Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.”

–Anne Frank

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

– Franz Kafka

"When an emotion is collective, as in war or disease, there are a few to correct the myths that naturally arise. Consequently in all times of great collective excitement unfounded rumors obtain wide credence. This myth-making faculty is often allied with cruelty. Such myths give an excuse for the inflection of abuse, and the unfounded belief in them is evidence of the unconscious desire to find some victim to persecute."

– Bertrand Russell, Unpopular essays (1950)

1. Netanyahu Says Israel Will Take Over the Entire Gaza Strip

2. How to Counter China in America’s Backyard by Sen. Bill Cassidy

3. Why a Teen Bullying Case in China Set Off Protests and a Crackdown

4. EXCLUSIVE: DoD considering 'czar' roles for key Navy, Air Force programs

5. Army negotiating contract for autonomy software for robotic initiative

6. Army crafting a new space policy, moving out on counterspace

7. Russia, China Simulate Attack on Enemy Submarine in Sea of Japan Drills

8. Ukraine-Russia peace talks under pressure. Who could face sanctions?

9. Army readies to launch 2026 competition for counter-drone laser weapon

10. The Marine Corps Americans Want Can’t Be Derailed by a Fake Crisis

11. Philippine Senate Shelves Impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte

12. Trump’s Tariff Gamble Puts America’s Ties With India at Risk

13. Putting Operation Spider’s Web in Context

14. Light Footprint, Heavy Stakes: The Case for Staying Engaged in Iraq

15. Beyond Icebreakers: The United States Needs a Bold New Approach to Arctic Security Equipping in an Era of Strategic Competition

16. The End of Mutual Assured Destruction? – What AI Will Mean for Nuclear Deterrence

17. The Unparalleled Devastation of Gaza – Why Punishing Civilians Has Not Yielded Strategic Success

18. Why the Joint Force Isn’t Very Joint

19. Is Ukraine Becoming the Silicon Valley of Defense Tech?

20. China’s Trump card: rare earths as geopolitical bargaining chips

21. Tesla Cybertrucks Wanted By Air Force As Missile Targets

22. We Discovered How Ukraine is 'Gamifying' Its Drone War Against Russia

23. Can we execute as superior political warfare strategy to defeat Putin?

1. Netanyahu Says Israel Will Take Over the Entire Gaza Strip

Control of Gaza to friendly Arab forces? Which ones are willing to take on such a "mission?"

Excerpt:

Netanyahu said Israel doesn’t plan to hold on to Gaza and would transfer control of the territory to “Arab forces that will govern it properly, without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life,” he said in an interview with Fox News. He said Israel would keep what he called a security perimeter around the enclave.

Netanyahu Says Israel Will Take Over the Entire Gaza Strip

Prime minister says control of Palestinian enclave would be transferred to friendly Arab forces after Hamas is vanquished

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/netanyahu-says-israel-will-take-over-the-entire-gaza-strip-0919a494

By Dov Lieber

Updated Aug. 7, 2025 2:28 pm ET

How to Counter China in America’s Backyard

Sen. Bill Cassidy proposes two tools to bolster our economic security.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-to-counter-china-in-americas-backyard-cassidy-pollution-americas-78fafd8d

Aug. 7, 2025 3:26 pm ET

Photo: Getty Images

Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is correct that the West needs a plan to compete with the axis of authoritarian states, including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea (“A 21st-Century Democratic Alliance,” op-ed, July 16). His proposal reflects a clear understanding that economic alliances are necessary if we are to preserve our way of life against ideological adversaries. I’ve proposed two measures that could help achieve the same goal.

Countering Beijing’s growing geopolitical and economic power is the focus of the Americas Act, which I introduced last year to strengthen U.S. leadership in the Western Hemisphere. The bill would establish tax incentives to re-shore and near-shore critical industries out of China and into the U.S. and our allies’ countries.

Congress can couple this effort with my Foreign Pollution Fee Act, which would impose a levy on imports from such countries as China that undercut our industry through lax pollution standards. For too long, U.S. manufacturers have been forced to compete on an uneven playing field, following strict regulations while Chinese firms pollute freely.

The foreign pollution fee would correct this imbalance, removing dirty imports’ competitive advantage and creating an incentive for consumers to buy American. This policy recognizes that the total price of a good isn’t always reflected on its price tag. If China uses its trade surplus to militarize or to pursue an industrial policy that subverts U.S.-based manufacturing, Americans are paying a far higher indirect cost than otherwise perceived. My proposal isn’t merely about seeing fairness—it’s a strategic move to shift production into reliable hands and reduce the flow of capital that fuels China’s military and surveillance state.

By emphasizing economic security, we align our trade policy with our national interests. We strengthen alliances not through abstraction but through shared infrastructure, investment and market integration. We can ground those partnerships in our own hemisphere, where geography and shared values offer a powerful foundation for long-term cooperation.

Mr. Sunak is correct that nations that uphold freedom must band together with clear priorities and a realistic path. Economic security is how we rebuild strength, regain independence and offer our allies a compelling alternative to authoritarian influence. The future will not be won by the cheapest supplier but by the most trusted partner.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.)

Baton Rouge, La.

3. Why a Teen Bullying Case in China Set Off Protests and a Crackdown

Is this the spark for social unrest? Or will the security services crush protests before they can spread? Not quite a "Tiananmen II" but one of these days perhaps that will happen.

Why a Teen Bullying Case in China Set Off Protests and a Crackdown

Residents in a city in southwestern China protested what they saw as official indifference in the attack on a girl. Police repression and censorship fueled the outrage.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/world/asia/china-bullying-protests.htm l

Share full article

By Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien

Aug. 7, 2025,

4:48 a.m. ET

A widely shared video clip of a 14-year-old girl being beaten, kicked and tormented by other teenagers set off large protests in southwestern China, with hundreds of residents accusing officials of letting the perpetrators off too lightly.

What began as a local outcry over school bullying in the city of Jiangyou, in Sichuan Province, escalated into a broader confrontation with the authorities. The police responded to the rallies with a forceful crackdown late on Monday, captured by residents in photos and footage.

Residents had demanded justice for the bullying victim and protested the police’s use of heavy-handed tactics, saying it was suffocating their right to voice grievances.

“No to bullying,” residents chanted as rows of police officers stood nearby, according to one video that was shared widely on social media and verified by The New York Times. “Give us back democracy,” they also shouted.

Video

CreditCredit...Social Media

The footage of the tense standoffs with the police also spread across China, where large protests are somewhat rare, before they were removed from social media.

The viral clip of the bullying showed the assailants taking the 14-year old to an empty, unfinished building where they kicked, slapped and pummeled her as she knelt. The video prompted widespread outrage online, where many expressed concern about bullying and the need for accountability.

On Monday, the Jiangyou police issued a statement saying that it had investigated the incident, which it said took place on July 22. Two of the attackers were ordered to attend a correctional school, according to the statement, and they also faced up to 15 days in detention, Chinese news reports said, citing officials. The third girl and other onlookers were let off with warnings.

The parents of the victim complained that the punishment was too light. They took their grievances to the Jiangyou city government headquarters, where dozens, and then hundreds, of residents gathered to support them.

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Many were incensed because they believed that the parents of the girl who was beaten were disadvantaged; her mother was deaf, according to Chinese news reports.

Tensions rose as the police tried to break up the crowd.

“Are you going to drag her away?” a man yelled at a police officer who appeared set to remove an older woman. The officer shouted at the man: “Do you want to get dragged away?” The crowd erupted in anger as the officers tackled the man and hauled him off.

Video

CreditCredit...Social Media

The videos were scrubbed from Chinese internet sites, but some were shared with online accounts outside China.

Protests are not uncommon in China, but the ones in Jiangyou stood out because they grew larger than most and generated footage and images and intense nationwide attention, said Kevin Slaten, the research lead for the China Dissent Monitor, which collects data on unrest in China by scouring social media.

Many protests in China are about unpaid wages or housing problems, such as apartments that people have paid for but remain unfinished. But school safety issues, such as bullying, have also been a source of public anger, Mr. Slaten said.

By calling for “democracy,” the protesters in Jiangyou most likely meant a broad demand for justice and fair treatment, Mr. Slaten said. “It can often be that, like we saw in Jiangyou, the protesters become more motivated when the authorities ramp up repression and the people feel even more indignation,” he said.

Still, the residents who protested in Jiangyou also sought to show that they were patriotic citizens trying to work within, not against, the system. The beaten girl’s parents appeared to get on their hands and knees to beg an official for his attention, some videos showed. At night, the protesters sang the national anthem while they faced off against police officers holding riot shields.

Acts like prostrating were “part of a longstanding cultural tradition in China where subjects petition benevolent officials to restore justice,” said Diana Fu, a political scientist at the University of Toronto who studies protest and dissent in China. By singing China’s national anthem, she added, the residents appeared to be “giving a nod to the central authorities’ rule while also sardonically mocking local authorities.”

By late Monday, the local authorities appeared to move in with greater force to break up the demonstrations. Phalanxes of police on foot pushed into the crowd, tackling people and dragging them away. Online comments in China about the unrest were largely removed. A woman in a shop near the Jiangyou government office who answered a call from the Times on Thursday said she did not know anything about the protests and hung up.

Joy Dong in Hong Kong contributed reporting.

Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.

Amy Chang Chien is a reporter and researcher for The Times in Taipei, covering Taiwan and China.

Why a Teen Bullying Case in China Set Off Protests and a Crackdown

Residents in a city in southwestern China protested what they saw as official indifference in the attack on a girl. Police repression and censorship fueled the outrage.

Share full article

By Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien

Aug. 7, 2025,

4:48 a.m. ET

Residents had demanded justice for the bullying victim and protested the police’s use of heavy-handed tactics, saying it was suffocating their right to voice grievances.

Video

CreditCredit...Social Media

The footage of the tense standoffs with the police also spread across China, where large protests are somewhat rare, before they were removed from social media.

Editors’ Picks

5 Memorable Moments From the Las Culturistas Culture Awards

Will Watching ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Be as Enjoyable as Watching the Filming?

When It Was ‘Time to Get Out of Florida,’ She Went for an Appalachian Vibe in North Carolina

Many were incensed because they believed that the parents of the girl who was beaten were disadvantaged; her mother was deaf, according to Chinese news reports.

Tensions rose as the police tried to break up the crowd.

Video

CreditCredit...Social Media

The videos were scrubbed from Chinese internet sites, but some were shared with online accounts outside China.

Joy Dong in Hong Kong contributed reporting.

Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.

Amy Chang Chien is a reporter and researcher for The Times in Taipei, covering Taiwan and China.

4. EXCLUSIVE: DoD considering 'czar' roles for key Navy, Air Force programs

If you interpret Elbridge Colby's book this is what he would do: increase ships and planes and use the Army to pay the price.

EXCLUSIVE: DoD considering 'czar' roles for key Navy, Air Force programs - Breaking Defense

The new positions, covering submarines and a number of Air Force programs, would report directly to the deputy defense secretary, numerous sources told Breaking Defense.

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · August 7, 2025

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering the creation of two new “czar” roles to take over major defense acquisition portfolios from the Navy and Air Force, in a move that would have them report directly to Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg, multiple sources tell Breaking Defense.

While no final decisions have been made, a dozen sources from the Pentagon, industry and defense community say a proposal has been floated in which one czar would have oversight over the Navy’s submarine programs and another in charge of several high-profile Air Force projects.

According to sources, Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher, commander of naval submarine forces, is being eyed for the submarine role. Lt. Gen. Dale White, the Air Force’s military deputy for acquisition, is under consideration to be put in charge of an office managing programs like the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, the newly announced F-47 fighter jet and the beleaguered Sentinel ICBM — although sources said the scope of the portfolio has yet to be set in stone.

Spokespeople for the Navy and Gaucher declined to comment for this report, while the Air Force referred comment to OSD. A defense official, speaking on background, said, “No additional information has been released.”

The roles — known within the Pentagon as “direct report program managers” or DRPMs — seemingly follow the model that saw Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein receive a fourth star while being tapped to lead DoD’s Golden Dome efforts. Like Golden Dome, F-47 and shipbuilding are both defense priorities for the White House.

The Pentagon usually delegates program management jobs to field grade officers with one- and two-star generals or admirals overseeing them. But some exceptions do exist, such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, one of the department’s largest acquisition programs in both scale and cost. It’s led by either a three-star Navy, Marine Corps or Air Force officer.

Erik Raven, former undersecretary of the Navy during the Biden administration, said the Pentagon has a history of elevating senior officers to oversee its most consequential programs, citing the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle as one example.

“But elevating a position does not automatically cut through the Pentagon’s red tape,” he told Breaking Defense. “If not properly organized, the risk is of becoming another hurdle that adds to the bureaucracy, rather than reducing it.”

More Four-Star Admirals? Don’t Step On The CNO’s Toes

If the Pentagon moves forward with the sub office plan, as eight sources suggested, it could signal a major change for how the Navy oversees its shipbuilding enterprise — a system that has been under heavy scrutiny in recent years for allowing nearly all of its premiere programs to fall behind schedule.

Historically, the Navy’s shipbuilding offices consist of one- and two-star program executive officers, all of whom report to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. That job is currently performed in an acting capacity by Jason Potter, a retired Navy officer and longtime GOP congressional staffer who joined the Pentagon’s senior executive ranks earlier this year. The White House has not yet nominated anyone to hold the job permanently, but regardless, a new “czar” position could mean the PEOs report straight to the four-star, resulting in certain civilian officials being cut out of the chain.

Steven Wills, a naval historian and associate at the Center for Maritime Strategy, compared the new position to the former “Naval Materiel Command,” a once-powerful office terminated by then-Secretary John Lehman in the 1980s as a way to streamline the acquisition process.

The “long-term implication is what happens when you start introducing other powerful, four-star officers with acquisition responsibilities in the same swim lane as the [chief of naval operations],” he said of Gaucher’s potential new job.

Wills cited Adm. Hyman Rickover, a veritable US Navy legend credited with leading the development of nuclear propulsion, as one example. Although Rickover commanded Naval Reactors, rather than Naval Materiel Command, the admiral was often accused of stepping on the toes of the Navy’s uniformed leaders. There were “a number of CNOs who were really pissed off at Rickover because they thought he interfered in the acquisition process,” Wills said.

“The CNO is supposed to provide the requirements to the acquisition system in terms of what they want, but now you’ve got another four-star officer interpreting those requirements, potentially junior to the CNO,” he added. “So, it does start to really shake things up.”

The possibility of Gaucher’s promotion comes weeks after POLITICO reported the Pentagon was considering a separate plan to gut the three-star admiral positions overseeing each of the Navy’s systems commands, the agencies primarily responsible for the acquisition of ships, planes and other technologies. The new structure, if implemented, would go hand-in-hand with a push by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to cut the number of general officers.

A screengrab from a US Air Force video shows an artist rendering of the F-47, produced by Boeing. (US Air Force)

Air Force: A Smorgasbord Of Programs

The exact scope of the Air Force office is more unsettled than the Navy plan, based on comments from five sources, with an assortment of some of the department’s worst and best-performing acquisitions potentially in the mix.

There is consensus that the Sentinel ICBM, which has struggled after cost projections for the effort skyrocketed by 81 percent and triggered a Nunn-McCurdy breach, is likely to be a focal point. However, other platforms appear likely to be included.

The portfolio could include advanced combat aircraft efforts like the sixth-generation F-47 fighter and the B-21 Raider bomber. Should the B-21 be included as part of the new czar’s portfolio, it could be pulled out from under its current management by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, a special office that oversees select technology priorities and is given additional acquisition authorities to ensure efforts stay on course.

In addition, it is possible that the Collaborative Combat Aircraft drone wingmen, as well as the service’s Air Force One recapitalization, could fall under this new role. The Trump administration intends to modify a Boeing 747 gifted by the Qataris into a third Air Force One plane in addition to procuring two new presidential transport aircraft from Boeing.

Michael Marrow contributed reporting to this story.

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · August 7, 2025

5. Army negotiating contract for autonomy software for robotic initiative

Army negotiating contract for autonomy software for robotic initiative - Breaking Defense

“How can we make the science and art of one human being able to control lots of different things easy enough to where I don't have to have four operators controlling a [single] robot?” asked Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch.

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · August 7, 2025

SMD 2025 — With the US Army pulling back from its own, internally developed ground autonomy software, it is currently negotiating a deal with a company to integrate commercial solutions into two platoons of ground robots, according to Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch.

“This was a decision to move away from just a government solution for autonomy, and bring in the best of industry to help, because we’re going to need them in the long run,” the three-star general in charge of the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) told Breaking Defense today.

“We’re in negotiations right now to award a contract, to bring in some industry partners to help us in the areas of autonomy,” he later added.

The Army has spent years internally developing an autonomy package called the Robotic Technology Kernel (RTK), later rebranded as the Army Robotic Common Software, meant to be the software backbone of an envisioned ground robotic fleet. However, delays and questions mounted regarding its viability for use with programs like the Robotic Combat Vehicle (RCV).

So for another initiative, dubbed the Human Machine Integrated Formation (HMIF), Rasch said the Army is looking elsewhere to solve that particularly tricky technical problem. HMIF is a concept designed to explore integrating robots and autonomous systems into Army formations.

“I can’t say who the company is yet, until we actually award the contract, but it’ll be this fiscal year,” Rasch said. Once the deal is inked, the company will be tasked with integrating the autonomy software into the ground robots the service already has on hand, and working on the Warfighter Machine Interface.

Then, between October and December 2026, those two platoons-worth of upgraded robots will be handed back over to the Army and used by soldiers in a National Training Center rotation.

“How can we make the science and art of one human being able to control lots of different things easy enough to where I don’t have to have four operators controlling a [single] robot?” Rasch asked. “I [want to] have one operator controlling four robots with their payloads.”

Work on HMIF, he said, may also shape the path ahead for RCV. In early March, Breaking Defense first reported that industry sources had been notified that Textron Systems’s Ripsaw 3 had won the RCV competition and the service was preparing to ink a deal with the victors. But around that same time, service leaders identified RCV as one program to cut as part of the 8 percent budget drill to realign funding toward higher priorities, one service official told Breaking Defense.

While the service appears to have put the breaks on the program, lawmakers also added $92.5 million to its reconciliation spending bill for the Army to use for completing RCV prototyping.

“There’s still some decisions that the Army is weighing on how they want to proceed [with RCV] from the overall autonomy perspective,” Rasch explained. “I can’t get ahead of those Army decisions … but my hope is that the work that we’re doing on HMIF will inform that overall strategy.”

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · August 7, 2025

6. Army crafting a new space policy, moving out on counterspace

Army crafting a new space policy, moving out on counterspace - Breaking Defense

The Army's emphasis currently is "on the counterspace piece for space control, electronic warfare, really doing counter-communications," said Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks, deputy commanding general for operations at Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

breakingdefense.com · by Theresa Hitchens · August 6, 2025

SMD 2025 — The US Army is working on a new space policy to serve as the “umbrella” for a new Army space strategy and doctrine, as well as the foundation for future requirements and acquisitions, according to a senior service official.

The rewrite of what is known as Army Regulation 900.1[PDF] is necessary in the face of the changed operational environment in space stemming from advancing adversary threats, Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks, deputy commanding general for operations at Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), told Breaking Defense in an interview on Tuesday.

“The last one was written in 2011. And a lot of things have changed over the last 14, almost 15 years,” he said, noting that the previous Army space strategy also was crafted in 2011.

Work on rewriting the policy is being spearheaded by Col. Pete Atkinson, space division chief with the Army’s Strategic Operations Directorate, with SMDC supporting the effort, Brooks added.

An Army spokesperson said Atkinson and his team (HQDA G-3/5/7 Space Division) “anticipate a major revision” of the current policy, “which will likely result in a publication summer 2026.”

Speaking during a panel at the the annual SMD Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., Brooks explained the new policy will not just drive the new strategy, but the overarching Army “roadmap” for space operations.

“That’s not just an equipment roadmap or fielding roadmap, but it’s also people, training, education, all of the components and aspects of doctrine … have to be accounted for in that roadmap. And establishing routine touch points so we get feedback from warfighters, feedback from the operational force, feedback from the experimentation, the exercise elements and the forces out there,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Army is not standing still in its effort to expand and modernize its space operations, Brooks said.

The service is on track to activate the first of its planned Theater Strike Effects Groups, to be embedded with Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), on Oct. 15, 2027, he said.

“This coming fall, we’re going to compete that 06 command in the command selection process, and so that’s a little more granularity and fidelity for the Army space community that we’re going to be real.” Brooks told Breaking Defense.

Already, he said, operational planning teams are being put together at SMDC and Army Pacific Command.

Further, SMDC is working with INDOPACOM and US Space Command on a plan to “deactivate two space control companies in the [Army] 1st Space Brigade and simultaneously activate two space control companies in the TSEG,” Brooks said.

The TSEG concept was initiated last year, flowing from the Army’s “Space Vision” published in January 2024. The mission of the groups is both to defend Army access to space and to undertake counterspace operations to deny the enemy the same.

SMDC envisions the Indo-Pacific TSEG to be followed by one for the European theater, but is awaiting decisions about requirements from US European Command.

With regard to the TSEG counterspace missions, Brooks said SMDC is focused on the “counterspace aspects for the terrestrial fight … really focused on the Army,” although with the “understanding that there are things that we can do to help support our brothers and sisters in the joint force and multinational capabilities.”

The Army’s emphasis, he said, currently is “on the counterspace piece for space control, electronic warfare, really doing counter-communications. I would say we’re moving on a well defined path that is very clear how we’re going to do this.”

Brooks said that aside from counter-communications, the Army also is well advanced on fleshing out concepts for other types of operations to disrupt adversary space capabilities.

“On the counter-surveillance [and] reconnaissance, on the navigation warfare, and the high altitude sides, we’ve developed great concepts of operation. We have been working those in and through the Army. Some of those have been approved by the Army. And now it’s going out and finding technology that already exists, and maybe it’s just using that technology in a different way.”

This could be doing something as simple as taking a laser-equipped weapon designed to take out adversary mortar, maybe changing its “form factor,” and repurposing it to “dazzle reconnaissance satellites,” Brooks said.

“I think our concept of employment was there, and that CONEMP is what drove the approval of the TSEG,” he explained. “Now, it’s OK, take that concept of employment and bring it to reality with concepts of operation, right? And I think we’ve done that clearly with space control, electronic warfare, and I think we’re well on our way with counter-surveillance, reconnaissance, nav warfare and high altitude as well.”

Indeed, Brooks said the Army already has fielded five of its new “Tactical Integrated Ground Suite Version 2,” or “TIGS V2,” jammers, which are in essence a smaller, more mobile variant of the original the TIGS. TIGS V2 can be dismounted, or even broken down and carried by several soldiers and reassembled closer to enemy emitters. TIGS V2 is based on a prototyping project initiated last year by the SMDC Technical Center called the Broadband Advanced Ground Radio (BAdGR).

Brooks explained that the general Army approach to counterspace is based on developing “multi-form factor capabilities” that allow “commanders to kind of pick and choose a menu of options that then they can bring to bear” based on the situation at hand.

For example, he said: “Do I need an MLRS [Multiple Launch Rocket System] weapon system to fire on this target, or do I need a 60-millimeter mortar to fire on a target?”

That said, he said SMDC’s goal is to make its counterspace weapons “as small as possible” based on power requirements necessary to make the systems effective.

breakingdefense.com · by Theresa Hitchens · August 6, 2025

7. Russia, China Simulate Attack on Enemy Submarine in Sea of Japan Drills

We cannot isolate or segregate the threats in the Asia-Indo-Pacific. The CRInK is the threat.

Russia and China could be showing us what they might do inthe event of Kim Jong Un's attack on the South.

Is the timing coincidental with the upcoming exercise in Korea?

And it is the East Sea.

Russia, China Simulate Attack on Enemy Submarine in Sea of Japan Drills - USNI News

news.usni.org · by Dzirhan Mahadzir · August 6, 2025

Russia and China wrapped up their joint exercise – dubbed Maritime Interaction 2025 by Russia and Joint Sea 2025 by China – Aug. 5, 2025, following several days of drills. Image via PLAN media

The Russian Navy and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) simulated attacks on an adversarial submarine and an amphibious ship, and rehearsed a submarine rescue during a recent five-day joint exercise in the Sea of Japan.

A Russian Navy IL-38 and PLAN Y-8 maritime patrol aircraft located and destroyed a simulated enemy submarine in a joint anti-submarine warfare drill in the Sea of Japan, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Wednesday. The two countries also conducted joint firing exercises, using naval guns to fire at a naval target meant to imitate an enemy assault landing ship detachment.

Russia and China wrapped up their joint exercise – dubbed Maritime Interaction 2025 by Russia and Joint Sea 2025 by China – on Tuesday following several days of drills. While the drills were part of the annual exercise, the simulated submarine takedown coincided with a rare public announcement from President Donald Trump that two submarines would operate in “the appropriate regions” in response to remarks from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the U.S. and Russia.

The drills began Aug. 1 with a harbor phase at Russian port city Vladivostok and continued through the weekend with a sea phase that took the ships off the coast of Russia.

The Russian Navy deployed destroyer RFS Admiral Tributs (564), corvette RFS Gromkiy (335), submarine rescue ship Igor Belousov and submarine RFS Volkhov (B-603) for the drills. The PLAN deployed destroyers CNS Urumqi (118) and CNS Shaoxing (134), fleet oiler CNS Qiandaohu (886), and submarine rescue ship CNS Xihu (841), as well as submarine Great Wall 210.

The countries’ submarines and submarine rescue ships rehearsed a crew evacuation in Peter the Great Bay, the main marine entrance to Vladivostok, the Russian Ministry of Defense said. Russian submarine Volkhov descended to the bottom of the bay, simulating an emergency, while Chinese rescue ship Xihu responded to the situation.

Xihu conducted a search and established contact with the Russian submarine. Xihu then launched its LR-7 submersible rescue vehicle, which docked with the Russian submarine. The crew of Volkhov simulated evacuating personnel from the submarine.

Following the completion of the drill between Volkhov and Xihu, Igor Belousov carried out a similar exercise with the PLAN submarine, according to the release.

“Russian rescue sailors shared their experience with their Chinese colleagues, demonstrating the capabilities of modern medical equipment, pressure chambers and an AS-40 deep-sea rescue submersible vehicle,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said.

CNS Shaoxing and Qiandaohu carried out a separate set of activities in the Sea of Japan. The People’s Liberation Army’s official news channel, China Military Online, said in a report that the drills included joint maneuvers, joint air defense, joint anti-ship operations, anchorage defense, replenishment at sea and other activities.

At the conclusion of the drills, the two countries departed the Sea of Japan for a joint patrol of the Pacific, according to China Military Online.

The Russian and PLAN ships appeared to have conducted their drills on the Russian side of the Sea of Japan, but Japan’s Joint Staff Office (JSO) issued news releases about other Russian and PLAN ships transiting near Japan.

PLAN destroyer CNS Zibo (156), shown, and frigate CNS Yangzhou (578) were sighted Aug. 2, 2025, sailing between Miyako Island and Okinawa to enter the Philippine Sea. Japan Joint Staff Office photo

PLAN destroyer CNS Zibo (156) and frigate CNS Yangzhou (578) were sighted Saturday sailing between Miyako Island and Okinawa to enter the Philippine Sea. On Tuesday, Dongdiao-class surveillance ship Yuhengxing (798) made the same journey to the Philippine Sea. In both cases, fleet oiler JS Towada (AOE-422) and a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force P-3C Orion MPA shadowed the PLAN ships, according to the JSO release.

Three Russian ships – including a Udaloy-class destroyer, a Ropucha-class tank landing ship, and a Steregushchiy-class frigate – were sighted Saturday sailing east approximately 43 miles northwest of Rebun Island, which lies 31 miles west of Japan’s main island of Hokkaido.

The ships transited east through La Pérouse Strait, which separates Hokkaido from Russia’s Sakhalin Island, to enter the Sea of Okhotsk. La Pérouse Strait is an international waterway and a regular transit route for Russian Navy ships moving between the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.

JMSDF fast attack craft JS Wakataka (PG-825) conducted surveillance on the Russian ships, according to the JSO release.

The three Russian ships are likely part of the Russian Pacific fleet detachment, which includes destroyer RFS Admiral Panteleyev (548), corvette RFS Sovershennyy, amphibious landing ship RFS Oslyabya (066), submarine RFS Magadan (B-602) and rescue tug Alatau.

The Russian Pacific fleet is conducting a patriotic and information deployment campaign called “Strength in Truth-2025.” As part of the campaign, the four ships and a submarine are expected to sail to various ports in the Russian Far East to commemorate Russia’s role in World War II, and the activities of Russian Pacific Fleet personnel in the Ukraine conflict.

Admiral Panteleyev, Sovershennyy, Oslyabya and Magadan left Vladivostok on Monday for the deployment. Russian state media on Wednesday reported the fleet had arrived in the port town of Magadan, its first stop.

news.usni.org · by Dzirhan Mahadzir · August 6, 2025

8. Ukraine-Russia peace talks under pressure. Who could face sanctions?

Ukraine-Russia peace talks under pressure. Who could face sanctions?

Defense News · by Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo · August 7, 2025

MILAN — Donald Trump’s push for a Ukraine-Russia peace deal to be reached by the end of this week is unrealistic, experts say, as substantive progress is improbable without a major shift on the battlefield.

On July 28, the U.S. president announced that he was shortening the initial 50-day deadline previously granted to Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine to “10 or 12 days from today.”

While the nature of this decision may have been more of a political pressure tactic to get the Russian official to the negotiation table, it implied that the revised deadline for such talks was now Aug. 8.

However, even with the threat of additional sanctions on the horizon and a possible meeting between Trump and Putin, experts share a skeptical outlook regarding any progress being made in the near term.

“The structural realities of this war make meaningful peace talks or even cease-fire nearly impossible in the short-term,” said Eitvydas Bajarunas, the former Lithuanian ambassador to Russia. “Putin’s strategic goals remain unchanged … [and] his ambitions are incompatible with any real compromise.”

Bajarunas added that any movement toward peace by the revised target date would be “performative at best” as concrete developments are dependent on “battlefield shifts, not diplomatic theatre.”

Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, shares a similar pessimistic perspective regarding the likelihood of a ceasefire deal by Friday.

“[The probability] remains very low, as Putin shows no signs of abandoning his core objectives in Ukraine,” she told Defense News. “The Kremlin is dismissive of the threat of new U.S. sanctions and reportedly confident in military victory.”

In May, Ukraine’s foreign minister stated that Russia had violated its three-day ceasefire only hours after it went into effect.

Bloomberg reported this week that Moscow may opt to pause temporarily drone and missile strikes, but continue ground operations.

Such a gesture, Snegovaya said, would primarily serve to ease pressure from potential U.S. sanctions.

Sanctions: Who is likely to be hit and how?

The Trump administration has signaled that significant, secondary tariffs could be placed on Russia’s closest trading partners if no concessions are made from Moscow.

The main objective: severely restrict global economic ties with the Kremlin in an attempt to cut off funding for its war machine.

According to Bajarunas, four countries are specifically at risk of being targeted: India, China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Although Indian goods are already subject to 25% tariffs from the U.S., the expert said that the country could be hit harder if it continues to buy Russian oil.

“[If secondary tariffs are imposed] India is more likely to respond by partially shifting to alternative oil suppliers,” Snegovaya added.

While this would effectively hurt Moscow in the near-term, she warned that ultimately, it could lead it to deepen oil ties with China or increase efforts to bypass sanctions.

As of this month, average American tariffs on Chinese exports stand at nearly 55% on all goods, per the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Ukrainian intelligence officials have maintained over the last few months that Beijing was still providing different products to Russian military plants. Additional sanctions on Chinese merchandise could be “framed as both economic leverage and national security protection,” Bajarunas added.

However, for Snegovaya, the existing tariffs on China reduce the likelihood or impact of imposing additional.

Concerning Turkey and the UAE, countries he noted “as intermediaries in Russia’s sanctions evasion networks,” Washington may opt to target key infrastructure or institutions such as ports, shipping companies or banks.

Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.

9. Army readies to launch 2026 competition for counter-drone laser weapon

I hope this will be the game changer we need.

Army readies to launch 2026 competition for counter-drone laser weapon

Defense News · by Jen Judson · August 6, 2025

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. − The U.S. Army is counting on funding in fiscal 2026 to hold a competition to pursue a high-energy laser weapon system focused first on countering drones, according to service officials.

Over the course of the last five-plus years, the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, or RCCTO, has built a wide variety of directed energy prototypes, from 10-kilowatt palletized systems for fixed sites to 20- to 30-kilowatt lasers mounted on small tactical vehicles, to 50-kilowatt systems on the Army’s Maneuver-Short-Range Air Defense Stryker-based vehicles.

The office also continues to develop a 300-kilowatt laser, as well as high-power microwave capabilities, to counter a variety of threats like drones, artillery and cruise missiles.

Out of the 17 prototypes developed through the office, the Army has deployed 11 of them, including four Directed Energy M-SHORAD systems to the U.S. Central Command area of operations.

Through operational experimentation, the Army has concluded there is great potential for directed-energy weapons, particularly because of their extraordinarily low cost per shot and naturally high magazine depth.

But currently, the ability to sustain the systems in the rough and dirty environments of the battlefield needs work — and industry is not yet poised to manufacture them at scale.

The Army decided to pursue what it is calling its Enduring High Energy Laser program to tackle those specific challenges and steer the capability from prototypes to systems that can be fielded.

“We have to continue to work harder, we have to continue to work with the soldiers. We have to continue to work with industry to develop our directed-energy platforms and focus on the areas of reliability,” Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, the RCCTO director, said Wednesday at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.

“We’ve got to work on maintainability because … we can’t get by with the thought of having clean rooms out in combat,” he said.

After years of prototyping, the Army’s Enduring High Energy Laser effort will also be designed to be delivered at scale “at more than onesies or twosies,” Rasch said.

The Army plans to release initial capability documents to industry within the next 60 days and is also planning to update its broad agency announcement, which was first released in the summer of 2024.

The service is looking at a modular approach for components and is asking industry to design the system with line-replaceable units, meaning components that can be swapped in and out by soldiers in the field in a non-sterile environment.

The experimentation in operational scenarios has led to a deep understanding of what components and parts of the laser systems have high failure rates, Col. Adam Miller, who is in charge of directed-energy programs within RCCTO, said at the symposium.

“The optics on these systems are one of the high failure rate items and one of the challenges that we have,” he said. “So as we look to design the beam director … we wanted to insert a touch point opportunity, an integration and a learning event for those soldiers to actually repair that optic and to demonstrate that.”

The system should also be interoperable in the sense that laser providers will not be asked to be vehicle integrators, like many were tasked to do in prototyping.

“We have decoupled the vehicle from our lasers,” Miller said.

“So, if the Army wants to put it on a robot or a Stryker or a [Joint Light Tactical Vehicle],” it can be done with some modifications and size, weight and power adjustments, he said.

The service is also looking to ensure the user interface is common and open, Miller added. The program will also challenge industry to design the systems to be ready to be manufactured at scale.

“Both industry, and on the government side, fully expect directed energy to go up like a hockey stick from the demand perspective, as well as the need to build these systems rapidly,” John Garrity, vice president at BlueHalo, now an AeroVironment company, said at the symposium.

“Not a single component of material suppliers is probably situated to meet that demand today, so our focus has been on building that coalition and team … to make sure that we are ready to actually produce those systems at scale and at volume.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

10.

A long read from Ryan. I did not realize he was so passionate about this subject as to write such a long essay outlining the issues.

Excerpts:

I appreciate Connable’s contribution to the debate and hope it heralds a more constructive era in the tussle over the future of the Marine Corps. Still, I think he is mostly wrong. The Marine Corps is not in a crisis and won’t be as long as it leans into adapting to the character of war, embracing the stand-in force — whether it is renamed or not. As for the so-called Chowderites, it is worth revisiting the ideas of another friend of mine, Frank Hoffman, another scholar and retired marine officer, who — in conversation with me —described the general thrust of the Chowderite critique as astrategic, ahistorical, and anti-institutional.

The 2018 and 2022 defense strategies explicitly shifted America’s strategic focus toward Asia and China, accepting calculated risk elsewhere. Yet the Chowderites stubbornly cling to outdated models, advocating for yesterday’s force structure against tomorrow’s threats. They consistently ignore clear strategic direction, geography, adversary capabilities, and emerging technologies. That is astrategic.

Second, the critics are notably ahistorical. The Marine Corps has always adapted to the strategic environment of its era — from small wars to major amphibious operations, through the Cold War, and later the counter-insurgency era. While Victor Krulak established institutional mechanisms for adaptation, he (and many others) did not anticipate the scale, sophistication, and challenge of today’s China challenge. True fidelity to Marine Corps heritage means embracing necessary changes rather than rejecting them.

Finally, the Chowderite position is essentially anti-institutional. Standing still has never been part of Marine identity. The Marine Corps exists to serve the United States, not its own parochial interests or nostalgic self-image. The critics advocate for a Marine Corps divorced from strategic reality, current joint doctrine, and policy directives. In doing so, they risk marginalizing the Marine Corps at precisely the moment when America most needs it to be — and has told it to be — relevant, agile, and forward-looking.

It is here where my critique becomes more forceful than Hoffman’s. I focus more sharply on the tactics of the Chowderites, who unprecedently employ lobbyists, smear tactics, and go above the commandant’s head, seeking meetings with senior defense officials and elected officials, including in the White House. This is simply not acceptable. As Bob Work wrote in his essential essay in the Texas National Security Review, their activities have been “highly troubling, raising serious concerns about civil‑military relations and the role of retired general and flag officers in the development of defense programs.” Unelected, unappointed cabals of retired octogenarians and nonagenarians don’t play any legitimate role in running the military services. There is no co-commandant.

Responsible critique is vital, but the criticisms leveled by the Chowderites occupy a land without strategy or context, far from the Corps’ longstanding ethos of innovation and adaptation. The Marine Corps has changed and must continue to change for good reasons. Through the presidents, members of Congress, and senators they have elected on both sides of the aisle, the American people have been loud and clear on the Marine Corps they want: It is the one described in Force Design 2030 and its subsequent annual updates. Americans want a Marine Corps that wins wars, not one only equipped to respond to lesser crises. The critics won’t catch up, so just ignore them and get back on course.

The Marine Corps Americans Want Can’t Be Derailed by a Fake Crisis - War on the Rocks

Ryan Evans

August 7, 2025

warontherocks.com · August 7, 2025

The Marine Corps relies on a sense of crisis to promote and prevent change more than any other institution I’ve come across. As one well-known Marine leader wrote over 40 years ago “the continuous struggle for a viable existence fixed clearly one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Corps — a sensitive paranoia, sometimes justified, sometimes not.” Indeed, many times throughout the history of our country, leaders have called into question whether the Marine Corps should exist. But this has not happened in any serious way for many decades. The paranoia has long since veered into the “not justified” category. Yet it persists.

For those of you who haven’t been following the biggest family feud the Marine Corps has had in generations, let me quickly catch you up. In response to congressional scrutiny, presidential policy, and secretary of defense guidance, Gen. (ret.) David Berger, as commandant, launched ambitious reforms known as Force Design 2030, beginning in 2019. A key objective was to position the Marine Corps to win as a part of a joint campaign to defeat China and defend key treaty allies as well as Taiwan. Since then, a small but vocal group of retired Marine officers have howled about Berger miring the Marine Corps in a crisis. They call themselves “Chowder II” after the Chowder Society, an informal group of Marine officers formed in 1946 to defend the institutional independence and future of the U.S. Marine Corps after World War II. Their methods have been unprecedented. They have employed doomsday rhetoric and distortions with such shameless fervor you’d think Force Design 2030 was a Chinese plot and not a strategy to stop one. Neither Congress nor three presidential administrations (Trump I, Biden, and Trump II) have found any merit in the arguments of the Chowderites.

But the critics will not let that get in the way of their narrative.

It is important to engage in reasoned debate on issues of defense policy. However, unless critics of the Marine Corps can produce evidence of some sort of actual crisis — something yet to occur in six years of sustained critique — Marine leaders should remain focused on preparing for the future fight as instructed by presidents and Congress. Force Design 2030 is now simply called Force Design and is owned by Commandant Eric Smith, a leader who I know and admire.

Under his leadership, however, Force Design has recently taken a puzzling diversion. It is not easy for me to say this, but I find the commandant’s renewed focus on the Marine expeditionary unit replete with opportunity costs. The stand-in force remains the most important part of the future Marine Corps, not the Marine expeditionary unit. If a war with China or any other adversary along key maritime terrain takes place, I firmly believe the stand-in force will be decisive in bringing the fight to the adversary alongside U.S. allies and other elements of the U.S. military. Gen. Smith should lean into the stand-in force and champion more aggressive changes, focusing his efforts on obtaining maritime capabilities independent of the U.S. Navy to ensure drone-equipped Marine units can move safely and swiftly across contested waters to fight America’s adversaries.

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The Crisis Myth

The Marine Corps has weathered difficult internal debates before. Across generations, Marine fault-finders with dire predictions have underestimated both the service’s proven ability to successfully reform itself and the extent to which megaphone critics damage the institution far more than the things they are criticizing.

We recently published a three–part series, which I edited and approved for publication, by my friend Ben Connable. His argument rests on the idea of a Marine Corps in crisis to the extent that the service is under existential threat. Even though I disagree with Connable’s argument (as I often do with articles we publish), I felt it was important to air the other side of the Force Design debate. Connable is among a vanishingly small group of critics who hold themselves to a real standard of professionalism. Unlike other critics, who regularly vilify the current commandant and his predecessor, and make outrageous claims about their integrity, Connable has a constructive aim and calls for people to rally behind Smith.

Still, he holds to the narrative of an existential crisis: Connable finds the origin of this supposed crisis in the Global War on Terror. During the 9/11 wars, the service was pushed away from its traditional role as the nation’s premier crisis response force, with that mission being increasingly taken over by U.S. Special Operations Command. This loss of a core purpose, he argues, has been compounded by a decline in the Marine Corps’ cultural significance and support.

The facts say otherwise.

Marine crisis response units, to include Marine expeditionary units, which are commonly referred to as the “crown jewel” of the Corps, were repeatedly launched into the most challenging crises of the 9/11 era. Examples include Najaf, southern Baghdad, and Fallujah in 2004; as well as Afghanistan in 2008 and 2011. Another Marine expeditionary unit fought fiercely against the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Syria. And it was a Marine expeditionary unit that helped spearhead the Kabul evacuation efforts in 2021.

While it is certainly true that U.S. special operations forces assumed a more prominent role than they had before, taking on missions once typically conducted by the Marine Corps (for the good of the country, it should be said), this started before 9/11. It was really the result of the flowering of the reforms initiated by the Goldwater-Nichols Act (1986) and Nunn-Cohen Amendment (1987), which led to the creation of U.S. Special Operations Command.

Connable neglects to note that the Marine Corps played an enormously important role in the campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan, doing things that special operators could never have done. He also neglects to mention that Marine special operators, or Raiders, still executed many of these crisis response missions, even if often as part of combined joint special operations task forces.

As far as a loss of cultural significance and support, his only evidence is the lower number of Marine veterans in Congress and the declining appearance of Marine heroes in Hollywood films. I don’t find that persuasive.

To agree with Connable, you also have to ignore that the American people and their elected representatives have shown more support for the Marine Corps than any other U.S. armed service in the last six years. This includes almost unanimous support in Congress and across multiple presidential administrations for the bold path charted by Berger as commandant. The Marine Corps struggled much less than any of the other services during the recent recruiting crisis. And leaders across the aisle have openly praised the Marine Corps for making hard choices, exercising fiscal discipline, and adapting for the future of warfare, encouraging senior Marine leaders to accelerate reform efforts, not to slow them down, and certainly not to go backward. None of the other services have anywhere near this level of support and goodwill.

The crisis only exists in the minds of a largely retired coterie of Marine leaders (including Gen. Charles Krulak, the son of Lt. Gen. Victor “Brute” Krulak, who I quote in the opening of this article). I have great respect for my friend Ben — a retired Marine officer and a serious scholar. He brings so much to the table and I know he is motivated by making the Marine Corps better. But once the fake crisis block in the Jenga tower of his argument is removed, much of the rest falls apart.

What does this tell us about the direction of the Marine Corps in the context of America’s military needs?

The Needs of the Nation and the Character of War

If you read this publication, you’ve likely encountered the concept known as the “character of war,” derived from Carl von Clausewitz’s On War. He tells us that the nature of war is immutable: always violent and always political. Its character, or the way it presents in the world, can change in accordance with the “spirit of the age.” This accounts for things like “technology, law, ethics, culture, methods of social, political, and military organization, and other factors that change across time and place,” as described by Christopher Mewett in these pages years ago.

Book 3, Chapter 17 of On War opens with a demand to understand this: “All planning, particularly strategic planning, must pay attention to the character of contemporary warfare.” Connable rejects the idea of a universally applicable changing character of warfare. Whether he’s correct or not, it’s not the right question. At issue is whether there are consistencies in the character of war as it is being planned for and practiced by our adversaries, and there are.

When one examines how China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran plan for war, there are of course differences, but there are important consistencies. First, they all emphasize military forces reliant on missiles and — increasingly — drones integrated with cyber operations, disinformation, and political subversion to undermine enemy cohesion and exploit societal divisions. Further, with the possible exception of North Korea, they all prominently feature deniable or semi-deniable forces, including Iran’s Islamist proxies, China’s maritime militia, and Russia’s private military companies and paramilitary groups.

When considering future conflicts, it is crucial to analyze how technology and geography intersect, especially in key maritime areas. This approach, championed by Olivia Garard in 2018, ensures we understand the likely character of these wars, which are likely to be fought against China in the first island chain, Russia in the Baltic and Black Seas, Iran in and through the Strait of Hormuz, and North Korea in the maritime approaches surrounding the Korean Peninsula, particularly the Yellow Sea, Sea of Japan, and adjacent littoral areas.

In each of these geographies, adversaries plan to leverage constrained waterways, island features, and proximity to their own shores, employing missiles, drones, mines, surface ships and submarines, and anti-ship capabilities to attack allies and U.S. forces while denying access and complicating U.S. freedom of action. Understanding this interplay between technology and geography underscores the contemporary character of war, emphasizing precision, contested maritime environments, and the challenge of projecting power into highly defended waters.

This demands reforms to the U.S. armed services. One has to give congressional leaders credit for when they occasionally see a bit further than the rest of us. In 2017, the Senate Armed Services Committee required the Marine Corps to rethink the two Marine expeditionary brigade joint forcible entry operation as an organizing principle, leading to Marine thinkers developing the “Warbot” concept that helped inform Force Design 2030. And this is why, in respect to these reforms, the Marine Corps is ahead of the other services, but not yet far enough along.

The Right Lessons Lead to the Stand-In Force

While the grueling ground-pounding across the vast steppes that stretch across much of Ukraine have captivated both the public and most military analysts, some of the most important tactical and operational lessons over the last few years have been in littoral zones, or those stretches of water within reach of the shore. From the Black Sea to the Red Sea, we have seen the intersection of desperation and determination fuel innovation and adaptation. As a team of Marine writers pointed out in these very pages in early 2024, in both of theaters, the Ukrainian armed forces and the Houthis have proven the indispensability of stand-off drone and missile strikes against larger foes. Other key insights include the strategic leverage of denial and disruption over control, the power of asymmetric tactics to impose costs on superior forces, the value of distributed operations with minimal signatures, and the psychological impact of persistence and unpredictability.

Ukraine’s deft campaign in and along the Black Sea offers a master class in how clever tactics and low-cost technology can harass and humiliate a superior naval force. Despite being vastly outmatched in raw naval power, Ukraine systematically eroded Russia’s maritime freedom of action by leveraging asymmetric tactics, modified commercial drones, unmanned surface vessels, and shore-based anti-ship missiles. Ukraine damaged or sank several key Russian vessels, most notably the Moskva, forcing the Russian Black Sea Fleet to relocate its operations farther from Ukraine’s shores. Ukraine significantly complicated Russia’s ability to maneuver, resupply, and project power along its maritime flank, while simultaneously enabling Kyiv to sustain critical maritime trade. Rather than seeking outright sea control — which was and remains beyond its reach — Ukraine successfully employed denial, persistent harassment, and targeted disruption to impose disproportionately high operational and strategic costs on the Russian navy.

The Houthis have offered a class of their own, although one that has been far less pleasurable for us in the West to watch. For almost two years, the Houthis have threatened key shipping lanes, harbors, and vessels of vastly more powerful adversaries. Employing inexpensive but effective drone boats, anti-ship missiles, sea mines, and explosive-laden aerial drones, they have repeatedly inflicted damage and created uncertainty, forcing their adversaries, including the United States, to expend much more expensive munitions and resources on defensive measures. Through persistence, ingenuity, and unpredictability, the Houthis have imposed outsized costs without ever needing to assert conventional maritime dominance. As Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, a marine currently serving as vice commander of Special Operations Command, said on our podcast,

I think we should learn the lessons from the Red Sea and what the Houthis are doing to hold us at bay. We’re depleting our magazine racks to fight the Houthis. They’re executing a very effective sea denial, sea control campaign, like we had talked [about] in the past… Are we willing to learn from an adversary that is actually holding ground and pushing back on us?

Following this thread, one can see the logical case for the stand-in force. Berger saw it even earlier than both of these wars. In 2021, Berger envisioned it as the reinvigoration of the Marine Corps’ “role as America’s forward sentinels.” It involves placing Marine units in contested maritime spaces, shoulder to shoulder with allies and partners, acting as the fleet’s persistent eyes and ears within range of adversary sensors. There, marines wage a relentless reconnaissance battle, identifying dangerous enemy behavior before conflict and disrupting the enemy’s efforts to gain the initiative through counter‑reconnaissance and deception. In crisis or war, marines will remain embedded inside contested zones, extending the entire U.S. military’s reach by enabling naval and joint fires and thereby denying the enemy freedom of action.

Bold in concept yet delicate in execution, the stand‑in force is designed to unsettle adversaries at every point on the strategic competition continuum while setting conditions for integration across the joint force and naval campaigning. In March 2022, the 3rd Marine Regiment was redesignated as the 3rd Littoral Regiment, followed shortly thereafter by the redesignation of 12th Marine Regiment to 12th Marine Littoral Regiment. Each of these units is composed of approximately 2,000 marines organized into a littoral combat team, a littoral anti-air battalion, and a combat logistics battalion.

Smith’s strong defense of the stand-in force in Proceedings in 2022 deserves to be revisited. In it, he defends the concept against critics who said that dispersed small units would be vulnerable, explaining that mobility, stealth, and integration with naval and allied forces significantly reduces risk. He also rejected criticism that the new approach overly focuses on China, clarifying that these units can be adapted to multiple theaters without sacrificing global expeditionary roles, which the service learned while employing reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance forces with Task Force 61/2 in the Baltic and Aegean Seas a few years ago. Additionally, Smith argued that modern combined arms warfare no longer demands heavy armor and traditional artillery, as much as diverse precision fires and unmanned capabilities to effectively confront future threats.

Dispensing with Cockamamie Ideas about Defensive Warfare

In the weeks before Russia was about to invade Ukraine in 2022, I remember asking a U.S. Army infantry officer friend of mine which side he’d rather be on, not morally, but strictly from a military balance perspective. He replied, “I’d always rather be on the offensive.” This is a deep and abiding part of military culture (not just in the United States), and to an extent it is a healthy thing. But when it dismisses military goals and sensible strategy, it can lead to disaster. And we can see how Russia’s misbegotten offensive operation to topple the Ukrainian government in mere weeks worked out.

This issue is at the center of most objections to Force Design, and it is deeply emotional. Being an offensive force is especially ingrained in the traditional Marine Corps identity, at least since the early 1940s. Aggression is central to Marine identity. U.S. marines pride themselves on being America’s most forward-deployed force, being willing to seize and hold ground under fierce enemy fire, constantly push the initiative, turn defensive positions into offensive opportunities, and assert dominance on the battlefield. Aggression has also been at the core of the Corps’ historical role in spearheading critical assaults, from Iwo Jima to Fallujah, where decisive and relentless attack was essential to victory.

Critics of Force Design argue the stand-in force concept has compromised the aggressive essence of the Marine Corps. Lt. Gen. (ret.) Paul Van Riper, for example, has inaccurately dismissed the stand-in force as sitting “on the defense on isolated islands waiting for an enemy ship to pass by,” claiming this will change “the very ethos of the Corps and not to the good.” Even Connable advances a version of this critique, calling it “uninspiring and uncharacteristically passive.” In evaluating these claims, it is important to consider the relationship between defensive and offensive operations, the intensity and aggression involved in defensive operations, and what the American people are asking the Marine Corps to do through their elected leaders.

Defense and Offense in Marine and Military Thought

The Marine Corps’ original maneuver warfare manual, Fleet Marine Force Manual 1, was published in 1989 under the intellectual leadership of Gen. Alfred Gray. Its successor, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, developed under the guidance of Charles Krulak and released in 1997, retained and expanded these foundational principles. Both manuals, simply titled Warfighting, speak of the non-exclusivity and inseparability of offense and defense. For example, the first manual explains “defense cannot be purely passive resistance. An effective defense must assume an offensive character, striking at the enemy at the moment of his greatest vulnerability.” Quoting Clausewitz, it continues, explaining that the defense is “not a simple shield, but a shield made up of well-directed blows.”

Krulak’s newer manual largely retains the same language, but leans further into this theme with a passage on the dynamism of defense that Van Riper has perhaps forgotten:

Because we typically think of the defense as waiting for the enemy to strike, we often associate the defense with response rather than initiative. This is not necessarily true. We do not necessarily assume the defensive only out of weakness. For example, the defense may confer the initiative if the enemy is compelled to attack into the strength of our defense. Under such conditions, we may have the positive aim of destroying the enemy. Similarly, a defender waiting in ambush may have the initiative if the enemy can be brought into the trap. The defense may be another way of striking at the enemy.

In fact, I find it hard to believe this exact passage of Warfighting wasn’t front of mind while the expeditionary advanced base operations concept was being tested through wargaming several years ago. This is, in sum, the intent of the stand-in force: a “Clausewitzian attack defense.”

Defensive Warfare is Not for Lesser Warriors

Perhaps the most storied battle in the history of the world took place in a slender passage hemmed by steep cliffs and mountains in Greece. It was there that a small Spartan force held off wave after wave of Persian attacks. Though eventually betrayed and surrounded, the Spartans’ sacrifice burned itself into history, a timeless testament to courage, duty, and defiance in the face of impossible odds. Their bravery gave the Greeks the precious time needed to gather strength, unite their scattered city-states, and ultimately repel the Persian invasion, safeguarding the cradle of Western civilization. Thermopylae thus became more than a battle — it became a symbol of the power of sacrifice to alter history’s course. It was also undeniably a defensive battle.

The 2006 film 300 presents this tale in stylized, graphic-novel-inspired visuals. It resonated deeply in popular military culture, particularly among marines, who often see themselves in the Spartans’ fierce resolve. Marines frequently evoke the film’s iconic imagery, adopting Spartan helmets and shields in tattoos as permanent symbols of discipline, warrior ethos, and brotherhood under fire. Key exercises at Twentynine Palms are called “Spartan Resolve” and “Spartan Advance.” Also, in a nod to the film, a perfect score on the Marine Corps’ Physical Fitness Test and Combat Fitness Test is, yes, 300.

The defiant stand at Thermopylae is shorthand for unwavering courage and tenacity in defense, highlighting an ethos where holding ground — aggressively and unflinchingly — defines the warrior spirit as vividly today as it did thousands of years ago.

And there is indeed a proud history of defensive sacrifice in the Marine Corps. In 1941, as Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, they also launched another operation over two thousand miles away against Wake Island. It was there that 450 marines, including a Marine fighter squadron, augmented by 200 civilian volunteers, held off the much larger Japanese force for nearly two weeks, killing 600 of them. The marines defeated the first Japanese amphibious assault while under constant aerial bombardment. They also sank at least three Japanese ships and damaged others. The unit succumbed to the second major assault, but their stalwart defense served as a potent symbol of American and Marine tenacity for a nation still licking its wounds and standing back up to take the fight to Imperial Japan.

During the fight for Guadalcanal, the Marine Corps fought and won two primarily defensive battles: Tenaru and Edson’s Ridge, which were critical to prevailing in the Solomon Islands and the war in the Pacific. And let’s not forget the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir against China during the Korean War. For those who say the Marine Corps only finds true meaning in the offensive, the least offensive thing I can say in reply is this: Read a book!

Defense, Offense, and the Stand-In Force

The fact is, American leaders today, across party lines, are explicitly ordering the Marine Corps, and the other services, to be primarily prepared for what will start as a defensive campaign against China in the Indo-Pacific in the first island chain: to defend and fight alongside allies and partners from their territory and beyond, and in doing so defeat China’s fleet, exhaust its batteries, and destroy its capacity to wage war beyond Chinese shores. Thought of another way, American leaders are ordering the Marine Corps to do everything possible to prevent the country from having to cede to the Chinese Communist Party the very territory that marines of the World War II generation fought so hard to seize eight decades ago.

And, of course, as already mentioned, defensive and offensive operations flow into each other. Marines remain ready to go to war from Okinawa. There are near daily rotational Marine deployments to allied soil in the Indo-Pacific. Amphibious Squadron 11 is embarked for half of the year in the Indo-Pacific. Third Marine Littoral Regiment is training to do things like seizing airfields within 100 miles of Taiwan to throw off a Chinese invasion. They are establishing anti-ship missile capabilities in the middle of the Luzon Strait. In other words, since 2019, the Marine Corps has reshaped itself to carry out operations across the Indo-Pacific, as directed. These changes strengthen deterrence and, if deterrence fails, help ensure victory.

What if the Marine Corps downgrades or gives up on the stand-in force and the littoral regiments as some critics would have it do? Ironically, this critical mission would likely be picked up by Special Operations Command, as best as it could, and the Army’s multi-domain task forces.

Even though I disagree with Connable’s diagnosis of the stand-in force as it pertains to the defense and aggression, I find his proposed solution un-objectionable:

Marine leaders should rename the stand-in force concept and recenter it on its most aggressive, most compelling subordinate mission set: seizing and defending advanced bases.

…

The good news? Marine littoral regiment units are already practicing these operations.

I recommend retiring the term “stand-in force” and adopting a term more benefitting the aggressive culture of the Marine Corps — perhaps something like an expeditionary assault force.

What About the Marine Expeditionary Unit?

I was honored to attend the Marine Corps Association Ground Awards Dinner, where Smith delivered the keynote address. I have to admit, I was surprised by his speech. It focused on the amphibious ready group and Marine expeditionary unit. He said he will be championing the need for “three consistently deployed, three-ship formations — heel to toe. One from the east coast, one from the west coast, and one episodically deployed from Okinawa, Japan,” He calls this a “3.0 ARG/MEU presence.” Today, the Navy-Marine Corps team can only sustain one reliably.

He didn’t mention the stand-in force or the Marine littoral regiment once.

The Marine expeditionary unit and the stand-in force reflect fundamentally different operational philosophies and are each optimized for distinct threat environments. The Marine expeditionary unit has long been the Marine Corps’ signature global crisis-response formation, flexibly responding to short-notice crises worldwide. Typically comprising around 2,200 marines and sailors afloat on ships, these units combine infantry, aviation, logistics, and command capabilities, allowing them to independently carry out missions ranging from combat operations to humanitarian assistance. Marine expeditionary units are heavily dependent on $2 billion to more than $4 billion Navy amphibious ships. In his speech, Smith lamented the insufficient number of amphibious ships, which constrains the Corps’ ability to project power globally at short notice. Reinforcing Marine expeditionary units without enough amphibious ships could unintentionally worsen current shortages, increasing the gap between what the corps aims to do and the resources it actually has.

In contrast, stand-in forces require specialized capabilities such as more capable and experienced infantry formations, drones, advanced missile systems, survivable logistics, resilient communications networks, and hardened basing infrastructure. The stand-in force is designed explicitly to provide persistent presence, resilience, and lethality across strategically critical island chains, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. Stand-in forces, while still reliant on the Navy for mobility (for now), demand a more dispersed maritime posture, potentially leveraging smaller, lower cost, and lower manpower-intensive vessels, lighter amphibious platforms, and intra-theater connectors. This approach demands immediate and significant investments. It aligns directly with the strategic priorities set forth clearly by both congressional mandate and presidential guidance. The stand-in force is what will allow the Marine Corps to complicate Beijing’s planning and decision-making and to live up to its legacy of being “first to fight” in a high-end maritime conflict, which would inevitably be waged heavily in and around key maritime terrain.

If Smith intends to avoid sacrificing strategic clarity for operational versatility, he should ensure Marine expeditionary unit modernization complements rather than competes with stand-in force priorities. This could mean reevaluating how Marine expeditionary units deploy, train, and operate, orienting their capabilities toward scenarios that directly reinforce the stand-in force concept. Otherwise, attempting to prioritize the Marine expeditionary unit risks undermining the strategic coherence that he and his predecessor carefully cultivated, generating confusion within the service about its primary focus at a time when strategic clarity is critical. It also risks diverting attention, senior leader time, and resources away from the more strategically essential — and demanding — task of fully operationalizing the stand-in force in the Indo-Pacific.

While Marine expeditionary units are important and are built for versatility across a wide array of contingencies, they are not tailored for operations inside enemy missile range. To be sure, their survivability is not fixed but conditional — affected by task organization, escort presence, and employment concepts: precisely the conditions that are becoming harder to guarantee in contested maritime theaters where adversaries can saturate defenses and exploit even brief lapses in coverage, especially as advanced missile and drone technologies proliferate even among small powers and non-state actors. As a result, relying too heavily on large, high-signature platforms to operate close to enemy shores invites unacceptable constraints at best and disaster at worst.

I do not know why the commandant is focusing on the Marine expeditionary unit and have not yet had the opportunity to ask him. I hope he is not doing this to somehow seek a compromise with the most unreasonable and vociferous critics of Force Design: Van Riper, Charles Krulak, and Gen. (ret.) Anthony Zinni (who dishonestly count other living former commandants and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis among their ranks). Nothing less than a complete reversal of Berger’s reforms will satisfy these critics, so any compromise will be fruitless in terms of defanging their brutal, unprofessional, and unethical public and private campaign of agitation.

Regardless, Congress isn’t buying it. As Adm. Daryl Caudle — soon to be chief of naval operations — pointed out in his recent confirmation hearing, the last time the United States had three amphibious ready groups and Marine expeditionary units decades ago, it took 37 to 40 amphibious ships. The Navy can’t or won’t even get to the current congressionally mandated requirement for 31 (more on this later). And neither the House or Senate defense budgets include funds for the construction of new Landing Helicopter Assault or Landing Platform Dock vessels, the specific types of amphibious ships required to meet Smith’s 3.0 presence vision.

The bottom line is this: Properly manned, trained, and equipped Marine littoral regiments are what will allow the Marine Corps to be first to fight against China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea — not Marine expeditionary units. Investments in equipping America’s Marine littoral regiments with drones and missiles, as well as the training and concepts of operation necessary to enable marines to successfully use them in combat, ought to be the top priority, alongside solving the littoral mobility problem. The Marine Corps should, of course, also be able to save an embassy in Africa or Latin America or launch a sustained assault against a terrorist group. That’s good and proper, but that’s not what the fate of the nation hangs on.

The Littoral Mobility Problem

In terms of force structure, the biggest problem facing the Marine Corps is its dependence on the Navy for amphibious operations, whether it’s the Marine expeditionary unit or the Marine littoral regiment. The Marine Corps has been locked in a seemingly endless fight with the Navy about the number of amphibious ships it should have. The debate is mostly about L-class ships: the America– and Wasp-class amphibious ships, which are among the largest vessels in the Navy. They have large, flat flight decks for launching and recovering helicopters and vertical take-off jets, expansive hangar spaces, medical facilities, and command-and-control centers.

Marine leaders have insisted that at least 31 L-class amphibious ships are necessary to meet global operational demands. In contrast, the Navy has advocated for a smaller number, typically around 24 amphibious ships, citing budgetary pressures, competing priorities, and limited shipyard capacity.

However, Marine littoral regiments are to rely more on the smaller, faster, and less conspicuous new Medium Landing Ship. It has a modest footprint, relatively lower crew requirements, and a shallow draft that enables it to operate closer to shore and land directly on beaches or austere landing sites. It features a prominent bow ramp allowing marines to quickly drive vehicles — such as tactical trucks, missile launchers, and other lighter equipment — directly onto shore. It does not have the expansive flight decks or aviation facilities of larger ships, focusing instead on simplicity, speed, and ease of movement to reduce vulnerability and logistical demands.

What all these amphibious programs have in common though, is they are Navy programs and Navy ships, crewed by sailors. And as long as the Marine Corps is reliant on the Navy for these critical capabilities, the Navy will keep disappointing the Marine Corps because the same presidential administrations and Congresses that have directed the Marine Corps to change have also directed the Navy to prioritize different capabilities, such as revitalizing the undersea component of the U.S. nuclear triad, fast-attack submarines, ballistic and cruise missile defense, and much more.

Something has to change.

The Marine Corps needs a new family of ships to operate in littoral environments, whether it’s the South China Sea, the Baltic Sea, or the Arabian Gulf. These ships would be designed to complement each other and to work together as a part of a concept of employment, nested in the stand-in force concept and expeditionary advanced base operations manual. The smaller ship design needs to be premised on the idea that marines will need to be able to fight with what they already have in place or with what they can get into the fight extremely quickly through a contested environment. This is not a call to entirely replace traditional amphibious ships, which still have a role to play. Rather, the Marine Corps ought to have additional vessels for contested littorals, that could complement more traditional amphibious ships in more contested crisis response scenarios.

What should these ships be? They should be fast, stealthy, and survivable small ships and boats specifically designed for contested amphibious maneuver. While the Medium Landing Ship is a good first step toward tactical mobility and distributed operations due to its ability to operate near shorelines, it is not ideal for a contested environment. It is too slow and easily detectable. The Marine Corps needs additional low-observable fast transports capable of moving up to three platoons, with their gear, over 1,000 nautical miles at speeds up to 35 knots. This would ensure they could, for example, travel from Palawan in the Philippines to Taiwan before an adversary could successfully establish a blockade.

These types of ships or vessels could also carry one or two smaller landing survivable littoral landing craft. These would not be traditional landing craft. Each would carry one squad with equipment and a light vehicle. Aside from deploying from low-observable fast transports, they could also launch from concealed positions along coasts and rivers. The new ship-to-shore connector cannot do these things. It is certainly fast and carries more, but it is also loud and hot, making it ill-suited for going up against any enemy with modern surveillance systems, infrared sensors, or anti-ship missiles.

To better ensure the marines are able to make it from Palawan to Taiwan and to move along island chains safely, there should also be uncrewed littoral screening and deception vessels. Those on the diversion mission mimic the signatures of larger transports and landing craft, going elsewhere and broadcasting false signals — generally creating confusion for enemy surveillance systems and drawing fire away from actual forces. Those masking would carry electronic warfare payloads to jam sensors or disrupt communications, feeding the adversary a noisy, misleading picture of the battlespace. Strong candidates for this include the Devil Ray T24 and T38, which have been tested by the Navy in the Middle East and Baltic Sea (the United States recently funded a purchase of a smaller variant by the Philippines) or Textron’s Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle, which is already fielded by the Navy.

Sustainment in contested littorals is no small task. The service has been experimenting with uncrewed, low-profile vessels inspired by drug traffickers’ semi-submersible “narco-submarines” — a design perfected by cartels to evade detection across thousands of miles of ocean. As far as I can tell, this was first envisioned by three marines in War on the Rocks five years ago. Built by Leidos, these vessels are now being tested, with trials underway in Okinawa and during joint experimentation exercises such as Project Convergence. Brig. Gen. Simon Doran described the project:

We stole the idea from friends down south. And so, this is 55 feet long, completely autonomous. It’s able to go hundreds or thousands of miles. It’s able to carry weapon systems that we have that are new … It can carry pretty much anything you want to put in it.

Finally, these ships should programmatically belong to the Marine Corps, not the Navy. There is an old joke that the Marine Corps is America’s second army with its own air force. It’s time for the marines to have their own navy as well. Historically, the Marine Corps operated smaller landing craft independently during critical wartime operations, proving this model viable. Today’s littoral ships should similarly be Marine-led programs, perhaps under a new deputy commandant. And the ships themselves should be crewed entirely by marines, ensuring the service has direct control over the maritime mobility and responsiveness it requires. To be sure, this would be a major change in the Department of the Navy, but a necessary one for the country, the joint force, and the Marine Corps.

The Proper Place of Critique of Military Reform

I appreciate Connable’s contribution to the debate and hope it heralds a more constructive era in the tussle over the future of the Marine Corps. Still, I think he is mostly wrong. The Marine Corps is not in a crisis and won’t be as long as it leans into adapting to the character of war, embracing the stand-in force — whether it is renamed or not. As for the so-called Chowderites, it is worth revisiting the ideas of another friend of mine, Frank Hoffman, another scholar and retired marine officer, who — in conversation with me —described the general thrust of the Chowderite critique as astrategic, ahistorical, and anti-institutional.

The 2018 and 2022 defense strategies explicitly shifted America’s strategic focus toward Asia and China, accepting calculated risk elsewhere. Yet the Chowderites stubbornly cling to outdated models, advocating for yesterday’s force structure against tomorrow’s threats. They consistently ignore clear strategic direction, geography, adversary capabilities, and emerging technologies. That is astrategic.

Second, the critics are notably ahistorical. The Marine Corps has always adapted to the strategic environment of its era — from small wars to major amphibious operations, through the Cold War, and later the counter-insurgency era. While Victor Krulak established institutional mechanisms for adaptation, he (and many others) did not anticipate the scale, sophistication, and challenge of today’s China challenge. True fidelity to Marine Corps heritage means embracing necessary changes rather than rejecting them.

Finally, the Chowderite position is essentially anti-institutional. Standing still has never been part of Marine identity. The Marine Corps exists to serve the United States, not its own parochial interests or nostalgic self-image. The critics advocate for a Marine Corps divorced from strategic reality, current joint doctrine, and policy directives. In doing so, they risk marginalizing the Marine Corps at precisely the moment when America most needs it to be — and has told it to be — relevant, agile, and forward-looking.

It is here where my critique becomes more forceful than Hoffman’s. I focus more sharply on the tactics of the Chowderites, who unprecedently employ lobbyists, smear tactics, and go above the commandant’s head, seeking meetings with senior defense officials and elected officials, including in the White House. This is simply not acceptable. As Bob Work wrote in his essential essay in the Texas National Security Review, their activities have been “highly troubling, raising serious concerns about civil‑military relations and the role of retired general and flag officers in the development of defense programs.” Unelected, unappointed cabals of retired octogenarians and nonagenarians don’t play any legitimate role in running the military services. There is no co-commandant.

Responsible critique is vital, but the criticisms leveled by the Chowderites occupy a land without strategy or context, far from the Corps’ longstanding ethos of innovation and adaptation. The Marine Corps has changed and must continue to change for good reasons. Through the presidents, members of Congress, and senators they have elected on both sides of the aisle, the American people have been loud and clear on the Marine Corps they want: It is the one described in Force Design 2030 and its subsequent annual updates. Americans want a Marine Corps that wins wars, not one only equipped to respond to lesser crises. The critics won’t catch up, so just ignore them and get back on course.

BECOME A MEMBER

Ryan Evans is the founder of War on the Rocks. In making these arguments, he builds on the work of many thinkers — mostly Marine officers, retired, active duty, and reserve — who have spent years shaping force design to prepare the United States for a war we all hope never comes.

Image: Sgt. Alyssa Chuluda

warontherocks.com · August 7, 2025

11. Philippine Senate Shelves Impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte

There is always political turmoil in the Philippines. Politics is a contact sport there.

Philippine Senate Shelves Impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte

The Senate set aside the trial of Sara Duterte, a rival of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. She and her party won more seats than expected in midterm elections in May.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/world/asia/philippines-vice-president-impeachment.html

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A protest to demand the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte of the Philippines outside the Senate in Manila on Wednesday.Credit...Jam Sta Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Francesca Regalado

Aug. 7, 2025, 4:30 a.m. ET

Vice President Sara Duterte of the Philippines moved one step closer to defeating the impeachment case against her on Wednesday, after the Senate voted to put on hold a trial that could have led to her removal.

The Senate voted 19-4 to archive the impeachment complaint against Ms. Duterte, which had been approved by the lower house. Though the Senate can still hold a trial later, the possibility is diminishing. Last month the Supreme Court found the impeachment proceedings were unconstitutional, which influenced the Senate vote. In a statement last week, Ms. Duterte called the charges an abuse by the House.

It was the latest sign that Ms. Duterte, who was impeached in February, and her party, once led by her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, is emerging from this political storm stronger than most experts expected. In May elections, candidates endorsed by the Dutertes won more seats in both chambers of Congress. That was a show of strength for Ms. Duterte, who has made no secret of her intention to succeed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., her former ally.

In the Philippines, as in the United States, the Senate tries and convicts an official impeached by the House of Representatives. The House voted in February to impeach Ms. Duterte and accused her of misusing public funds and making threats to assassinate Mr. Marcos, his wife, and Speaker Martin Romualdez of the House.

Ms. Duterte and Mr. Marcos, also the child of a former president, ran on the same ticket in 2022, winning in a landslide on the combined popularity of their two families. Their alliance quickly crumbled as the House, where allies of Mr. Marcos hold a slim majority, opened probes into the vice president’s budget.

The feud reached a peak in March, when the Marcos administration arrested Mr. Duterte and handed him over to the International Criminal Court to face charges of crimes against humanity for thousands of deaths during his war on drugs. Mr. Duterte is in prison awaiting trial at The Hague.

All but three of the 14 justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Mr. Duterte, who was president from 2016 to 2022. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Ms. Duterte’s favor on July 25, saying that the constitution bars the House from initiating impeachment proceedings against a government official more than once a year.

The House’s impeachment of Ms. Duterte was the fourth complaint that had been filed against her since December. The House did not act on the first three complaints, which were submitted by regular citizens.

The candidates backed by Mr. Marcos in the midterm elections in May won fewer seats than expected, narrowing their majority and giving Ms. Duterte and her party some momentum. Senator Rodante Marcoleta, an ally of the Dutertes who won his seat in May, made the motion to archive the articles of impeachment.

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“This is once again the Dutertes flexing their muscles and showing they still have the people and the resources to win in 2028. They’re hoping that by winning the presidential election in 2028, they would be able to extract Rodrigo Duterte from The Hague,” said Carlos Conde, a human rights researcher and political analyst.

Mr. Marcos is limited to one term as president. A conviction by the Senate would disqualify Ms. Duterte from elected office and prevent her from running for president in the next elections in 2028.

“Archiving is just putting it on the shelf, where you can take it up at a later time. It’s not junked, technically, but in the eyes of the people, those nuances don’t matter. Archiving it is like killing it,” said Edre Olalia, secretary-general of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers.

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Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.

12. Trump’s Tariff Gamble Puts America’s Ties With India at Risk

Trump’s Tariff Gamble Puts America’s Ties With India at Risk

As the president pursues his goals on Russia and trade, America’s relationship with an important partner in Asia could end up as collateral damage.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/world/asia/trump-india-tariffs.html

Assembling printed circuit boards at factory in Bengaluru, India, in June.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

By Anupreeta Das

Aug. 6, 2025

President Trump has staked enormous political capital on being the one to end the war in Ukraine, even asserting that he could do so “in 24 hours.” In perhaps his biggest gamble yet to achieve that goal, he pledged on Wednesday to punish India with tariffs of 50 percent for buying Russian oil.

At stake is the relationship between the United States and an increasingly important strategic partner in Asia. India, the world’s most populous democracy, and the United States, its most powerful one, have an unusual relationship. They are friendly but not close, brought together by mutual interests and shared values, especially in recent decades.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump seemed ready to ditch that relationship. He doubled already hefty tariffs on Indian exports to the United States for its steadfast refusal to stop buying oil from Russia, in an effort to pressure Russia to end the war. Mr. Trump has accused India of helping Russia finance its war on Ukraine through oil purchases; India has said it needs cheap oil to meet the energy needs of its fast-growing economy.

India called the additional tariffs “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” pointing out that it was being punished for doing something — buying Russian oil at a discounted price — that other nations have done, although it didn’t mention names. China is the largest buyer of Russian oil, and Turkey has also deepened its energy links with Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine, without incurring similar penalties.

Analysts said Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics could damage the longstanding ties between India and the United States.

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in India and Russia? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“We are better off together than apart,” said Atul Keshap, a retired U.S. diplomat and president of the U.S.-India Business Council. “The partnership forged by our elected leaders over the past 25 years is worth preserving, and has achieved considerable mutual prosperity and advanced our shared strategic interests.”

It’s difficult to quantify what exactly America would lose if its relationship with India cools. India is a valuable strategic partner for the United States, acting as a counterweight to China. It is also important to many American companies, including Apple, which has shifted some manufacturing of its products to India from China.

Image

The site of the Foxconn Apple Project in Bengaluru, India.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

Ajay Srivastava, a former trade official at the Global Trade Research Initiative, a New Delhi-based think tank, said the U.S. action “will push India to reconsider its strategic alignment, deepening ties with Russia, China and many other countries.”

India and the United States, along with Japan and Australia, are part of a diplomatic partnership called the Quad, set up largely to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region. India is planning to host the Quad Leaders’ Summit later this year. Mr. Trump was expected to attend, although it’s now unclear if he will.

For India, the costs of a damaged relationship may prove to be higher. Mr. Trump’s move puts Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a bind. Russia is the source of 45 percent of its oil imports. If India stops buying Russian oil, accepting higher prices for consumers and domestic manufacturing, it would be politically damaging for Mr. Modi’s government.

If it ignores Mr. Trump’s threat and continues buying Russian oil, the hit to India’s economy will be far costlier. The higher tariffs could cut India’s more than $86 billion in exports to the United States by half, according to the Global Trade Research Initiative, an Indian research group. The United States is India’s biggest trading partner, and exports account for nearly 20 percent of India’s economy. India ranks only 10th among American trade partners in goods.

India has also come to value American backing for its bid to be recognized as a global superpower. Mr. Modi has touted his relationship with Mr. Trump, courting the U.S. president during his first term in office and calling him a “true friend.”

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But that friendship, as many American allies have learned, may mean little when Mr. Trump’s own priorities are at stake.

Image

President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at the White House in February.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump announced that he had struck deals with Japan, Korea and the European Union, but even after months of negotiation, India had not reached an agreement. India was reluctant to make concessions on politically sensitive sectors like dairy and agriculture.

India also publicly denied Mr. Trump’s repeated claims that he helped broker a cease-fire between India and Pakistan after a brief, four-day conflict between the two neighbors in May. India has maintained that the cease-fire was negotiated bilaterally with Pakistan, and Indian leaders bristled at Mr. Trump’s willingness to insert himself into that bitter rivalry.

It is not yet clear whether the punitive tariffs Mr. Trump has threatened will ever take effect. In the executive order he issued on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said the tariffs would be implemented within a month, but he could modify the order if circumstances changed. The order included a provision that the United States would look at other countries’ purchases of Russian oil as well.

So far, there is no indication that Mr. Trump intends to take a similar approach to China, which is the biggest buyer of Russian oil. Chinese and U.S. officials are in the middle of sensitive negotiations about potential trade agreements after an initial round of retaliatory tariffs threatened to destabilize the global economy.

With his tariff moves against India, Mr. Trump is keeping his eye on big strategic goals — a deal with China, and keeping the pressure on Russia before a potential meeting with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, which he disclosed on Wednesday.

Far from being “a dead economy,” as Mr. Trump’s called it, India is the fastest-growing large economy in the world. But its place on the president’s list of priorities may be much less certain.

Anupreeta Das covers India and South Asia for The Times. She is based in New Delhi.

13. Putting Operation Spider’s Web in Context

Worth refection.

Excerpts:

Given the proclivity of senior military leaders and politicians to bite on revolutionary-technology hyperbole, it is also imperative to routinely point out the inherent tradeoffs between risk acceptance and risk avoidance, between commonsense use and overreliance on technology, and between exciting tactical effects and enduring strategic success. It is good to applaud the Ukrainians as they adapt and sometimes dramatically succeed in this war. But we should not extrapolate our entire understanding of warfare from their narrow contextual experience.

Given that I am writing this article for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, I also argue we must continue to work together to break down the artificial and often illogical conceptual barriers between irregular and conventional warfare. There probably has not been a recorded conventional war that did not include some type of so-called irregular operation leveraging clandestine intelligence, sabotage, resistance forces, or raids. Deep airfield raids and all types of novel technical adaptations are regular “irregular” components of conventional warfare.

And while I join others in arguing that the line between irregular and conventional war is artificial, we must also refrain from immediately attaching greater meaning to special operations exploits. As exciting and novel as combat or special operations might look from time to time, war goes on in places like Ukraine. Soldiers fight in trenches, assault across open ground, fire artillery at one another, and kill each other with rifles, grenades, and even knives. They also use evolved 100-year-old drone technology. Two things can be true at once without one devaluing or erasing the other.

Operation Spider’s Web does not indicate a change in the way wars are fought. It does highlight the importance of human adaptability in war. We must periodically remind ourselves that all Western militaries describe war as a fundamentally human endeavor. In that context, technology is a useful tool only when applied by humans. I recommend focusing here on more immediate and practical lessons. Foremost: Given the broader historical context of deep-penetration raids and indirect-fire attacks on vulnerable airfields, Ukraine’s operations certainly recommend a careful review of standing Western airfield security measures.

Putting Operation Spider’s Web in Context

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/08/07/putting-operation-spiders-web-in-context/

by Ben Connable

08.07.2025 at 06:00am

Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of the Irregular Warfare Initiative as part of a republishing arrangement between SWJ and IWI. The original article was published on June 20, 2025 and is available here.

On June 1, 2025, the Ukrainian special intelligence services launched Operation Spider’s Web, a remotely triggered drone attack that may have damaged or destroyed over 40 Russian strategic aircraft at four air bases deep inside the Russian Federation’s borders. Spider’s Web was undeniably successful: Russia’s capacity to launch cruise missiles into Ukrainian cities and kill civilians has been sharply curtailed. Part of the Russian nuclear triad may have been reduced by more than 30%. And Russia certainly will have to reallocate some precious combat manpower for internal security missions. I and others who support Ukraine in its war against Russia celebrated these attacks.

But nothing about Operation Spider’s Web changes either the nature or character of warfare, however those overused terms might be defined. Nor is this special intelligence operation indicative of any broader change in war that might already have been underway. Drones have been a feature of warfare since World War II and have been in regular use in conflict since the early 1980s. Irregular operations like Spider’s Web have long been a consistent feature of even large-scale conventional war. Moreover, successful deep penetration airfield raids have routinely occurred since they were first mastered by special operations forces in the early 1940s.

So why is there so much inclination to bite on the idea that a novel integration of an old technology with an old tactic indicates a change in the very nature of war itself? I argue in my book Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War, that a yawning gap in modern military historical analysis has made it difficult to put emerging events in context. Ahistoricism, a disregard or lack of concern for historical context, makes us more prone to buy into the idea that the very nature of war is in constant, uncontrollable flux.

War is not in constant or high-amplitude flux. Instead, it evolves in form and remains far more steady in function. But this overreaction to Operation Spider’s Web—and more broadly to the use of drones and AI in some modern wars—provides an excellent opportunity to help put exciting irregular operations like these in historical context.

Airfield Raids in World War II

The lack of high-speed trucks, the density of the frontlines, and the newness of air warfare effectively precluded ground attacks against airfields in World War I. However, there were at least 130 ground attacks on airfields conducted in World War II resulting in 367 aircraft destroyed. In Snakes in the Eagle’s Nest: A History of Ground Attacks on Air Bases, Alan Vick recorded a total of 645 ground attacks on airfields worldwide from 1940 through the early 1990s that resulted in 843 aircraft destroyed and 1,207 aircraft damaged. Many such attacks have occurred in the intervening years.

Getting more to the point: many of these attacks were long-range infiltration missions conducted deep in the enemy’s rear security zone. Some were launched from submarines, small boats, or by air assault. Vick briefly recounts the British use of deep-penetration ground raids, particularly in North Africa, to illustrate the historical precedent for such operations.

Small teams of commandos would form into raid platoons mounted on about a dozen light trucks, each packed tight with water, fuel, food, explosives, radios, machineguns, and even antiaircraft and antitank guns. As early as 1940, the Long Range Patrols were pushing hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines to raid Axis airfields, destroying planes and immolating thousands of gallons of precious aviation fuel.

Long-range special operations raiding forces all but lived behind the Axis front lines. Sometimes they conducted raids within a hundred kilometers of the front, but other raids required dangerous round-trip treks of 2,000 or even over 4,000 kilometers. For example, in January 1941, a long-range patrol pushed over 1,100 kilometers forward of friendly lines to attack an Italian airfield and base at Murzuk.

Another deep raid in December of that year simultaneously targeted four Axis airfields. As part of that multi-pronged attack, Captain Bill Fraser and a four-man team sneaked onto the airfield at Agedabia, Libya and destroyed 37 aircraft with explosive charges while suffering no casualties. Perhaps the best-known British raid occurred at Sidi Haneish (an airfield in northwestern Egypt), where British raiders drove their light trucks across the airfield, firing machineguns to destroy or damage well over 40 aircraft. They took only two casualties and escaped.

Airfield Raids after World War II through the 21st Century

Airfield attacks were also a routine occurrence in major wars following World War II. Vick recounts the nearly 500 attacks by Vietnamese forces against U.S. airbases in Vietnam and Thailand. In contrast to World War II, only a handful of those—20, or about 4% of the total—were ground assaults or clandestine sapper attacks. Vietnamese attackers primarily relied on a mix of mortars, rockets, direct fire, and other weapons to destroy or damage well over 1,000 aircraft.

For example, on October 1, 1964, in a carefully planned small-unit raid, a Vietnamese insurgent team moved six 81-mm mortars into position near the Bien Hoa airfield and launched 83 rounds onto target. This simple, very-low-cost raid destroyed five B-57 bombers and damaged 15 more, effectively putting a U.S. bomber squadron out of commission. Four American personnel died and 70 were wounded. No attackers were killed or captured.

In the Falklands War, a British Special Air Service unit landed by small boat and helicopter to raid the Argentine airfield at Pebble Island, destroying 11 aircraft with only two soldiers wounded. Throughout the post-2001 Iraq and Afghanistan wars, insurgents routinely attacked airfields by infiltrating close enough to launch indirect fire attacks or—less frequently—infiltrate or assault the airfield perimeters. In probably the best-known of these attacks, Taliban fighters infiltrated and attacked the coalition airfield at Camp Bastion, Afghanistan in 2012. They destroyed six AV-8B fighter-bombers and damaged two more.

A Very (very) Brief History of Drones in War and Changes in Our Perceptions

While the proliferation of small drones is fairly new, drones themselves are old technology. Probably the first electronically guided drone was built before 1910. Suicide drones like the Kettering Bug were successfully tested by the end of World War I. Television guided attack drones were employed many times during World War II: at least 18 U.S. Navy drones hit their targets in the Pacific theater.

By the 1980s, both the Israelis and South Africans were routinely using large and small drones in combat in places like Lebanon and Angola. Mini-quadcopter drones with cameras were developed in the late 1980s. American military and intelligence services routinely used drones starting in the early 1990s. And by the 2010s, drones were in wide use by most regular and irregular forces on the planet.

Why, then, is there a collective sense that drones are suddenly and radically altering warfare? I argue in Ground Combat that several converging factors are at play. Primarily, long-running drone operations emerged from the shadows. Military forces that had tried to classify and hide drone flights for decades lost control of the narrative as flight trackers, mobile phones, and online videos uncovered once secretive operations.

In parallel, all militaries increasingly recognized the information warfare value of drones and competed to promulgate their own videos. And the sheer volume of publicly available drone videos multiplied as small, commercial drones went into mass production. These trends contributed to a collective and broadly mistaken sense that drones were a sudden phenomenon “changing everything” about war.

Back to Operation Spider’s Web: A Novel Technical Means in Broader Context

Also contrary to popular perception, Spider’s Web was certainly not the first surprise close-proximity drone attack on a military airfield. We do not have a full accounting of all incidents from every battlefield in the world, but I was able to find references to about 20 historical attacks with a basic internet search.

For example, Iraqi insurgents have been launching small drones at airfields with some frequency for years (and continue to do so). Syrian rebels launched attack drones at the Russian airbase at Khmeimim several times in 2018. Rebels in Myanmar routinely attack junta airbases with small drones. A mid-2024 article describes junta efforts to improve their airfield counter-drone defenses with help from the Indian Air Force in the face of repeated small-drone attacks.

In this historical context, Ukraine’s recent airfield attacks take on different meaning. They clearly were ingenious in context. But this was a narrow, carefully planned operation conducted by a country that can ill-afford to risk its elite troops on long-range airfield raids. It combined over 100-year-old drone technology with over 80-year-old deep airfield raid tactics and likely equally proven clandestine logistics techniques.

Based on the videos and results of the operation, the Ukrainians traded risk for effect. In other words, greater effect might have been achieved with a human raid. Russia’s airfields appear to have been poorly secured; one could easily imagine a Special Air Service–like special operations ground raid taking out far more aircraft than the remote-controlled drones actually destroyed or damaged.

In the Ukrainian raid and in other modern operations, technology was used in place of humans at the point of attack. As a result, human adaptability and resilience were removed from the operational equation. At one site, Russian civilians may have been able to knock some drones out of action by throwing rocks at them. As previous attacks in Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere show, airfields can be successfully protected against drones with layered counter-drone systems. We should not perceive a temporary or isolated security failure as a revolution in warfare.

Implications for Understanding Modern Irregular and Conventional Warfare

Foremost, it is imperative that we improve our collective historical understanding of modern warfare to reduce our vulnerability to hyperbole, technophilia, and technophobia. Anyone armed with this collective knowledge of the history of drones, of deep-penetration airfield attacks, and of the many small-drone attacks on military airbases in the past decade certainly would be less inclined to see Operation Spider’s Web as revolutionary. This dynamic applies to all of warfare: understand history in width, depth, and context to better understand the present and to better forecast the near future.

Given the proclivity of senior military leaders and politicians to bite on revolutionary-technology hyperbole, it is also imperative to routinely point out the inherent tradeoffs between risk acceptance and risk avoidance, between commonsense use and overreliance on technology, and between exciting tactical effects and enduring strategic success. It is good to applaud the Ukrainians as they adapt and sometimes dramatically succeed in this war. But we should not extrapolate our entire understanding of warfare from their narrow contextual experience.

Given that I am writing this article for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, I also argue we must continue to work together to break down the artificial and often illogical conceptual barriers between irregular and conventional warfare. There probably has not been a recorded conventional war that did not include some type of so-called irregular operation leveraging clandestine intelligence, sabotage, resistance forces, or raids. Deep airfield raids and all types of novel technical adaptations are regular “irregular” components of conventional warfare.

And while I join others in arguing that the line between irregular and conventional war is artificial, we must also refrain from immediately attaching greater meaning to special operations exploits. As exciting and novel as combat or special operations might look from time to time, war goes on in places like Ukraine. Soldiers fight in trenches, assault across open ground, fire artillery at one another, and kill each other with rifles, grenades, and even knives. They also use evolved 100-year-old drone technology. Two things can be true at once without one devaluing or erasing the other.

Operation Spider’s Web does not indicate a change in the way wars are fought. It does highlight the importance of human adaptability in war. We must periodically remind ourselves that all Western militaries describe war as a fundamentally human endeavor. In that context, technology is a useful tool only when applied by humans. I recommend focusing here on more immediate and practical lessons. Foremost: Given the broader historical context of deep-penetration raids and indirect-fire attacks on vulnerable airfields, Ukraine’s operations certainly recommend a careful review of standing Western airfield security measures.

Tags: drone warfare, drones, FPV drones, Operation Spider Web, Russia-Ukraine War, Russo-Ukrainian War

About The Author

Ben Connable
Ben Connable, PhD, is the executive director of the Battle Research Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to military field research and modern historical analysis. He is also adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a part-time principal research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

14. Light Footprint, Heavy Stakes: The Case for Staying Engaged in Iraq

Excerpts:

Conclusion

Many of the Iraqis I had the opportunity to work with harbored ambitions familiar to many here in America; they desired a better future for their children, stability, and the freedom to live their lives free of fear and terrorism. They believed in their country’s future, but they were anxious about the expanding presence of Iranian-backed militias and the growing influence of the likes of China. Many understood, with quiet frustration, that real autonomy remained aspirational. Those same individuals hoped for a U.S. that would stay engaged, because they knew that without American presence, ISIL could reconstitute, Iran would be emboldened, and China would have a freer hand to play.

Few dispute that the United States must prioritize bigger theaters—China and the Indo-Pacific foremost amongst them. But those priorities don’t require walking away from Iraq. A light, smart, sustained presence is not mission creep—it’s a strategic hedge against future instability, a check on adversarial influence, and a quiet but powerful signal that America does not abandon hard places once the headlines move on.

The path forward isn’t about escalation. It’s about disciplined engagement—just enough to prevent a slide back into chaos and give Iraqis the tools to shape their own future. If Iraq collapses again, the U.S. won’t have the luxury of staying uninvolved. And if we’re forced to return, it could be on someone else’s terms—and at a much higher cost.

Light Footprint, Heavy Stakes: The Case for Staying Engaged in Iraq

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/08/07/light-footprint-heavy-stakes-the-case-for-staying-engaged-in-iraq/

by Rob Pierce

08.07.2025 at 06:00am

Major General Kevin C. Leahy (L), Commander of CJTF-OIR meets with Iraqi PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani (R) and Daniel Rubinstein (C), U.S. Chargé d'Affaires in Iraq. (Photo: Iraqi Government)

On December 27, 2019, a U.S. forward operating base in Kirkuk, Iraq—K1 Air Base—was struck by 32 Katyusha 107mm rockets launched by Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iranian-aligned Shia militia group. A contractor who served as an interpreter for a SEAL platoon deployed to K1, Nawres Hamid—a proud father and a proud American of Iraqi ethnicity—was tragically killed in the attack.

Iranian militias conducted more than a dozen attacks on U.S. bases in the months preceding the K1 attack, but this attack was the first of its magnitude and was clearly intended to inflict casualties. Then CENTCOM Commander General Frank McKenzie Jr. later wrote that this attack “was a game-changer, and it was obvious to me that we would be responding.”

The U.S. did respond, and with force, leading to a back-and-forth escalation between the U.S. and Iran that resulted in the killing of Iran’s notorious Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and an Iranian ballistic missile attack targeting U.S. military bases in Iraq.

When the president delivered his speech following the missile attack, the SEALs at K1 gathered around the TV in their Tactical Operations Center (TOC)—still scarred from the rocket attack—to find out if what began at K1 would catapult the U.S. towards a new military campaign against Iran, with them as the war’s first participants.

I served as the intelligence officer for that SEAL platoon at K1. While the president’s speech ushered in a period of de-escalation, I will always remember the increasing awareness of being vulnerable at a tactical level to the strategic decisions made by those in Washington and Tehran.

I also remember asking myself the same questions many U.S. servicemembers in Iraq are surely asking to this day: Why are we still here? Is it worth it? With tensions now spiking to levels not seen since those volatile days in early 2020, the answers matter more than ever. This essay argues that it is worth it—if we’re smart about how we stay. The United States can and should maintain a modest, sustained presence in Iraq, including the 2,500 troops currently in country. Doing so is essential to preserving regional stability, checking adversarial influence, and avoiding the kind of costly reintervention that history warns us against.

From Shock and Awe to the Present

The collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 following the U.S. Shock and Awe invasion marked the beginning of one of the most ambitious—and costly—nation-building efforts in American history. The U.S.-led invasion quickly toppled a brutal dictatorship, but what followed was a series of cascading failures. The Coalition Provisional Authority’s sweeping de-Ba’athification policies and the disbanding of the Iraqi Army gutted the state’s bureaucracy and security forces, sending thousands of young, armed men home without jobs. Widespread looting went unchecked. Iraq’s borders were left porous, leading to an influx of foreign jihadists. The initial absence of basic law and order—combined with a lack of coherent planning—lit the fuse for a years-long cycle of sectarian violence. Meanwhile, Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps exploited the security vacuum to sow distrust against the U.S. and Iraqi Sunnis.

The 2007 U.S. troop “surge” helped temporarily suppress insurgent activity and opened space for limited political reconciliation. But the gains were never institutionalized. When U.S. forces withdrew in 2011, Iraqi politics remained brittle and Iraqi forces—with the notable exception of special operations units—lacked a strong will to fight. Then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s increasingly sectarian and authoritarian rule marginalized Sunnis and deepened the country’s divisions. Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s public signaling of a full withdrawal—combined with diplomatic disengagement and apologies for U.S. power—encouraged adversaries to simply wait the U.S. out.

By 2014, Iraq was unraveling. ISIL stormed across the Syrian border and seized vast swaths of Iraqi territory. The U.S. returned to Iraq in an advisory and counterterrorism role, working with Iraqi and Kurdish forces to defeat the Islamic State’s territorial caliphate. By the time I deployed to K1 in 2019 I saw a country that had traded one form of instability for another. While ISIL no longer held ground (those we targeted mostly lived in caves and wadis), Iranian-backed militias were expanding their reach—sometimes with more influence than the Iraqi government itself.

Today, Iraq has a nominally elected government under Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, but real authority remains fragmented. Popular Mobilization Forces operate semi-autonomously under Iranian influence, not Baghdad’s command. Attempts to integrate these militias under state control are ongoing, but such efforts appear more symbolic than structural.

The state’s weaknesses extend beyond politics and security. Oil revenues still underwrite ~90% of the national budget, but chronic corruption siphons funds meant for reconstruction and services. Corruption remains endemic, youth unemployment is dangerously high, and basic services like electricity, clean water, and healthcare are erratic at best. Americans would be shocked to see the burn pits and the lack of public services we witnessed in places like Kirkuk. Yet, despite the hardships endured, in 2024, more than half of Iraqis believed the country was on the right track for the first time since 2004, an indication of renewed optimism and progress.

The Threat of an Unstable Iraq

Try as the U.S. might to actualize its pivot to the Indo-Pacific and focus on strategic competition with China, the gravitational pull of the Middle East continues to shape Department of Defense priorities and capture significant public attention, as exemplified by the recent 12-Day War. Similarly, hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon, Houthi attacks on maritime shipping, and the post-Assad reemergence of the Syrian state remain in the headlines. Yet Iraq—once the crucible of America’s post-9/11 military interventions, where more than 4,500 American service members lost their lives, over $2 trillion was spent, and two decades were devoted to a deeply fraught stabilization effort—has all but vanished from the national conversation.

But Iraq is not dormant, and its stability—or lack thereof—impacts nearly every major U.S. regional concern. A destabilized Iraq, absent U.S. combat power, would inevitably lead to amplified Iranian influence and a reinvigorated ISIL. Additionally, such a state could create the conditions for expanded conflict between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq and Northeast Syria, improved logistics flow from Iran to militias in Syria and Lebanon and thus a greater security risk to Israel, and increased concern amongst Gulf Coordination Council states for their own security.

Continued U.S. presence is largely designed to prevent such risks from materializing because instability in Iraq doesn’t just threaten Baghdad—it spills into Syria, Turkey, Jordan, and the Gulf. For example, cross-border militia activity between Iraq and Syria allowed Iran to funnel weapons to proxy groups in Syria and Lebanon, demonstrating how crises in Iraq can upend broader strategic priorities and regional stability. And as the rise of ISIL demonstrates, when the U.S. is forced to re-engage, it is often on worse terms and at greater cost.

Critically, a destabilized Iraq does not simply threaten U.S. interests in the Middle East. If U.S. troops were once more forced to make a significant commitment to Iraq to fight, for instance, a reconstituted ISIL caliphate, the threat to American interests would be global. With the Chinese Communist Party’s intentions to take Taiwan and global hegemonic ambitions, and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and aggressive revisionism, the U.S. can ill-afford a Middle East conflict that siphons away critical combat troops to the Middle East, yet that is exactly what could happen were Iraq to destabilize.

The risk of an unstable Iraq is compounded by the accelerating presence of America’s strategic competitors inside Iraq, as China and Russia deepen their ties. China, now Iraq’s largest trading partner, invests billions through its Belt and Road Initiative, trading resources and access for influence without any concern for governance or transparency. Russia, meanwhile, remains an active player in Iraqi energy markets and reconstruction projects. And Iran, despite its recent setbacks, remains a powerful power broker, leveraging militias and political proxies to shape Iraq’s future.

Iraq also remains one of the world’s top oil exporters, and its output plays a critical role in stabilizing global energy markets. Even though the United States no longer depends on Middle Eastern oil imports, energy is a globally traded commodity. Disruptions in Iraq—whether due to unrest, sabotage, or militia violence—can ripple across global supply chains and drive-up prices for American consumers and businesses alike.

Why the United States Should Stay Engaged

Washington seeks a stable Iraq that is sovereign, not a satellite of Iran; capable, not a breeding ground for terrorist resurgence; and independent, not beholden to China or Russia. That doesn’t require a democratic utopia—only a stable, resilient state that can manage its own affairs.

The 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq maintained as part of Combined Joint Task Force—Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) may seem like the legacy footprint of a bygone era, but their mission is neither symbolic nor static. American forces tasked with advising, assisting, and enabling Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and Kurdish Peshmerga in ongoing counterterrorism operations can also coordinate airpower (including recent strikes in Kirkuk), facilitate intelligence collection, and offer logistical, medical, and command-and-control capabilities that Iraqi forces alone cannot yet execute.. CJTF-OIR also enables interoperability with Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service—the country’s most capable and professional fighting force.

Importantly, this limited troop presence helps the U.S. retain situational awareness in a country that continues to serve at a strategic crossroads. And, while the risk to U.S. personnel is certainly not zero, it is manageable; the U.S. divested of vulnerable bases like K1 after the rocket attacks of 2019-2020 and consolidated its forces in hardened bases like the Erbil and Al Asad Air Base. With just 2,500 troops, the U.S. is able to demonstrate that it holds the biggest stick, and so long as our adversaries know we are willing to use it, their willingness and ability to achieve their aims remains diminished.

The Iraqi government, for its part, has repeatedly expressed a desire for continued U.S. partnership, particularly in security and counterterrorism. That the current prime minister governs within a precarious parliamentary coalition, pressured by Iran-aligned political factions and militias that demand a full U.S. withdrawal, is added reason for the U.S to stay. Leaving would only empower those militias.

Many Iraqis—especially in the military, Kurdish north, and among civil society—still see value in a restrained U.S. presence that supports, but does not dominate, their path towards security—particularly if it prevents a reemergence of ISIL and further consolidation of Iranian power.

Competing effectively in Iraq does not require massive reinvestment. A modest U.S. presence—focused on advising Iraqi forces, enabling counterterrorism operations, and providing targeted economic and diplomatic engagement—can go a long way. This light-touch approach won’t dominate headlines or stretch budgets, but it can preserve hard-won gains and prevent the kind of collapse that would demand a far costlier re-entry.

History makes clear that the price of walking away is far higher than the cost of staying smartly engaged. Strategic neglect won’t make Iraq irrelevant—it will make it unstable, and instability in one part of the world leads to instability elsewhere.

Conclusion

Many of the Iraqis I had the opportunity to work with harbored ambitions familiar to many here in America; they desired a better future for their children, stability, and the freedom to live their lives free of fear and terrorism. They believed in their country’s future, but they were anxious about the expanding presence of Iranian-backed militias and the growing influence of the likes of China. Many understood, with quiet frustration, that real autonomy remained aspirational. Those same individuals hoped for a U.S. that would stay engaged, because they knew that without American presence, ISIL could reconstitute, Iran would be emboldened, and China would have a freer hand to play.

Few dispute that the United States must prioritize bigger theaters—China and the Indo-Pacific foremost amongst them. But those priorities don’t require walking away from Iraq. A light, smart, sustained presence is not mission creep—it’s a strategic hedge against future instability, a check on adversarial influence, and a quiet but powerful signal that America does not abandon hard places once the headlines move on.

The path forward isn’t about escalation. It’s about disciplined engagement—just enough to prevent a slide back into chaos and give Iraqis the tools to shape their own future. If Iraq collapses again, the U.S. won’t have the luxury of staying uninvolved. And if we’re forced to return, it could be on someone else’s terms—and at a much higher cost.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense. The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense of the information contained therein.

Tags: Iran, Iraq, Middle East security, operation inherent resolve

About The Author

Rob Pierce
Rob Pierce deployed as a Naval Intelligence Officer with SEAL Team THREE to Iraq and the Indo-Pacific and later served as a China analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He holds degrees from Wake Forest University and Georgetown University and is currently a Vice President at American Global Strategies.

15. Beyond Icebreakers: The United States Needs a Bold New Approach to Arctic Security Equipping in an Era of Strategic Competition

Excerpts:

The current US Arctic strategy—centered on a small fleet of delayed, expensive, and potentially vulnerable PSCs/ASCs—has failed to adapt to today’s dynamic threat environment and that is a liability. It reflects a legacy acquisition mindset ill-suited to the speed, scale, and asymmetry of modern warfare. Rather than doubling down on sunk costs in the PSC/ASC acquisition program—the United States should redesign its Arctic posture to a more affordable and agile force design like that advocated by thinkers like Brose, Colby, and Doshi. This includes off-the-shelf, ice-capable patrol ships, rapidly deployable A2/AD capabilities, low-cost domain-awareness systems, and dual-use infrastructure investments.

Simultaneously, the United States must deepen its reliance on allies to share burdens and close capability gaps. NATO should take the lead in securing the European High North flank, allowing the United States and Canada to focus on the Indo-Pacific. Cooperative procurement—rather than duplicative efforts—can reduce costs, speed delivery, and improve interoperability. Congress should revise current laws to permit the acquisition and operation of proven, off-the-shelf, foreign-built icebreakers, enabling the Coast Guard to field urgently needed Arctic-capable platforms in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.

Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense must act now to recalibrate Arctic defense investments—or risk falling behind in a critical theater of twenty-first-century strategic competition. If current PSC/ASC delays continue and the United States fails to field sufficient Arctic platforms it may cede the initiative to Russia and China, risking an unchecked buildup of adversary Arctic capability in the High North with corresponding risks of the potential of denial of access to the region in a crisis.

Beyond Icebreakers: The United States Needs a Bold New Approach to Arctic Security Equipping in an Era of Strategic Competition - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jeremy M. McKenzie · August 7, 2025

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What does a $1,000 Ukrainian drone have to do with a Russian strategic aircraft worth hundreds of millions? The former can destroy the latter—and that asymmetry requires defense planners to think differently. Recent Ukrainian and Israeli strikes have shown that expensive, high-value assets are increasingly vulnerable to cheap, distributed threats. The threat is not just from drones, however; a similar dynamic is on display as Chinese DF-21 and DF-26 and Russian 3M54 Kalibr missiles pose increasing risks to US surface combatants. Yet, as strategic rivalry increasingly heats up in the high latitudes, the US Arctic strategy still hinges on a troubled program to produce a handful of costly, vulnerable, and delayed Polar and Arctic Security Cutters (PSCs and ASCs). That is a strategic liability.

The United States must reassess its Arctic strategy and defense acquisitions model, shifting from costly, vulnerable systems to a distributed, resilient, and NATO-integrated force. A credible strategy demands not only deeper NATO integration but also a new acquisition model that prioritizes modularity, mobility, survivability, affordability, and interoperability. These elements are essential to confronting asymmetric threats in the High North while deterring China and Russia across multiple theaters.

The Arctic in Strategic Context: An Ancillary but Critical Theater

The strategic importance of the Arctic is readily apparent when viewing a globe from the top—where the United States and Russia become neighbors, and Greenland’s strategic value becomes unmistakable. The Arctic, once locked in permanent pack ice, is suddenly much more accessible due to climate change. Thus, the fabled Arctic sea routes are becoming increasingly realistic, reducing transit times by as much as a third. Likewise, the Arctic holds many potential riches including an estimated $1 trillion in minerals, 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves, and 13 percent of its undiscovered oil reserves. Recent headlines have discussed the Norwegian king’s visit to Svalbard, President Trump’s proposal to annex Greenland, and joint Chinese and Russian air and naval patrols to the region.

The Arctic has long held strategic importance. Russia first discussed moving its naval fleet via the Arctic in 1897, just before the Russo-Japanese War. During World War II, the Arctic was an important, albeit ancillary, theater, which is perhaps best illustrated by the 8,500 Japanese troops stationed in the Aleutian Islands, prompting deployment of four hundred thousand US troops to Alaska. Hitler’s occupation of Norway required over three hundred thousand German troops—tying down forces needed elsewhere. Lend-Lease Arctic convoys underscored the importance of Arctic sea lines of communication—as well as an icebreaker’s potential as an air defense platform, with the Soviet vessel Krasin shooting down two German fighter planes. Finally, during the Cold War the region served as the primary vector for intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers as the Soviet Union and the United States squared off under the strategy of mutually assured destruction.

Today, the Arctic has returned to the forefront as a territory for strategic competition between China, Russia, and the United States. The main theaters in that competition are Europe and the Indo-Pacific region, but the Arctic remains a critical ancillary theater that serves as a strategic enabler—shaping outcomes elsewhere. Russia’s threat to NATO’s High North extends from the Gulf of Finland to the Barents Sea. The Russian Navy also poses considerable risk to Svalbard, the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap, and the broader North Atlantic. By securing NATO’s northern flank and constraining Russian naval operations in the Arctic, the United States reduces the risk of a two-front maritime conflict—freeing up forces to sustain pressure on China in the Indo-Pacific.

Meanwhile, China is expanding its Arctic influence through investments, many with dual-use potential. It has also shown a growing pattern of strategic activity in the region, from air and naval patrols to expanding icebreaker acquisitions and deployments.

In short, as the recent US Air Force Arctic Strategy asserts, “the Arctic’s capacity as a strategic buffer is eroding.” It is a pivotal flank in a world of global, multidomain strategic competition—one that demands US strategy and acquisitions rapidly evolve to meet the challenge.

Why Big Ships Alone Can’t Win the Arctic for the United States and NATO

Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that national power is directly tied to maritime supremacy, asserting that control of the seas enables power projection, economic strength, and global influence. His framework for seapower included geography, overseas bases, national will, and a powerful navy coupled with a merchant marine. While Mahan’s name is often associated with large fleets and capital ships, his core argument was more nuanced: achieving control of the sea to support national objectives.

Admiral James Stavridis, in Sea Power, echoes Mahan in the modern context, writing, “The Sea is One, meaning that no matter how large or small a given body of water is upon the oceans, in the end it is connected and a part of a single system.” Therefore, Arctic fleet acquisitions cannot be made in isolation. Rather, they must support US goals in the Pacific, Atlantic, and beyond. This involves ensuring survivability, mobility, adaptability, and the production of sufficient platforms for use in potential great power conflicts.

Admiral Stavridis warns that modern naval operations are threatened by increasingly sophisticated antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) systems like drones, long-range antiship missiles, and submarines, many of which are now in the hands of US adversaries. In the increasingly contested Arctic waters, large PSCs and ASCs may struggle to survive where drones, missiles, and submarines render them vulnerable, slow-moving targets. In this context the United States must ask: Do current Arctic investments enhance or undermine our broader Indo-Pacific posture? Could smaller, modular, ice-capable vessels integrated with allied forces offer greater value? Additionally, should the United States look to purchase a nonmilitarized polar icebreaker?

As Christian Brose writes in The Kill Chain, the United States remains overly reliant on “large, expensive, exquisite, heavily manned, and hard to replace platforms”—a model increasingly misaligned with modern warfare and fiscal reality. Elbridge Colby and Rush Doshi echo this, asserting that competing in a new era of great power rivalry requires scalable, resilient, and coalition-ready force structures.

If the United States is serious about pivoting to Asia to counter China’s rise in an era of increasing budget constraints and troubled procurement projects, then every acquisition needs to be judged according to its ability to meet the core threat. The Arctic should not be an exception.

A Modular Arctic Strategy: Mobility, Survivability, Affordability, and Interoperability

The United States faces a significant icebreaker gap in the Arctic, with China and Russia collectively operating around forty-five icebreakers—depending on how they are counted—versus two aging and one commercially procured icebreaker in the US fleet. The disparity remains stark even if the comparison is limited to Russia’s seven nuclear-powered icebreakers. This shortfall impacts not just presence but also emergency response capabilities, logistics support, and the ability to secure sea lines of communication.

Yet, as Andreas Kuersten argued almost a decade ago, the icebreaker gap is not a “defense readiness” gap. This fact remains true today. The US Navy is even on record stating that a lack of icebreaking capability “would have minimal impact.” If the United States wants to “out-compete” China and constrain Russia—it must evaluate its acquisitions and strategies to align with these goals.

Both Brose and Colby argue that the United States’ most demanding strategic objective is countering China’s goal of hegemony in the Pacific. Brose details that in the event of a conflict, “US and allied forces would have to close the kill chain against 350 Chinese ships during the first three days of a conflict.” Yet, as Rush Doshi warns, “the United States cannot compete with China symmetrically—that is, dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship.”

The United States and its allies must rethink their approach to great power conflict. Instead of centering Arctic strategy on a few vulnerable, high-cost platforms, the United States should pursue a modular and diversified force posture emphasizing survivability, scale, and allied interoperability to achieve US strategic objectives. First, the United States should invest in modular, ice-capable patrol ships that can be adapted to a variety of missions, from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and A2/AD to humanitarian support. Canada’s Harry DeWolf–class and Finland’s forthcoming Pohjanmaa-class offer affordable, proven templates that could be adapted for US needs.

Second, Arctic-deployable A2/AD systems should be part of the foundation of regional deterrence. These systems’ mobility provides flexibility not only in the Arctic but also in the lower latitudes. Capabilities like the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense, the Patriot Missile System, the Typhon, and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) provide credible deterrence and layered protection against peer adversaries.

Third, the United States and NATO must also prioritize dual-use Arctic infrastructure investments like airfields, ports, and satellite stations that support both civil and military operations. NATO’s benchmark of spending 1.5 percent of GDP on, among other things, security infrastructure should include these assets.

Fourth, persistent Arctic domain awareness is essential. The United States should leverage relatively low-cost, scalable, and sometimes commercially available solutions like unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned undersea vehicles, undersea sensors, and satellites.

Finally, the United States must strengthen partnerships with its allies. Alliances remain the cornerstone of US strategic strength. As others have argued, the United States must work to empower NATO, particularly its Scandinavian allies, to take the lead in Europe’s High North, thereby allowing the United States and Canada to pivot to the Indo-Pacific. Additionally, the United States and its allies need to leverage their respective defense industrial bases and consider shared procurement strategies to increase economies of scale—rather than designing three separate heavy icebreakers for the United States and Canada.

A force built on modular ships, mobile missiles, alliance partnerships, and multinational logistics will survive first contact, deter aggression, and let the United States keep its strategic main effort on China—without ceding the High North.

The Risk of Forgoing PSCs/ASCs Altogether

The United States needs heavy polar icebreakers and the Coast Guard’s current capability is insufficient to meet the current demand signal. The Congressional Budget Office notes that icebreakers support nine of the service’s eleven missions: ports, waterways, and coastal security; aids to navigation; search and rescue; living marine resources; marine safety; defense readiness; maritime environmental protection; ice operations; and law enforcement. Admiral Stavridis makes a strong case for a minimum of four heavy and four medium icebreakers. The Congressional Research Service notes, “A 2023 Coast Guard fleet mix analysis concluded that the service will require a total of eight to nine polar icebreakers.”

The problem is that the current program is overbudget by 61 percent and delayed by at least six years. Much of this can be attributed to a failure to use a mature design and shifting requirements, including transitioning from a standard icebreaker to a heavily armed security cutter—the utility of which is still under debate. Retired Canadian Admiral Mark Norman recently questioned the strategic thought process behind Canada’s pursuit of heavy, armed icebreakers, asking what strategic objective the government was trying to achieve. Rob Huebert said of the same project, “If you are actually in a shooting conflict, you’re going to find out where the icebreaker is right away. If you’re going to be putting money into something, put it into a submarine and give it some form of perhaps anti-missile capability.” Andreas Kuersten makes a similar argument, noting that “icebreakers contribute to U.S. Arctic security by providing human, economic, and environmental security, not by meaningfully enhancing northern defense capabilities.” Rather than transforming PSCs/ASCs into warships, the United States should ensure ice-capable patrol vessels have modular self-defense suites, providing enough deterrent value without compromising affordability or survivability.

This is not a failure of the Coast Guard. Rather, as Brose describes, the service is following an acquisitions process that incentives it to count “people and things, especially platforms” to “compete for money in the budget process. ”The civilian leadership, in this case Congress, needs to take a more coherent systems view of defense acquisitions, capability, and strategy.

Congress should revise 14 U.S.C. §1151 and 10 U.S.C. §8679 to allow the building and operation of foreign icebreakers, thus freeing up domestic shipyards to focus on submarines and high-end surface combatants. Then it should direct the Coast Guard to pursue the procurement of foreign vessels like the Finnish icebreaker Polaris, which is a heavy icebreaker with a reported cost of approximately $150 million, compared to the more than $1.6 billion for the current PSC design. According to the Wilson Center, “Finland’s shipyards have the capacity to produce icebreakers quickly and at a reasonable cost. It is estimated that compared to US icebreaker production underway, the average Finnish icebreaker would cost about a fifth of the price and be completed in about twenty-four months after a contract is signed.” While politically sensitive due to US shipbuilding interests, it is possible for Congress to grant exceptions, and it is essential for it to do so given the “pacing challenge” presented by China.

Purchasing unarmed, off-the-shelf Finnish icebreakers would quickly deliver needed capability, while freeing up US shipyards to focus on high-end naval platforms—where bottlenecks already pose serious risks.

A Combined Joint Arctic Strategy Aligned with Global Security Demands

In an era of constrained budgets and intensifying global competition, the United States must ruthlessly align its military investments with its central strategic objective—preventing Chinese hegemony in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, warfare is undergoing a profound shift to an era where low-cost, rapidly deployable platforms can threaten expensive, slow-to-build platforms. The principle of economy of force has gained new urgency in an era where a $1,000 drone or a relatively cheap antiship missile can destroy a platform worth hundreds of millions—and there is no geographical exception for the Arctic.

The current US Arctic strategy—centered on a small fleet of delayed, expensive, and potentially vulnerable PSCs/ASCs—has failed to adapt to today’s dynamic threat environment and that is a liability. It reflects a legacy acquisition mindset ill-suited to the speed, scale, and asymmetry of modern warfare. Rather than doubling down on sunk costs in the PSC/ASC acquisition program—the United States should redesign its Arctic posture to a more affordable and agile force design like that advocated by thinkers like Brose, Colby, and Doshi. This includes off-the-shelf, ice-capable patrol ships, rapidly deployable A2/AD capabilities, low-cost domain-awareness systems, and dual-use infrastructure investments.

Simultaneously, the United States must deepen its reliance on allies to share burdens and close capability gaps. NATO should take the lead in securing the European High North flank, allowing the United States and Canada to focus on the Indo-Pacific. Cooperative procurement—rather than duplicative efforts—can reduce costs, speed delivery, and improve interoperability. Congress should revise current laws to permit the acquisition and operation of proven, off-the-shelf, foreign-built icebreakers, enabling the Coast Guard to field urgently needed Arctic-capable platforms in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.

Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense must act now to recalibrate Arctic defense investments—or risk falling behind in a critical theater of twenty-first-century strategic competition. If current PSC/ASC delays continue and the United States fails to field sufficient Arctic platforms it may cede the initiative to Russia and China, risking an unchecked buildup of adversary Arctic capability in the High North with corresponding risks of the potential of denial of access to the region in a crisis.

Jeremy M. McKenzie is a retired US Coast Guard officer and aviator. His last military assignment was as a researcher at the US Coast Guard Academy’s Center for Arctic Study and Policy. He previously served as an Army aviator and has a master of public policy from Brown University as well as a master of social science from Syracuse University.

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, Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security.

Image credit: Lt. Jared Payne, US Coast Guard

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jeremy M. McKenzie · August 7, 2025

16. The End of Mutual Assured Destruction? – What AI Will Mean for Nuclear Deterrence

Excerpts:

But even if intelligence is a powerful asset, it isn’t magic, and states seeking to use AI to disarm their adversaries will confront real physical, practical, and institutional limits. A state empowered by transformative AI systems will still have to solve an enormous number of extremely difficult problems before it can contemplate decapitating a nuclear competitor: it will need to integrate advanced AI into large-scale military bureaucracies, no easy task, and figure out how to test these systems in advance—a tall order given the need both to avoid triggering a preemptive response and to rehearse thousands of steps with little room for error. No matter how intelligent they are, powerful AI systems will not be able to evade the laws of physics. And no tool or capability guarantees that a state can impose its preferences on another: the United States, after all, possessed overwhelming military and economic power over the Taliban in Afghanistan yet suffered an unambiguous defeat after two decades of war.

None of this should encourage complacency. Even if nuclear deterrence persists, AI will still transform national security in many ways, including by helping states develop new autonomous weapons and by strengthening offensive and defensive cyber-capabilities. These developments will have significant consequences, even if they do not give any state the ability to impose its will on nuclear-armed adversaries. AI may also democratize access to dangerous capabilities, lowering the barriers for nonstate actors and individuals to build and deploy devastating biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. These are just a few of the problems that policymakers will have to grapple with as AI continues to improve.

In the nuclear domain, U.S. officials should not wait to see what advances AI brings. They should ensure that policy processes include AI experts alongside nuclear ones, encouraging a dialogue that has thus far been lacking in the national security community. They should conduct rigorous reviews of nuclear systems to check for vulnerabilities that could be exploited by advanced AI, especially in cyberspace, and deepen the ranks of AI experts within the U.S. government. They should carefully calibrate any statements about the need to race to artificial general intelligence, or the importance of being the first to develop a decisive wonder weapon, lest they exacerbate risky and costly nuclear competition. And through arms control dialogues, they should work to strengthen the significant ethical, political, and legal constraints on a state’s ability to launch a splendid first strike or to take other escalatory steps. The system of nuclear deterrence that has been in place since the end of World War II cannot be taken for granted. As political rivalries and the growing competition for AI supremacy heat up between the world’s great powers, it is more important than ever to maintain channels of communication and pathways to reduce the risk of inadvertent escalation and calamity.

The End of Mutual Assured Destruction?

Foreign Affairs · by More by Sam Winter-Levy · August 7, 2025

What AI Will Mean for Nuclear Deterrence

August 7, 2025

A Russian intercontinental ballistic missile system in Moscow, May 2025 Yulia Morozova / Reuters

SAM WINTER-LEVY is a Fellow in Technology and International Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

NIKITA LALWANI is a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She served as Director for Technology and National Security at the National Security Council and as Senior Adviser to the Director of the CHIPS Program Office at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Biden administration.

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The rapid development of artificial intelligence in recent years has led many analysts to suggest that it will upend international politics and the military balance of power. Some have gone so far as to claim, in the words of the technologists Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt, and Alexandr Wang, that advanced AI systems could “establish one state’s complete dominance and control, leaving the fate of rivals subject to its will.”

AI is no doubt a transformative technology, one that will strengthen the economic, political, and military foundations of state power. But the winner of the AI race will not necessarily enjoy unchallenged dominance over its major competitors. The power of nuclear weapons, the most significant invention of the last century, remains a major impediment to the bulldozing change brought by AI. So long as systems of nuclear deterrence remain in place, the economic and military advantages produced by AI will not allow states to fully impose their political preferences on one another. Consider that the U.S. economy is almost 15 times larger than that of Russia, and almost 1,000 times larger than that of North Korea, yet Washington struggles to get Moscow or Pyongyang to do what it wants, in large part because of their nuclear arsenals.

Some analysts have suggested that AI advances could challenge this dynamic. To undermine nuclear deterrence, AI would need to knock down its central pillar: a state’s capacity to respond to a nuclear attack with a devastating nuclear strike of its own, what is known as second-strike capability. AI technology could plausibly make it easier for a state to destroy a rival’s entire nuclear arsenal in one “splendid first strike” by pinpointing the locations of nuclear submarines and mobile launchers. It could also prevent a rival from launching a retaliatory strike by disabling command-and-control networks. And it could strengthen missile defenses such that a rival could no longer credibly threaten retaliation. If AI could in this way help a state escape the prospect of mutual assured destruction, the technology would make that state unrivaled in its capacity to threaten and coerce adversaries—an outcome in line with increasingly popular visions of AI-enabled dominance.

But undermining the nuclear balance of power will not be easy. Emerging technologies still face very real constraints in the nuclear domain. Even the most sophisticated AI-powered targeting and sensor systems may struggle to locate a mobile nuclear launcher hidden under a bridge, isolate the signatures of a nuclear-armed submarine from the background noise of the ocean, and orchestrate the simultaneous destruction of hundreds of targets on land, air, and sea—with zero room for error. And competitors will respond to their adversaries’ use of new technology with moves of their own to defend their systems, as they have at every turn since the dawn of the atomic age.

Yet even if it does not challenge nuclear deterrence, AI may encourage mistrust and dangerous actions among nuclear-armed states. Many of the steps that governments could take to protect and toughen their second-strike capabilities risk alarming rivals, potentially spurring expensive and dangerous arms races. It also remains possible that AI systems could cross a crucial threshold and exhibit extremely rapid improvements in capabilities. Were that to happen, their advantages to the country that possesses them could become more pronounced and difficult for rivals to contend with. Policymakers should monitor for such a scenario and facilitate regular communication between AI and nuclear experts. At the same time, they should take steps to reduce the probability of accidents and escalation, including assessing nuclear systems for AI-related vulnerabilities and maintaining channels of communication between nuclear powers. Such steps will help ensure that nuclear stability—and not just nuclear deterrence—endures in the age of AI.

FIRST STRIKE

Nuclear deterrence depends, most fundamentally, on states’ possessing the ability to retaliate after absorbing a nuclear attack: so long as two nuclear powers credibly maintain a second-strike capability that can inflict unacceptable damage on their adversary, a first strike is suicidal. This understanding has for decades sustained a relatively stable equilibrium. But second-strike capabilities are not invulnerable. States can eliminate delivery platforms, such as road-mobile missile launchers and nuclear submarines, provided that they can find them. The difficulty of finding and disabling these platforms is one of the central obstacles to launching a splendid first strike. The sheer size of China, Russia, the United States, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean—the most important domains for nuclear competition today—makes such a strike hard to accomplish.

The emergence of powerful AI systems, however, could solve that problem. Capable of processing and analyzing vast amounts of data, a military equipped with such technologies could better target the nuclear assets of its rivals. Consider ground-launched mobile missiles, one of the platforms that underpin Russian and Chinese second-strike capabilities. These missiles, which are carried on vehicles that can hide under camouflage netting, bridges, or tunnels and drive from one concealed location to another, are probably the most difficult element of Russian and Chinese nuclear forces to eliminate. (Silo-based ballistic missiles, by contrast, are much more vulnerable to attack.) The improved speed and scale of AI-empowered intelligence processing may make it easier to conduct operations against these vehicles. AI systems can scour and integrate huge amounts of data from satellites, reconnaissance aircraft, signals intelligence intercepts, stealth drones, ground-based sensors, and human intelligence to more effectively find and track mobile nuclear forces.

When it comes to the sea, the potential convergence of AI with sensing technologies might make the oceans “transparent,” allowing governments to track ballistic missile submarines in real time. That is a particular concern for the United States, which keeps a much higher percentage of its warheads on submarines than Russia or China does. AI could make it easier to track submarines by automating pattern recognition from multiple types of sensors across massive ocean areas and over long durations. It could also help a state hack into the systems its adversaries use to track their own weapons.

Yet even with the assistance of AI, states will not be absolutely sure that a splendid first strike can knock out a rival’s capacity to retaliate. On land, for instance, China and Russia could respond to improvements in U.S. tracking systems with their own countermeasures. They could invest in antisatellite weapons and jamming capabilities. They could adopt old-fashioned low-tech solutions, such as covering roads with netting or constructing decoys, to increase the number of targets an attacker would need to strike. They could order their launchers to emit fewer signals, making it harder for the United States to track them. They could modify the launchers to move faster, widening the target area U.S. strikes would have to hit. They could even use their own AI systems to inject false information into channels monitored by the U.S. intelligence community.

In the maritime domain, too, AI is unlikely to make the sea fully transparent. Any system will struggle to continuously identify, track, and monitor multiple targets over long ranges and amid ocean background noise, especially as submarines get quieter and oceans noisier. Submarines remain extraordinarily difficult to detect when submerged at depth and operating at low speeds, due to how sound moves underwater, shifting ocean conditions, and the inherent noisiness of the marine environment. In the seas, false alarms are frequent; reliable contact is rare. And at sea, as on land, major powers can tip the scales in their favor through various countermeasures: they can jam signals, manipulate sensor data, use undersea sensors and uncrewed vehicles to detect adversary assets, and operate their own submarines in protected bastions close to their home shores. Detection will thus remain a matter of probability, even with the introduction of AI—and states are unlikely to want to risk a splendid first strike on anything less than a safe bet.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Beyond making it easier to find and destroy an adversary’s nuclear weapons, AI could plausibly threaten the nuclear command-and-control systems that would be needed to launch a retaliatory strike. Command-and-control systems are responsible for detecting attacks, reporting them to the relevant authority, and transmitting retaliation orders to nuclear forces. These systems must be able to identify a wide range of missiles; assess damage on the ground; send short messages over thousands of miles, including deep underwater; and protect the leaders responsible for nuclear decision-making. States seeking to disable a command-and-control system must proceed with caution, as overt moves to knock out a rival’s system may be seen as the prelude to a nuclear attack, potentially justifying preemptive retaliation. Like most elements of a splendid first strike, disarming a command-and-control system requires, in the words of the scholar James Acton, destroying “as much of each component as possible with as little warning as possible.”

Many parts of a nuclear command-and-control system are already vulnerable to attack and will become increasingly so with new technological breakthroughs. Nuclear and conventional strikes can already destroy fixed equipment, such as radars and high-frequency transmitters. With improvements in AI, meanwhile, it may become easier to track mobile command posts on land as well as more precisely target airborne ones. Satellites that provide early warning of incoming nuclear attacks may become increasingly vulnerable to AI-enhanced antisatellite weapons. And sophisticated cyber operations supercharged by AI might allow states to penetrate a rival’s command-and-control networks, disable early warning-systems, and disrupt the transmission of orders—a risk that may grow as states modernize their systems, moving away from analog and hardwired capabilities toward digital ones.

But taking out an entire command-and-control system in one fell swoop will never be straightforward, even with advanced technology. States have gone to great lengths to make their systems resilient, incorporating redundancy and elaborate countermeasures. On land, some command bunkers in China, Russia, and the United States are buried at least 700 meters underground in hard rock, deep enough to survive even a direct hit from a large nuclear weapon. In space, every major nuclear power has either sent hundreds or thousands of satellites into orbit or is close to doing so, making it difficult to destroy all of a country’s advance-warning and communications systems. In the air, the curvature of the earth limits the distance at which surveillance radar can track airborne command posts. And in cyberspace, the ability to launch a disarming strike will require persistent access to an adversary’s systems, risking detection and possible retaliation. States will also expend enormous effort trying to prevent such intrusions, most likely with the aid of their own AI defenses, while operating multiple redundant networks. As a result of these challenges, it seems unlikely that AI will credibly threaten the elimination of command-and-control systems.

DEFENSE, DEFENSE

A final fear is that AI could weaken nuclear deterrence by improving missile defenses, thereby minimizing the possibility of a successful second strike and making first strikes more tempting. Establishing strong defenses against nuclear missile attacks has always been an exceptionally challenging task. Russia and China have few such capabilities, and U.S. defense systems are error-prone, spread thin, and unable to fully prevent an attack from a major nuclear power. These systems must do the nearly impossible: detect a launch, track hundreds of missiles traveling through space at 20 times the speed of sound, estimate their future trajectories, and destroy them with interceptors—all in less than 30 minutes, the rough flight time for most land-based missiles traveling between the United States and Russia or China. National security officials have likened this process to trying to shoot a bullet with another bullet. And they must be able to do all this economically and at scale, so that an attacker cannot overwhelm a defensive system with many cheaper missiles.

AI could improve some of these capabilities. Machine-learning algorithms might, for example, rapidly analyze data from multiple sensors to distinguish actual warheads from sophisticated decoys and speed up decision-making once an adversary launches its missiles. Software advances can make it easier to predict a missile’s trajectory. In addition, through advancements in materials science, AI might help produce lighter, more agile interceptors, making the weapons cheaper and more maneuverable in flight.

But none of these developments will take place overnight: defensive architectures take years to develop, and U.S. adversaries will not stand by and watch. Attackers maintain significant advantages: they can launch from unexpected directions, overwhelm defenses with coordinated salvo attacks using large numbers of decoys, or directly target key defense systems. In the highly unlikely event that missile defense becomes so strong that it is insurmountable, states could resort to more creative delivery methods, such as smuggling and prepositioning small nuclear devices in enemy territory. An AI-hardened system of missile defense would depend on machine learning algorithms that are trained on large, reliable data sets regarding decoy measures and missile systems—data that U.S. adversaries have every incentive to obscure. Indeed, U.S. rivals could try to confuse AI algorithms by manipulating missile tests. In short, even AI-enhanced defenses face physical and economic constraints that sophisticated nuclear powers can exploit.

NOTHING FOR GRANTED

Even in the face of AI-driven technological change, nuclear deterrence should remain strong. This does not mean, however, that AI poses no risks to global nuclear stability. Even if predictions of AI power overestimate the technology’s actual capabilities, states may perceive greater threats and take potentially destabilizing actions. If a state believes that an AI-powered rival can more easily discover its missiles, for example, it may decide to build more warheads, house more of its weapons on harder-to-detect mobile vehicles, direct those vehicles to move faster, and delegate more launch authority to vehicle drivers to reduce the need for long-distance communication that could be intercepted. If states believe their command-and-control systems are vulnerable to AI-enabled attacks, they may wish to reduce the number of steps required to launch a counterattack. These are all moves that increase the probability of escalation and accidental launches, especially with respect to states with fewer resources and less experience in managing nuclear weapons, such as India and Pakistan.

Beyond such destabilizing uncertainty, it remains possible that countries will develop significantly more powerful AI systems that could threaten methods of nuclear deterrence in ways that cannot yet be anticipated, especially if—as some experts suggest is possible—AI R&D becomes fully automated, spurring a sudden takeoff in capabilities. National security experts should not dismiss this eventuality, and they should continuously monitor for evidence of rapid takeoffs in AI capabilities among rivals.

AI may encourage mistrust among nuclear-armed states.

But even if intelligence is a powerful asset, it isn’t magic, and states seeking to use AI to disarm their adversaries will confront real physical, practical, and institutional limits. A state empowered by transformative AI systems will still have to solve an enormous number of extremely difficult problems before it can contemplate decapitating a nuclear competitor: it will need to integrate advanced AI into large-scale military bureaucracies, no easy task, and figure out how to test these systems in advance—a tall order given the need both to avoid triggering a preemptive response and to rehearse thousands of steps with little room for error. No matter how intelligent they are, powerful AI systems will not be able to evade the laws of physics. And no tool or capability guarantees that a state can impose its preferences on another: the United States, after all, possessed overwhelming military and economic power over the Taliban in Afghanistan yet suffered an unambiguous defeat after two decades of war.

None of this should encourage complacency. Even if nuclear deterrence persists, AI will still transform national security in many ways, including by helping states develop new autonomous weapons and by strengthening offensive and defensive cyber-capabilities. These developments will have significant consequences, even if they do not give any state the ability to impose its will on nuclear-armed adversaries. AI may also democratize access to dangerous capabilities, lowering the barriers for nonstate actors and individuals to build and deploy devastating biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. These are just a few of the problems that policymakers will have to grapple with as AI continues to improve.

In the nuclear domain, U.S. officials should not wait to see what advances AI brings. They should ensure that policy processes include AI experts alongside nuclear ones, encouraging a dialogue that has thus far been lacking in the national security community. They should conduct rigorous reviews of nuclear systems to check for vulnerabilities that could be exploited by advanced AI, especially in cyberspace, and deepen the ranks of AI experts within the U.S. government. They should carefully calibrate any statements about the need to race to artificial general intelligence, or the importance of being the first to develop a decisive wonder weapon, lest they exacerbate risky and costly nuclear competition. And through arms control dialogues, they should work to strengthen the significant ethical, political, and legal constraints on a state’s ability to launch a splendid first strike or to take other escalatory steps. The system of nuclear deterrence that has been in place since the end of World War II cannot be taken for granted. As political rivalries and the growing competition for AI supremacy heat up between the world’s great powers, it is more important than ever to maintain channels of communication and pathways to reduce the risk of inadvertent escalation and calamity.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Sam Winter-Levy · August 7, 2025

17. The Unparalleled Devastation of Gaza – Why Punishing Civilians Has Not Yielded Strategic Success

Does it only harden resolve and resistance?

Excerpts:

THE STRATEGIC COSTS OF IMMORAL ACTIONS

Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, international support for the country has been based in significant part on the recognition that Jews were the victims of the worst genocide in history. The war in Gaza, however, has seen a swelling tide of condemnation of Israel for committing intentional harm to civilians, mass atrocities, and even genocide. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants that require some 125 countries, including France and the United Kingdom, to detain Israel’s prime minister and other members of Israel’s cabinet. Even within Israel, prominent voices are calling for a course correction: former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza are tantamount to a “war crime,” arguing that “what we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: the indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” As Israel becomes an international pariah and faces stiffening resistance to its rule in Gaza, the historic scale of its punishment of civilians is only jeopardizing the country’s long-term security.

Many Western countries have already begun to make moves to chastise Israel, including by joining much of the rest of the world in formally recognizing a Palestinian state, a step that could lead to large-scale humanitarian intervention in Gaza and economic sanctions on Israel. The United States will likely not follow that path, but U.S. President Donald Trump is mercurial. He has already contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and insisted that the starvation of Gaza must end. Rifts within Trump’s base are widening over Israel. U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leading hard-right Republican, declared that Israel is in fact committing genocide in Gaza, borrowing from rhetoric heard more often on the left. A tactical alliance could grow in the United States between elements of the far right and the far left that seek to roll back U.S. support for Israel.

Israel is the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East and has scored numerous victories over its opponents in recent years. But it is also a tiny country surrounded by rivals. And it needs close relations with major Western democracies to ensure the viability of its economy. Those relations could be tested and strained as Israel continues waging the worst campaign of civilian punishment ever performed by a Western democracy, a campaign that has not come close to eliminating Hamas and has given Israel more adversaries and left it more isolated. Israeli leaders must decide whether their ongoing immoral actions in Gaza are really worth the costs to their country’s future.

The Unparalleled Devastation of Gaza

Foreign Affairs · by More by Robert A. Pape · August 7, 2025

Why Punishing Civilians Has Not Yielded Strategic Success

Robert A. Pape

August 7, 2025

After an overnight Israeli strike in Gaza City, August 2025 Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters

ROBERT A. PAPE is Professor of Political Science and Director of the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats. He is the author of Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War.

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After nearly 700 days of war, the death toll in Gaza has risen to extraordinary levels. Amid heavy bombardment that has turned the territory into a wasteland of rubble and stringent blockades that have led to mass hunger and even starvation, over 61,000 Palestinians have died and over 145,000 have been seriously wounded, according to Gaza’s Hamas-affiliated health authorities, which do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters.

But the true number of the war’s casualties may far outstrip those figures, which do not include the thousands of bodies that remain under the rubble, the large number of dead that could not arrive at morgues, and the excess deaths from the destruction of infrastructure and the ensuing disease, famine, and lack of medical care. In February, the medical journal The Lancet published an extensive analysis based on a wide variety of sources (including obituaries) and estimated that the official death toll underreported the direct war deaths in Gaza by at least 41 percent and perhaps by as much as 107 percent, while not accounting at all for nontrauma-related deaths resulting from the impact of Israeli military operations on Gaza’s health services, food and water supplies, and sanitation.

In sum, the authors of the study suggested that Israel’s campaign has caused at least an additional 26,000 Palestinian deaths and perhaps as many as over 120,000 additional deaths, with the true death toll possibly upward of 186,000. Taking that into account, as of late July 2025, Israel’s war in Gaza has led to the deaths of between five to ten percent of the prewar population of about 2.2 million. This represents an unprecedented slaughter. Israel’s campaign in Gaza is the most lethal case of a Western democracy using the punishment of civilians as a tactic of war.

Leaders and scholars have long assumed that democracy offered a solution to the worst pathologies of authoritarian states, especially the willingness of a government to subject populations to coercion, cruelty, and violence. Indeed, the United States and other Western democracies, including Israel, have insisted that democracy is crucial for the promotion of fundamental human rights, individual prosperity, and a more peaceful world. For Israel, a country that has long touted its democratic bona fides, to violate core democratic norms in such dramatic fashion cheapens the value of democratic government itself.

Israel’s defenders may insist that civilian deaths are inevitable in a conflict against a burrowed-in terrorist enemy. But it has been clear from Israeli actions—including the targeting of children by snipers, the relentless bombing of civilian infrastructure and residences, and the blockade and starvation of the civilian population—as well as the rhetoric of numerous Israeli officials that Israel’s war is not simply against Hamas but aimed at all the residents of Gaza. That is also the conclusion of numerous international institutions and human rights groups. Indeed, the notion that Hamas can be eradicated via military means is a “fantasy,” as former Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen said this week. As civilians continue to suffer in Gaza, Israel has squandered the moral high ground for no good strategic purpose.

Israel’s critics may demand that, based on its treatment of the Palestinians, the country should not be considered a democracy. That understates the full dimensions of Israel’s behavior in Gaza. Even now, Israel retains the political institutions built on majority rule and the high levels of citizen participation in free elections that are the hallmarks of representative government and that have long characterized Western democracy. Independent experts, such as Freedom House, still recognize Israel as a democracy. What is truly shocking about events in Gaza is both the scale of the devastation and that the government of Israel can genuinely say that its policies reflect the will of most Israelis. The carnage in Gaza is not the work of authoritarians or demagogues but bears the imprimatur of democracy. Israel’s campaign thus has profound implications both for the long-term security of the country and the value of democracy around the world.

IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY

In my 1996 book, Bombing to Win, I studied every campaign in the twentieth century that employed airpower with the intention of inflicting harm on civilians: 40 campaigns in all, including the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War, and the 1991 Gulf War. Only five of the 40 involved civilian deaths greater than one percent of the civilian population. These included four campaigns in and around World War II—Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945, Germany’s invasion of Poland from 1939 to 1945, the Allied bombing and invasion of Germany from 1939 to 1945, and the U.S. bombing and conquest of Japan from 1942 to 1945—and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1988. In proportional terms, Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland ranks as the deadliest of these campaigns, killing upward of 20 percent of the prewar population over six years. That figure was enlarged, of course, by the Holocaust and the slaughter in ghettos and concentration camps of millions of Polish Jews.

Until Gaza, the worst civilian punishment campaign by a Western democracy was the bombing and ground invasion of Germany in World War II, which killed approximately two to four percent of the population, outpacing even the U.S. nuclear attacks and fire-bombing raids on Japan, which killed about one percent of the population. Those estimates from Germany account for deaths caused by both Soviet and Western forces, as well as direct and indirect deaths (as in The Lancet’s study on Gaza).

Whether it is called a “genocide” or not, no sensible observer could look at Israel’s war in Gaza and miss the stunning levels of devastation that Palestinians have endured. Beyond the mass death and suffering, the level of physical devastation is remarkable: satellite analysis by credible independent media outlets, such as The Economist and the Financial Times, reveals that at least 60 percent of all the buildings and 90 percent of homes in Gaza have either been severely damaged or completely destroyed. All 12 of Gaza’s universities, 80 percent of its schools and mosques, and numerous churches, museums, and libraries have also been demolished. No hospital in Gaza is fully functioning, and only 20 out of 36 hospitals are partially functioning.

And yet despite this mammoth destructive enterprise, Israel has not come close to fulfilling its stated aim of eliminating Hamas. The group still has significant appeal among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It may be diminished as a military force, but it can replenish its depleted ranks with new recruits—indeed, by some accounts, it has managed to bring in over 10,000 new fighters since the war began. The extreme brutality Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people has not produced the strategic gains that Israeli officials promised.

The moral case for harming civilians is always dubious even when such violence serves a strategic purpose. When that strategic purpose does not exist, however, the moral case evaporates altogether. Israel now finds itself in a morally untenable situation. Rather than incur the world’s growing wrath, increased economic pressure, and the greater likelihood of future violence, Israel must reverse course and pursue alternatives to its campaign of mass death in Gaza.

THE END OF STRATEGY

Throughout history, states have repeatedly punished civilian populations harshly to try to compel local communities to turn against governments and terrorist groups. But even intense civilian punishment rarely achieves these goals. Instead, it often leads to what I have termed the “Pearl Harbor effect”: growing support among the assailed civilian community for its government or for the local terrorist group.

In June 2024, I argued in Foreign Affairs that at least in one way, Hamas was stronger then than it was before October 7, 2023. To be sure, Israeli attacks had devastated the group’s leadership and smashed much of its infrastructure. But according to the most reliable polling information available at that point in time, Palestinian support for Hamas had remained the same or risen in Gaza and the West Bank. Overall, the taproot of Hamas’s power—its ability to recruit new fighters to replenish losses—had actually increased. In January 2025, U.S. officials revealed that according to their estimates, Hamas had recruited around 15,000 new fighters since the start of Israel’s military operations in 2023, more than making up for the 11,000 to 13,000 losses that U.S. intelligence estimated the group had suffered.

Israel now finds itself in a morally untenable situation.

Much has happened since the start of this year: the end of a two-month cease-fire in March, the escalating Israeli siege and the tightened blockade on food and humanitarian goods entering the territory, the humanitarian crisis affecting Gaza’s entire population, and Israel’s announced intention to conquer at least 75 percent of Gaza—along with the overt consideration by some Israeli leaders that they should expel all Palestinians from the territory. For its part, Hamas seems to be stepping up its guerrilla tactics of ambushes and bombings targeting Israeli soldiers in Gaza, but the group has not been able to meaningfully defend the territory and its population from Israeli attacks.

Media reports in recent months have revealed sporadic demonstrations in Gaza against Hamas, suggesting that some Palestinians are fed up with the group and its actions. But according to recent polling, Hamas remains broadly popular among Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. The unprecedented scale of Israeli action has not yet exploded the assumptions in my original analysis.

Hamas’s relative power cannot simply be measured the same way one would measure the military balance between Israel and its state rivals. In contests between states, the military balance between opponents is of paramount importance. Their militaries usually engage in direct, large-scale battles to take and hold territory, control the skies over territory, or secure access to contested territory. The success of these operations is determined by key indicators, such as the numbers of fighters, stocks of weapons, and levels of economic support. If such factors determined the nature of combat between Hamas and Israel, the war would have been over long ago, since Israel far outpaces the group on all the usual indicators of military strength. That the war has continued for nearly two years and Hamas retains sufficient governing authority in Gaza to hide the remaining Israeli hostages and inflict casualties on the Israeli security forces strongly suggests that the true power of Hamas cannot be found in the traditional metrics of the military balance.

THE PERSISTENCE OF HAMAS

Terrorist groups such as Hamas fight asymmetrically. They rarely seek to seize and hold territory and almost never attempt to win pitched military-to-military battles. Instead, these groups seek to impose losses on their opponents in other ways, mostly through guerrilla operations that pick off enemy military personnel in small numbers and over long stretches of time and through attacks against civilians. Most often, they simply want to maximize harm to vulnerable civilian targets. And since they are always weaker than their state rivals in the usual military indicators, terrorist groups expect to suffer great losses as the conflict persists. As a result, the most telling power of Hamas is its ability to replace the fighters it loses with new ones. Estimates of Hamas’s fighting strength bare out this logic. According to the Israeli military, in early 2025, Hamas had as many as 23,000 fighters, a figure roughly the same as an Israeli estimate of the group’s size prior to October 7, 2023.

Hamas can recruit new fighters because it still enjoys support. Surveying public opinion is the best way to measure how much support exists among Palestinians for Hamas. The best available surveys conducted among Palestinian populations in Gaza and the West Bank are by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), an independent, nonprofit survey center established in 1993 following the Oslo accords, that collaborates with Israeli scholars and institutions.

My previous June 2024 analysis relied on the PSR surveys from 2023 and 2024. When recent surveys from May 2025 are added to the mix, a striking finding emerges: Hamas has more support among Palestinians today than it did before October 7. Hamas is now, for instance, substantially more popular than its main political rival, the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which dominates the Palestinian Authority. In September 2023, Fatah enjoyed a four-point lead over Hamas (26 to 22 percent). In polling from May 2025, Hamas now enjoys an 11-point lead over Fatah (32 to 21 percent).

The shift toward Hamas is particularly acute in the West Bank, where support for Hamas has more than doubled. There, support for armed attacks on Israeli civilians—and for the October 7, 2023, attacks—has risen from 48 percent in June 2023 to 59 percent in May 2025.

Waiting for food in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, August 2025 Hatem Khaled / Reuters

In Gaza, support for Hamas has remained flat, despite the enormous suffering brought upon the territory in the wake of Hamas’s October 2023 attack. In September 2023, Hamas had a 13-point lead over Fatah in Gaza (38 to 25 percent), and in May 2025, the numbers were almost the same: Hamas held a 12-point edge over Fatah (37 to 25 percent). The one sign that the Israeli campaign may have changed some views in Gaza is the drop in support among Gazans for armed attacks on Israeli civilians, which fell from 67 percent in September 2023 to 37 percent in May 2025.

But the polling suggests that Israel has not succeeded in severing the connection between Gazans and Hamas. Far from dwindling, support for Hamas has grown or remained the same, and the willingness of Palestinians to attack Israeli civilians remains high enough to satisfy Hamas’s recruiting needs, despite the most brutal punishment campaign by a Western democracy in history. For Israel’s security, the tragic reality is that Hamas likely retains the key asset that could allow it to carry out another major attack down the road: vast numbers of fighters willing to fight and die for the cause.

Hamas’s abiding popularity could be a factor in wider violence beyond Gaza. With Israeli forces stepping up raids on Palestinian refugee camps and settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, the region is now a powder keg. The West Bank is home to 2.7 million Palestinians and 670,000 Israeli settlers living in close proximity to one another. Recent Israeli plans to expand settlements in the West Bank and rhetoric from far-right figures calling for the territory’s annexation will likely add fuel to this potential fire.

Israel’s announced intention to seize control of at least 75 percent of Gaza and then confine Gazans to a small portion of territory won’t succeed in divorcing the population from Hamas. As Palestinians are driven into a small corner of the enclave, Hamas will just move with them; this plan is no more likely to defeat Hamas than were the previous population transfers that forced people from area to area inside Gaza. Indeed, such Israeli actions will cause more suffering among civilians—and produce more terrorists. Israel could go further still, expelling Gazans into the Sinai Desert, but such a drastic measure would stoke the possibility of future retributive violence targeting Israelis. And most damaging for long-term Israeli security, throwing Gazans out of the territory would leave Israel open to accusations of engaging in ethnic cleansing, undermining any moral case for supporting the country.

Military operations that, intentionally or not, result in historic levels of civilian deaths are ultimately leading to a more dangerous situation for Israel, making it a less desirable home for Jews and a more likely target for those seeking revenge. Instead, Israel should establish a new security perimeter between Israeli civilian population centers and the Palestinians in Gaza, allowing Gazans enough space to rebuild their lives, letting humanitarian and economic aid to flow into the territory unimpeded, and working with international allies to foster alternative political arrangements to Hamas or Israeli control in Gaza.

THE STRATEGIC COSTS OF IMMORAL ACTIONS

Since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, international support for the country has been based in significant part on the recognition that Jews were the victims of the worst genocide in history. The war in Gaza, however, has seen a swelling tide of condemnation of Israel for committing intentional harm to civilians, mass atrocities, and even genocide. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants that require some 125 countries, including France and the United Kingdom, to detain Israel’s prime minister and other members of Israel’s cabinet. Even within Israel, prominent voices are calling for a course correction: former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has declared that Israel’s actions in Gaza are tantamount to a “war crime,” arguing that “what we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: the indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.” As Israel becomes an international pariah and faces stiffening resistance to its rule in Gaza, the historic scale of its punishment of civilians is only jeopardizing the country’s long-term security.

Many Western countries have already begun to make moves to chastise Israel, including by joining much of the rest of the world in formally recognizing a Palestinian state, a step that could lead to large-scale humanitarian intervention in Gaza and economic sanctions on Israel. The United States will likely not follow that path, but U.S. President Donald Trump is mercurial. He has already contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and insisted that the starvation of Gaza must end. Rifts within Trump’s base are widening over Israel. U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a leading hard-right Republican, declared that Israel is in fact committing genocide in Gaza, borrowing from rhetoric heard more often on the left. A tactical alliance could grow in the United States between elements of the far right and the far left that seek to roll back U.S. support for Israel.

Israel is the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East and has scored numerous victories over its opponents in recent years. But it is also a tiny country surrounded by rivals. And it needs close relations with major Western democracies to ensure the viability of its economy. Those relations could be tested and strained as Israel continues waging the worst campaign of civilian punishment ever performed by a Western democracy, a campaign that has not come close to eliminating Hamas and has given Israel more adversaries and left it more isolated. Israeli leaders must decide whether their ongoing immoral actions in Gaza are really worth the costs to their country’s future.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Robert A. Pape · August 7, 2025

18. Why the Joint Force Isn’t Very Joint

Conclusion:

In many ways the modern history of the U.S. Armed Forces is a history of inter-service rivalry. It need not be. While powerful service cultures and perspectives will remain, at higher levels they must not be permitted to jeopardize or hinder the true integration and synchronization that are the essence of jointness. The world is too dangerous, and there’s too much at stake.

Why the Joint Force Isn’t Very Joint

By R.D. Hooker, Jr.

August 07, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/08/07/why_the_joint_force_isnt_very_joint_1127445.html

The U.S. Department of Defense makes much of the Joint Force, stressing its overriding importance. Particularly since the advent of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols legislation, “jointness” became a mantra, amplified by reams of joint doctrine and scores of “joint” organizations. The importance of a truly joint approach to warfighting is, or should be, obvious. In theory, the synergistic employment of all forms of military power across all domains generates effects greater than the sum of the parts, optimizing all military operations. In practice, however, the U.S. military often falls far short.

The evidence is everywhere around us and reaches back at least to the Second World War, if not before. In WWII, interservice rivalry was intense and pervasive. In the Pacific, Army and Navy disputes forced the bifurcation of the region into Army and Navy bailiwicks: MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific theater and Nimitz’s Pacific Ocean Areas theater. Arguments over Pacific strategy forced President Roosevelt to personally intervene by flying to Pearl Harbor in July 1944 to referee. In Europe, tensions between the nearly-independent Army Air Forces and General Eisenhower, the European theater commander, over strategic bombing permeated the campaign, at one point prompting Ike to threaten resignation.

The National Security Act of 1947 and subsequent amendments attempted to smooth over inter-service rivalry by formalizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff organization, establishing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and “unifying” the services under a Department of Defense in place of the War and Navy Departments. In practice, that rivalry if anything intensified, as seen in the 1949 “Revolt of the Admirals,” when senior navy leaders attempted to unseat Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson following the adoption of the B-36 bomber and the cancellation of the “supercarrier” USS United States. In Korea, furious battles over the best use of airpower persisted throughout the war. In Vietnam, controversy over control of airpower again surfaced, leading to bitter disagreements at the highest levels; like Eisenhower, General Westmoreland threatened to resign over the issue.

The Gulf War – the first major conflict after Goldwater-Nichols - is often cited as a paragon of jointness, but in fact inter-service conflict permeated the campaign. As one authoritative study concluded, “the campaign was “joint” more in name than in fact. Each service fought its own war, concentrating on its own piece of the conflict with a single-minded intensity, and the commanders in Washington and Riyadh failed to fully harmonize the war plans.” For much of the Global War on Terror, joint doctrine was regularly ignored. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, theater commanders – though designated four star “Joint Force Commanders”- could not directly control Marine forces, Tier 1 Special Operations Forces (“Black SOF) or fixed wing fighters and bombers; at best they could request or cajole. All were task organized under U.S. Central Command in Tampa, thousands of miles away. As a result these separate organizations enjoyed substantial autonomy, but only at the price of disunity and often ineffective coordination on the battlefield, contributing to inconclusive outcomes. Through enshrined in joint doctrine, “unity of command” proved ephemeral.

Among many examples, Operation ANACONDA in January 2002 in Afghanistan is illustrative. There, the designated Combined Joint Task Force Commander (Major General Hagenbeck, Commanding General of the 10^th Mountain Division) actually commanded only his own organic Army forces. Though a dizzying array of coalition, Afghan, Air Force, Navy, Marine and SOF organizations participated in the battle, Hagenbeck lacked the ability to direct, and in some cases even coordinate with, any of them; his command was neither combined nor joint. The result was near disaster. U.S. casualties were high, avoidable fratricide occurred, the enemy escaped with few casualties, and finger-pointing continued for years. It was, as Secretary of the Army Tom White later remarked, “a dog’s breakfast.”

Today, despite these lessons, actual jointness remains elusive. Army units rarely or never train with Marines, or Special Operations Forces, or naval gunfire. The retirement of the A-10 and more reductions in Air Force Joint Tactical Air Controllers means even less emphasis on close air support for ground formations, a trend paralleled by the Navy. “Joint” exercises are harmonized to preclude or damp down points of friction. Joint doctrine smooths over inter-service disputes instead of making clear, hard calls in favor of true synergy. Service budget decisions prioritize core service functions first, not joint solutions. By finessing these points, and allowing the services to train in peacetime stovepipes, DoD perpetuates disfunction and hampers true jointness.

What accounts for these behaviors? It begins with an understandable desire on the part of large organizations for freedom of action. U.S. Special Operations Command is a prime example. Virtually an independent service, with its own Title 10 authorities, USSOCOM has grown from infancy only a generation ago to become a behemoth today. With assigned manpower larger than the entire German army, SOCOM also fields an air component larger than many of the world’s air forces, and a headquarters more than twice the size of the Joint Staff. The Department of the Navy, which includes both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, fields ground and air forces larger than all but a handful of the world’s militaries, with budgets to match. Not surprisingly, it guards its autonomy jealously. For its part, Air Force service culture remains wedded to the doctrine of airpower as a war winning capability in its own right – a doctrine first espoused by Giulio Douhet in the 1920s and expanded by Billy Mitchell and Hap Arnold. Its core tenet, that “airpower should be centrally controlled by airmen to achieve strategic effects,” remains alive and well today.

As in the past, in future campaigns this drive for independence and autonomy will play out again, with harmful effects, unless checked. Ground forces may be deprived of effective close air support. Naval gunfire in support of ground formations will remain notional. Marine forces will resist task organization under Land Component Commanders unless that commander is a Marine. Naval and Marine aviation will be largely sequestered for purely service, not joint missions. Special operations forces will resist subordination to joint commanders. In all these ways, true unity of command for joint force commanders will remain problematic.

While inter-service rivalry cannot be fully suppressed, it can be controlled and kept within reasonable limits. Today, the CJCS and the Joint Staff are essentially advisors, with the Combatant Commanders reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense. Inserting the Chairman into the chain of command between the Secretary and the COCOMs – the norm in most countries - would strengthen oversight without challenging civilian control. An empowered Chairman would be better positioned to insist that joint doctrine be observed and to take action when service parochialism hampers joint operations.

Combatant Commanders also play a key role. During the Long War, USCENTCOM commanders remained in Tampa, far from the scene of operations, with periodic short visits into theater. For the most part they proved reluctant to tackle thorny inter-service wrangling; after all, service component commanders ultimately reported to them, and the absence of unity of command at the theater command level was not seen as a pressing issue – or at least, not solvable without engaging powerful service chiefs in open conflict. An important consideration is that service commanders in wartime joint organizations are rated and promoted by their parent service, ensuring that service loyalties come first. The fact that the services have more four stars serving in service billets than in joint billets also weights the scales in favor of the services. In future, COCOMs can and should honor and enforce basic joint principles like unity of command and unified action. Like their fighting formations they should spend most of their time forward, where they can observe and resolve emerging disputes firsthand, with a firm bias in favor of true joint solutions.

The Goldwater-Nichols requirement for joint service as a requirement for promotion to flag rank was a step in the right direction, but joint assignments on high-level staffs have done little to prevent inter-service disputes. Exchange assignments between services at the tactical level with high-potential officers could help foster better appreciation and understanding of joint matters. (Interestingly, this is done in some U.S. formations with allied officers, but not with sister service officers). U.S. staff and war colleges might also address the difficult history of inter-service rivalry more fully and comprehensively than is now the case.

In many ways the modern history of the U.S. Armed Forces is a history of inter-service rivalry. It need not be. While powerful service cultures and perspectives will remain, at higher levels they must not be permitted to jeopardize or hinder the true integration and synchronization that are the essence of jointness. The world is too dangerous, and there’s too much at stake.

R.D. Hooker, Jr. is a Senior Fellow with The Atlantic Council. He served three tours on the National Security Council, was Dean of the NATO Defense College and commanded a parachute brigade in Iraq.

19. Is Ukraine Becoming the Silicon Valley of Defense Tech?

Is Ukraine Becoming the Silicon Valley of Defense Tech?

united24media.com · by Daniel Kosoy

Some experts would liken it to the next Costa Mesa. Either way, Ukraine is just getting started.

Aug 06, 2025 12:36 Updated Aug 06, 2025 14:52

8 min read

Authors

Author

It is July 2025, and a conference room in Berlin is filled with donor governments and policy architects. Ukraine and the European Union launched BraveTech EU—a €100 million ($115 million) public‑private defense innovation alliance. It marks the first time the EU has funded a tech partnership of this scale with a nation at war.

Half the money will come from Ukraine, coordinated by the country’s homegrown defense incubator, Brave1. The rest will come from Brussels, through the European Defense Fund and the EU Defense Innovation Scheme, with oversight by the European Defense Innovation Office—now headquartered in Kyiv.

The mission is to discover, test, and scale the types of wartime technologies that can transform the battlefield. Hackathons begin this fall. Grant funding for deployment is expected to be available in 2026.

“Modern warfare is innovative, fast, and hybrid,” said Ukraine’s Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. “Ukraine has a unique experience and is ready to share it.”

Behind that carefully chosen language is something more profound. Ukraine is becoming something more than just a testing ground. It’s becoming a co-architect of how Europe prepares for future war.

Giving Ukraine its flowers

In the early 2000s, Ukraine emerged as one of Europe’s largest outsourcing hubs. Engineers fluent in math, English, and C++ sold their skills to the world’s top firms. Multinationals like EPAM, Luxoft, and GlobalLogic hired thousands, opening delivery centers from Kyiv to Kharkiv and Lviv. Ukrainian tech workers earned a reputation for Silicon Valley‑level skill at a competitive cost.

Illustration of top Ukrainian tech companies (Photo: UNITED24 Media)

They weren’t just junior coders abroad. Ukraine produced its global brands—Grammarly, GitLab, Ajax Systems, Preply, BetterMe—conceived, built, and led at home. By 2021, the IT services sector was exporting over $6 billion annually to more than 100 countries, employing 300,000 people and delivering fast, scalable work without the drag of big‑company politics.

Pivot to defense tech

In the first weeks of the Russian full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s tech sector adapted. Teams worked from basements with limited access to electricity, turning Telegram bots into coordination tools, 3D-printed drones into weapons, and AI software into target acquisition systems.

A flag reading 'Ukrainian Defense Innovations' at a test exhibition of Brave1 ground robots at an undisclosed location in Ukraine (Photo: Getty Images)

“If we stop even for a day or a week, we risk falling behind Russia for good,” says Fedorov. “That’s why many companies are doing R&D, looking at what’s coming in a week, in two weeks, in six months. Everything changes in real time.”

That urgency drives not only speed but also creativity. “There simply cannot be a symmetrical response to Russian aggression,” says Artem Romaniukov, Deputy Minister at the Strategic Industries Ministry. “We always have to invent something asymmetrical to compensate for our lacks. Our people are the most valuable asset we have, and unmanned systems are the way to protect them—doing the job instead of humans.”

The government moved quickly to support this shift. In 2023, it launched Brave1, a functioning pipeline that connects developers with soldiers, funds prototypes, and pushes the best ideas straight to the battlefield. “We set technical tasks for the market, search for solutions, and then scale them—we provide grants and test them at proving grounds and on the battlefield,” Fedorov explains.

By 2024, over 500 defense startups had passed through Brave1. The feedback loop between the frontline and the factory was no longer measured in quarters—it was measured in days.

The EU signs on

In just a few years, Brave1 has evolved into a defense-tech pipeline producing drones (land, air, and sea), electronic warfare systems, and targeting software already in use on the front. More than 500 startups have entered the program, and while not all have gone beyond prototypes, enough have delivered combat-proven systems to draw serious interest from European and NATO militaries.

BraveTech EU will build on that model. Launching this fall, it will run joint hackathons pairing Ukrainian and European startups on live battlefield challenges. The best solutions will move to full production in 2026.

Left: Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov with Right: Andrius Kubilius, EU Commissioner for Defense and Space. (Photo: Brave1)

“European companies bring strengths in manufacturing and scaling; Ukrainian companies bring battlefield innovation and speed,” says Fedorov. “Together, we can deliver game-changing capabilities.”

For Kyiv, the program is a strategic breakthrough—a bridge between Ukraine’s frontline ingenuity and Europe’s defense procurement systems. Ukrainian tech will be integrated into the European market, co-developed, co-funded, and co-owned.

That cooperative spirit already defines Ukraine’s defense-tech sector. “There’s no competition here—only partnerships,” says Romaniukov. “In peacetime, many of these companies would be rivals. Today, they’re exchanging ideas, asking questions, and proposing solutions together.”

“Many Ukrainian startups are technologically ahead of their counterparts in the EU and US, but they remain significantly underfunded. They’re already combat-proven. Investors shouldn’t hesitate.”

Artem Moroz

Head of Investment at Brave1

Moroz sees BraveTech EU as “a unified market for defense startups”—one that merges Europe’s scale with Ukraine’s speed to “build a more resilient and competitive defense-tech sector together.”

The numbers behind the boom

The Digital Tiger 2024 report shows that Ukraine’s tech sector didn’t shrink during the war. It accelerated.

Illustration of Ukrainian IT measurables (Photo: UNITED24 Media)

2,600+ startups are now active, nearly triple the 2020 figure.
The IT industry exported $6.4 billion in services in 2024, reaching 147 countries.
The US alone accounts for 37.2% of Ukrainian IT exports.
now includes 1,600+ companies, employing over 100,000 tech specialists.
From 2019 to 2024, Ukraine raised $1.5 billion in venture capital and private equity.
In 2024, DefenseTech led all verticals in VC activity, overtaking fintech, deeptech, and SaaS.
Average annual growth: 8.2% in USD, 20%+ in hryvnia.

Moroz adds his own tally: since its launch, Brave1 has facilitated approximately $145 million in combined public and private investment, about $85 million private and $60 million in public grants.

“Broadly speaking, it’s safe to say hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed into Ukraine’s defense tech sector since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” he says.

A different clock

“Ukraine is definitely the new Silicon Valley for defense tech,” says Romaniukov. “We have a truly unique experience, and it would be a crime not to use this advantage and develop it.”

First Person View (FPV) drone controlled via fiber optics is seen during a test flight. (Photo: Getty Images)

That advantage is speed. In NATO procurement, new weapons can take years from concept to deployment; in Ukraine, the cycle can be weeks, sometimes days. “It’s a constant race,” says Fedorov. “If we stop even for a day or a week, we risk falling behind Russia for good… Everything changes in real time.”

That pace is driven by battlefield urgency, but it comes with constraints. Moroz is blunt: funding remains the biggest bottleneck. “They are already combat-proven,” he says of Ukraine’s startups. “They don’t just exist in theory—they’re being used successfully on the battlefield. Investors shouldn’t hesitate.”

Fedorov points to the focus trade-offs; Ukraine can’t lead in every category at once. This year’s priority was interceptors for Shahed drones, a program that “got results,” but fiber‑optic drones and countering guided aerial bombs remain gaps. Infrastructure is still vulnerable, export controls slow dual‑use tech transfers, and the sector lives with a constant drain of talent and energy.

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Scaling the edge

BraveTech EU is meant to do more than fund ideas; it’s designed to turn Ukraine’s defense‑tech ecosystem into a fully integrated part of Europe’s industrial base. The goal is to link Ukrainian innovation with European manufacturing, while giving European firms access to battlefield testing they can’t get anywhere else. For investors, it offers a rare combination of proven technology and growth potential.

That potential depends on scaling quickly. Ukraine’s next phase is about moving from small, agile teams to larger entities capable of delivering complete systems, not just individual tools. NATO members and other partners are already signaling interest, with some preparing to commit funds.

Workers assemble FPV drones in a drone production facility on April 5th, 2025, in northeastern Ukraine. (Photo: Getty Images)

Romaniukov calls it the shift “from prototypes to mass production,” and stresses that unmanned systems will remain Ukraine’s core advantage. Fedorov, looking ahead, sees autonomy and AI as the next leap—drones operated from anywhere in the country, eventually working in coordinated swarms—but warns that getting there will demand sustained investment in R&D, engineering talent, and infrastructure.

The scale of Ukraine’s 1,200‑kilometer front means every breakthrough forces Russia to adapt, and every adjustment by Moscow drives fresh innovation in return. With contracts at home and abroad, combat‑proven systems, global attention, a highly motivated technical workforce, and a legacy of heavy industry to build on, Ukraine already has the conditions in which entire industries take root.

Whether Ukraine becomes the “next Silicon Valley” for defence technology is still an open question, but the pieces are falling into place. The war has forged an ecosystem where necessity drives invention, investors are engaged, and the output is tested in the most demanding environment on Earth. Given the trajectory, it may be less a question of if than when.

20. China’s Trump card: rare earths as geopolitical bargaining chips

And the importance of Burma.

China’s Trump card: rare earths as geopolitical bargaining chips

Amid border conflict with Myanmar and a trade war with the US, Beijing’s heavy rare earth restrictions are having a global impact.

Alex Blair

August 6, 2025

army-technology.com · by Alex Blair · August 6, 2025

Months of conflict between China and the Kachin Independence Army (pictured) have drastically increased the prices of rare earths including terbium. Credit: Simon Roughneen/Shutterstock.

When camouflage-clad, rifle-carrying rebels from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) led an offensive to seize the northern town of Pangwa near the Myanmar-China border last October, few recognised the international implications.

It marked the latest escalation in a seven-decade-long civil conflict between Myanmar’s brutal military regime and hundreds of armed groups like the KIA, rooted in the resource-rich provinces spanning China, Thailand, India and Myanmar.

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More significantly, the KIA’s offensive consolidated its control over Kachin State, home to nearly all of Myanmar’s rare earth mines – and nearly half of the world’s supply of the heavy rare earths used in magnets for car motors, electric vehicles (EVs), wind turbines, semiconductors and defence technology.

Over the following months, high-ranking politicians and business executives in Beijing, Washington and boardrooms across Europe sat up and took notice. Ford Motors’ CEO Jim Farley said in June that the auto giant had been forced to close one of its plants due to the rare earth shortage. Days later, executives from Toyota and General Motors told the White House their suppliers faced acute shortages that could shut production lines.

Even as KIA spokesperson Colonel Naw Bu said the rebel group had policies in place to continue rare earth mining and negotiate with businessmen, the KIA raised taxes on miners and stifled production of dysprosium and terbium, sending the price of the latter skyrocketing.

The KIA does not have the capability to process the rare earth elements (REEs) mined under its supervision. For that, Myanmar needs China to process the elements into magnets that power EVs and wind turbines around the world. Instead, China has closed trading posts between the two countries.

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Beijing’s ultimatum

Soon after seizing Pangwa, the KIA turned to Bhamo, another strategically vital town in Kachin State where rebels and the military junta continue to wrestle for control.

Beijing’s response was to threaten to halt buying the REEs mined in the territory. In July, Reuters reported that Chinese foreign ministry officials issued an ultimatum to the KIA: abandon the offensive into Bhamo and Beijing would establish cross-border trade, or else face full economic isolation.

Such a move would be a significant blow to Myanmar’s already bleak economic outlook, amid a ‘polycrisis’ of intensifying conflict, natural disasters and deepening poverty. It could also inflict wider turmoil on global heavy REE supply chains.

Not only does China hold the largest reserves of rare earths in the world, estimated at some 44 million tonnes, the country also processes nearly 90% of global REEs, according to GlobalData’s Global Rare Earths Mining Review, published in January.

“The cessation of imports could jeopardise not only global supply chains but also the stability of China’s domestic industries,” Isabel Al-Dhahir, principal analyst at GlobalData, tells Mining Technology. “Considering the historic scale of imports from the Kachin State, China’s threat of stopping purchases of REEs from KIA-controlled territories is an intriguing negotiation tactic.”

The significance of Myanmar’s civil war and China’s looming presence will be felt hardest in heavy rare earths, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“Today, China and Myanmar together account for around two-thirds of global mined supply of heavy rare earths”, an IEA spokesperson tells Mining Technology. “[But] China represents around 90% of global refined heavy rare earths supply.”

While the China-Myanmar border remains strictly controlled, a gradual flow of existing inventories to China restarted in March.

Despite China’s inventories of raw materials at refining plants, which come from domestic mines and imports from Laos and Brazil, there are likely to be shortages for heavy rare earth feedstocks at Chinese processors if the border conflict continues, according to the IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook.

“Therefore, if the conflict in Myanmar continues, it could lead to a price increase for the medium and heavy rare earths, while the impact on light rare earths would be relatively limited,” the IEA’s report predicts.

A Trump card

In many ways, the China-KIA saga is a microcosm of Beijing’s willingness to wield its dominance over the processing and refinement stages of the REE supply chain to further its geopolitical aims on the global stage.

However, while pulling the plug on trade can leave beleaguered economies like Myanmar’s on the brink of collapse, does China have the same leverage over multi-trillion-dollar economies like the US?

The prevalence of REEs across numerous key industries indicates that Beijing’s leverage remains impactfully high, above all on the auto industry. As China and the US continue to verbally and economically spar, REE supply has become an ever more sought-after bargaining chip, as seen with the previous economic conflict around mining exports between Australia and China.

Reciprocal tariffs were Beijing’s go-to response when US President Trump imposed universal tariffs on his so-called ‘Liberation Day’ (2 April), which included a total of 54% total tariffs on Chinese goods.

China’s President Xi Jinping retaliated with a 34% tariff on all US imports on 4 April. On the same day, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced it would require companies to apply for a licence before exporting seven types of rare earths: dysprosium, gadolinium, lutetium, samarium, scandium, terbium and yttrium.

Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China. Credit: Photo Agency/Shutterstock.

Both nations spent the following week escalating tariffs tit-for-tat, with the US raising tariffs to 104%, then 145%, and China to 84%, then 125%.

It took until 12 May for Chinese and US officials to agree a temporary reduction in reciprocal tariffs – but the Trump administration would later reveal that China did not ease restrictions on REE exports, which was supposedly part of the deal.

On 26 June, Trump announced that the US and China had signed an agreement on trade, although he did not mention any specifics. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg that “they are going to deliver rare earths to us”, adding that the US would “take down our countermeasures” once Beijing did.

“The sporadic nature of Trump’s trade policies and resulting retaliations adds an extra layer of uncertainty to US manufacturers, with some planning month to month,” Al-Dhahir says. “The restrictions could incentivise the US to expand its domestic production of REEs.”

Could the US bolster rare earth production to compete with China?

Domestic REE reserves are a chink in the US’ geopolitical armour when compared to China.

Currently, the only operational mine in the US is Mountain Pass in California. Its production has been “steadily expanding to account for approximately 15% of global rare earth mining”, Al-Dhahir adds.

Companies not traditionally active in the mining industry have identified this potential and begun investing.

In July, Apple announced a $500m investment in MP Materials, the Las Vegas-headquartered REE company that owns and operates the Mountain Pass mine. This investment will secure the fabrication of US-made rare earth magnets from MP Materials’ factory in Fort Worth, Texas, as well as the development of a rare earth recycling facility in Mountain Pass.

MP Materials’ expansion of its Fort Worth factory (pictured) will supply recycled rare earth magnets for

hundreds of millions of Apple devices. Credit: MP Materials.

While deals like the MP Materials-Apple partnership bolster the US’ REE supplies, China’s dominance looks set to remain undisputed – and Beijing’s geopolitical sword-brandishing is likely to continue, with Myanmar and the KIA the latest in the line of fire.

“The prevalence of REEs across so many industries makes them indispensable. Rare earths therefore constitute a significant component of China’s geopolitical toolkit,” Al-Dhahir concludes. “The country’s emphasis on REEs can be traced back to the 1980s when the then-President Deng Xiaoping likened the importance of rare earths to China to the significance of oil to the Middle East.”

It seems unlikely that China’s current president, Xi Jinping, will play anything but hardball with Myanmar, the US, or any other geopolitical entity as he seeks to quash the unrest and capitalise on the importance of REEs over the decade to come.

army-technology.com · by Alex Blair · August 6, 2025

21. Tesla Cybertrucks Wanted By Air Force As Missile Targets

I thought of all kinds of snarky comments.

Tesla Cybertrucks Wanted By Air Force As Missile Targets

The Air Force says enemies may use Cybertrucks in the future, so its Test Center needs to add them to its live fire target fleet.

Joseph Trevithick

Aug 7, 2025 11:20 AM EDT

367

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick

The TWZ Newsletter

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

The U.S. Air Force is looking to buy two Tesla Cybertrucks for use as targets for precision munitions during testing and training. The service says it needs these vehicles for this purpose specifically because of the prospect of unspecified adversaries driving around in them in the future.

The Cybertrucks are among 33 target vehicles the Air Force Test Center (AFTC) is looking to acquire and have delivered to the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico, according to contracting documents recently posted online. WSMR is run by the U.S. Army, but the Air Force has a significant presence there. There are no name-brand requirements for the other sedans, bongo trucks, pickups, and SUVs, that are also on AFTC’s shopping list. The primary intended use of all of the target vehicles is in support of U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Stand Off Precision Guided Munitions (SOPGM) program and related training. SOPGM covers multiple special operations-specific air-launched precision-guided munitions, including multiple variants of the AGM-114 Hellfire, the AGM-176 Griffin missile, the GBU-69/B Small Glide Munition (SGM), and the GBU-39B/B Laser Small Diameter Bomb (LSDB).

A GBU-69/B Small Glide Munition seen about to hit a target SUV during a test. Dynetics

A Hellfire missile seen about to impact a target vehicle being towed on a trailer behind another truck. Public Domain

The explicit requirement for the Cybertrucks – which do not need to be in running condition, but do need to be able to roll towed behind another vehicle – requires a formal sole-source justification, a redacted copy of which is among the documents that AFTC has shared online.

“On 13 February 2025, market research was conducted to assess the competition for the Tesla Cybertruck by evaluating its design, materials, impact resistance, and innovative technologies. The study revealed that the Cybertruck’s aggressively angular and futuristic design, paired with its unpainted stainless steel exoskeleton, sets it apart from competitors typically using painted steel or aluminum bodies,” the justification document explains. “Additionally, its 48V electrical architecture provides superior power and efficiency, a feature that rivals are only beginning to develop. Extensive internet searches and industry outreach by [redacted] found no vehicles with features comparable to those of the Cybertruck.”

More importantly, “[redacted] intends to uses [sic] specific Tesla manufactured vehicles for target vehicle training flight test events. In the operating theatre it is likely the type of vehicles used by the enemy may transition to Tesla Cyber trucks [sic] as they have been found not to receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact,” it adds. “Testing needs to mirror real world situations. The intent of the training is to prep the units for operations by simulating scenarios as closely as possible to the real world situations.”

The key sections of the contracting document laying out the justification for the purchase of Cybertrucks for use as range targets. USAF

The document does not elaborate on the “operating theatre” or “the enemy” in question, and TWZ has reached out to the Air Force for more information. Tesla effectively eliminated its public relations department years ago, but we have also reached out to its investor relations department for comment.

As of this spring, an estimated 46,000 Cybertrucks have been sold to date, though the exact number is unclear. Currently, Tesla only offers Cybertrucks for sale in North America, though examples have been exported elsewhere in the world. Tesla did announce in April that it was planning to start direct sales in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar before the end of the year.

Tesla

Without more context, it is hard to say what may have prompted the belief that U.S. adversaries might soon be driving Cybertrucks. It is worth noting that the primary targets for SOCOM’s SOPGM arsenal, at least as they are publicly known, have been terrorists and militants, especially ones riding in cars and trucks, in the Middle East, South and Central Asia, and parts of Africa.

The Cybertruck’s windows and side panels have been shown to be bullet-resistant, stopping subsonic pistol caliber rounds, something that was heavily touted with the vehicle was first unveiled in 2019. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has described the vehicle, which has a retail price starting at around $80,000, as being “apocalypse-proof” in the past. At the same time, the Cybertruck has been dogged by recalls, controversies, and criticism over its actual performance, features (or lack thereof), safety issues, build quality, ownership terms of service, and more. There have been reports this year of flagging sales.

TWZ did previously lay out a detailed case for a militarized uncrewed version of the Cybertruck, which you can find here. Multiple companies are now offering Cybertrucks with add-on armor and other features aimed at prospective law enforcement, military, and private security customers.

A rendering of a notional militarized uncrewed Cybertruck. Mr Vu The Vuong (aircraft101)

One of the models in Unplugged Performance’s STING line, an example of an up-armored Cybertruck on the market now. Unplugged Performance

There have been some sales of Cybertrucks to law enforcement agencies, including the Dubai Police. The U.S. State Department made headlines earlier this year over a possible purchase of Cybertrucks, a plan it subsequently said had been shelved indefinitely.

The Dubai Police General Command has added the Tesla Cybertruck, the modern electric car with a futuristic design, to its tourist police luxury patrol fleet. pic.twitter.com/eubpvfjVbA

— Dubai Policeشرطة دبي (@DubaiPoliceHQ) June 16, 2024

Last year, Ramzan Kadyrov, the dictatorial head of Russia’s semi-autonomous Chechen Republic, also showed off several Cybertrucks with 12.7mm machine guns mounted in the back and claimed to have sent some of them to join the fighting in Ukraine. How and where Kadyrov, who the U.S. government and others have sanctioned, acquired the vehicles is unclear. He later claimed that Tesla had remotely disabled at least one of them.

Kadyrov of Chechnya published a video with Tesla Cybertruck with a machinegun installed pic.twitter.com/HQmLLbeCbP

— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) August 17, 2024

After complaining Elon Musk remotely disabled his souped-up Cybertruck, Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov claims he has sent two more that Tesla couldn't turn off.

Kadyrov says he sent them to the "zone of the special operation" in Ukraine. This was presumably filmed elsewhere. pic.twitter.com/HAH2DyNhFl

— max seddon (@maxseddon) September 20, 2024

What we do know is that the Air Force is looking to buy a pair of Cybertrucks to fire missiles and bombs during testing and training events based on the possibility that American forces may encounter enemies driving them going forward.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Joseph Trevithick

Deputy Editor

Joseph has been a member of The War Zone team since early 2017. Prior to that, he was an Associate Editor at War Is Boring, and his byline has appeared in other publications, including Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defense Journal, Reuters, We Are the Mighty, and Task & Purpose.

22. We Discovered How Ukraine is 'Gamifying' Its Drone War Against Russia

We Discovered How Ukraine is 'Gamifying' Its Drone War Against Russia

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by David Kirichenko · August 5, 2025

Military Hardware: Tanks, Bombers, Submarines and More

We Discovered How Ukraine is ‘Gamifying’ Its Drone War Against Russia

Published

2 days ago

Bohdan, a drone pilot from the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade, pilots an FPV drone in Donetsk Oblast during active battle operations. Photo: David Kirichenko

Russia expected an easy victory in Ukraine when Moscow launched its invasion in February 2022.

What it didn’t anticipate was that its army would become bogged down in years of grinding warfare, suffering over a million casualties by 2025.

Today, the war has evolved into a technological contest, with both sides constantly tinkering and seeking every advantage to overcome the other. For Kyiv, traditional methods of warfare had to be reimagined to confront a far larger adversary.

From the very first days of the invasion, Ukrainians began experimenting with all kinds of solutions to fight back. Many rushed to improve reconnaissance operations and started modifying off-the-shelf drones—devices once used by hobbyists before the war. Ukraine has now built entire procurement processes around unmanned systems and rebuilt its military acquisition system around commercial technologies. Ideas can be operational within months, instead of years.

The Ukraine War Is the Drone War

“Unmanned systems have become a critically important component in the war against Russia,” said Bohdan, a drone pilot known by his callsign Bandera, from the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade.

“Drones enable close and long-range reconnaissance, fire correction, mining, delivery of supplies and ammunition, and carrying out strikes.” Bohdan added, “Without putting operators at direct risk, UAV crews have partially taken over the roles of sappers, artillery, infantry, reconnaissance units, and drivers.”

The full-scale invasion also drew Ukrainians from all walks of life to join the army, including numerous businessmen and entrepreneurs, who would prove to be very effective leaders. Ukraine’s new Commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, is a prime example. He began as a conscript in 2022 and went on to help develop one of the most deadliest drone units in the Ukrainian army.

Data First Warfare

Brovdi approaches war like a business, likening it to a product cycle in which constant data collection and iteration drive improvements. In a recent talk in Germany, he noted that Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces make up just 2% of the army but are responsible for eliminating one-third of enemy troops. And their primary weapon of choice is a First-Person-View (FPV) drone.

The largest war in Europe since World War II also demanded faster procurement cycles. Weapons and tech solutions could become ineffective within weeks or months. Take the Turkish Bayraktar drone, for example—it featured heavily in the early months of the war, but eventually became a rare sight on the battlefield, due to Russian countermeasures.

So, even when Ukraine was starved of artillery shells due to the pause in US aid in late 2023, it increased its reliance on cheap drones. This shift also offered an advantage in that Kyiv had the ability to widely deploy low-cost, scalable technologies that can be rapidly iterated and adapted.

Millions of Drones for Ukraine and the Points System

Ukraine is now on pace to produce a few million of these FPV drones, which form the backbone of its “drone wall” that is holding the line against Moscow. However, there is always room for greater optimization on the battlefield, particularly in using data to determine where pilots should focus their efforts.

In August 2024, the Army of Drones also introduced a new points-based rewards program, which has seen success on the front. The points system was referred to as the “mathematics of war” by Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation.

Each drone strike is logged and verified using footage from the same FPV drones used in combat, allowing kills to be accurately tracked and scored. High-value targets like Russia’s advanced T-90M tanks yield higher scores, which can make a unit eligible for bonuses like additional drones. The system incentivizes pilots to seek out impactful targets and ensures that the most successful units receive prompt resupply.

Brovdi’s unit, the elite “Birds of Magyar,” has thrived under this model and was credited with destroying 8% of all Russian armored vehicles. In April 2025, the system was integrated with Ukraine’s Brave 1 Market, a platform that allows frontline units to directly acquire equipment, bypassing traditional procurement delays.

However, the points system isn’t static and is updated, depending on battlefield needs. Recently, the points system was updated to give more focus to killing enemy drone pilots to blind their operations. Russia has since confirmed that, following changes Brovdi made to the scoring system, Ukrainian attacks on Russian drone crews have intensified, focusing on fiber-optic operators. This points system is also meant to foster healthy competition between different drone units through this data-driven approach to rewards.

Heorhii Volkov, Commander of the drone unit Yasni Ochi (“Clear Eyes”) within Ukraine’s 13th National Guard Khartiia Brigade and a former entrepreneur, is a strong proponent of the points system and Ukraine’s broader data-driven approach to warfare.

Yevhen (“Ice”), a drone pilot from Yasni Ochi, said, “I’m personally a fan of digitization and optimizing every process, so I really like this system.” He added, “It encourages competition within our field and ensures that the most effective units receive the best equipment. When a unit’s performance can be calculated and clearly demonstrated in numbers, it allows for in-depth analysis and informed conclusions.”

Speaking on the points system, Serhii (“Gray”) from the 10th Separate Mechanized Brigade said, “I believe it has further motivated pilots to strike various types of targets, since these points can be exchanged for new drones.”

However, the data-driven approach can also lead to greater inequalities between units. “On the one hand, it’s a great incentive system, the more efficient the crew or the battalion as a whole, the more you get rewarded for your work,” said Andrii (“Murphy”) from the 419th Battalion of Unmanned Systems. “I think it is a good tool for internal competition between units, so that battalions compete with each other in efficiency and improve their skills.”

He acknowledged that newer units will struggle to match the capabilities of more experienced and better-resourced brigades. Still, Ukraine’s unmanned systems, its startup-style approach to procurement, and an increasing reliance on data-driven decision-making are rapidly becoming central to Kyiv’s strategy for waging asymmetric warfare against Russia.

The wars of the future will be technological, and the West should be prepared accordingly, as many of the guidebooks are being rewritten by Ukraine.

About the Author: David Kirichenko

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.

In this article:

Written By David Kirichenko

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by David Kirichenko · August 5, 2025

23. Trump Has All the Cards to Play Against Putin. Will He Use Them?

Can we execute a superior political warfare strategy to defeat Putin?

Trump Has All the Cards to Play Against Putin. Will He Use Them?

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Alexander Motyl · August 7, 2025

PUBLISHED on August 7, 2025, 11:58 AM EST – Key Points and Summary – The upcoming summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin will likely produce “probably nothing” in terms of a real peace deal for Ukraine.

-Putin has no interest in ending the war, as he believes it is essential for his political survival and needs to justify the massive casualties to the Russian people.

-His ultimate goal remains Ukraine’s complete capitulation.

-While Trump’s recent pro-Ukrainian rhetoric has boxed him in from completely abandoning Kyiv, his position is fundamentally irreconcilable with Putin’s war aims, setting the stage for a likely stalemate rather than a breakthrough.

The Putin-Trump Summit: Just a Photo-op?

What should we expect from Donald Trump’s forthcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin?

Probably nothing: no peace, no ceasefire, and certainly no end to Putin’s genocidal war. Instead, hearty handshakes, a few photo ops, and the promise of further meetings.

Which, considering what looked like the only possible alternative a few months ago—throwing Ukraine under the bus—may not be all that bad.

The problem, as always, is Russia’s fascist dictator. He has absolutely no interest in ending the war. And with good reason. He appears to believe—pace the mounds of evidence to the contrary—that Russia is winning.

What Putin Fears Most

He fears unleashing tens of thousands of angry and armed war veterans on a society already plagued by high crime rates.

He knows that Russia’s militarized economy will be useless in times of peace.

He knows that anything short of Russia’s complete acquisition of all four still not fully occupied provinces it formally annexed in late 2022 (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson) will be viewed as a defeat that could end his career and life.

And he knows that Russians will want to know what, besides amputated limbs, inflation, and declining living standards, they got in return for a million-plus casualties.

Simply put, continuing the war is Putin’s only way of atoning for starting and conducting a stupid aggression that’s brought Russia and Russians nothing but death and destruction.

As he and his minions have explicitly and repeatedly stated, peace means Ukraine’s capitulation, its people’s annihilation, and its rump state’s transformation into a Russian colony.

What Can Trump Do?

Several months ago, Trump might have agreed to Ukraine’s disappearance from the face of the earth. Although we don’t know whether his recent pro-Ukrainian, pro-Zelensky, and anti-Russian statements reflect a genuine change of heart or are simply convenient discursive flourishes, Trump’s current rhetoric has effectively boxed him into a corner.

Leaving that corner without some acknowledgement of Ukraine’s legitimate interests would be tantamount to cutting and running—hardly the behavior of a man who intends to transform America and the world and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

It’s hard to see how Putin’s demand that Ukraine be exterminated can be reconciled with Trump’s verbalized support (whether sincere or insincere) of Ukraine’s existence.

NATO and Ukraine’s potential membership are not, and never were, the problem for Putin, who knows full well that the Alliance is in no position to include Ukraine, that Article 5 of the NATO Charter does not obligate any state to respond militarily to a Russian attack, and that Trump’s commitment to NATO is conditional.

The problem for Putin is, was, and will be Ukraine—not the threat it poses to Russia’s security (how can a country of 20-30 million threaten a nuclear state of 140 million?), but the danger that Ukraine’s existence poses to Russian identity, a point Putin et al have openly acknowledged on numerous occasions.

The problem for Trump is Trump. Has the US President finally understood that Putin is an irreconcilable threat to the world, who can be coerced but not cajoled?

Trump has all the cards. It would be a significant geopolitical error not to utilize them.

About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University

Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”

Hypersonic Weapons In-Depth

Russia’s Hypersonic Missiles Summed Up in 4 Words

America’s Hypersonic Missiles Summed Up in 4 Words

China’s Hypersonic Missiles Summed Up in 4 Words

In this article:

Written By Alexander Motyl

nationalsecurityjournal.org · by Alexander Motyl · August 7, 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."

Access NSS HERE

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We Discovered How Ukraine is 'Gamifying' Its Drone War Against Russia

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