, entrusted to Namibian hands, could guard Walvis Bay when American ships are absent—ensuring the security of both nations and strengthening a military friendship born not of conquest, but of common cause. While these ideas are merely hypothetical for now, I firmly believe that policies such as these, which bond our militaries together while uplifting Namibia’s agriculture and American mining interests, could be the start to outcompete Chinese influence and potential censorship in the region within several years.

International engagement is not charity; it is strategy. When America invests in Namibia’s ports, offers transparent trade, supports democratic institutions, and provides fair military cooperation, we do not merely uplift Namibia. We fortify ourselves. Namibia’s people deserve better than to be pawns in Beijing’s game or proxies in Moscow’s ambitions. America has both the moral obligation and strategic imperative to offer an alternative. It is time to return to Africa, not with condescension, but conviction. Increased American investment, expanded military cooperation, robust diplomatic presence—these are not optional. They are essential. Namibia stands at the crossroads. The question is whether Washington will meet her there.

Tags: Africa, American Foreign Policy, China, China strategic influence, Namibia, US-China

About The Author

Christopher Jefferson Jensen
Christopher Jefferson Jensen is a 25-year-old researcher and analyst from the suburbs of Chicago. He graduated cum laude from Concordia University Chicago, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Theater. His academic interests focus on international relations, security policy, and historical geopolitics. He is currently employed in the data security sector, where he specializes in safeguarding information infrastructure. Christopher is an incoming student at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Law, where he will begin his legal studies on a prestigious Dean’s Scholarship with a focus on international law.
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14. Trump must resist WHO’s pandemic power-grab

The mention of Taiwan reminds me that in 1946 when the WHO was established the Republic of China was a founding member (Recall the People's Republic of China was not established until the end of the civil war in 1949).

The problem with Anthony's argument is that the WHO or the UN cannot force the US to comply with anything that is not in the US interests and the UN and the WHO do not trump congress or the US government. We will not and have never given up our sovereign rights to the UN. There is no enforcement mechanism available to the UN. Like the Pope, how many battalions does the UN have?

That said I agree that the "treaty" is problematic but that may also be because of or lack of engagement developing the treaty.

Excerpts:

By the end of 2020, the U.S. was distributing 14 million doses of the vaccine to Americans. But a U.S. president should decide whether any of the production should be exported moving forward. Under the pandemic treaty, however, the WHO would have been entitled to almost 3 million doses from the United States with no input from America’s elected leaders, who would be unable to determine whether the organization will use them responsibly.

Trump should go further than simply withdrawing from the WHO and pledging not to sign the pandemic treaty. He should amend his current executive order or issue a new one mandating that federally funded or supported vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics cannot be provided, sold, or transferred to the WHO unless it allows Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly, bars Russia and North Korea from seats on the Executive Board, holds China accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic, and ensures the reliable distribution of vaccines.

Congress should support the administration by codifying such executive actions into law, thereby ensuring that a new Democratic administration cannot reverse them in the future.

The WHO said the pandemic treaty is a victory for public health. But it’s not. Trump must act to protect Americans from the WHO’s power grab.

Trump must resist WHO’s pandemic power-grab

by Anthony Ruggiero, Opinion Contributor - 06/04/25 7:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5330881-who-pandemic-treaty-falls-short/

The World Health Organization is still not doing enough to stop another pandemic. Last month, the UN body adopted a new pandemic treaty by consensus at its annual meeting, but the accord merely doubles down on the WHO’s previous failed policies. President Trump has rightly pledged to oppose this treaty, but he must now take further steps to protect Americans from the WHO’s counterproductive approach.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a seminal era for the world, and the WHO was created for such crises. It should have rallied the international community to respond aggressively and discover the pandemic’s cause. Instead, the organization allowed the Chinese Communist Party to conceal China’s role in the outbreak, partnering with Beijing to release a now widely discredited report that labeled a lab-leak origin as “extremely unlikely.”

On Trump’s Inauguration Day in January, he rightly issued an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the WHO. He had started this process in his first term, but President Joe Biden reversed it immediately upon taking office.

The WHO did not respond with reforms or distance itself from China in the intervening four years. Instead, at China’s behest, the organization continued to deny Taiwan a seat at its annual meeting. The WHO also welcomed Russia and Syria to its Executive Board in 2020 and 2021, respectively, for three-year terms, even though the regimes of both countries at that time had a history of bombing hospitals and indiscriminately killing civilians.

North Korea also joined the board in 2023, where it will remain until 2026, even as it continues to starve its population to pay for its illegal nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

Rather than push for new WHO leadership, the Biden administration voted to allow Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to serve a second five-year term, which ends in 2027. These developments, and now the pandemic treaty, showed that the WHO had lost its way.

An effective pandemic treaty would focus on China’s two core mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, Beijing lied about the emerging outbreak and pressured the WHO to mute its response. Second, the Chinese Communist Party refused to cooperate with a full investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

However, the 30-page treaty fails even to mention China or its response to the COVID-19 pandemic and merely expands the WHO’s bureaucracy in a way that does not address the problem.

The agreement creates a new Conference of Parties that will meet at least annually with additional subsidiary meetings. But public health officials do not need more glitzy meetings in Geneva. They should instead be streamlining their organization and sending money back to countries that can use it to prevent and detect the next disease outbreak.

The treaty also mandates that vaccine, therapeutics, and diagnostics manufacturers conclude legally binding contracts with the WHO to provide rapid access to 20 percent of their real-time production. Half of the allotment will be a donation, while the other half must be made available at affordable prices. But given the WHO’s ineffective leadership and Beijing’s control over the organization, American companies should not be forced to send public health materials funded by U.S. taxpayers.

The treaty’s inadequate provisions fail to recognize that it was America that saved the world from the pandemic. Operation Warp Speed, a World War II-style engineering and production effort, was one of the greatest achievements of Trump’s first term. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense pledged $13 billion toward the development and manufacturing of a vaccine. In just seven months, vaccines were created for a novel disease.

By the end of 2020, the U.S. was distributing 14 million doses of the vaccine to Americans. But a U.S. president should decide whether any of the production should be exported moving forward. Under the pandemic treaty, however, the WHO would have been entitled to almost 3 million doses from the United States with no input from America’s elected leaders, who would be unable to determine whether the organization will use them responsibly.

Trump should go further than simply withdrawing from the WHO and pledging not to sign the pandemic treaty. He should amend his current executive order or issue a new one mandating that federally funded or supported vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics cannot be provided, sold, or transferred to the WHO unless it allows Taiwan to attend the World Health Assembly, bars Russia and North Korea from seats on the Executive Board, holds China accountable for the COVID-19 pandemic, and ensures the reliable distribution of vaccines.

Congress should support the administration by codifying such executive actions into law, thereby ensuring that a new Democratic administration cannot reverse them in the future.

The WHO said the pandemic treaty is a victory for public health. But it’s not. Trump must act to protect Americans from the WHO’s power grab.

Anthony Ruggiero is an adjunct senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former White House National Security Council senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense.

15. US troop presence in Syria will be reduced to a single base, envoy says

US troop presence in Syria will be reduced to a single base, envoy says

Stars and Stripes · by Lara Korte · June 4, 2025

A Syrian Free Army vehicle idles beside a U.S. Army vehicle near al-Tanf Garrison, Syria, on May 6, 2023. The number of U.S. bases in Syria will eventually drop from eight to one, Tom Barrack, the American ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, said June 2, 2025, in an interview with a Turkish TV station. (Terry Vongsouthi/U.S. Army)

The number of U.S. bases in Syria will be pared from eight to one, the American ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria said this week in an interview with a Turkish TV station.

Tom Barrack’s comments Monday on the impending consolidation were confirmed to Stars and Stripes by a U.S. official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Reduction of the U.S. military’s footprint in Syria is a reflection of shifting American policy, Barrack said in the interview, which was published in Turkish.

For more than a decade, the U.S. has been conducting Operation Inherent Resolve, a mission aimed at defeating the Islamic State group in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Since ISIS’ territorial defeat in 2019, the U.S. has consistently maintained at least several hundred troops in northeastern Syria to train and assist Kurdish partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces, as well as a small contingent near the southern border with Jordan and Iraq.

Following an agreement the SDF made in March to merge forces with the interim government in Damascus, the Pentagon said it will reduce the American troop level in the country from 2,000 to less than 1,000 in the coming months.

Fox News, citing U.S. officials, reported Monday that 500 troops had left bases in northeastern Syria, including Mission Support Site Green Village and Mission Support Site Euphrates, which was handed over to the SDF.

The top priority for the U.S. are the 9,000 ISIS fighters currently held in detention centers maintained by the SDF.

During a recent Middle East visit, President Donald Trump urged his new Syrian counterpart, interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, to assume responsibility for the prisons where U.S. forces for years have trained and equipped their Kurdish partners.

But it will likely be months or years before the new government is stable enough to do so, experts say.

Barrack’s announcement came as the United States and other world powers try to navigate shifting dynamics in the Middle East following the collapse of the Assad family’s regime in Syria in late 2024 after more than a half-century of rule.

Trump’s Syria policy will not be close to those of the past 100 years because none of them worked, Barrack said.

The U.S. is also taking steps to ease decades of economic sanctions on Syria as the interim government works to gain control and stability.

In a congressional hearing last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that without U.S. support, the country faces “potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions.”

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Lara Korte

Lara Korte covers the U.S. military in the Middle East. Her previous reporting includes helming Politico’s California Playbook out of Sacramento, as well as writing for the Sacramento Bee and the Austin American-Statesman. She is a proud Kansan and holds degrees in political science and journalism from the University of Kansas.

Stars and Stripes · by Lara Korte · June 4, 2025

16. Confirmed Losses Of Russian Aircraft Mount After Ukrainian Drone Assault

Imagery at the link: https://www.twz.com/air/firm-evidence-of-russian-aircraft-losses-after-ukrainian-drone-strikes?utm

Confirmed Losses Of Russian Aircraft Mount After Ukrainian Drone Assault

Some of the bombers were armed with cruise missiles when Ukraine’s drones rained down on them.

Thomas Newdick

Updated Jun 4, 2025 1:06 PM EDT

720

twz.com · by Thomas Newdick

The TWZ Newsletter

Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.

New satellite imagery and an official video have revealed more about the scale of destruction and damage inflicted on Russian airfields in Ukraine’s unprecedented drone attacks last weekend. Today, the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, which carried out the drone attacks, published previously unreleased drone footage showing the raid underway. At the same time the SBU video was released, Ukraine also announced more details of the drone attacks, which were carried out under Operation Spiderweb.

You can catch up with our previous reporting about the operation and its aftermath here.

СБУ показала унікальні кадри спецоперації «Павутина», у результаті якої уражено 41 військовий літак стратегічної авіації рф

https://t.co/OSxqEsI9CD pic.twitter.com/aGSZNEsoX3

— СБ України (@ServiceSsu) June 4, 2025

A Ukrainian PFV-type drone perspective of a Tu-22M3 and, behind it, an Il-78M Midas aerial refueling tanker. SBU screencap

Front view of a Tu-22M3. SBU screencap

The SBU claims that its drones used artificial intelligence (AI) during at least some aspects of the operation. “During the operation, modern UAV control technology was used, which combines autonomous artificial intelligence algorithms and manual operator intervention,” the SBU said. “In particular, some UAVs, due to signal loss, switched to performing the mission using artificial intelligence along a pre-planned route. After approaching and contacting a specifically designated target, the warhead was automatically triggered.”

While we cannot confirm this, TWZ has, in the past, detailed exactly how AI can be harnessed for lower-end drones.

Ukraine's SBU says its drones used AI during Operation Spiderweb: "During the operation, modern UAV control technology was used, which combines autonomous artificial intelligence algorithms and manual operator intervention.

"In particular, some UAVs, due to signal loss, switched…

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) June 4, 2025

Initially, Ukrainian authorities claimed to have hit a total of 41 aircraft, including Tu-95MS Bear-H and Tu-22M3 Backfire-C bombers, as well as A-50 Mainstay airborne early warning and control aircraft. However, these were clearly not all destroyed or even damaged.

Subsequently, Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that “at least 13 Russian aircraft were destroyed.”

Among those aircraft, the new video confirms that several of the Tu-95MS bombers were already loaded with Kh-101 conventionally armed cruise missiles, ready for launch against Ukraine, as seen in the image below. This fact underlines how big a threat these aircraft are to Ukraine and reinforces the fact that they are legitimate targets.

Rear view of a Tu-95MS with a Kh-101 cruise missile loaded under the wing. SBU screencap

Now, with the new satellite imagery, verification of at least some of these previous claims is becoming somewhat easier. Here’s what we know so far for each of the airfields targeted:

Belaya Air Base

Soon after the drone strikes, ground-level videos of Belaya, which is situated in Russia’s eastern Irkutsk region, began to appear online, showing smoke rising from the base, confirming that at least something was hit.

Footage of a Ukrainian FPV strike drone flying towards Russia’s Belaya Airbase, already heavily burning.

The base, home to a number of bombers, was hit this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/JYFBqurknE

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 1, 2025

Thereafter, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery obtained by TWZ from the U.S.-based ICEYE US pointed to at least four Tu-95MS bombers having been destroyed or at least damaged at Belaya. However, the resolution and the nature of SAR, which does not show the same kinds of details that would be available in visual spectrum imagery, made it difficult to definitively determine the state of any of the aircraft. That has since changed.

Now, with new satellite imagery from Maxar, we can clearly see the remains of three destroyed Tu-95MS and four destroyed Tu-22M3 bombers at Belaya. While we cannot be certain of the operational status of the aircraft that were destroyed, most were arranged along the flight line or in blast pens among active aircraft, so there’s a high possibility that these were frontline assets.

Additional satellite images of the Russian Belaya Air Base by Planet Labs. https://t.co/uyJVIa7lTb pic.twitter.com/NPOVwsLa5t

— Special Kherson Cat (@bayraktar_1love) June 4, 2025

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 4, 2025

5/ Additional high-resolution images from @AirbusDefence taken on 4 June over the Belaya airbase show an even clearer picture of destroyed Tu-95 and Tu-22 aircraft. pic.twitter.com/x1fXugxjDl

— Open Source Centre (@osc_london) June 4, 2025

Olenya Air Base

On June 1, video footage emerged showing Olenya, located in far northwestern Russia near the Barents Sea, from the perspective of cameras on first-person-view (FPV) type drones. This earlier footage suggested that Olenya was among the hardest-hit bases, with the drone videos showing that Tu-95MS bombers and an An-12 Cub cargo aircraft had been targeted.

A Ukrainian PFV-type drone perspective of an An-12 SBU screencap

A satellite image of Olenya taken on June 3 from Planet Labs appeared to show three Tu-95MS and one An-12 damaged and/or destroyed, but was too low-resolution to be conclusive.

Now, additional satellite imagery from Airbus Defense and Space, Maxar, and Planet Labs provides a better understanding of the destruction at Olenya, with telltale burn marks on the tarmac consistent with the destruction of five aircraft, at least three of which can be confirmed as Tu-95MS bombers.

Olenya, seen after the drone strike, in imagery dated June 4. The wreckage of two Tu-95MS aircraft is visible, while the clean-up operation has removed the remains of a third. Satellite image ©2025 Maxar Technologies Wood, Stephen

At opposite ends of the same flight line are further scorch marks, as seen in the oblique image in the embedded tweet below. Here, the nearest aircraft destroyed was likely the An-12, supported by a comparison with previous satellite imagery showing the transport intact in this location. It’s not clear what aircraft might have been targeted at the other end of the flight line from the An-12 (the area seen at the very top of the frame in the oblique image). The most likely candidate is another Tu-95MS, which would appear to be consistent with some of the original video footage from the attack.

4/ Imagery taken on 23 May by @Satellogic of the Olenya airbase shows that two Tu-95 were at this location. A possible transport aircraft An-12 also appears to have been destroyed and another unidentified aircraft – both visible on the 3 June @AirbusDefence image posted above. pic.twitter.com/gQjBIraClM

— Open Source Centre (@osc_london) June 4, 2025

New raw footage of Russia’s Olenya airbase burning today, filmed by a Ukrainian FPV strike drone.

Four Tu-95 bombers and an An-22 transport plane can be seen ablaze. pic.twitter.com/GTki8t2XHl

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 1, 2025

Ivanovo Air Base

Clear satellite imagery that might definitely show damage to aircraft at Ivanovo has yet to emerge, although a video released today by the SBU shows two A-50 being targeted. The location was presumably Ivanovo, where these radar planes are home-based.

Based on lower-resolution satellite imagery, there have been claims that two A-50s were at least hit at Ivanovo, although it’s by no means certain that this is the case. If the aircraft were hit, there is currently no evidence that they were destroyed outright.

From new satellite imagesfrom Ivanovo's Severny air base, one A-50 AEW is confirmed to be destroyed and second one is hit, not sure if unrepairable.

Other one was propably not in operational condition and was only parked in the airfield. https://t.co/m1gTQB9MUq pic.twitter.com/IqtewBxek7

— Tomi (@TallbarFIN) June 3, 2025

At the same time, it’s worth bearing in mind that Russia’s fleet of A-50s — two examples of which have already been destroyed in the air by Ukraine — normally conducts its wartime operations from forward bases closer to Ukraine. While A-50s rotate in and out of Ivanovo periodically, examples that might have been hit there could also be inactive aircraft, which are known to be stored at the base.

the question is what ac they actually hit.

There are a lot of inoperable A-50 at Ivanovo AB…

we need evidence and no guessing https://t.co/HsfJVYNXKG pic.twitter.com/u4HZaPL1p5

— ben-reuter (@benreuter_IMINT) June 3, 2025

Indeed, the aircraft seen in the SBU video may well have been non-operational, with highly weathered radomes, while at least one aircraft doesn’t have a full set of engines fitted.

A Ukrainian PFV-type drone perspective of the A-50s that were attacked. It is very possible that neither of these aircraft was in active service, with evidence of missing engines. SBU screencap

Prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia was estimated to have nine A-50s, including a number of modernized A-50Us, in active service. As well as the two combat losses since then, one of these aircraft was damaged in a drone attack while on the ground at a base in Belarus, and its current status is unknown. Any further losses to the A-50 fleet will be very keenly felt.

Dyagilevo Air Base

A high-resolution satellite image of Dyagilevo from Planet Labs, taken on June 2 and reviewed by TWZ, showed no obvious signs of damage to any aircraft there. Still, some aircraft may have been damaged by shrapnel, against which relatively thin-skinned aircraft are notably vulnerable, and this would not necessarily be visible even in higher-resolution imagery.

Satellite images of Dyagilevo Airbase as of June 2, 8:55 UTC

The airbase housed 3 Tu-95MS (Bear-H), 5 Tu-22M3 (Backfire-C), 14 Il-78M or Il-76MD (Midas or Candid) and 2 Su-30SM (Flanker-C).

There was no serious damage after the Ukrainian special operation. In the right… pic.twitter.com/BUz2h0t9aj

— AviVector (@avivector) June 2, 2025

Ukrainka Air Base

Clear satellite imagery showing potential damage to aircraft at Ukrainka is yet to emerge. What little visual evidence we have of this airfield after the drone strikes is inconclusive, although there are claims, at least, of a single Tu-95MS having been hit. For now, these claims need to be treated with caution.

#UkraineRussiaWar #Pokrovsk #Kupyansk #ChasovYar #Toretsk #Kursk #Belgorod #Dnipro

A Tu-95MS was hit at the Ukrainka air base.

It is more than 6,000 kilometers away from the Russian border pic.twitter.com/oNfJBg8AKh

— Koba (@Roberto05246129) June 3, 2025

It’s also worth noting that the tires, frequently scattered over the wings and upper fuselages of Russian bombers and other combat aircraft, and which are employed in this manner to confuse image-matching seekers on incoming munitions, appear to have been misidentified by some observers as evidence of damage or scorch marks.

A Ukrainian FPV-type drone perspective of a Tu-22M3 with tires and rubber matting on the wings. SBU screencap

While cloud cover has hindered the opportunity for more rapid and verifiable analysis of the results of Operation Spiderweb, we can now say, with certainty, that at least six (and more likely seven) Tu-95MS and four Tu-22M3 bombers were destroyed. While far short of some of the earlier Ukrainian claims, this still represents a significant loss to Russia, not least because it’s impossible to replace the Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3, both of which have been out of production for decades, as you can read more about here.

While the new SBU video shows multiple drones landing on their targets before presumably exploding, it is possible that some made it to their final destinations and failed to detonate.

Additional satellite imagery could well reveal more aircraft destroyed or damaged, although, with each passing day, Russia is better able to conceal the results of the raid, disposing of wreckage and moving aircraft around to make it that much harder to create an accurate tally.

Russians quickly replaced some of the destroyed aircraft with undamaged aircraft/decoys on their airfields, placing them in the exact same spots. pic.twitter.com/VvB9JgePzI

— MilitaryNewsUA (@front_ukrainian) June 4, 2025

At the same time, Russian aircrews are already making clear their reaction to the drone strikes, referencing the destroyed aircraft in the form of slogans on glide bombs launched by tactical combat aircraft, as seen below:

This is what Russian servicemen are now writing on FAB-500 UMPK guided aerial bombs installed under the wings of a Sukhoi Su-34 bomber:

"For Tu-22M3"

"For Tu-95MS"

"For Long-Range Aviation"

"For the train" pic.twitter.com/6cJRM5wem0

— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (BlueSky too) (@Archer83Able) June 4, 2025

Whatever the final losses to the Russian Aerospace Forces, the Ukrainian drone strike will also have sent a shockwave all the way to the top of the Russian leadership, as well as military planners around the globe. The carefully planned operation visibly exposed the vulnerability of some of Russia’s prime strategic assets. For now, at least, there appears to be no quick-fix solution to protecting these high-value aircraft. This may well force Russia toward an even more highly dispersed positioning model, which will severely limit the bombers’ effectiveness for Ukraine operations.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Thomas Newdick

Staff Writer

Thomas is a defense writer and editor with over 20 years of experience covering military aerospace topics and conflicts. He’s written a number of books, edited many more, and has contributed to many of the world’s leading aviation publications. Before joining The War Zone in 2020, he was the editor of AirForces Monthly.

twz.com · by Thomas Newdick

17. ‘We need your creative, innovative, patriotic, and diabolical minds': Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine

"Innovative, patriotic, and diabolical minds" should describe every member of DOD.

‘We need your creative, innovative, patriotic, and diabolical minds': Joint Chiefs Chairman Caine - Breaking Defense

Gen. Dan Caine called for greater collaboration between the Pentagon and industry — building on the Silicon Valley-based Defense Innovation Unit — to speed up new technology, especially for globally integrated command and control.

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · June 4, 2025

Lt. General John D. Caine testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s top military officer, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, chose a massive AI conference in the nation’s capital for one of his first public addresses as chairman, invoking his own business background in a passionate appeal to tech entrepreneurs in the audience.

“I deliberately chose this forum to have one of our first public appearances, mindful of the audience today,” Caine told the third annual Ash Carter Exchange and AI+ Expo, convened by the Special Competitive Studies Project to continue the late defense secretary’s campaign to bridge the gap between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley.

“I’m so lucky to have come from a unique background where I had time as a fighter pilot, time as a special forces officer, a part-timer in the military service [as an Air National Guard officer], but for this crowd, time is both a founder and a funder in several different sectors,” Caine told the overwhelmingly civilian audience. “That has allowed me to see things from a lot of different angles … [and] one of the things that I learned is we cannot do this alone. We have to do this, we have to do this together. And frankly, my friends, the joint force needs your help.

“Your nation needs you with a sense of urgency,” the chairman continued. “We need your creative, innovative, patriotic and diabolical minds — 24/7/365.”

In a brief and broad-strokes speech — just over 15 minutes — Caine spent most of his limited time and considerable energy on exhortations, but he still managed to hint at some specific policy priorities. In particular, he praised the Defense Innovation Unit, created by then-Defense Secretary Carter in 2015 as the military’s embassy to a then-highly skeptical Silicon Valley, and promised to build on DIU’s success.

“We’ve got to reinforce those things that we’ve made strong progress in, organizations like DIU, and we’ve got to drastically scale that capability and that culture inside the joint force,” Caine said.

That’ll be a hard slog, because in many ways the military is surprisingly behind the times, Caine acknowledged. At least as of a few years ago, he told the assembled techies, “in one of the most secret rooms in the Pentagon, there’s a typewriter. There’s a typewriter there because we could not sort out how to merge multiple levels of classification together on the systems that we have, and we had to hand-jam a memorandum for a senior policy leader.”

Caine wants to replace typewriters and other industrial-age kludges with streamlined, integrated, and AI-enhanced networks, he emphasized multiple times. “If we’re going to integrate across the entire world at speed and scale, we’ve got to do it with technology,” he said. “Every element of the joint force can, must and will use advanced technology to improve our command and control systems, our decision-making, our execution and, frankly, our survivability.”

While the Chairman didn’t specifically mention the military’s work-in-progress meta-network, Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), his emphasis on digital command and data-sharing certainly seems to align with that initiative. Although the services have offered many different visions and versions CJADC2, its most practical instantiations — especially a “Minimum Viable Capability” declared operational last year — have focused on sharing data rapidly amongst high-level commands around the globe.

That version of CJADC2 jibes with Caine’s emphasis today on bridging long-established jurisdictional divides between theater commands.

“In the past, we’ve thought of things on a country-by-country basis, and we simply, we simply can’t do that anymore. We have to think in terms of global challenges and problems, global algorithms,” Caine said. “I need to make sure that the joint force is integrated across the globe, within the combat commands, the geographical and function commands, and the services.”

Nor is it just the military Caine wants to integrate in this network: “We’ve got to connect them with our interagency allies and partners, including founders and funders, and scale that capability in order to meet the challenges,” he said.

One major obstacle to such public-private partnerships is that the government can be very difficult to do business with, Caine acknowledged frankly, invoking his own experience.

“The USG [United States Government] needs to be better buyers,” he said. “I know this from my time in the private sector, where I tried to sell things to the government when I was an entrepreneur. It’s hard.”

This sclerotic acquisition process doesn’t just cost companies opportunities to win government business, Caine said: It also costs the government opportunities to tap private sector innovation.

“The barrier to government business is high, frankly, too high — and yet the changing nature and character of warfare is happening right before our eyes. We’ve seen examples of that, most recently as this weekend,” Caine said, in reference to Ukraine’s “Operation Spider Web” drone strikes on Russian airfields Sunday. “We’ve got to go faster, my friends, and that’s mostly, in many cases, on us in the USG … We need entrepreneurs, both in the private sector and in government.”

Caine asked industry to help the Pentagon move past its established Pentagon processes and the “legacy” weapons that have been in service for decades.

“It’s our ability to look around corners to anticipate the next fight that resides right here in this room,” he told the audience. “Peace in our nation will not be won by the legacy systems that we’ve had or the legacy thinking. It will be determined by the entrepreneurs and innovators and leaders, both in government and out of government, that create overwhelming strength. It will be won by our breakthroughs in AI, cyber, autonomy, space, energy, advanced manufacturing, data, compute — you name it.”

Again, he emphasized to the industry audience, “we need your help with this. I need you inspired to help us. You’ve got the agility, the boldness, the culture and spirit to do these big things, and we welcome your ideas.”

breakingdefense.com · by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. · June 4, 2025

18. Army leaders need to show their 'homework' for transformation plans, lawmakers say

Transformation in contact. It is hard.

As always, Congress is parochial which is not a surprise.

Excerpts:

Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, also spoke out against plans to get rid of the 1st Assault Helicopter Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment within the Army Reserve’s 11th Theater Aviation Command. The unit operates UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and has been used in disaster relief efforts, including hurricanes.

“[Lawmakers] can be your greatest asset or your worst enemy. And you’ve come into my house, where I was born and raised, in this county, and you’re taking something away from me, and I want to know why,” Luttrell told the two leaders.

Army leaders need to show their 'homework' for transformation plans, lawmakers say - Breaking Defense

“You chose to give us a plan with few details, with no budgeting and a failure to answer a lot of our questions, and now [I’m] hearing about how this plan will be implemented from my own constituents, not from leadership,” said Rep. Eric Sorensen.

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · June 4, 2025

Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy George join “Fox and Friends” to discuss the new Department of Defense memorandum on Army transformation and acquisition reform, at the Pentagon, Washington, DC, May 1, 2025. (DoD/US Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

WASHINGTON — Members of the House Armed Services Committee delivered a bipartisan message to senior Army leadership today: They need a much clearer picture of the Army’s plans for the new transformation shakeup.

“We need to see your homework,” Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said during a hearing on Capitol Hill. “Overall, this significance should be based on thorough assessment of requirements, and it should include a detailed blueprint of the specific changes being proposed and how the Army plans to implement them.

“We need those assessments and blueprints … We also need you to provide us a timeline for implementing ATI [Army Transformation Initiative],” he added.

It’s been just over a month since the service began unveiling a massive overhaul of its force structure and cuts to a slew of legacy and newer weapons under the ATI umbrella. Details about just what this means have been coming out in drips and drabs since then, prompting Rogers to prod Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George for more details today, while also calling the plan “encouraging.”

And he wasn’t alone.

The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., also applauded service leaders for diving into that very difficult subject of force structure and weapons cuts, but said the “devil’s in the details” and those details are needed.

Driscoll explained that the Army is rolling out the ATI changes that it can right now (think force structure) but not yet halting the weapon buys lawmakers greenlit in the fiscal 2025 continuing resolution. Those ATI directed program cuts (i.e., M10 Booker, Robotic Combat Vehicle, Maneuver Support Vessel-Light and more) will only be reflected when the White House delivers a comprehensive FY26 budget request for the Pentagon. Lawmakers will then have to approve the program cuts if and when they pass a spending bill and associated authorization one.

But, Driscoll warned, ATI cuts won’t stop there.

“The way that we envision ATI, and how we have described it throughout the formations, is this will be an iterative process. … There will be no one date where everything with our first batch of ATI will be completed,” the newly minted secretary added. “We will be hopefully doing what the best companies in America do, and learning as we go.”

While lawmakers wait for those details to emerge when the FY26 budget request is submitted, Army leaders may continue hearing about a broad swath of ATI concerns, many which extend to uncertainty about how the workforce will be hit in various districts.

Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., for example, voiced concerns about how the shakeup will impact Rock Island Arsenal with the proposed merger of Army Sustainment Command and the Joint Munitions Command.

“I am frustrated by how the Army has decided to roll out this Army Transformation Initiative,” Sorensen said today. “It doesn’t matter which side of the aisle that we’re on here. We all want to make sure that the Army is lethal [and] it is ready to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

“However, you chose to give us a plan with few details, with no budgeting and a failure to answer a lot of our questions, and now [I’m] hearing about how this plan will be implemented from my own constituents, not from leadership.”

Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, also spoke out against plans to get rid of the 1st Assault Helicopter Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment within the Army Reserve’s 11th Theater Aviation Command. The unit operates UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and has been used in disaster relief efforts, including hurricanes.

“[Lawmakers] can be your greatest asset or your worst enemy. And you’ve come into my house, where I was born and raised, in this county, and you’re taking something away from me, and I want to know why,” Luttrell told the two leaders.

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How will the Army train the next generation of helicopter pilots?

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How will the Army train the next generation of helicopter pilots?

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How will the Army train the next generation of helicopter pilots?

The Army is looking for improved pilot training in its innovative Flight School Next initiative. The Navy advanced its rotary wing training with the TH-73, which may provide a proven roadmap.

From Breaking Defense

The Army is looking for improved pilot training in its innovative Flight School Next initiative. The Navy advanced its rotary wing training with the TH-73, which may provide a proven roadmap.

From Breaking Defense

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breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · June 4, 2025

19. Sustaining an Indo-Pacific Fight: The Contested Logistics Triad

Of course General Nathan Bedford Forest did not actually say: "get there firstest with the mostest." But it is applicable.

Excerpts:

In closing, consider the following situation. It is 2027. Taipei has fallen. People’s Liberation Army troops are in occupation and have had weeks to prepare an urban defense at multiple levels, at sea, in the air, on land and in the underground. A cyberattack has severely impaired all cabotage on both US coasts, resulting in commercial shipping being disrupted for weeks. A series of mysterious, unattributable accidents have closed the Port of Houston with its long sea lanes and severely reduced flow from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in southern California and, across the country, the Port of New York and New Jersey. In addition, major Chinese commercial shipping firms like COSCO have been struck by widespread delays that, for reasons unknown, have only affected shipments to and from the United States. Supermarket shelves in America are starting to empty rapidly and US public opinion is turning against any action to reverse the status quo in Taiwan. A recent UN resolution, backed by virtually every African and South American country, has strongly supported China’s reestablishment of sovereignty Taiwan. Given all these events, US military planners are now confronted with planning a long maritime move, the need for a highly risky JLOTS operation well within China’s antiaccess, area-denial zone (since Taiwan’s major ports have been essentially destroyed by the Chinese), and the prospect of an intense urban littoral fight at the destination.

This is the contested logistics triad at its worst. Acknowledging and preparing for it, then, becomes a matter of deterrence. And if deterrence breaks down, it will prove essential to sustain the fight that follows.

Sustaining an Indo-Pacific Fight: The Contested Logistics Triad - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Ronald Ti · June 4, 2025

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It’s an uncomfortable truth that we can’t know precisely what the next war will look like. But it is equally true that defense planners, military practitioners, and strategists have a professional obligation to do their best to forecast the character of a future conflict in order to guide the way we prepare for it. The place to start is with what we know to be true and the evidence-backed assumptions we have the most confidence in. We can be all but certain, for instance, that a conflict in the Indo-Pacific region would be characterized by contested logistics.

Unfortunately, in the ongoing public discussion on contested logistics in the Indo-Pacific region, two topics have gotten far less attention than they warrant. First, despite the Indo-Pacific being one of the most heavily urbanized regions in the world,, with most of these urban spaces situated in the littoral zone, fewer commentaries focus on the problem presented by combat operations in the most likely ultimate battleground, that of Indo-Pacific urban littoral battlespaces. Second, even fewer commentaries emphasize the necessity for JLOTS (joint logistics over-the shore) operations—in short, a way to “enter a land area from sea despite insufficient port infrastructure”—in sustaining an Indo-Pacific fight. This is puzzling, especially when operational planners employing a worst-case-scenario paradigm must assume that a conveniently located port is either degraded or totally nonfunctional, in which case JLOTS operations are effectively the only viable sustainment alternative. Perhaps part of the problem is that most—but by no means all—commentators perceive operations in the Indo-Pacific region primarily as a maritime and air domain fight.

In recent years, despite the Pentagon’s public acknowledgement that China is the United States’ pacing threat, US defense publications have featured little commentary recognizing contested multidomain logistics, JLOTS, and urban littorals as critical elements of Indo-Pacific logistics—with a few important but rare exceptions. The same is true in my country, where despite the 2023 Defence Strategic Review specifically directing the Australian Army to focus on amphibious operations in the littoral environment to the archipelagic north of Australia, there has also been a lack of commentary that considers all three relevant elements, particularly urban littorals—though also with notable exceptions.

If we’re serious about being ready to fight in the Indo-Pacific, then we need a conceptual framework to understand contested logistics in that region. And it is imperative that it accounts for such a conflict’s multidomain character, emphasizes the importance of JLOTS, and acknowledges the challenges of operating in the region’s urban littoral environments. Taken together, these three elements form what I have conceived as the contested logistics triad, which should take its place as the conceptual framework we currently lack.

I have yet to see these key elements represented in this way elsewhere in either Australian or US operational commentaries. My intention is for nonspecialist US and Australian readers—those without professional logistics experience—to be able to grasp the true dimensions of the problem of multidomain Indo-Pacific sustainment at a glance by understanding this contested logistics triad. Effective sustainment in the Indo-Pacific area of operations must consider all three elements, particularly the two that have received less attention to date: JLOTS and the demands of complex urban littoral battlespaces. The latter element extends to logistics all of the demands, challenges and requirements that urban littoral combat operations entail. The Indo-Pacific urban littoral is the malevolent presence waiting for US and allied forces at the end of the long, contested logistics supply line and past the JLOTS operation in a deadly littoral zone—a truly nasty ending to a long series of sustainment challenges these forces will face.

Multidomain Contested Logistics

The first element in the contested logistics triad is multidomain logistics itself. This describes logistics being contested across the five operational domains of land, maritime, air, space, and cyberspace. Much has been written in recent years on conducting logistics operations in these domains and the challenges to those operations. Too often these perspectives are siloed, however, often reflecting service bias and single-domain emphasis. Thus, articles written by army officers will focus, quite reasonably, on the land domain, while another on logistics by a naval officer will often display a corresponding maritime domain emphasis. The presence of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) and its much vaunted (but thus far unproven) antiaccess, area-denial zone has become a recurring theme when discussing contested maritime Indo-Pacific logistics. To discuss each domain element in contested logistics is outside the scope of this article. However, no appreciation of contested logistics is complete without considering all domains—whether cross-domain kinetic fires, cyber threats to key sustainment software, or disruption of space-based positioning, navigation, and timing systems. Nor can asymmetric action be ignored, like the prospect of potential phase-zero actions by up to two thousand Chinese distant-water fishing vessels, or by vessels of the Peoples’ Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM), both of which are not readily identifiable as potential combatants.

Joint Logistics Over The Shore

Multidomain contested logistics is only the first substantial issue facing American, Australian, and allied force elements deploying by sea into the archipelagic zone of the first island chain. Once any force has reached its ultimate land destination the critical issue of sustainment from sea to shore then arises. This leads to the second element of the contested logistics triad: the JLOTS requirement.

Prudent military planners need to plan according to worst-case and not best-case scenarios. In the context of Indo-Pacific, it must therefore be assumed that viable port facilities will be degraded or nonexistent. Given this operational assumption, it follows that the only effective alternative for seaward replenishment of land operations must be provided through JLOTS sustainment operations. The US Department of Defense publicly defines these as “operations in which Navy and Army logistics over-the-shore forces conduct logistics over-the-shore operations together under a joint force commander. Logistics over-the-shore operations, in turn, are defined as “the loading and unloading of ships without the benefit of deep draft-capable, fixed port facilities; or as a means of moving forces closer to tactical assembly areas.”

Unfortunately, the current state of US JLOTS is not optimal, with a recent report from the DoD Office of the Inspector General on the conduct of JLOTS in Gaza humanitarian operation making for disturbing reading. This report highlighted a number of critical deficiencies, including the nonavailability of secure communications between US Navy and US Army JLOTS elements, structural incompatibility of platforms (with respective single-service pier assets at significantly different heights, resulting in substantial pier section damage), and even the failure by operational planners to factor in critical (and fundamental) amphibious planning parameters such as tide times and sea states. The other critical issue of JLOTS is the relative vulnerability of the logistics structures to adversary action, with both pier structures and sea-to-shore connectors generally unarmored and unarmed. In a future Indo-Pacific fight, JLOTS will very likely be required , considering the operational planning assumption that the existence and ongoing viability of a convenient port cannot be guaranteed. Given its current state in the US military, JLOTS represents a distinct critical vulnerability.

Urban Littoral Battlespaces: The Nasty Ending

To reiterate, not only is the Indo-Pacific one of the most heavily urbanized regions in the world, but the majority of these urban spaces are located within the littoral zone. Urban combat imposes a number of specific constraints on operational planners. Urban operations are conducted in a highly challenging battlespace, but also require specific demands in terms of everything from resourcing and force ratios to logistics. The attritive nature of urban warfare further adds to the logistics burden. Urban littoral combat has been described by Australian operational commentators as the “worst of both worlds,” combining the challenges of urban and amphibious operations. In an Indo-Pacific conflict scenario, it is conceivable that Chinese forces would secure a major Indo-Pacific urban littoral center well before the arrival of theatre US or allied forces and then reinforce and fortify it against any counteroffensive. The capital of Taiwan is a prime example of such an urban littoral battlespace. This scenario would be totally consistent with the established Chinese military philosophy of “active defense.” Any fight occurring ultimately in an urban littoral battlespace is truly a potentially nasty ending, especially if the full spectrum of threats are directed toward US and allied logistics lines of communications. If JLOTS will be required, it will be carried out in a highly targeted, littoral battlespace. Moreover, the volume of supply needs to be robust enough to support attritive, drawn-out urban operations. This will be especially true if, as Professor Anthony King has described, a series of grueling micro-sieges with greatly increased logistics demands and operational duration is anticipated.

Why the Triad Matters

Not all the elements of the contested logistics triad may be present at every stage of every future Indo-Pacific operation. It may well be, say, that in a future scenario a functioning port will be available. Or it could be that the ultimate assault will be in a nonurban setting more reminiscent of the sands of Iwo Jima than the gates of an Indo-Pacific Stalingrad. Nevertheless, military planners must assume worst-case scenarios. The contested logistics triad and its elements extend its effects throughout the Indo-Pacific battlespace and before its risks can be mitigated, they must first be recognized. A major issue in understanding the challenges of Indo-Pacific sustainment is in understanding a complex logistics problem.

Although each element of the triad is often individually discussed, we need a conceptual framework that links the three, depicts their effects in relation to one another, and, in particular, highlights the need to conduct JLOTS in support of high-intensity, protracted, urban littoral combat operations. By representing multidomain contested logistics together with JLOTS and urban littoral battlespaces as the contested logistics triad, we have a construct that may be more easily recognized by operational planners, not just logisticians. Recognition must precede planning: We must first recognize something before we can plan for it.

Further, the logistics challenges at play in the Indo-Pacific are more than the sum of the challenges related to each of the three elements. The contested logistics triad should be recognized as a discrete entity with elements that compound each other. Even if we were comfortable with multidomain contested logistics, even if we were good at JLOTS, and even if we were prepared for the intense combat required in complex urban littoral spaces, that isn’t enough. There is an interactive and amplifying relationship between the challenges associated with each element and we cannot meet the challenge if we, collectively—across services and among allies—lack a holistic approach.

For two decades, our expeditionary operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were sustained by a logistics enterprise that was essentially uncontested. Cargo sent by ship wasn’t at risk of being sunk to the bottom of the ocean and was certainly not at risk of any cyber interdiction. Supplies sent by air flew over enemy forces with little means of shooting down aircraft. Even on the comparatively dangerous roads, where supply convoys could be ambushed or targeted by roadside bombs, successful enemy attacks were infrequent enough that the cumulative effect did little to dent combat forces’ time-tested assumption that there would always be plenty of whatever was needed to sustain their operations.

We became accustomed over a generation to dining facilities that never ran out of energy drinks and protein shakes. Creature comforts became the norm. Maneuver units need to prepare for a future where supplies of water are more important than WiFi connections to call home, where supply chain interdictions could mean dwindling ammunition stocks and equipment sidelined by an inability to deliver spare parts. The contested logistics triad, in reflecting three elements that will challenge our ability to sustain forces and operations and acknowledging their compounding effects, is an important mechanism for operational planners and tactical commanders to think about the operational realities they will face.

In closing, consider the following situation. It is 2027. Taipei has fallen. People’s Liberation Army troops are in occupation and have had weeks to prepare an urban defense at multiple levels, at sea, in the air, on land and in the underground. A cyberattack has severely impaired all cabotage on both US coasts, resulting in commercial shipping being disrupted for weeks. A series of mysterious, unattributable accidents have closed the Port of Houston with its long sea lanes and severely reduced flow from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in southern California and, across the country, the Port of New York and New Jersey. In addition, major Chinese commercial shipping firms like COSCO have been struck by widespread delays that, for reasons unknown, have only affected shipments to and from the United States. Supermarket shelves in America are starting to empty rapidly and US public opinion is turning against any action to reverse the status quo in Taiwan. A recent UN resolution, backed by virtually every African and South American country, has strongly supported China’s reestablishment of sovereignty Taiwan. Given all these events, US military planners are now confronted with planning a long maritime move, the need for a highly risky JLOTS operation well within China’s antiaccess, area-denial zone (since Taiwan’s major ports have been essentially destroyed by the Chinese), and the prospect of an intense urban littoral fight at the destination.

This is the contested logistics triad at its worst. Acknowledging and preparing for it, then, becomes a matter of deterrence. And if deterrence breaks down, it will prove essential to sustain the fight that follows.

Colonel Ronald Ti is a logistician currently in the Australian Army Reserve but currently works in professional military education within the European Union. His PhD in military logistics was awarded in March 2025 by King’s College London and researched resilience at the tactical level in NATO military logistics units during NATO Article V, large-scale combat operations.

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, nor that of the Australian Army or the Australian Department of Defence.

Image credit: Capt. Jared McCully, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Ronald Ti · June 4, 2025

20. World won’t forget Tiananmen Square, US and Taiwan say on 36th anniversary of massacre

Never forget.

Excerpts:

The date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, and the Chinese government employs extensive and increasingly sophisticated resources to censor any discussion or acknowledgment of it inside China.

Internet censors scrub even the most obscure references to the date from online spaces, and activists in China are often put under increased surveillance or sent on enforced “holidays” away from Beijing.

New research from human rights workers has found that the sensitive date also sees heightened transnational repression of Chinese government critics overseas by the government and its proxies.

The report published on Wednesday by Article 19, a human rights research and advocacy group, said that the Chinese government “has engaged in a systematic international campaign of transnational repression targeting protesters critical of the Chinese Communist party”, with Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hongkongers particularly likely to be affected.

World won’t forget Tiananmen Square, US and Taiwan say on 36th anniversary of massacre

The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · June 4, 2025

The world will never forget the Tiananmen Square massacre, the US secretary of state and Taiwan president have said on the 36th anniversary of the crackdown, which China’s government still tries to erase from domestic memory.

There is no official death toll but activists believe hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the streets around Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s central plaza, on 4 June 1989.

“Today we commemorate the bravery of the Chinese people who were killed as they tried to exercise their fundamental freedoms, as well as those who continue to suffer persecution as they seek accountability and justice for the events of June 4, 1989,” said Marco Rubio, the US’s top diplomat, in a statement.

Örkesh Dölet descended on to Tiananmen Square with thousands of fellow student protesters. He’s now 36 years into exile | Nuria Khasim

“The CCP [Chinese Communist party] actively tries to censor the facts, but the world will never forget.”

Responding to Rubio’s remarks on Wednesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, said: “Erroneous statements by the US side maliciously distort historical facts, deliberately attack China’s political system and developmental path, and seriously interfere in China’s internal affairs.”

Separately, Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, also praised the bravery of the Tiananmen Square protesters.

“Authoritarian governments often choose to silence and forget history, while democratic societies choose to preserve the truth and refuse to forget those who gave their lives – and their dreams – to the idea of human rights,” said Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te.

Ahead of the 1989 massacre, protesters had been gathering for weeks in the square to call for democratic reforms to the CCP. The student-led movement attracted worldwide attention, which turned to horror as tanks rolled into the square to clear the encampment. Several protesters were also killed at a smaller demonstration in Chengdu, a city in south-west China.

The date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, and the Chinese government employs extensive and increasingly sophisticated resources to censor any discussion or acknowledgment of it inside China.

Internet censors scrub even the most obscure references to the date from online spaces, and activists in China are often put under increased surveillance or sent on enforced “holidays” away from Beijing.

New research from human rights workers has found that the sensitive date also sees heightened transnational repression of Chinese government critics overseas by the government and its proxies.

The report published on Wednesday by Article 19, a human rights research and advocacy group, said that the Chinese government “has engaged in a systematic international campaign of transnational repression targeting protesters critical of the Chinese Communist party”, with Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hongkongers particularly likely to be affected.

The Pillar of Shame, a statue made by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Beijing Tiananmen Square massacre, displayed at the University of Hong Kong before it was removed in 2021. Photograph: Jérôme Favre/EPA

The report cited Freedom House research in 2023, which found that China had been responsible for about 30% all recorded acts of physical transnational repression since 2014.

“Protesters targeted by [transnational repression] frequently live in fear of surveillance; targeting; abduction and forced repatriation, especially around embassies and consulates; and ‘collective punishment’ retaliation against relatives still in China, which also leads people to cut ties with their family,” the report said.

The Article 19 researchers found that, with Tiananmen Square vigils snuffed out in China, pro-CCP agents appear to be targeting commemorations in other parts of the world.

In 2022, a replica of a statue known as the Pillar of Shame, by the Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, was vandalised in Taipei. The statue is designed to memorialise the people who died on 4 June 1989. The original was on display at the University of Hong Kong for 23 years before it was removed by university authorities in 2021.

For many years, Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Macau, were the only places on Chinese territory where the event could be commemorated.

Police officers stand guard during a stop and search near Victoria Park in Hong Kong ahead of the 36th anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre. Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters

But since the 2019 pro-democracy protests and the ensuing crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong, the annual 4 June vigil in Victoria Park has been banned.

In recent years some high-profile activists have been prosecuted over attempts to mark the day. For the last three years a government-sponsored food carnival has been held on the site during the week of the anniversary.

On Tuesday there was a heavy police presence in Causeway Bay, near the park, Hong Kong Free Press reported.

A performance artist, Chan Mei-tung, was stopped and searched, and later escorted from the area by police. She was standing on the road chewing gum, according to the outlet. In 2022 Chan was arrested after she stood in the same area peeling a potato.

On Tuesday Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee, warned that any activity conducted on Wednesday must be “lawful”, but was not specific. A key criticism of Hong Kong’s national security laws are that they are broad and the proscribed crimes are ill-defined.

One of the few groups of people in China who are still outspoken about the events of 36 years ago are the rapidly ageing “Tiananmen Mothers”, parents of young people killed in the massacre, who have called for an official reckoning.

One of the founding members, 88-year-old Zhang Xianling, gave a rare interview this year with Radio Free Asia, saying that she still lives under close surveillance.

Zhang said: “I don’t know why they are so afraid of me. I am 88 years old and I have to use a wheelchair if I can’t walk 200 metres. Am I that scary?”

Earlier this week Li Xiaoming, an ex-PLA officer who has lived in Australia for 25 years, gave an interview to Taiwan media, about his involvement at the Tiananmen crackdown as a junior soldier.

Li said he was compelled to talk “as a warning to the world”, and also to Taiwan which is facing the threat of Chinese annexation.

“Although the CCP leadership sees the 4 June incident as something shameful, what they learned from it is the need for strict control – eliminating any sign of unrest early on, controlling and blocking public opinion, and brainwashing to people. They work to crush all instability at the earliest stage,” he said according to Channel News Asia’s translation.

Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes

The Guardian · by Helen Davidson · June 4, 2025

21. Why Some U.S. Military Advising Missions Succeed—and Others Don’t

The professor has some selected analysis and she should not draw broad conclusions from it as she seems to do. Of course influence ebbs and flows but many analyses and conclusions are based on snapshots in time. In the Philippines this is true for many reasons to include the political leadership in power at the time, but currently US influence is positive in the Philippines probably for three reasons - sustained military relationships but also due to the threat from Chinese and the foundation of people to people Philippines- American relationship. As an example, according to some diplomats it was the military to military relationship that ensured sustainment of the alliance through the Duterte years who was decidedly anti-American.

Excerpts:

While these findings are valuable, caution should be taken in drawing broad conclusions from them. What works for local SOF organizations constructed from scratch (the scope of Sobchak’s study) may not necessarily work for the host nation’s conventional forces, where recruiting, training, and equipping at scale becomes difficult given factors like inequality. It is reasonable, though, to expect factors important for interpersonal influence in the SOF context, like consistency in advisor-counterpart pairings, to improve advising of conventional forces. Moreover, we should avoid conflating success at building partner military effectiveness with the achievement of desired strategic outcomes more broadly. From the case studies, it is unclear whether successful capacity building translated uniformly into desired outcomes for the United States. El Salvador ended in a negotiated settlement with the rebels, which begs the question whether such an agreement could have been reached before 12 years of fighting and violence against civilians claimed many lives. Afghanistan ended in a U.S. defeat. Iraq, Colombia, and the Philippines have experienced shaky domestic politics and government repression, with U.S.-advised forces sometimes contributing to instability even as they provided stability in other ways by defeating insurgent groups or fighting them to a draw. Meanwhile, U.S. influence arguably declined over time in Iraq and the Philippines and is now nonexistent in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, history suggests that security force assistance will continue to be an indispensable tool of U.S. policy. Understanding how to do it as best as possible is essential. On that front, Training for Victory provides an important contribution to scholars and practitioners alike.

Why Some U.S. Military Advising Missions Succeed—and Others Don’t

irregularwarfare.org · by Alexandra Chinchilla · June 5, 2025

The Irregular Warfare Initiative (IWI) Editorial Team is proud to present the second installment in our series featuring leading thinkers in the irregular warfare community critically engaging with recent IW-related publications. Curated by IWI editors Barbara Elias and Lewis Fraser, this series goes beyond traditional book reviews. Contributors are encouraged to challenge ideas, draw connections to their own expertise, and explore how the works shape broader debates in the field.

Introduction: Rethinking U.S. Military Advising

After the failure to build a sustainable Afghan military that could survive without U.S. presence, many scholars and practitioners now argue that U.S. efforts to build foreign militaries are nearly predestined to fail and should rarely, if ever, be undertaken. In Training for Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Operations from El Salvador to Afghanistan, Frank Sobchak pushes back against this view, arguing that “…we have not failed because advising our allies is too hard; we’ve failed because we have never taken it seriously …Building foreign militaries is a difficult, long-term, and often thankless endeavor. But it is not impossible” (2024, 177). To support his argument, Sobchak examines five cases of U.S. military advising: El Salvador during the Cold War, and the Philippines, Colombia, Iraq, and Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror. While cases like Colombia and El Salvador are considered successes by some scholars, Afghanistan is widely seen as a failure. Sobchak seeks to understand why some advising efforts succeed while others do not. He tackles this challenging analytical problem with a clear research design and well-researched case studies offering new empirical detail on important U.S. advising missions.

Existing explanations attribute security force assistance outcomes to structural conditions or the provider’s use of strategies like carrots and sticks or military-to-military socialization to encourage local compliance. Sobchak’s work broadly supports the findings of researchers who argue that human contact between militaries generates more influence for security force assistance providers. His contribution lies in demonstrating that advising missions vary greatly in their design across cases, and this variation makes some more successful than others at generating influence. Within the U.S. special operations forces (SOF) community—the military organization most frequently engaged in advising—so-called “SOF truths” shape beliefs about how special operations forces should be built and maintained. Despite this shared reference point, in practice, U.S. SOF advise differently across cases. Sobchak leverages variation in the design of military advising missions to determine which are more effective. The implications are important for policy: if certain kinds of advising missions are correlated with better outcomes, security force assistance providers have some control over whether the outcome mirrors Afghanistan or more closely resembles El Salvador.

The Role of Human Relationships in Advising

Military advisors serve the interests of the states that send them by exerting influence, and sometimes even control, over local military institutions and operations on the battlefield. Advising hinges on human contact and personal relationships between advisors and their local counterparts. Advisors use these relationships to transfer useful knowledge to counterparts, as well as to persuade them to adopt the sending state’s preferred course of action. SOF advisors have long hypothesized that strong, enduring relationships are the key to success. Drawing on these folk theories, Sobchak identifies five factors, or independent variables, that strengthen advisor-counterpart bonds: (1) consistency in advisor-counterpart pairings, (2) language and cultural skills, (3) a low partner-to-advisor ratio, (4) the ability of advisors to organize host-nation SOF—not only by training but also by shaping military institutions, and (5) combat advising, which grants credibility and therefore battlefield control to advisors.

Sobchak also carefully conceptualizes and measures the dependent variable of military effectiveness. He defines it through four factors (three skill-based indicators and one battlefield performance indicator): “(1) fighting without advisors present, (2) fighting at night, (3) conducting multi-day combat operations, and (4) consistently defeating enemy forces in combat” (2024, 14). Night operations and sustained combat require significant technical skill, making these particularly useful indicators. Empirical scholars of conflict will appreciate Sobchak’s precise conceptualization and measurement across the qualitative case studies, rich with detail which could inspire new quantitative indicators of military effectiveness.

The key analytical challenge, of course, is determining causation: do the variables that Sobchak identifies actually drive the observed outcomes? Structural conditions—such as host-nation receptivity to external influence—vary widely, meaning advising strategies are just one factor, …and maybe not even the most important one. To address this, Sobchak employs a comparative case study method, analyzing cases where U.S. SOF built partner forces from scratch. This approach enhances comparability across cases by reducing the impact of historical legacies, ensuring similar partner force characteristics, and maintaining consistency in U.S. advising methods, since conventional forces tend to have less experience and interest in advising partner forces and therefore may be less skilled. His cases draw on extensive original interviews with U.S. SOF advisors, and his attention to detail allows him to reconstruct valuable military history across the cases—an important contribution for our understanding of understudied cases, such as U.S. advising in the Philippines.

Assessing Causal Claims and Limitations

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Sobchak finds that combat advising is not necessary for strong relationships with local partners and does not correlate with success. In fact, it can have downsides, as U.S. advisors may become overly focused on combat missions instead of letting local forces operate independently. Sobchak also finds that fluency in the partner’s language is not essential, although he relies on the self-assessment of advisors with limited language skills who may not have been able to fully notice areas of disconnect. Advisors with fluency in the local language believed it provided them with a significant advantage in building relationships. As one advisor put it: “When it comes down to ‘Should I share this tidbit of intel, fuel, ammo, or gossip about internal office politics?’ It is the one who gained rapport who gets it, and the one who doesn’t never knows” (2024, 183). Sobchak argues, however, that advisors can still build deep and enduring bonds in the presence of a language barrier if they maintain connections with local counterparts and repeatedly return to work with them over a long period of time. These strong relationships enhance compliance with influence requests. Sobchak therefore places more weight on consistency in advisor-counterpart pairings compared to language skills. Low partner-to-advisor ratios also matter significantly. Perhaps most important, Sobchak finds, is the ability to organize partner forces. In cases where advisors encountered less resistance from host-nation forces—not just due to interest alignment but also other factors—they were more successful in implementing reforms to improve military effectiveness.

Despite its strengths, Sobchak’s approach does not fully resolve causal inference challenges. He does not control for key host country characteristics, and one of his core variables—the ability of U.S. SOF to organize partner forces—is itself shaped by the design of the advising mission as well as other, unobserved factors. Why were U.S. forces more successful in organizing partner forces in some countries than others? Was it a resourcing issue, or did variation in host-nation receptivity play a role? Unraveling this puzzle is crucial for future research and the design of future SOF advising efforts. It is also essential to determine appropriate policy recommendations; whether the observed advising successes can be attributed to the design of U.S. advising missions or are based on fundamentally unalterable host nation characteristics leads to different recommendations for allocating U.S. security assistance across partners.

The Case of Ukraine

A clear example of the importance of defense institutions—including both SOF-specific institutions as well as their integration with broader military and civilian structures—comes from Ukraine, a case I have studied extensively. The example of Ukraine reinforces Sobchak’s point that the ability to organize local forces is crucial for advising success and a carefully designed advising mission can create better outcomes. After 2015, Ukrainian SOF (UKRSOF) transformed from their Soviet-legacy spetsnaz roots into a highly trained and professional force, thanks to extensive involvement from NATO countries, particularly the U.S. Army’s 10 th Special Forces Group, and NATO Special Operations Forces Command. NATO allies prioritized institution-building. Advisors determined early on that training alone would be insufficient without institutional reform; in other words, “there would be no ‘random acts of touching,’ or ‘RATS.’” NATO advisors, backstopped by U.S. senior advisors, engaged high level stakeholders to push for major reforms, including the establishment of Ukrainian SOF as a separate service to ensure its independence.

At the same time, even the best advising mission faces significant challenges to building institutions—and sustaining them over time, especially after external advisors have departed. In other words, the outcome can depend on factors beyond Sobchak’s model. Despite these efforts and clear successes, Ukrainian SOF’s operational and strategic-level institutions remained less developed. In the first year after Russia’s invasion, SOF fought as elite infantry alongside conventional forces or reinforced weaker units, leading to high attrition. In Ukraine’s crowded and competitive SOF landscape, UKRSOF must continue proving its relevance to other military organizations, especially without foreign advisors in country to advocate for continued institutional reform.

The “Sovereignty Clock”: Influence Decay Over Time

One of Sobchak’s most intriguing observations is what he terms the “sovereignty clock”—the fact that receptivity to U.S. influence decays over time in host countries with an active advising mission. Across his case studies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, U.S. forces initially faced little resistance and were able to organize SOF effectively. However, this initial warm welcome eventually turned to resistance or even hostility from the host nation. In the Philippines, for instance, civilian authorities grew wary of U.S. advisors after their U.S.-trained SOF were involved in a 2003 coup attempt, and obstructed U.S. efforts to develop SOF institutions. If the “sovereignty clock” is widespread, it presents a challenge for dominant theories of U.S. influence in security cooperation. The “carrots and sticks” approach assumes powerful states can coerce compliance, yet Sobchak’s cases highlight how local sovereignty limits U.S. leverage over time. Meanwhile, the “socialization” approach suggests sustained advising builds stronger relationships, and by extension influence, which is self-reinforcing over time. However, Sobchak’s cases indicate that prolonged U.S. presence can actually breed resistance. Future research should better incorporate analysis of influence strategies over time to see whether states can successfully prevent the “sovereignty clock” from running out.

Implications for Future Advising Missions

Sobchak’s findings offer critical insights for practitioners and scholars alike. First, while structural factors matter, the design of advising missions can significantly influence outcomes. Even when required by strategic necessity or lack of foresight to work with less-than-ideal partners, U.S. military organizations have the agency to craft an intervention that has a better chance of succeeding. Army Special Forces can take care to be sure that advisors are carefully selected for the mission, abstain from pushing the boundaries and taking over for the local military, and maintain relationships with counterparts through additional rotations in country or through remote advising. Second, institution building is difficult but can result in long-term payoffs through the creation of local host-nation forces that can operate more effectively today and sustain themselves even after advisors depart. Senior SOF advisors should work on building local SOF institutions; this requires an advising force that can operate at a higher echelon and with civilian political leaders. Third, the “sovereignty clock” suggests that security cooperation efforts potentially face diminishing returns, meaning the United States must plan for inevitable host-nation resistance and develop strategies to either achieve its goals quickly or sustain influence beyond an initial window of receptivity.

While these findings are valuable, caution should be taken in drawing broad conclusions from them. What works for local SOF organizations constructed from scratch (the scope of Sobchak’s study) may not necessarily work for the host nation’s conventional forces, where recruiting, training, and equipping at scale becomes difficult given factors like inequality. It is reasonable, though, to expect factors important for interpersonal influence in the SOF context, like consistency in advisor-counterpart pairings, to improve advising of conventional forces. Moreover, we should avoid conflating success at building partner military effectiveness with the achievement of desired strategic outcomes more broadly. From the case studies, it is unclear whether successful capacity building translated uniformly into desired outcomes for the United States. El Salvador ended in a negotiated settlement with the rebels, which begs the question whether such an agreement could have been reached before 12 years of fighting and violence against civilians claimed many lives. Afghanistan ended in a U.S. defeat. Iraq, Colombia, and the Philippines have experienced shaky domestic politics and government repression, with U.S.-advised forces sometimes contributing to instability even as they provided stability in other ways by defeating insurgent groups or fighting them to a draw. Meanwhile, U.S. influence arguably declined over time in Iraq and the Philippines and is now nonexistent in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, history suggests that security force assistance will continue to be an indispensable tool of U.S. policy. Understanding how to do it as best as possible is essential. On that front, Training for Victory provides an important contribution to scholars and practitioners alike.

Alexandra Chinchilla is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service and a core faculty member of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy. Alexandra received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Previously, she was a Niehaus Postdoctoral Fellow at The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and a Minerva/Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace. Alexandra’s research examines how powerful states use security cooperation tools, such as military advisors and arms transfers, to increase their influence over allies, partners, and proxies.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Photo Credit: U.S. Army (VIEW ORIGINAL)

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irregularwarfare.org · by Alexandra Chinchilla · June 5, 2025

22. Notes from History for Surviving the Trade War

Conclusion:

Historical context might be reassuring. We’ve been down this road before and participants in tariff disputes and imminent trade wars have compartmentalized these conflicts, resolved them, or moved on. Maybe the pattern will hold up this time, but we shouldn’t count on it. This trade war is different because Trump’s tariffs reject the processes, rules, and norms of the international trade system. For 80 years, restraint prevented the slide into economic recession and full-scale trade war, but now the brakes are off on American trade policy. Balance between domestic and international economic well-being was the goal and cooperation and competition made the trade system work. The American tariffs uphold a zero-sum nationalist rationale and the politics behind tariffs are brutal, bullying, and destructive. No one can be sure what the United States will do next. Trump might reverse himself on tariffs or be forced to remove them if American courts determine that he has exceeded his tariff authority. What we can be sure of is that the credibility and reliability that made the United States a vital pillar of the international trade system is gone.

Notes from History for Surviving the Trade War – War on the Rocks

Francine McKenzie

warontherocks.com · June 5, 2025

The trade war isn’t coming. It’s already here.

Alarming as the daily news may be, this is not the first time nations have clashed over trade. In the 20th and 21st centuries, there have been many moments of conflict over tariffs and dire warnings of imminent trade wars. Understanding that history helps us navigate today’s treacherous trade waters.

While historical precedent is cold comfort for those who are suffering the consequences of ongoing trade turbulence, from lost jobs to more expensive groceries, it shows that this trade war is different from those of the past in ways that are worth thinking about. The most important point is that the new American trade policy has forsaken the rules and norms of trade politics and jettisoned balance, restraint, and cooperation — principles that have made the current trade system work, albeit imperfectly, for 80 years.

BECOME A MEMBER

Trade Is Politics

Tariffs and trade are not often the topic of international headlines. They usually make for dry reading, but they have always been a major issue in international politics and a chronic source of disagreement between countries.

Trade is divisive domestically and contentious internationally because trade connects the domestic and international spheres. Some producers want access to foreign markets while others want protection against foreign competition. Trade can increase choices available to consumers and lower costs — this improves people’s standards of living. But foreign competition can cost jobs, and thus also lower people’s standards of living. Trade produces winners and losers.

Trade also affects countries’ international influence and authority. Trade can make countries rich, and national wealth is a key basis for international influence. Trade can also prevent economic growth and diversification, thereby marginalizing countries.

Trade politics get even more complicated when trade is instrumentalized to achieve non-trade objectives. The United States has used trade policy to strengthen its allies, as it did with the creation of the European Economic Community in the 1950s, isolate its enemies during the Cold War, and draw former enemies closer, including China in the 1980s.

For all these reasons, political leaders pay a lot of attention to trade. President John F. Kennedy kept a chart in the Oval Office with daily updates about the amount of foreign textiles arriving in the United States. We might not expect textiles, films, cars, lumber, or cheese to be the stuff of high-stakes international politics, but they have been in the past and are again.

We Never Had Free Trade and Not All Tariffs Are Bad

Since the end of World War II, tariffs have been lowered item by item, but tariffs have not disappeared. In 2022, 51 percent of world imports were duty free. Many remaining tariffs are (or were) low or they serve a preferential function, meaning they extend protection to specific economic sectors so that they can develop, become robust, and then, so the logic goes, become internationally competitive. Most industrial and highly developed economies developed behind protective tariff barriers.

The utility of tariffs has not disappeared. As economies evolve, some industries become less competitive and new sectors emerge that require protection to establish themselves. Tariffs are not the only way to protect a domestic economy — they are just the most conspicuous. Non-tariff barriers include quotas, internal levies, value added taxes, quality standards (safety, technical, health), and foreign exchange restrictions. Every country uses non-tariff barriers, including the United States. You can think of this as cheating, but it’s more useful to think of tariffs and non-tariff barriers as tools that make the international trade system work. That system requires stable and growing domestic economies that have access to foreign markets and are in turn accessible to foreign products. It’s a question of balancing access and protection as well as domestic and international economic well-being.

Trade Wars Are Harmful and Trade Negotiations Are Hard-Fought

Trade wars rattle markets, raise prices, increase unemployment, weaken supply chains, prompt nationalist sentiment, and strain foreign relations, including those between longstanding allies. People suffer in a trade war.

This was exactly the logic behind the creation of the current international trade system, which emerged after World War II. The victorious countries in the war set up an organization to lower tariffs and increase world trade: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. That agreement was established because experts, officials, and politicians around the world — including in the United States — believed that the Great Depression of the 1930s had been one of the main causes of World War II. According to Harry Hawkins, one of the leading economic planners in the U.S. State Department in the 1940s, “Nations which are economic enemies are not likely to remain political friends for long.” Its mandate reflected the logic of doux commerce: Increasing the volume of world trade and deepening interdependency among nations would make the world less likely to go to war again.

But the trade liberalization process was never gentle. Despite repeated assertions that international trade made the world more peaceful, trade negotiations were, and continue to be, combative and selfish. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade organized eight rounds of trade negotiations between 1947 and 1994. In every single one, national negotiators asked for much and grudgingly made concessions in return. Negotiations included accusations of bad conduct, walkouts, and deadlocks. The hard-nosed behind-the-scenes politics of trade negotiations were papered over in upbeat statements at the end of rounds.

Don’t be fooled.

Agreement to lower tariffs, and later to remove or minimize other kinds of barriers to trade, involved zero-sum horse trading as each national delegation was determined to bring home a good deal for their people. This did not mean the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade wasn’t working well. The point of the organization was not to make the process of liberalizing trade peaceful. Rather, haggling over tariff rates and access to foreign markets was the preferred way to compete, infinitely better than going to war.

America Hasn’t Always Championed Freer Trade

To his critics, President Donald Trump’s trade policy is a rejection of the role the United States has played in the creation of the international trade system and in the world generally. American leadership and backing have been crucial to the creation of the international trade system, to launching rounds of trade negotiations in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, as well as concluding ever more complex international trade agreements. It was the United States that pushed for a new round of international trade negotiations in the 1980s (called the Uruguay Round), which had an ambitious agenda that moved far beyond tariffs.

Characterizing the United States as the sole champion of freer international trade is only part of the story. The United States has long been divided over freer international trade and many administrations have introduced protectionist measures. The United States received a waiver from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade for agriculture in the 1950s to limit foreign competition. It restricted foreign products that were manufactured more efficiently than domestic producers, such as textiles, televisions, and cars in the 1960s and 1970s.

The United States has also engaged in trade battles with its most important trading partners and closest allies. In the 1960s, the United States and the European Economic Community raised tariffs against one another in a dispute over American poultry exports. People worried the “Chicken War” would become a full-scale trade war. Canada and the United States have been fighting about softwood lumber for 40 years. This dispute is still not resolved.

Trump is not the first president to say that trade and trade agreements have harmed Americans. President Ronald Reagan was a proponent of freer international trade, but he declared that he would “not stand by and watch American businesses fail because of unfair trading practices abroad … because other nations do not play by the rules.” The Biden administration also endorsed protectionism in order to revive American manufacturing. Indeed, it kept many of the tariffs introduced during the first Trump presidency.

American opposition to trade, and the use of trade policy and tactics that combine liberalization and protection, are not exceptional. Other countries, including trading countries, have behaved in similar ways.

Familiarity Shouldn’t Make Us Complacent

Historical context might be reassuring. We’ve been down this road before and participants in tariff disputes and imminent trade wars have compartmentalized these conflicts, resolved them, or moved on. Maybe the pattern will hold up this time, but we shouldn’t count on it. This trade war is different because Trump’s tariffs reject the processes, rules, and norms of the international trade system. For 80 years, restraint prevented the slide into economic recession and full-scale trade war, but now the brakes are off on American trade policy. Balance between domestic and international economic well-being was the goal and cooperation and competition made the trade system work. The American tariffs uphold a zero-sum nationalist rationale and the politics behind tariffs are brutal, bullying, and destructive. No one can be sure what the United States will do next. Trump might reverse himself on tariffs or be forced to remove them if American courts determine that he has exceeded his tariff authority. What we can be sure of is that the credibility and reliability that made the United States a vital pillar of the international trade system is gone.

BECOME A MEMBER

Francine McKenzie is a historian at the University of Western Ontario. She writes about the history of global trade, peace, and international organizations, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the United Nations. She is the author of GATT and Global Order in the Postwar Era (2020).

warontherocks.com · June 5, 2025

23. Turning the Lens Inward: A New Frame for Great Power Competition

Excerpts:

The JSOU-led Great Power Competition Seminar was not the end of a conversation, but the beginning of a transformation. One that sees SOF not simply as a tactical edge, but as a strategic force multiplier for a grander American narrative.

In this frame, the battlefield expands to include schoolhouses, media networks, port authorities, and civil society. Influence becomes more vital than occupation. And victory is defined not just by who holds terrain—but by who shapes futures.

Turning the Lens Inward: A New Frame for Great Power Competition

Day 4, Ep.4: Strategic Imagination in an Age of Fragmentation.

https://compoundsecurityunlocked.substack.com/p/turning-the-lens-inward-a-new-frame

Isaiah Wilson III

Jun 03, 2025

Turning the Lens of Great Power Competition Inward: A Special Operations View from the Edge

In May 2020, as the world braced for the geopolitical and health shocks of a global pandemic, a different kind of strategic dialogue was quietly reshaping the intellectual terrain within America’s Special Operations Forces (SOF) community. The Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), acting under the directive of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), convened a landmark seminar: The Great Power Competition – A Special Operations Perspective.

What emerged from this convening was more than a seminar—it was a provocation. A challenge to rethink how America defines power, deploys influence, and competes in a world where adversaries do not simply challenge us with tanks and troops but with narratives, networks, and norms.

The Purpose: Reframing the Competition

The seminar was structured around a deceptively simple question: What is the role of SOF in the era of great power competition?

Historically forged in the fires of irregular warfare and counterterrorism campaigns, SOF has been synonymous with agility, asymmetry, and adaptability. Yet as the global strategic landscape shifted away from the binary simplicities of the Global War on Terror and into the opaque contours of a renewed multipolar struggle, the traditional toolsets and frameworks that had defined SOF excellence began to show their limitations.

This moment demanded not just a retooling of tactics—but a rebirth of strategic imagination.

JSOU’s Great Power Competition (GPC) Seminar was designed to catalyze that transformation.

The Problem: Great Power Thinking Trapped in Small Power Constructs

Too often, national security debates treat Great Power Competition (GPC) as an arms race redux—a return to industrial-era statecraft. But what if the real competition lies less in firepower and more in staying power? Less in missile gaps, more in meaning gaps?

Participants—ranging from senior SOF officers and civilian defense leaders to scholars and industry innovators—confronted hard truths:

That today’s competitors are rewriting the rules of engagement, fusing coercive diplomacy, digital authoritarianism, and economic statecraft.
That the United States often exports security solutions in search of a strategy, rather than developing strategy grounded in the socio-political and cultural fabric of regions at risk.
That winning the 21st-century contest will demand something SOF has always practiced but never fully institutionalized—strategic empathy, cultural acumen, and polycentric thinking.

The Breakthrough: SOF as the Vanguard of Adaptive Power

If there was one unifying theme to the JSOU GPC deliberations, it was this: Special Operations Forces are uniquely positioned to serve as America’s first-responder and forward-thinker in the age of compound competition.

The concept of “compound security” acknowledges that the threats facing the U.S. and its allies are no longer siloed—military, economic, informational, and ecological crises converge at the same time, often in the same place.

In this context, SOF’s agility and embeddedness are not just assets; they are imperatives.

SOF must be the connective tissue between hard and soft power, the fusion point between defense, diplomacy, development, and commerce—what W.i.S.E. Consulting refers to as the 3D+C approach.

This demands a recalibration of SOF education, doctrine, and mission design, grounded not only in warfighting excellence but in intellectual adaptability, narrative control, and strategic foresight.

The Way Forward: A Doctrine of Humble Mastery

The GPC Seminar did not yield a one-size-fits-all blueprint. Instead, it surfaced a deeper insight: that America must move beyond legacy assumptions and cultivate humble mastery—the ability to lead without presuming dominance, to influence without imposition, and to act with agility in spaces where legitimacy is as vital as lethality.

This ethos is particularly vital in an era when peer competitors do not just challenge U.S. primacy—they seek to redefine the very idea of global order. China’s techno-authoritarian model and Russia’s strategic disruption campaigns are not just threats to be countered—they are ideologies to be discredited and displaced with more compelling alternatives.

This is where SOF can once again lead. Not by mimicking adversaries’ methods, but by offering credible, relational, and forward-deployed partnerships rooted in trust, shared values, and local legitimacy.

Conclusion: Competing for Influence, Not Just Terrain

The JSOU-led Great Power Competition Seminar was not the end of a conversation, but the beginning of a transformation. One that sees SOF not simply as a tactical edge, but as a strategic force multiplier for a grander American narrative.

In this frame, the battlefield expands to include schoolhouses, media networks, port authorities, and civil society. Influence becomes more vital than occupation. And victory is defined not just by who holds terrain—but by who shapes futures.

Substack Note to Readers:

Future essays will explore how the SOF community, and its global partners are adapting to the era of uncertainty—and why the lessons from JSOU’s seminar matter for policymakers, strategists, and civilians alike.

Stay tuned—and stay engaged.

— I.W.

24. Special Operations & Intelligence—A Strategic Convergence

Special Operations & Intelligence—A Strategic Convergence

https://compoundsecurityunlocked.substack.com/p/special-operations-and-intelligencea

Day 4, Episode 5, Spycast Podcast, April 2021.

Isaiah Wilson III

Jun 04, 2025

Breaking the Fourth Wall: Why This Conversation, Why Now?

Ep 517 | 12.14.21

Dear readers,

Before we dive into this essay, let me offer you a moment of transparency—what in theater or film we’d call a “break the fourth wall.” Because this entry in our 10-part series is a little different. It’s not just an analysis—it’s a reflection on a conversation. One that I was honored to have with the team at the SpyCast podcast, hosted by Andrew Hammond and produced by the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC.

Who was in the room?

I was. Isaiah “Ike” Wilson III—former President of the Joint Special Operations University, former SOF Education Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command, and longtime practitioner-scholar in the national security enterprise. Across from me: Andrew Hammond, a sharp and intellectually curious interviewer with a passion for bringing classified history and strategy to life for a wide audience.

Where and when did this happen?

The conversation was recorded and released as Episode 517 of SpyCast in April 2021. You can find the episode here.

What did we talk about?

Everything from the evolution of SOF to the ethics of elite power; from compound security dilemmas to the education of the modern warrior-scholar. We explored not just operations, but the identity of special operations forces in this emerging Fourth Age—a world where conflict is ambient, and boundaries between statecraft and warcraft collapse.

Why does it matter for this series?

Because this conversation embodies what this entire Substack effort is about: rethinking special operations as more than tactics and tools—as a way of thinking, a strategic posture, and a reflection of national values under pressure. The SpyCast format allowed us to unpack these ideas in a fresh way, and what follows here is a written extension—anchored in the dialogue, enriched with excerpts, and expanded through the lens of this series.

So now, let’s dive into what this conversation revealed.

Introduction: Bridging the Gap Between Special Operations and Intelligence

In the evolving security landscape of the 21st century, one of the most vital—and yet under-theorized—relationships is that between Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the intelligence community. These two arms of national power have long worked in tandem, often in the shadows. But in this Fourth Age of compound threats and converging domains, their integration is no longer optional—it’s strategic destiny.

The SpyCast episode gave us a platform to explore that convergence—through history, theory, and lived experience.

The Genesis of a Synergistic Relationship

Historically, SOF and the IC operated in proximity but not always in synchronization. That changed in the aftermath of 9/11, as counterterrorism demanded a new form of precision-integrated campaigning. The mission sets began to merge, and so too did the cultures—operational tempo, global reach, deep discretion.

“When you're in, or working with and for, special operations, you're really in the ambiguity business. And that's what intelligence is about too—making sense of what no one else is paying attention to.”

— SpyCast Interview, Dr. Ike Wilson

This was the seed of what I’ve come to call the polycentric architecture of modern security—where the dividing lines between kinetic and non-kinetic, between soldier and strategist, are increasingly artificial.

The OSS Legacy and the Call for a 21st-Century Analog

To fully appreciate today’s convergence of SOF and intelligence, we must understand that this is not a novel phenomenon—it is a return to roots.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), formed during World War II under the leadership of William J. Donovan, was the progenitor of both the CIA and U.S. Army Special Forces. It fused unconventional warfare, espionage, sabotage, and psychological operations into a single, integrated entity. In its brief but impactful existence from 1942 to 1945, OSS operatives worked behind enemy lines, partnered with resistance forces, and ran missions that blurred every line between strategy and tactics, diplomacy and insurgency.

“The OSS was, in many ways, the spiritual and operational birthplace of both modern special operations and strategic intelligence. It was the original 'Think-Do Tank.'”

— SpyCast Interview, Dr. Ike Wilson

For over 75 years, the ghost of the OSS has lingered—in doctrine, in mythos, and in moments of necessity. Yet since its disbandment, the institutional logic that made it so effective has rarely been replicated at scale.

Today, as we confront compound security dilemmas and battles that unfold in the seams between domains, many of us are asking: Do we need an updated version of the OSS?

Not just to centralize functions—but to synchronize minds and missions, under a design that matches the velocity and ambiguity of our age.

“What OSS did right was recognize that cognition, culture, and capability all had to be designed into the same force structure. We’ve unbundled that over the years—and maybe it’s time to rebundle it.”

— SpyCast Interview, Dr. Ike Wilson

A 21st-century OSS wouldn’t simply be a wartime contingency. It would be a standing capability—one built on the fusion of SOF, IC, and interagency innovation, capable of addressing not just traditional threats but gray zone conflicts, digital influence operations, and sub-threshold strategic competition.

Such an entity would need to be agile, ethically governed, strategically aligned—and fully enabled by both operational authorities and strategic trust.

We don’t need nostalgia for OSS. We need evolution from it.

The time may be ripe—not for a resurrection, but for a reinvention.

The Fourth Age: A Strategic Inflection Point

We discussed how SOF, like intelligence, is evolving from a kinetic force to an epistemic one—a community that doesn’t just act but understands; that doesn’t just execute, but interprets.

“I don’t think of SOF anymore just as operators. I think of them as strategic translators. They interpret ambiguity at speed.”

In this Fourth Age, threats do not announce themselves with tanks at borders. They manifest in data breaches, drone swarms, proxy militias, viral disinformation, and climate-instigated migration crises. Understanding these demands a mindset as much as a mission set.

JSOU and the "Think-Do Tank" Imperative

Much of the conversation turned to education—especially during my tenure leading the transformation of JSOU under the JNEXT initiative. We reframed JSOU as more than a professional military education center. We made it a Think-Do Tank—where strategic insight and operational utility reinforce one another.

“At JSOU, we didn’t just teach people how to win. We taught them how to think about what winning even means in a world where victory is ambiguous.”

This matters because knowledge is now a form of deterrence. And the SOF of the future must be as intellectually agile as they are physically elite.

Compound Threats, Compound Campaigning

We explored how the modern battlespace is no longer defined by geography, but by convergence—what I’ve called the Compound Security Dilemma. In this context, SOF and intelligence must not merely cohabitate. They must co-design strategy.

“Campaigning today means shaping perception, altering adversary decision cycles, and managing risk across domains. It’s not about lines on a map. It’s about moving minds and markets.”

In the Fourth Age, the tools of SOF and the tradecraft of the IC are two halves of a necessary whole.

The Ethical Load of Elite Power

Another thread we unpacked was the moral burden carried by SOF and intelligence professionals.

“The danger of being elite is that you start to believe you exist above the fray. But in fact, you're the first one accountable—to your mission, your nation, and your conscience.”

This is the paradox of the warrior-scholar in the modern age: to be lethal but discerning; silent but transparent to the republic; flexible without being unmoored from principle.

Toward a Unified Strategic Vision

So where do we go from here?

The conversation concluded with a call—not just for better integration of SOF and the IC—but for a shared vision of national power in an era of systemic uncertainty. That means institutional design. It means cultural literacy. And above all, it means redefining what it means to win.

“In the end, the fight is not just on the outside—it’s a fight for strategic coherence on the inside. And that’s the kind of fight that SOF and intelligence must wage together.”

Final Word: From Reflection to Reckoning

This SpyCast episode was not a retrospective—it was a strategic provocation. It asked: Are we ready for the world that’s already here? Are we building SOF not just for missions—but for meaning? Are we fusing intelligence and operations in ways that reflect the nature of power in this compound age?

These questions echo across this series.

If you haven’t yet listened to the full episode, I invite you to do so here. Then join me back here as we continue the journey—through education, identity, and power—in the Fourth Age of Special Operations.

Stay sharp. Stay strategic.

— Ike.

25. Small Craft, Big Impact: Ukraine’s Naval War and the Rise of New-Tech Warships

Excerpts:

Kuzan believes that Ukraine is already working on building AI technologies for its sea drones as well. “Notably, during the successful maritime drone attack on December 31, 2024, which resulted in the destruction of Russian helicopters, many researchers speculated that AI was used to enhance target identification and missile guidance,” said Kuzan.

NATO should work closely with Ukraine on the development of these models to prepare its own autonomous sea drones to deploy them in future conflicts. The UK-built Kraken3, inspired by Ukraine’s battlefield innovations, was recently unveiled, showcasing AI-powered swarming capabilities, kamikaze drone launches, and GPS-free navigation, reflecting how Ukrainian success is already influencing NATO procurement.

NATO itself has begun expanding its unmanned maritime capabilities, recently demonstrating autonomous surface vessels in the Baltic Sea through Task Force X, an initiative designed to deter sabotage and fill surveillance gaps. But these sea drones are focused on addressing the threat of Russian sabotage. More practical drones are needed to help disable enemy warships, such as in the event of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan. Expensive systems will no longer do the job. Cheap and scalable solutions are what is needed for NATO. Some in the U.S. are already thinking about how naval warfare is being transformed. For example, the U.S.-based Anduril has unveiled the Seabed Sentry – a network of AI-powered mobile undersea sensor nodes designed for persistent monitoring and undersea kill chains.

Lithuania is leading by example as it is moving toward shared sea drone production with Ukraine under a “1+1” model, where one Magura-class sea drone would be retained for Lithuania’s defense and the other delivered to Ukraine. “Whether you want to believe it or not, whether you have or are about to sign contracts for tanks and helicopters for the next 10 years, the nature of military power has already changed,” said Zaluzhnyi.

Today, Ukraine’s sea drones control a significant extent of the Black Sea. In a future conflict over the Arctic or the Asia-Pacific, we can expect an even greater surge – a true sea of drones. As Ukraine’s navy chief put it, “After the war we will certainly write a textbook and we’ll send it to all the NATO military academies.”

Small Craft, Big Impact: Ukraine’s Naval War and the Rise of New-Tech Warships

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

By David Kirichenko

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked the international order. What surprised the world even more was Ukraine’s ability to resist. While many in the West believed Ukraine would only hold out for a few weeks, the war has now entered its fourth year. Ukraine has relied on agility and innovation – especially in its use of drones and battlefield technology – to fend off Russian forces. This technological edge has extended beyond land warfare to the sea.

Over the past few years, Ukraine’s growing use of naval drones has pushed both sides to rapidly adapt, accelerating the race for countermeasures and maritime innovation. NATO would do well to study Ukraine’s approach as it prepares for the future of warfare at sea. Rear Admiral James Parkin, the Royal Navy’s director of development, notes that in 28 maritime battles, the larger fleet won all but three. Parkin believed that larger fleets win, but Ukraine has changed that paradigm, for now. The future of naval warfare is here and Ukraine is demonstrating what the future looks like.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the U.K., stated, “I have repeated many times that the nature of modern warfare has changed and continues to change.” Zaluzhnyi added, “The nature of modern warfare is far from what NATO is now operating.”

Ukraine’s Naval Lessons

At the outset of the war, Ukraine’s navy was virtually nonexistent, having lost most of its fleet when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Its only major warship, the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, was scuttled by Ukrainian forces in February 2022 to prevent its capture. Yet through asymmetric tactics – naval drones, coastal missile strikes, and aerial attacks – Ukraine has transformed the Black Sea battlefield, forcing Russia into retreat and reclaiming strategic control of key waters around Ukraine’s coast.

Serhii Kuzan, chair of the think tank Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center and a former adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, explained that even before the full-scale invasion, Ukraine understood it could not match Russia in conventional naval strength.1 As a result, it adopted an asymmetric strategy focused on coastal missile systems, small vessels, and air support. After 2022, sea drones were added to this concept and have since become the navy’s primary strike weapon at sea. These unmanned systems emerged out of necessity, filling the gap left by the absence of a traditional fleet.

Ukraine is now rebuilding its navy around a fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), making sea drones central to its maritime strategy. When Russia attempted to blockade Ukrainian shipping, Kyiv responded swiftly with sea drone strikes. Even after the Russian Navy retreated from occupied Crimea to the safety of its mainland ports, Ukrainian USVs continued to harass and damage its fleet.

Following the sea drone offensive in 2023, Former US Navy Admiral James George Stavridis noted, “We’re at a juncture in military evolution akin to the game-changers like Agincourt or Pearl Harbor. Expensive manned surface warships now face existential threats from affordable drones.” The Ukrainians issued a warning in August 2023 that “There are no more safe waters or peaceful harbors for you in the Black and Azov Seas.” The Russians eventually learned to heed that warning and hid from Ukraine’s sea drones. According to Roy Gardiner, an open source weapons researcher and former Canadian Armed Forces officer, “These asymmetric victories have forced the relocation of the Russian Fleet to the eastern Black Sea, and broke the blockade to reopen the vital grain export routes.”

Ukraine’s drones have even achieved the unprecedented. By January 2025, modified Magura V5 sea drones armed with heat-seeking missiles shot down two Russian Mi-8 helicopters and damaged a third off the coast of Crimea – marking the first time a naval drone successfully downed enemy aircraft. In May 2025, Ukraine stunned the world by using sea drones equipped with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, each worth about $300,000 to shoot down two Russian fighter jets, each worth $50 million. The Ukrainian sea drones themselves are worth only several hundred thousand dollars. HI Sutton, a naval warfare expert wrote, “The success of Ukraine’s uncrewed surface drones (USVs) cannot be overstated. They are rewriting the rules of naval warfare.”

A Magura V5 maritime drone. (Photo by Daniyar Sarsenov/Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine)

Ukrainian forces are increasingly adapting these drones for multi-role capabilities, equipping them with missile launchers and advanced payloads. Ukraine has effectively turned its USVs into robotic drone carriers capable of launching explosive FPV drones at Russian coastal targets. One of Ukraine’s latest sea drones, can launch up to four quadcopter First-Person View (FPV) drones and may carry naval mines, enabling complex multi-phase attacks. Ukrainian intelligence recently announced that their sea drones have been upgraded to carry over a ton of explosives and can now operate across distances exceeding 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles), significantly expanding their strike range and lethality across the Black Sea. “We completely blocked the Russian Black Sea fleet in the water area near the port of Novorossiysk,” said Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence (HUR). He added that said the Russian fleet can no longer come out to the open waters.

“The cost of USVs such as Magura V5 and Sea Baby is about $250,000, which is inexpensive relative to their significant tactical and strategic success,” said Gardiner. “With naval targets gone from the western Black Sea, some Ukrainian USVs have transitioned to FPV carriers and launched successful attacks on multiple radars and air defense systems in Crimea.”

According to Kuzan, sea drones have emerged as one of Ukraine’s most effective tools against the Russian fleet. Ukrainian unmanned systems have struck Russian ships and boats 21 times, with 10 vessels confirmed destroyed and several others severely damaged. As a result, Russian naval forces have lost the initiative at sea and are now largely confined to operating near the ports of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea and Novorossiysk on the Russian mainland. Kuzan highlighted that these drone strikes have also enabled Ukraine to reopen the grain corridor despite Russia’s withdrawal from the agreement, effectively restoring maritime trade.

Despite Ukraine’s impressive string of successes at sea, Russia has begun mounting a more effective defense. According to Ukrainian Navy Commander Oleksiy Neizhpapa, Moscow has built a multi-layered system around key locations like Sevastopol Bay, including long-, medium-, and short-range detection zones designed to identify and destroy incoming sea drones. “In the past, we could easily enter Sevastopol Bay with our drones,” Neizhpapa said.

“Now it’s not so simple because the enemy has established a tiered defense system.” In response, Ukraine is working to upgrade its unmanned systems with more advanced weaponry and modular designs that can adapt to rapidly evolving threats. Russia has adapted but by bringing out its ships into the open sea, meaning that the success rate of Ukraine’s sea drones has also dropped. According to Gardiner, “Naval vessels have been equipped with thermal vision systems to better combat Ukrainian USV nighttime attacks.”

The naval drone war is also becoming more symmetric: Russian forces are beginning to deploy their own sea drones. “They are gearing up for it,” Neizhpapa warned, “so we are preparing not only to deploy drones against the enemy but also to defend against them.”

Gregory Falco, an autonomous systems and cybersecurity expert at Cornell University, commented on the design balance between sophistication and scale. According to Falco,

“The sea is a highly dynamic environment so it has been a more difficult domain to design robust and reliable systems for. Given Ukraine’s people-constrained navy, they have relied on unmanned systems which Ukraine has adeptly made cost efficiently and therefore largely disposable. The sophistication of this technology right now is less important than its scale and cost. Scale for drones is what will help win wars.”

The war in the Black Sea shows how asymmetric innovation can shift the balance of power. Despite having no traditional fleet, Ukraine has dealt major blows to a superior naval force using low-cost, adaptable technology. Dmitry Gorenburg, a researcher with the Center for Naval Analyses, remarked that,

“Russia has been forced to erect barriers for harbor protection, which have been relatively effective. But Ukraine showed that it could still damage Russian ships at sea. In the future, the cost asymmetry between cheap drones and expensive ships will mean that even a low success rate will prove highly damaging to naval forces, including Russia. The advantage of having a powerful navy will thus be somewhat decreased.”

However, Kuzan stresses that drones alone cannot provide full control over maritime space. A balanced navy remains essential. Looking ahead, Ukraine’s future fleet will likely combine Ada-class corvettes, missile boats, and coastal defense systems, with sea drones continuing to serve as the main offensive force.

Adaptability and Technology

Moreover, both China and Russia “are surging ahead in the realm of small drones, while the United States moves at a relatively glacial pace,” the Modern War Institute at West Point noted in a March 2024 report. Deborah Fairlamb, founding partner of Ukraine-focused venture capital firm Green Flag Ventures said, “I still believe that the West really does not understand how much warfare has changed.” Fairlamb pointed out the rapid technological advancements on the battlefield, increased mass production, and the decreasing cost of effective weaponry – such as $500 drones that can take out a $5m tank, a $30m radar system.”

Now, the U.S. Navy is embracing unmanned systems with urgency, spurred by lessons from Ukraine’s naval drone success and asymmetrical threats like the Houthis in the Red Sea. Ukraine is already working closely with artificial intelligence (AI) and is rapidly reshaping modern warfare, particularly through machine vision in drones and ground platforms, allowing for autonomous targeting. Ukraine is at the forefront of this transformation, with over 90 percent of AI military technologies coming from domestic developers, including swarming drone systems.

Ukraine is placing innovation at the heart of its defense strategy, leveraging homegrown technologies to stay ahead on the battlefield. Mykhailo Fedorov, the country’s minister of digital transformation, emphasized this approach in a speech at the The NATO-Ukraine Defense Innovators Forum:

“In Ukraine, we fight with innovations made in Ukraine. It is a constant work, a continuous R&D process, solving logistical problems with components and looking for solutions five steps ahead. Ukraine is already the best R&D center for any innovation. Today we get a technology for testing, and tomorrow we will scale it hundreds of times.”

Ukraine’s defense tech sector is accelerating rapidly under the pressure of war, driving battlefield innovation in drones, robotics, AI, electronic warfare, and demining systems. Platforms like the government-backed Brave1 fast-track promising technologies – by providing funding, testing, and streamlined certification, bypassing the slow procurement systems common in the West. “I always tell our American and other international partners: if your drone hasn’t been tested in Ukraine, it’s still just a toy,” said Oleksandra Ustinova, a Ukrainian member of parliament.

Economics of War

Modern warfare is now a battle of economics and scale, where the key metric is no longer troop numbers, but the cost and quantity of systems deployed. Cheap, one-way drones costing under $1,000 have become central to the fighting in Ukraine and elsewhere, capable of destroying far more expensive targets. As Christian Brose noted in The Kill Chain, U.S. military dominance has long relied on costly platforms like tanks, stealth fighters, and aircraft carriers. First-person view drones invert that model, using cheap, smart, networked machines to challenge the traditional military-industrial complex. As the U.S. continues to rely on high-cost systems, adversaries like China, Russia, and even non-state actors are leveraging mass-produced, inexpensive drones and missiles to inflict outsized damage at a fraction of the cost.

Andy Yakulis, a former Army special operations commander, highlighted how expensive the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is at $13 billion, with other platforms, “such as the F-35, costing between $80m to $100m per aircraft. While the U.S. was building such systems, China has been focused on cheaper systems that, in mass, can destroy these large systems.” Yakulis further pointed out that in the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy has been using two $1 million missiles to shoot down Houthi drones that cost just $40,000 each. That means the cost of the drone is only about two percent of the price of the missiles needed to destroy it.

“Our adversaries use $10,000 one-way drones that we shoot down with $2 million missiles,” said Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton. “That cost benefit curve is upside down.” The Houthis in under two months were also able to shoot down $200 million worth of U.S. drones in the Yemen conflict.

Taiwan is Taking Note

Taiwan has also recently unveiled its first uncrewed surface vessel (USV), the Endeavor Manta, developed specifically for naval defense in the Taiwan Strait. Built by CSBC Corporation, the vessel is designed for swarm operations, can carry light torpedoes and a warhead for kamikaze-style strikes, and includes autonomous navigation, AI target recognition, and anti-hijacking features. Inspired by Ukraine’s use of naval drones, the Manta is part of Taiwan’s broader strategy to counter Chinese military superiority through low-cost, asymmetric warfare, joining a growing global trend of using drones as force multipliers in modern conflicts. Alessio Patalano, Professor of War and Strategy at King’s College, London, noted that relying on weapons that are cheaper and easier to acquire will be critical to helping Taiwan defend itself against a potential Chinese invasion.

The Endeavor Manta USV during the launch event held in the port of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. (Photo via Taiwan Ministry of National Defense)

Rather than attempting to match China’s drone production, Hunter Keeley of the U.S. Marine Corps suggested Taiwan should adopt Ukraine’s targeted approach: deploying naval drones and missiles in focused, intelligence-led strikes near expected landing zones. A limited, layered Hellscape – centered on drones, jammers, and mobile sensors – could significantly disrupt PLA amphibious operations and buy Taiwan critical time in the opening stages of a conflict.

According to Kuzan, “Taiwan already benefits from U.S. support and has its own advanced defense industry, which is testing both surface and underwater maritime drones. For example, Taiwan’s Smart Dragon underwater drone is reportedly armed with torpedo systems.” He believes that incorporating torpedoes into Ukrainian sea drones could be the next step in their development. Kuzan remarked that, “If the opportunity and necessity arise, Ukraine could potentially sell or exchange its military technologies with Taiwan. This would be mutually beneficial, allowing both countries to enhance their capabilities.”

China and Russia Prepare

Russia is also taking notes. While it has significantly lagged behind Ukraine in naval drone warfare, it is now preparing for the future at sea. At the Army-2024 defense show, Russia unveiled the Murena-300S, a new naval drone resembling Ukraine’s successful sea drones. With a 500 km range, the fast and compact USV is built for coastal missions such as reconnaissance, mine-laying, and strike operations, possibly with a large explosive payload. The Murena appears to feature a Starlink antenna, suggesting Russia is seeking to match Ukraine’s real-time drone control capabilities.

The Russians have learned hard lessons from Ukraine’s asymmetric warfare and are now applying those insights more rapidly. Russia is creating unmanned systems regiments within its Navy that will integrate aerial, ground, and maritime drones to carry out reconnaissance and strike missions across all fleets. These new units, equipped with systems like Orlans, Lancets, FPVs, and USVs, are expected to form the backbone of the Navy’s unmanned component, with deployments planned across the European, Pacific, Caspian, and Dnieper naval forces.

At the same time, Russia is steadily advancing toward the development of AI-enabled autonomous drone swarms. It is investing heavily in AI research, both domestically and through partnerships with countries like Iran and China. Russia is focusing its efforts on leveraging cheap, scalable drone technology to overwhelm adversaries. This can be applied to the battle at sea as well. If the U.S. aims to deploy large expensive ships across the Asia-Pacific, we could see our adversaries working together to deploy cheap drones to destroy the ships.

China has also unveiled the Feiyi drone earlier this year, the world’s first known aerial and underwater drone capable of launching from a submarine, transitioning between air and sea multiple times, and returning to its original platform.

Preparing NATO for the Future

In a February 2025 interview, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey laid out bold ideas for revitalizing the U.S. defense industry and countering China’s growing military threat. He argued that the U.S. should shift from “world police” to “world’s gun store,” prioritizing mass production of weapons over elite, slow-to-build systems. Citing China’s massive manufacturing capacity and militarized civilian infrastructure, Luckey warned that Beijing is preparing for full-scale war, including repurposing commercial ships and producing cruise missiles far faster than the U.S.

Warfare is rapidly evolving into a battle of algorithms and adaptability. If the West clings to its old-school model of building massive, slow-to-deploy systems, it risks a harsh wake-up call – where billion-dollar warships are struck down by sea drones costing a fraction of that. In this new era, speed, scale, and software will determine who dominates the battlefield. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it was unprepared for how quickly warfare would evolve, and how drones would come to dominate the skies.

Now Ukraine has amassed a massive war-time video dataset, over 2 million hours of drone footage through its OCHI system, which collects and analyzes feeds from 15,000 frontline drone crews. This data is being used to train AI for battlefield applications such as target recognition, weapon effectiveness analysis, and autonomous drone tactics.

Kuzan believes that Ukraine is already working on building AI technologies for its sea drones as well. “Notably, during the successful maritime drone attack on December 31, 2024, which resulted in the destruction of Russian helicopters, many researchers speculated that AI was used to enhance target identification and missile guidance,” said Kuzan.

NATO should work closely with Ukraine on the development of these models to prepare its own autonomous sea drones to deploy them in future conflicts. The UK-built Kraken3, inspired by Ukraine’s battlefield innovations, was recently unveiled, showcasing AI-powered swarming capabilities, kamikaze drone launches, and GPS-free navigation, reflecting how Ukrainian success is already influencing NATO procurement.

NATO itself has begun expanding its unmanned maritime capabilities, recently demonstrating autonomous surface vessels in the Baltic Sea through Task Force X, an initiative designed to deter sabotage and fill surveillance gaps. But these sea drones are focused on addressing the threat of Russian sabotage. More practical drones are needed to help disable enemy warships, such as in the event of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan. Expensive systems will no longer do the job. Cheap and scalable solutions are what is needed for NATO. Some in the U.S. are already thinking about how naval warfare is being transformed. For example, the U.S.-based Anduril has unveiled the Seabed Sentry – a network of AI-powered mobile undersea sensor nodes designed for persistent monitoring and undersea kill chains.

Lithuania is leading by example as it is moving toward shared sea drone production with Ukraine under a “1+1” model, where one Magura-class sea drone would be retained for Lithuania’s defense and the other delivered to Ukraine. “Whether you want to believe it or not, whether you have or are about to sign contracts for tanks and helicopters for the next 10 years, the nature of military power has already changed,” said Zaluzhnyi.

Today, Ukraine’s sea drones control a significant extent of the Black Sea. In a future conflict over the Arctic or the Asia-Pacific, we can expect an even greater surge – a true sea of drones. As Ukraine’s navy chief put it, “After the war we will certainly write a textbook and we’ll send it to all the NATO military academies.”

David Kirichenko is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. His work on warfare has been featured in the Atlantic Council, Center for European Policy Analysis, and the Modern Warfare Institute, among many others. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko.

References

1. This article draws on interviews conducted by the author from the period of March-April 2025.

Featured Image: A Ukrainian military counterintelligence brigadier general walks on a new Sea Baby “Avdiivka” naval drone, during its presentation by the Ukrainian security service, in the Kyiv region, on March 5, 2024. (Photo by Evgenniy Maloletka/AP)

cimsec.org · by Guest Author

26. Strategic Humility — The New Pentagon Doctrine

Excerpts:

“President Trump is a leader of peace, a man of peace, a force for peace... Reestablishing deterrence. Sharing our burdens. Multiplying our strengths. Reinforcing our great alliances. Respecting our cultures. Not starting wars but preventing them.”

This isn’t just aspirational language. It’s doctrine-in-formation. Strategic humility doesn’t retreat from responsibility—it refines it. It doesn’t weaken military posture—it grounds it in judgment. It doesn’t signal indecision—it signals discipline.

And in this speech—in this moment—the Pentagon may have finally found a new compass. Perhaps more importantly, new language for our shared security and mutual dignity.

Strategic humility isn’t a slogan. It’s a doctrine. One built not on dominance, but on dialogue. And it began at Shangri-La.

Strategic Humility — The New Pentagon Doctrine

By Chad Williamson

June 05, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/06/05/strategic_humility__the_new_pentagon_doctrine_1114528.html

How Pete Hegseth Is Reframing American Strength for an Era of Shared Power

“Those who long for peace, must prepare for war.”

— Platoon motto of Secretary Pete Hegseth

That was the creed of the first platoon Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ever led—and it became the quiet current running beneath his 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue address this past Saturday in Singapore. But what followed wasn’t just a warfighter’s mantra. It was a redefinition of deterrence itself—not as provocation, but as posture. Not as power for its own sake, but as peace through principle.

“Your presence here today sends a strong message about our shared purpose, our shared commitment to peace, our shared dedication to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Hegseth’s message was clear—the United States is not stepping back from global leadership. The U.S. is stepping forward with clarity, humility, and composure. His speech did not reject strength, it reframed it. Not as the language of domination, but as the scaffolding of peace through shared purpose.

Calm-Assertive Posture

“We do not seek conflict with Communist China. We will not instigate nor seek to subjugate or humiliate... President Trump and the American people have immense respect for the Chinese people and their civilization.”

This wasn’t appeasement. This was deterrence without dehumanization—resolve without provocation. In those lines, Hegseth modeled a calm-assertive posture that rewires what strength sounds like in American statecraft. This was not the rhetoric of zero-sum power. It was the voice of a defense enterprise finally attuned to its moment, which is resolute yet respectful. Prepared, not provocative.

It’s a voice that, increasingly, reflects what’s been missing from the lexicon of national defense—strategic humility.

Strength, Redefined

Too often in recent decades, deterrence has been mistaken for dominance. But Hegseth flipped that script. With cultural awareness and composure, he said plainly…

“We are not here to pressure other countries to embrace or adopt policies or ideologies... We respect you, your traditions, and your militaries. And we want to work with you where our shared interests align for peace and prosperity.”

This is humility as discipline—an institutional recognition that to lead in today’s world, the United States must lead with others, not above them. And in doing so, Hegseth articulated a subtle but powerful truth. Humility is a form of strength when applied at scale. It builds alliances. It de-escalates rhetoric. It makes deterrence believable.

Strategic Inflection Points

In business, Intel’s Andy Grove coined the phrase strategic inflection point—a moment when everything changes and a failure to adapt means failure to survive. It’s clear that Hegseth—and the Trump administration—see America at just such a point now.

This consequential speech captures that tension. Between readiness and restraint, between urgency and patience. And it gives it a name. When he said…

“We will be ready, but we will not be reckless.”

…it echoed Grove’s insight that institutions must move at the speed of relevance, but with the clarity of self-awareness. Strategic humility doesn’t slow us down. It sharpens our vision. It anchors our urgency in judgment.

Tension in Translation

Critics may argue that humility invites exploitation—or that adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party may mistake kindness for weakness. But Hegseth’s speech did not signal passivity. It signaled clarity. Strategic humility does not erase red lines—it makes them credible. Because when power is exercised without arrogance, it becomes more believable. More measured. More sustainable.

America First, But Not Alone

“America First certainly does not mean America alone.”

This line matters. It reframes nationalism not as isolation, but as an ethos of shared liberty. Hegseth affirms that sovereignty is not the enemy of solidarity—that a strong America becomes stronger when it stands with principled partners.

This is not the hollow burden-sharing language of past speeches. This is empowered mutuality—what the U.S. expects of allies and what it offers in return.

“And as our allies share the burden, we can increase our focus on the Indo-Pacific, our priority theater.”

This quote provides an outline and realignment of global trust architecture, one rooted not in obligation, but in agency.

Exercising Cultural Proficiency

Moving from “we are not here to impose” to “we respect your traditions,” the speech demonstrated the rare vocabulary of cultural humility—the kind needed to rebuild long-term alliances and avoid unforced escalation.

In an era when national security rhetoric often defaults to dominance, Hegseth modeled something else. He modeled a doctrine grounded in mutual respect, not ideological pressure. That’s not just diplomatic language—it’s strategic positioning. By elevating relationships over rivalry, and sovereignty over subjugation, he framed America’s posture not as a threat, but as a partner in peace.

Importantly, this isn’t just a message for diplomats—it’s a skillset for warfighters. Cultural proficiency is a form of discipline, requiring the same awareness, composure, and intentionality expected on the battlefield. It’s about reading the room as much as the terrain. And as Army doctrine (ADP 6-22) makes clear, empathy is not a weakness—it’s a leadership competency.

This is how trust is cultivated. This is how peace is preserved.

Doctrine Beneath Doctrine

Hegseth ended his address with a charge—and a vision.

And in this speech—in this moment—the Pentagon may have finally found a new compass. Perhaps more importantly, new language for our shared security and mutual dignity.

Strategic humility isn’t a slogan. It’s a doctrine. One built not on dominance, but on dialogue. And it began at Shangri-La.

Chad Williamson is a military veteran and is currently pursuing his graduate degree in national security policy. He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Dr. Heather Williamson, and their two chocolate labs, Demmi and Ferg.

27. Europe Doesn’t Have a China Card

Excerpts:

Even if the United States is not on board with such sanctions, Europe has a lot of leverage of its own. The flip side of Europe’s trade dependence on China is China’s own reliance on Europe’s market to absorb its excess capacity. Since Trump’s tariff announcements against China and the diversion of U.S.-bound Chinese goods to Europe, Europe is now an even more important market for China’s exports; Europeans should use that leverage to ramp up the pressure on China. Instead of merely sanctioning Chinese companies that trade in goods that are of use to Russia’s military, the European Union should apply sanctions on Chinese banks that help Russia circumvent the EU’s sanctions regime. And if China truly wants to pursue a revival of an investment agreement with Europe, Brussels should condition any talks on China restricting the flow of dual-use goods to Russia’s military.

Europeans also have an opportunity to take advantage of China’s role on the sidelines of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. China has invested a great deal of political capital into portraying itself as a potential neutral mediator in the war, albeit with pro-Russian leanings. This is now, ironically, the same role that the Trump administration has assumed, and there are signs that China suspects it is being left out. According to The Wall Street Journal, Chinese officials proposed hosting a Putin-Trump summit and offered to facilitate peacekeeping efforts in Ukraine, but Washington wasn’t interested. Europeans should signal to Beijing that it could be in China’s interest to take a step back from being so obviously supportive of Russia, while arguing neutrality.

Increased pressure on China will not, of course, result in Beijing abandoning Moscow. Nor will more free-trade agreements completely make up for the economic losses in a trade war with the United States and diminishing returns from trade with China. But regardless of how hostile the Trump administration (and Trump himself) is to the EU and how sweet the gestures are from Beijing, Europe must remember that China is not its friend. Europe cannot hedge against Trump’s disruptions by selling out its own economy and security.

Europe Doesn’t Have a China Card

Foreign Affairs · by More by Heidi Crebo-Rediker · June 5, 2025

Détente With Beijing Would Be a Disaster

June 5, 2025

The EU and Chinese flags, March 2025 Dado Ruvic / Reuters

Heidi Crebo-Rediker is a Senior Fellow in the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She served in the Obama administration as the State Department’s first Chief Economist.

Liana Fix is Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Germany’s Role in European Russia Policy: A New German Power?

More by Liana Fix

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The first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second presidency have turned out worse for Europeans than expected. In addition to Vice President JD Vance’s ideological crusade against European liberals, there are fears that the United States will abandon Ukraine and frustration and concern over Trump’s initiation of unprecedented tariffs on European countries. In the wake of these disruptions, it is not surprising that the gaze of some European politicians has wistfully turned toward China, which is perceived by some as a potential hedge against an unpredictable United States. Brussels, for example, recently started negotiations with Beijing on reducing European tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for China lowering its tariffs on European goods and lifting export restrictions on rare earth elements. And after Chinese leader Xi Jinping declined to travel to Europe for a 50th anniversary summit on EU-Chinese ties, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, skeptical yet pragmatic in dealing with China, announced she will travel to Beijing in late July.

Beijing, meanwhile, is playing its cards well and positioning itself as a more reasonable and cooperative great power than Washington. This is a change from Trump’s first term, when China overplayed its hand and embraced an aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy that backfired. Now, not a day passes in which Chinese officials do not underscore how they share their European counterparts’ desire to protect the multilateral trading system from Trump’s disruptions. Xi, for instance, has noted that China and Europe are “two major forces for building a multipolar world, two major markets supporting globalization, and two major civilizations championing diversity.” China has even proposed reviving the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which was put on ice in 2021 after Beijing sanctioned several members of the European Parliament who were critical of China. If implemented, the CAI would replace the bilateral treaties that regulate how Chinese investors are treated in European countries and help create a level playing field for European businesses in China.

These are tempting overtures. But the harsh reality is that the game has not really changed: the EU still doesn’t have a China card to play. In fact, Trump’s disruptions are only magnifying China’s economic and security threats to Europe. To offset U.S. tariffs this year, China diverted its exports to alternative markets including Europe. This resulted in a record Chinese trade surplus with Europe in the first quarter of 2025. These low-cost Chinese exports are massively subsidized and undercut European producers who are already facing margin pressures and the imposition of U.S. tariffs. Many of the goods China redirected from the United States to the EU are now competing directly with Europe’s core manufacturing industries—the automotive sector, for instance, as well as electronics, industrial machinery and components, home appliances, and clean energy technologies. This flood of goods could damage the broader competitiveness of Europe’s manufacturing ecosystem, creating something like the “China shock” that rocked the United States in the first decade of this century.

Europe’s security threat from China has not diminished either. The Ukrainian government says it has evidence that Chinese factories inside Russia are producing weapons and that China is exporting gunpowder and artillery to Russia for use in Ukraine. Beijing denies the allegations. If China is bolstering Russia’s military with impunity from both Brussels and Washington, the war in Ukraine is unlikely to end in a cease-fire or a peace agreement in the foreseeable future, and Russia will continue to destabilize not only Ukraine but also the entire European continent.

Seeking détente with China, therefore, is still a dangerous game for the EU. Instead, the EU must realize it has other cards to play, including forging more advantageous trade agreements elsewhere in the world and changing China’s calculus about supporting Russia.

BUILD A BETTER HEDGE

In the economic realm, Europe’s strongest hedge against the U.S. trade war is to secure more agreements with allies, not with China. A central pillar of this strategy should be for the EU to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade pact among 12 economies, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, and, more recently, the United Kingdom, that reduces tariffs; sets common rules on trade, investment, and labor; and aims to promote economic integration and strategic cooperation. The growing CPTPP architecture collectively accounts for about 15 percent of global GDP; if the EU were to join, the bloc would represent nearly 30 percent of global GDP.

Trade with CPTPP countries currently represents 15 percent of EU trade and is not sufficient to replace the more dominant trade relationship the EU has with China, but knitting together additional bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements with other allies and partners could build a promising hedge against both China and the United States. By adding new sectoral provisions to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada, for instance, the EU and Canada could build mutual resilience against China and the United States, especially in the areas of critical minerals and energy security. Brussels could also prioritize finalizing the EU-India Free Trade Agreement, which would help the EU take advantage of the world’s fastest-growing major economy. This negotiation has long been stalled because of disputes over market access and tariff reductions, but the United Kingdom recently secured its own agreement with India, which could provide a path for the EU to do the same. Similarly, the free-trade agreement that the EU completed in December 2024 with the Mercosur bloc of countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) should be implemented as quickly as possible in order to open Europe to vast Latin American markets and the region’s bountiful natural resources.

Europe’s strongest hedge against the U.S. trade war is more agreements with allies, not with China.

Building on momentum from the 2023 Hiroshima G-7 summit, Europe should also deepen coordination on economic and technology security with advanced democracies, particularly Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. These countries must align their strategies to counter Chinese economic coercion and mitigate the risks of China’s civil-military fusion. Joint initiatives should prioritize the protection and advancement of dual-use technologies, especially in AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology. Maintaining a lead in these sectors will require not just defensive measures but coordinated investment in innovation.

Collectively, these same allies can also help sustain high-value scientific research, which the second Trump administration is aggressively defunding at top U.S. research universities and government labs. What could become a generational self-inflicted wound for the United States could also become a generational opportunity for Europe—to attract displaced talent, safeguard R & D programs, and reinforce its own innovation base. Although strong security frameworks will be necessary to prevent intellectual property theft, selective cooperation with Beijing will remain crucial for European companies, especially in the automotive sector, where European manufacturers lag behind, and in battery innovation and clean energy technology, where Chinese firms lead globally.

As Europe expands and reprioritizes its trade and technology relationships with allies and partners, it must also reform the rules and institutions that govern those ties to allow more innovation and investment while protecting core European interests. New frameworks should be built with flexibility in mind to allow the United States, under a future administration, to participate. Strategic patience and careful design today can lay the groundwork for a renewed transatlantic partnership tomorrow.

THE FRIEND OF MY ENEMY

Insulating itself from trade shocks, however, is only step one: Europe must also stop underestimating China’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, which in turn threatens European security. During the Biden administration, the United States condemned China’s support of the Russian industrial base, but Europe has been more cautious and has rarely threatened Beijing or followed through with serious consequences. Beijing has stopped short of delivering weapons directly to Russia, which President Joe Biden warned is a redline. But China’s supply of dual-use goods, such as semiconductor chips and weapons parts, has taken on such proportions that it has become the equivalent of providing lethal aid: Carnegie estimates that, in 2023, China was responsible for roughly 90 percent of the goods that Russia needs to sustain its war effort. An internal EU report this year estimates that China is responsible for approximately 80 percent of all circumventions of sanctions against Russia.

This support allowed Russia’s military to reconstitute itself much faster than many NATO analysts expected after the massive losses in the first year of the war. Yet pressure on China for its obstructive role has almost disappeared. Trump administration officials have declined to push for greater scrutiny of China’s role in the war and have instead repeatedly suggested that China can help end the war in a positive way, without following up with any pressure on China to do so. European governments, meanwhile, say they oppose Beijing’s involvement while doing little to genuinely punish or deter China: so far, Europe has sanctioned only a few dozen Chinese companies for delivering dual-use goods to Russia.

Ukraine has tried to keep its partners focused on China’s involvement and to demonstrate that Beijing’s support for Russia is intensifying. Kyiv has claimed, for instance, that more than 150 Chinese mercenaries are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine and that Beijing has done nothing to rein them in. Ukraine has also pointed to China’s willingness to cross the dual-use line, claiming it has evidence of China’s direct involvement in weapons manufacturing inside Russia. Yet precisely because China is no longer facing any significant backlash from the United States or Europe, Beijing has moved to take advantage of the newly permissive environment. During a summit last month in Moscow, which coincided with Russia’s annual commemoration of the Allied victory in World War II, Putin and Xi pledged to “enhance [their] strategic coordination.”

Europe must stop underestimating China’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Moscow is also taking advantage of European inaction. Because it can rely on China’s support for its military needs, Russia believes it can outlast Ukraine. Increasing pressure on China for its support of the war, therefore, is one of the best methods by which the United States and Europe could increase pressure on Russia to agree to a cease-fire. Military analysts believe that Russia is planning a summer offensive in which it will expend its stockpile of weapons; afterward, it will rely on what it can produce from day to day, heightening its dependence on the supply chains it has built with other countries. At that point, sanctions that bite at Chinese supply lines to Russia could become particularly effective.

Even if the United States is not on board with such sanctions, Europe has a lot of leverage of its own. The flip side of Europe’s trade dependence on China is China’s own reliance on Europe’s market to absorb its excess capacity. Since Trump’s tariff announcements against China and the diversion of U.S.-bound Chinese goods to Europe, Europe is now an even more important market for China’s exports; Europeans should use that leverage to ramp up the pressure on China. Instead of merely sanctioning Chinese companies that trade in goods that are of use to Russia’s military, the European Union should apply sanctions on Chinese banks that help Russia circumvent the EU’s sanctions regime. And if China truly wants to pursue a revival of an investment agreement with Europe, Brussels should condition any talks on China restricting the flow of dual-use goods to Russia’s military.

Europeans also have an opportunity to take advantage of China’s role on the sidelines of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. China has invested a great deal of political capital into portraying itself as a potential neutral mediator in the war, albeit with pro-Russian leanings. This is now, ironically, the same role that the Trump administration has assumed, and there are signs that China suspects it is being left out. According to The Wall Street Journal, Chinese officials proposed hosting a Putin-Trump summit and offered to facilitate peacekeeping efforts in Ukraine, but Washington wasn’t interested. Europeans should signal to Beijing that it could be in China’s interest to take a step back from being so obviously supportive of Russia, while arguing neutrality.

Increased pressure on China will not, of course, result in Beijing abandoning Moscow. Nor will more free-trade agreements completely make up for the economic losses in a trade war with the United States and diminishing returns from trade with China. But regardless of how hostile the Trump administration (and Trump himself) is to the EU and how sweet the gestures are from Beijing, Europe must remember that China is not its friend. Europe cannot hedge against Trump’s disruptions by selling out its own economy and security.

Liana Fix is Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Germany’s Role in European Russia Policy: A New German Power?

Foreign Affairs · by More by Heidi Crebo-Rediker · June 5, 2025

28. America and Israel Follow the Same Old Script

Excerpts:

The honeymoon, however, was brief. In April, Trump called Netanyahu back to the White House to tell him that negotiations on a new nuclear deal with Iran were beginning. The encounter was followed by reports that Trump had blocked Israel from bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. Then came news of a U.S.-Houthi cease-fire, which excluded Israel, and American outreach to Hamas and Syria. Trump even decoupled the proposed U.S.-Saudi defense and nuclear agreements from an Israeli-Saudi deal. Canada and Europe interpreted the change of heart in Washington as a green light to threaten Israel with sanctions if the war and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza continued.

Trump has voiced interest in a quick, new Gaza cease-fire and the return of the Israeli hostages. But Trump’s Gaza strategy is strikingly different from his regional one. Washington is seeking a common ground with Tehran, despite threatening its rulers with negative consequences if they keep their uranium enrichment program. In Gaza, however, Trump has signaled that he is fine with Israel’s continued fighting and its retention of freshly occupied territory in the enclave. The United States is keeping an open channel to Hamas. Although the contacts are limited to the evasive hostage-for-truce deal, they give Hamas—which Washington considers a designated terrorist group—unprecedented U.S. recognition as an interlocutor.

Trump’s behavior, in other words, does not mark a fundamental shift in U.S.-Israeli relations. Rather, freed from reelection concerns and with full control over Congress, Trump has returned Washington’s Middle East policy to its age-old basis. The United States will cut its own path when it comes to the region and beyond. But it will stand by Israel when it comes to the Palestinians, and it will continuously protect the country. Netanyahu has had to accept, however grudgingly, that Trump will no longer bow to his requests on Iran. But just like all his predecessors, Netanyahu retains a free hand in Gaza and the West Bank. He can move ahead with his plans to destroy and depopulate the former and to annex territory in the latter. He ultimately might not take these measures, thanks to broader international pressure or shifts in domestic public opinion or because he strikes a deal to normalize ties with Saudi Arabia. But he will still have ravaged Gaza with American consent.

America and Israel Follow the Same Old Script

Foreign Affairs · by More by Aluf Benn · June 5, 2025

Trump Restrains Netanyahu’s Regional Ambitions—but Gives Him a Free Hand With the Palestinians

Aluf Benn

June 5, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Washington, D.C., February 2025 Leah Millis / Reuters

ALUF BENN is Editor in Chief of Haaretz.

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In recent weeks, an air of crisis has enveloped the United States’ relationship with Israel—Washington’s closest ally and client state in the Middle East. When U.S. President Donald Trump made his first trip to the region in May, he notably bypassed Jerusalem on his way to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was coupled with dramatic twists and turns in American regional diplomacy. Against Israel’s wishes, Trump is negotiating directly with the Jewish state’s worst enemies: Iran and Hamas. His team reached out to the Yemeni Houthis, who keep firing missiles deep into Israel and continue to block its marine traffic. He even met with Syria’s ex-jihadist leader, whom he praised as “tough” and “attractive.”

To Netanyahu’s critics at home and abroad, Trump’s behavior is a breath of fresh air. For years, the Israeli leader has boasted about his close relationship with this U.S. president, arguing that their bond is a reason to keep him in power. During Trump’s first term, after all, the United States gave Israel and Netanyahu almost everything they asked for. But this time, Trump is bucking the prime minister, and Netanyahu and his supporters have had only feeble excuses as to why their efforts are failing.

Yet historically speaking, Trump’s diplomatic overtures to Israel’s adversaries are not new. Since Israel’s establishment, in 1948, U.S. administrations have generally followed Washington’s own geopolitical interests in the Middle East, even when those interests conflict with Israel’s. Judged by these standards, Trump’s first term—with its near-unequivocal support for Israel’s regional ambitions—was an aberration. His second, by contrast, is more of a regression to the mean.

Where Israel has gotten carte blanche from Washington is with regard to the Palestinians. No U.S. president, not even the most liberal of them, has forced Israel to stop building settlements or to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. And here, Trump is in keeping with both his first term and with decades of U.S. policy. Trump is allowing Netanyahu to prosecute the war in Gaza with American consent. He has only occasionally put pressure on Israel to let in aid. And in February, Trump declared his support for the “voluntary emigration” of Gaza’s Palestinian population to nearby Arab states or elsewhere—which is exactly what Netanyahu’s far-right coalition wanted to hear. A few weeks later, Israel breached a short-lived cease-fire with Hamas, escalated its bombing campaign, and cut off humanitarian supplies to Gaza’s two million people. Netanyahu declared his intent to occupy the entire territory, disarm Hamas, and implement Trump’s “genius plan” for clearing the land of Palestinians.

Under Trump, the United States continues to serve as Israel’s security guarantor and diplomatic shield. Israel thus remains free to engage in behavior that Washington rarely tolerates from other countries. The United States, for example, stonewalls any efforts to look into Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear arsenal. It vetoes UN resolutions criticizing Israel’s violations of international law. And Washington helps the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with cross-border operations by providing unparalleled military aid and access to advanced defense technology. Trump may no longer be doing everything that Netanyahu wishes. But the special relationship is alive and well, just as it always has been.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS

For nearly 80 years, the U.S.-Israeli alliance has withstood political upheavals in both countries and around the world. Ever since U.S. President Harry Truman recognized Israel, minutes after its declaration of independence in 1948—against the advice of his secretary of state, George Marshall—successive administrations have shrugged off criticism from human rights moralists, as well as foreign-policy realists critical of their support for the Jewish state. Israel, in turn, has grown only more dependent on American diplomatic cover and military assistance. But U.S. officials have often ignored or put pressure on the country when its actions proved geopolitically inconvenient to their own agendas.

Consider the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Truman gave Israel diplomatic recognition even as the United States abided by a UN arms embargo on its various belligerents. (The fledgling IDF got its arms from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and by smuggling excess war materiel from the United States.) When the war ended, Truman accepted the territorial and demographic results of the conflict. That meant he recognized Israel’s land gains beyond the UN Partition Plan of 1947 and accepted as fact the nakba—the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs, never allowed to return. He put only a token amount of pressure on Israel to accept some of them back.

Yet during the final stage of the war, when Israeli forces chased the retreating Egyptian army into the Sinai Peninsula, clashing with the British troops then deployed around the Suez Canal, Truman forced Israeli leader David Ben-Gurion to retreat. He would not allow Israel to go beyond Palestine’s antebellum borders and threaten the de facto British protectorate in Cairo, which controlled the crucial international waterway. Israel should have learned its lesson: it could enjoy a relatively free hand with the Palestinians but not undermine the interests of its superpower partner.

In the early 1950s, the United States kept Israel at arm’s length as it sought alliances with friendly Arab regimes and focused on the main Cold War fronts in Asia and Europe. It allowed its British and French allies to supply the IDF with tanks and aircraft. But in 1956, when Israel joined France and the United Kingdom in a failed effort to bring down the charismatic Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Washington balked. To win the race for the hearts and minds of postcolonial countries, the United States decided it could not side with the outdated imperialists. The IDF occupied the Sinai within days, but U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, furious about his allies’ freelance war, made Ben-Gurion withdraw. Once again, Israel had to face the limits of its outreach.

When Israel turned away from the peace process, the United States followed suit.

As the Cold War intensified in the 1960s, the United States grew closer to Israel, replacing Charles de Gaulle’s France as its arms supplier. And when war erupted again in 1967, leading to the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Sinai, and the West Bank, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson allowed Israel to keep these territories as bargaining chips in negotiations with the Arab states. After Israel and its neighbors fought another war in 1973, however, the United States forced Israel to return the Sinai in exchange for normalized relations with Egypt—an agreement that has served as the cornerstone of the regional order ever since its 1979 signing. Before the 1973 fight, Israel had hoped that it would be able to keep the territory. But Washington’s interest in pulling Egypt out of the Soviet orbit was ultimately paramount, so the United States forced Israel to concede.

This push and pull continued to define U.S.-Israeli relations after the Cold War ended. The United States consistently defended Israel in international organizations, using its UN Security Council seat to veto resolutions critical of the country. But it prevented Israel from retaliating against Iraqi missile attacks during the 1991 Gulf War, fearing that Israeli intervention would break apart the U.S.-led coalition fighting Baghdad, which featured several Arab states. Washington sold Israel boundless weapons but forced the country to halt its arms exports to China. U.S. officials keep silent about Israel’s nuclear weapons program and have sanctioned its secret 2007 bombing of a reactor under construction in Syria, but they have prevented Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Under U.S. President Barack Obama, Washington even struck a nuclear deal with Iran, despite Netanyahu’s vocal opposition.

Yet even though Washington has deviated from Israel in some regional matters, no U.S. president, not even Obama, has restrained Israel’s repression of the Palestinians. Instead, successive administrations have essentially given the Jewish state a free hand to expand its settlements in the West Bank, which are aimed at preventing a future Palestinian country from emerging and have been Israel’s key national project since 1967. U.S. presidents have sometimes criticized the settlements for legal and strategic reasons, but their tough talk was just that—talk. Washington has never done anything tangible to stop the incessant building, limiting intervention to a few key Palestinian areas.

Similarly, the United States has never forced Israel to negotiate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has come up with all sorts of peace schemes and sponsored round after round of negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. But Washington has agreed to meaningful talks with the Palestinian Liberation Organization only after Israel did so first. When Israel turned away from the peace process, the United States followed suit. Washington has abandoned the process despite its declared support for the two-state solution. Neither Trump nor Biden did anything to rekindle the dying hope of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

WILDEST DREAMS

Trump’s first term in office shifted away from this tradition. The president retained, and even accentuated, Washington’s disregard for the Palestinians. But he unequivocally aligned the United States with Israel on foreign policy matters, too. Breaking from all his predecessors since Truman, Trump moved the seat of the American embassy to Jerusalem. (Its main office remains in Tel Aviv.) He shut down the consulate general in Jerusalem, which had served as the U.S. diplomatic point of contact with the Palestinians. He recognized Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights. And with Netanyahu’s encouragement, he ditched the nuclear deal with Iran. In response, the Iranians began enriching more and higher-grade uranium.

Then, in 2020, Trump delivered his biggest gift to Netanyahu by negotiating the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates. In theory, this was a two-way deal, in which Netanyahu was to shelf his plan to annex a third of the West Bank in exchange for normalization. But this was barely a concession; the Palestinians gained nothing real. In fact, the Palestinian Authority didn’t even have a seat at the negotiating table. In his last week in office, Trump also added Israel to U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility. Since then, the IDF has trained with its counterparts in the Gulf kingdoms, Egypt, and Jordan.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration was also exceptionally accommodating of the Israelis. Biden, who has vocally supported Israel since joining the Senate in the 1970s, reversed none of Trump’s Israel policies. In fact, he tried to build on them, pushing for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords by offering Riyadh defense guarantees and nuclear technology. He exempted Israeli passport holders from U.S. visas. When Hamas attacked on October 7, 2023, and Hezbollah and the Houthis piled on, Biden flooded Israel with arms and deployed aircraft carriers from China to the Middle East. He backed Israel’s counteroffensive into Gaza, and later Lebanon and Syria, even as the Palestinian casualties mounted and American progressives revolted.

Biden did occasionally rebuke Israel for denying humanitarian aid to Gaza. He authorized the construction by U.S. forces of a pier in Gaza designed to receive shipments of aid, but that quickly collapsed into the sea. At one point, he embargoed some weapons shipments and sanctioned violent West Bank settlers whom the Israeli government had enabled to attack their Palestinian neighbors. But the latter policy was fleeting, and all were token gestures. Netanyahu periodically let in some aid to appease Washington, but he continued with his total war. This pattern will likely hold under Trump.

Notably, Biden unequivocally stood with Israel even as the country’s dependence on U.S. support reached new heights. When Iran attacked Israel twice last year with hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, Israel needed a U.S.-led coalition to protect its airspace. To strengthen military coordination and joint planning, Washington regularly dispatched General Michael Kurilla, the head of Central Command, to Tel Aviv as a uniformed watchdog. Last year, after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity, Biden criticized the decision. His government promised that Netanyahu and Gallant would not be arrested on U.S. territory. (The United States is not a member of the ICC.) Yet Israel never had to give Washington any meaningful quid pro quo for all this help. It was free.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

For Netanyahu, Trump’s return to the White House seemed, at first, to be a gift from heaven, after he effectively prayed for a Republican victory. Netanyahu’s popularity plummeted after the October 7 attacks, but he retained his reputation as a Trump whisperer. As a result, Trump’s election gave skeptical Israelis a reason to keep their prime minister around.

Indeed, during the first weeks of the second Trump term, Netanyahu racked up repeat victories. Biden’s sanctions on some West Bank settlers were eliminated. Instead, Trump put sanctions on the International Criminal Court and its employees. Netanyahu was the first world leader to be invited to the White House, and when he arrived, Trump laid out his plan to depopulate Gaza and turn it into a beach resort. Netanyahu could thus defy his critics at home, arguing that waiting out Biden and prolonging the war had paid off. Even Israel’s long-standing dream of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities appeared to be in reach.

The honeymoon, however, was brief. In April, Trump called Netanyahu back to the White House to tell him that negotiations on a new nuclear deal with Iran were beginning. The encounter was followed by reports that Trump had blocked Israel from bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. Then came news of a U.S.-Houthi cease-fire, which excluded Israel, and American outreach to Hamas and Syria. Trump even decoupled the proposed U.S.-Saudi defense and nuclear agreements from an Israeli-Saudi deal. Canada and Europe interpreted the change of heart in Washington as a green light to threaten Israel with sanctions if the war and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza continued.

Trump has voiced interest in a quick, new Gaza cease-fire and the return of the Israeli hostages. But Trump’s Gaza strategy is strikingly different from his regional one. Washington is seeking a common ground with Tehran, despite threatening its rulers with negative consequences if they keep their uranium enrichment program. In Gaza, however, Trump has signaled that he is fine with Israel’s continued fighting and its retention of freshly occupied territory in the enclave. The United States is keeping an open channel to Hamas. Although the contacts are limited to the evasive hostage-for-truce deal, they give Hamas—which Washington considers a designated terrorist group—unprecedented U.S. recognition as an interlocutor.

Trump’s behavior, in other words, does not mark a fundamental shift in U.S.-Israeli relations. Rather, freed from reelection concerns and with full control over Congress, Trump has returned Washington’s Middle East policy to its age-old basis. The United States will cut its own path when it comes to the region and beyond. But it will stand by Israel when it comes to the Palestinians, and it will continuously protect the country. Netanyahu has had to accept, however grudgingly, that Trump will no longer bow to his requests on Iran. But just like all his predecessors, Netanyahu retains a free hand in Gaza and the West Bank. He can move ahead with his plans to destroy and depopulate the former and to annex territory in the latter. He ultimately might not take these measures, thanks to broader international pressure or shifts in domestic public opinion or because he strikes a deal to normalize ties with Saudi Arabia. But he will still have ravaged Gaza with American consent.

ALUF BENN is Editor in Chief of Haaretz.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Aluf Benn · June 5, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

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."

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