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Emzari Gelashvili, RCD
the Beijing summit between Trump and Xi was not a breakthrough. It was not even a pause.

Ted Delicath, MWI
Americans hold institutional trust on two tracks rather than one.

Rebecca Grant, Lexington Institute
At The July NATO Summit In Turkey, Trump Should Commit To Permanent Basing Of A U.S.

Anthony Capaccio, Bloomberg
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin LLC remains eligible to be…

Summary and Key Points: Australia’s six Collins-class submarines were meant to be the pride of its navy. Instead came defective welds, propellers too loud to hide, and a combat system so bad the Navy scrapped it for U.S. tech. By the mid-2000s, often just one of six could put to sea — then came the turnaround.

The Collins-Class Nightmare? 

SSN-AUKUS. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Australia’s Collins-class submarines were supposed to be the pride of the Royal Australian Navy—stealthy, advanced, and the cornerstone of Australian undersea power.

Summary and Key Points: After years of delays turned its next frigate into an expensive disaster, the Navy made a hard call — and the Trump administration pulled the plug on the troubled Constellation-class program. Now the Navy is racing to fill the gap, and its solution is raising eyebrows: a new warship called the FF(X) that, stripped of the jargon, is essentially a militarized Coast Guard cutter.

Here Comes the FF(X)
After the disastrous cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate program, the U.S.

In 1863, Adm. David Dixon Porter famously wrote, “A ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons.”
Remembering that this was a time before t-shirts when people dressed properly, his words hold true. Sailors crew and fight a ship, but a Marine detachment is a critical element on a warship.
Also Read: The role of the Marine Corps during the Civil War
The Army loves to remind the Marine Corps that the largest amphibious invasion in military history was conducted by soldiers.

Summary and Key Points: China’s island fortresses in the South China Sea are usually told as a military story — the runways, the missiles, the unsinkable aircraft carriers. But there’s a second story beneath the surface, and ecologists call it one of the fastest ecological collapses ever recorded. To build those bases, China dredged and buried tens of thousands of acres of living coral reef — some of the most biodiverse oceans on the planet.

An Ecological Disaster for the History Books 

J-35 Fighter from China. Image Credit: PLAAF.

Summary and Key Points: Most people picture China’s South China Sea islands as little more than runways carved out of the sea. The reality is far more imposing — and far stranger. Thousands of Chinese troops now live on these man-made outposts year-round, scattered across dozens of reefs, crewing missile batteries, radar arrays, and runways that push Chinese air power hundreds of miles toward America’s allies.

China’s South China Sea Island Reality 

J-20 Fighter Fueling Up. Image Credit: Chinese Weibo.

Summary and Key Points: It was supposed to be one of the great strategic masterstrokes of the century. Over more than a decade, China dredged up coral and sand to build a chain of artificial island fortresses across the South China Sea — runways, radars, hangars, and harbors, some rivaling Pearl Harbor in scale, all designed to lock the United States and its allies out of the Pacific. But according to one regional analyst, Beijing may have overlooked something its own scientists could have warned it about: these islands sit on loose, waterlogged sand and coral.