Author: Michael

Key Points and Summary: Taiwan is harder to invade today than at any point in its modern history. Over the past two years it has procured 57 HIMARS rocket systems, fielded its fourth Patriot air defense battalion, ordered Army Tactical Missile Systems with 300-kilometer reach, and committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on hard defense — the NATO standard most NATO members do not meet.

–The Problem: Taiwan’s strategic LNG reserves nonetheless last only 11 to 14 days under blockade.

HIMARS. Image Credit: U.S. Government.

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The Army successfully hit its recruiting goal for the 2026 fiscal year, more than four months ahead of its deadline. 
The Army announced on Saturday that it reached its goal of signing 61,500 people for active-duty contracts. It’s the third year in a row that the Army met its recruitment goal, after falling short in 2022 and 2023. It also is the second year in a row that it beat the deadline by roughly four months; in 2025 the Army hit the milestone in the first week of June. The fiscal year closes at the end of September.

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The Navy’s longest serving aircraft carrier is now operating in the Caribbean. The USS Nimitz, the 51-year-old carrier that recently got its service extended, arrived in the sea on Wednesday, joining an American military presence that has been in place for several months. It also brings more naval power to the region as the United States ramps up pressure on Cuba.
The Nimitz and its strike group, including the USS Gridley and USS Patuxent as well as Carrier Air Wing 17, entered the Caribbean earlier this week after conducting operations with Brazil, U.S.

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Captain John Monroe Hawk Smith was the executive officer of the U.S. Navy’s TOPGUN program — and one of the most lethal air-to-air aviators in the Navy across a 30-year career. In one storied TOPGUN engagement, Hawk flew a smaller, older Northrop F-5 Tiger so close beside a second F-5 that two Block 90 F-14 Tomcats with the powerful AWG-9 radar and television unit could paint only a single target. Hawk then dove for the deck, where the AWG-9’s Pulse-Doppler mode could not pick him up. The desert lizard paint scheme blended into the sand.

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Key Points and Summary: China holds approximately 1.4 billion barrels of oil in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve — the largest in the world. The U.S. SPR is now below 375 million barrels and is dropping by 10 to 18 million barrels per week, according to various analyses. Most experts estimate the SPR needs to hold 500 to 700 million barrels to remain effective in mitigating short-term energy disruptions in a country the size of the United States.

-Gerald Ford created the SPR in 1975 after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo.

-The last shipment of oil from the Strait of Hormuz bound for the U.S.

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Summary and Key Points: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a recent NBC interview he would support Vice President JD Vance if Vance runs for the 2028 Republican nomination — and that he would prefer to continue serving as secretary of state under a Vance administration.

Rubio has become the public face of the Trump administration’s Iran and Venezuela diplomacy and is now overshadowing Vance in the polls.

F-15EX Eagle II In the Sky. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The Iran War may complicate that race.

A March 2026 Marist poll found 84% of Republicans support U.S.

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