In 2021, a single explosion in Minden, Louisiana, sent shockwaves across the U.S. defense industrial base. For nearly two years, the nation’s only domestic producer of black powder stopped operating. Ammunition manufacturers were forced to draw down stockpiles and delay deliveries because there was nowhere to get the main ingredient for their product. That episode captures a reality often missed in debates about defense production.
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Moscow’s “Oreshnik” strike on January 9, 2026 is best understood as strategic signaling designed to shape what NATO will and will not do. Russia’s use of nuclear-capable delivery systems in the Russo-Ukrainian War underscores a returning logic: nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion and risk manipulation, not only city destruction. RAND Europe’s 2025 scenario analysis similarly includes a coercive diplomacy pathway in which Russia might threaten or conduct a limited nuclear strike to compel political concessions or sanctions relief.
In late 2003, I was asked to take on the task of demobilizing Iraqi militias. This would later be named the “transition and reintegration” program. Shortly after the program commenced, efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq veered off in directions no one wanted.The task I took on was conceptually simple but practically daunting: persuade Iraq’s armed factions to lay down their weapons and trust in a future they could not yet see while violence escalated.
Head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin has reported that the combat use of the newly operationalised Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile on January 8 against targets in western Ukraine had a “staggering” effect on defence planners in the Western world. The West perceived it “as a warning against their military’s direct involvement… in the hostilities,” he claimed, adding that it highlighted the vulnerability of any Western Bloc forces that may be deployed in the country.
The United States Air Force is currently preparing Misawa Air Base in northern Japan to support a planned permanent deployment of F-35A fifth generation fighters, as part of a much broader expansion in F-35 deployments in the region. The Pentagon plans to deploy 48 of the aircraft to the facility to replace 36 aging F-16CM fourth generation fighters, in parallel to the replacement of 48 F-15C/D air superiority fighters at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa in southern Japan with 36 newer F-15EX fighters.
The U.S. Space Force officially stood up a new element focused on Latin America this past week, nearly three weeks after Guardians were taking part in a major combat operation in South America.
On Jan. 21 Space Force Force Southern was formally activated. The new component, operating under U.S. Southern Command, is based out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. Under this new purview, it will coordinate space-related matters dealing with Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, where U.S. forces have been massed for months.
Three days before Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, California, some of the biggest names in professional football will attend a ceremony on February 5 that honors individual excellence. The NFL’s MVP will be announced, as will the Coach of the Year and Rookie of the Year, among other awards.
One honor that night will stand above all others, though, when it comes to impacting the military community. Since 2011, the NFL Salute to Service Award has been presented to an honoree who has made a significant impact on service members and veterans.
An operational mindset that fostered a “false confidence of safety” as well as poor mission planning contributed to an Air Force demonstration gone wrong last year, when a helicopter crew in Japan accidentally caused a civilian to suffer a fatal fall.
An Air Force accident report was released this past week, looking into a mishap at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. A Japanese civilian working as a Department of Defense Education Activity teacher at Kadena Elementary School was knocked off balance by the helicopter’s rotor wash, causing her to suffer a fall. She would die five days later.
For Nazi history in US buffs like me, a very interesting report by Commander Kenneth T. Klima, U. S. Navy was put forth in 2024 in the form of an MA thesis at Harvard University.
The effectiveness of Nazi-era espionage in the US had been downplayed. But his review of a declassified intelligence batch in the early 2000s appears to tip that over.
AFP Publisher L Todd Wood appears on Bannon’s War Room after attending the grand opening of the LTG James M Gavin Joint Innovation Outpost at Fort Bragg, NC, where army innovation in collaboration with industry and academia is happening.
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