Author: Michael

Some weapons win firefights, and then some weapons decide whether a firefight is even allowed to happen.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the MK19 Mod 3 automatic grenade launcher lived firmly in the second category. It didn’t need to be fired often to do its job. This beast’s presence, mounted high, visible, unapologetic, was more than enough to ease anxiety. Its presence rewrote behavior, redrew boundaries, and simplified decisions in wars defined by the fog.
This was not about precision or finesse. It was about controlling the battlespace in environments where space was a problem.

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2025 was a busy year for defense tech, but this year’s most-read Cogs of War pieces have a clear throughline. Readers were most interested in whether the United States can still build things that matter at scale. From drones and shipyards to software, data centers, quantum materials, and missile defense, our writers expressed frustration with systems and processes that slow production, reward hype, and turn industrial weakness into risk. Factories, labs, infrastructure, and the laws that govern them hold power.

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On Dec. 5, 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reached a significant milestone in his bid to build “Europe’s strongest conventional army”: Germany’s parliament passed a controversial bill requiring all German men to register for potential military service, which could become the first step toward reinstating a draft if volunteer numbers fall short. The breakthrough followed weeks of tense negotiations within Merz’s governing coalition, during which leading members accused one another of “torpedoing” the plan.

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