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Saudi Arabia conducted airstrikes against Houthi military targets in western Yemen on Saturday, July 25. It was one of Riyadh’s biggest military responses since the collapse of the years of relative calm along the southern border, and came after the Iran-backed Houthi movement attacked Saudi-linked shipping in the Red Sea and attempted missile strikes against

Two Assumptions That Defined Trump’s Strategy In Iran Were Never Going To Work: When U.S. President Donald Trump authorized military action against Iran earlier this year, the administration appeared to be pursuing an obvious strategy: to apply overwhelming military pressure and then offer diplomacy from a position of strength. It’s a strategy the U.S. has used before, and one that would work against perhaps more rational enemies.

When the U.S. military partners with other nations for large-scale training exercises, it likes to give everyone a big target to blow up and sink. This month, U.S. forces and partner militaries got to sink not one but two decommissioned Navy ships.
As part of the ongoing Rim of the Pacific multi-national exercise, American and allied militaries unloaded missiles and other weapons on the USS Peleliu and USS Mobile Bay on July 11 and 17, respectively. It was part of a sinking exercise, or SINKEX.

The federal government is hoping that veterans who drove heavy military vehicles will drive large freight trucks. On Friday, the Department of Transportation announced a new interagency effort to encourage veterans to step in to fill commercial trucking jobs around the country.
Specifically, the campaign wants veterans with a particular career history of having driven similarly large vehicles. The new push, which the Trump administration is calling the “Freedom Haulers” initiative, argues that they have the skills to make the transition into truck driving.

Until we do, our generals will continue to fail us — not because they lack technology or tactical drills, but because the system that produces them was designed for a different war and century.

By Donald Vandergriff
Gary Anderson’s recent piece “Our Generals Are Failing Us” gets one big thing right and almost everything else wrong. He correctly identifies that America’s flag and general officers (FOGOs) keep failing at the operational and strategic levels. Iran, Afghanistan, and the Marine Corps’ Force Design fiasco are only the latest exhibits.

We know how this story goes.
A PCS interrupts your career just as things are starting to fall into place. You discover that transferring a professional license is more complicated than you expected. A deployment puts your career goals on hold, or you’re trying to balance work, school, kids, and everything military life throws your way.
Building a career as a military spouse isn’t always a straight path. It often means adapting, pivoting, and finding new ways to keep moving forward.

U.S. military operations have degraded Iranian capabilities, but they have not altered Tehran’s belief that it can outlast Washington or continue threatening neighboring Arab states and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. A coordinated revenue-denial campaign across five principal channels, beginning with Kharg Island’s loading infrastructure, is more likely to produce a verifiable agreement than continued attrition alone. Although the administration has adopted important components of that strategy, the revenue channels that finance Iran’s endurance remain substantially open.

Throughout the Russia–Ukraine war, special operations forces (SOF, or SSO in Ukrainian) have conducted many raids and missions to probe enemy defensive positions. Examples include Ukraine’s use of SOF probing operations in Bryansk and Kursk in 2023 and 2024 before launching its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024.

At the same time, the drone war in Ukraine was rapidly accelerating. By 2025, Kyiv had established a drone wall, with virtually every part of the front monitored by uncrewed aircraft.

Over the past four months, tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have thrust the Strait of Hormuz back into the global spotlight. The conflict has not only intensified instability in the Middle East but has also revived one of the oldest strategic assumptions in international politics: the importance of the Strait of Hormuz to the U.S. Thus, central is this assumption that many Iranian officials and analysts now describe the Strait as Tehran’s most valuable strategic asset and its primary instrument of deterrence against the U.S.

MC Compass Points