The rise of the “manosphere” is reshaping c

As America’s westernmost territory, the island of Guam is the logistical heart of any large-scale military build-up in the western Pacific. It has long runways, a deepwater port, huge fuel storage and weapons depots, and it’s about 2,000 miles closer to China than it is to Hawaii. The island is also U.S. soil, so the military does not need permission from a foreign government to operate there.
Those factors make Guam a prime target for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) if a conflict were to break out between the U.S. and China.

The story of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency is inseparable from the story of the modern United States. From safeguarding President-elect Abraham Lincoln to building one of the earliest organized intelligence networks during the Civil War and shaping the country’s frontier legends, the Pinkerton Agency played a consequential role in the American experience.
Its operatives protected the railroads that came to bind the country together, pursued criminals across the American West, and were central to the most violent labor conflicts of the industrial age.

A senior UK Government Minister has gone on the attack, accusing “journalists and armchair generals” of “talking down” the UK miliary.

Malcolm Davis, The Strategist (ASPI)

For decades, notions of laser weapons have been the stuff of science fiction.

Whitney, M+A Electronics
By processing sensor streams directly on the platform, defense systems can fuse, analyze, and act on data in near real time, even in contested environments

Avaition Week
The U.S.

Michael Peck, Uncommon Def.

Ryan Finnerty, Flight Global

This video describes the military situation in

The French Air Force is currently undertaking a restructuring to place a much greater emphasis on drone strike capabilities, including pairing its ageing Rafale fighter aircraft with ‘loyal wingman’ drones, some of which have advanced stealth capabilities. This fits into larger efforts to prevent high value platforms like the manned fighters and attack helicopters from becoming strategically brittle in a battlespace increasingly saturated by low cost drones, loitering munitions, and layered air defences, which will require the development lower-cost sovereign theatre drones.

▶️Player Playback, brought to you by Vodafo

A few hours before Anthropic announced the launch of its newest model, Claude Mythos Preview, on April 7, I had just completed a six-month analysis of AI-enabled cyberattacks. My research traced Chinese state-sponsored cyber campaigns against U.S. critical infrastructure and found that the barrier between nation-state-level hacking and everyone else was eroding far too fast.By the time I closed my laptop that afternoon, Mythos had shattered that barrier.

The Russian Armed Forces on April 15-16 launched at least 24 missiles from Iskander systems at targets across Ukraine, as part of a larger barrage that also included missiles from other systems, as well as multiple types of attack drones. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched two waves of combined aerial attacks, marking the third consecutive day of major bombardment, as Ukraine’s air defences have been increasingly severely depleted.

After failing to reach an agreement in the first round of talks in Islamabad, the United States and Iran are set to resume talks in the coming days. Via Pakistani mediation, U.S. and Iranian negotiators have reportedly made progress toward a framework agreement, though significant gaps remain and a deal is far from guaranteed. In the meantime, President Donald Trump has imposed a blockade on Iranian ports, while Israel is pressing ahead with its assault on the Lebanese border town of Bint Jbeil, even as it engages in direct talks with Lebanon in Washington.

Commercial technologies are enabling the U.S. military and militaries around the world to operate with greater efficiency, speed, precision, and lethality. The benefits of commercial capabilities can be particularly impactful given the defense industrial base’s struggles to produce at the speed and scale needed to outmatch China, Russia, and other aligned adversaries. It is largely for these reasons that President Donald Trump mandated the Department of Defense to preference commercial solutions.

The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has exposed a reality many policymakers long preferred to avoid: The deterrence model that governed the Gulf for decades is no longer working as intended.For years, the region operated in the gray zone — covert strikes, proxy warfare, and carefully managed escalation. Iran built a strategy around missiles, regional partners, and nuclear latency.The United States underwrote Gulf security without direct war. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors relied on that umbrella while hedging against its limits, investing in missile defense and selective partnerships.

Editor’s note: This article is the sixth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.The next major war the United States fights could be decided by supply chains long before the first shot is fired.

French Air Force Rafale fighters forward deployed in Lithuania have engaged Russian Su-30SM fighters, which are thought to be operated by the Russian Navy from facilities in the Kaliningrad region. Rafale pilots reportedly used the Thales TALIOS targeting and laser designation pod during the intercept, which provides a high-resolution long-range visual identification capability This allows personnel to confirm aircraft type and visible weapon loads from a safer distance.

The Russian S-400 long range air defence system is currently relied on to form the backbone of the country’s air defence network, with more than twice the quantities of funds having been spent on procuring the systems over the last two decades than on all types of fighter aircraft combined. While the system has been widely praised by analysts and operators for its very high mobility, its extreme engagement range, and its ability to shoot down very fast targets using missiles with speeds of over Mach 14, its high situational awareness has also gained considerable attention.

The UK Armed Forces have been a dominant force

The U.S. Air Force’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber has successfully tested its aerial refuelling capability with a KC-135 Stratotanker. as part of ongoing flight testing efforts. The testing of the B-21’s aerial refuelling capabilities marks a major landmark in preparing for a future win which the two types of aircraft operate closely together to provide a global capacity for sustained penetration strikes.

The U.S. Air National Guard has sought to press Congress for a significant increase in fighter procurements, as decades of underinvestment leave the fleet increasingly out of date, while ageing airframes suffer from fast rising maintenance needs and operational costs. Air National Guard adjutants general from more than 20 states sent a jointly written letter to Congress in early April requesting multiyear funding for the acquisition of between 72 and 100 new fighters each year.

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg’s March 9 memorandum sets an ambitious deadline for Pentagon and military leaders to transition the Maven Smart System (MSS) into a formal program of record by the end of this fiscal year.
That Palantir-supplied, AI-enabled platform fuses disparate military systems and intelligence sources into one interface that rapidly integrates data and compresses the military’s processes for finding and striking targets.

The Trump administration is proposing a major overhaul of how the federal government decides which workers to lay off when eliminating jobs. For veterans, the new rule would prioritize performance reviews over both veteran status and years of service when agencies determine which workers to cut.
The rule, according to one advocate for disabled veterans, could reduce protections for military veterans who hold federal jobs.

On April 13, the U.S. military began a “blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports.” The move came after U.S. President Donald Trump announced on April 12 that the United States would begin a blockade after American and Iranian negotiators were unable to reach an agreement during a meeting in Islamabad.The announcement of a blockade immediately raised questions about how a blockade would work, how it fits into a broader U.S. strategy, its impacts on the global economy, and more.

Defence Minister Luke Pollard hits back at crit

Federal agencies have always faced the challenge of finding and retaining talent that meets current and future mission needs. For too long, however, federal and defense agency heads have lacked the tools and incentives to view workforce planning as the agile, proactive, strategic discipline it should be: one that drives, not just supports, an agency’s mission.

New UK-made autonomous ground vehicles — test

Royal Air Force players have been cracking on w

From a business systems perspective, the Pentagon operates in essentially the same manner that any other multinational conglomerate does.
Yet, the department has long seen its requirements, even those for everyday business operations, as unique. To meet those supposedly one-of-a-kind needs, it has been willing to foot a hefty upcharge to build highly customized software applications.

This video describes the military situation in

In 2024, John Stanko and Spenser Warren wrote, “Russian Threat Perception and Nuclear Strategy in its Plans for War with China,” where they explained some of the potential tensions between Russia and China that could make armed conflict between the two countries a possibility. Two years later, we asked them to revisit their arguments. Image: Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2024 article, you explained some of the potential tensions in the Sino-Russian partnership that could make armed conflict between the two countries a possibility.

The First Sea Lord has faced scrutiny over a da

Germany and Ukraine will cooperate on missile deliveries, drone technology, and battlefield data exchange.

President Trump has been effusive in his praise

Raytheon has finalised a contract valued at $3.7bn to supply Ukraine with Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) interceptors.

Somewhere in Ukraine, a crew sits in silence next to a launcher that could pass for a rooftop HVAC unit.
A radar pings. A Shahed is inbound, low and slow, grinding toward a power station at 185 kilometers per hour. The crew has roughly 12 minutes of battery life to find it, chase it, and kill it before their interceptor falls out of the sky like a four-kilogram brick.
That interceptor is called JEDI Shahed Hunter, and it might be the gnarliest multirotor drone ever built.
Also Read: Your standard rifle can now be an anti-drone weapon. Seriously.
On Mar.

AeroVironment on Wednesday unveiled Mayhem 10, the first in a new product line of unmanned aerial systems that the company plans to market to the Army and other potential customers.
Best known for its Switchblade family of kamikaze drones or loitering munitions, AeroVironment describes its new platform as an “autonomous, multi-role launched effects system” with payload flexibility that allows it to perform precision strike, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), electronic warfare, or communications relay missions.

Breaking Defense
After the president’s FY27 budget request zeroed out funding for the new engine, GE said more money is needed to finish qualification testing.

Tyler Rogoway, The WarZone
A new image of aerial refueling trials gives us our first full overhead look at the B-21 and a glimpse at some very interesting features.

AT
ADOC leads Army’s shift to data-centric operations by connecting commanders to enterprise data for timely decisions.

The Navy photographer who snapped a defining photo of the Artemis II astronaut crew’s return to Earth swears he wasn’t trying to create an iconic American image. In fact, he barely even recalls taking it.
“To be honest, I don’t even remember taking the photo,” Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class August Clawson told Task & Purpose. Clawson snapped the photo April 10 on the deck of the USS John P. Murtha after two Navy helicopters retrieved the Artemis crew from their Pacific Ocean splashdown, just as the sun began to set.

Improvise, adapt, and overcome. This is a mantra of the U.S. Marine Corps, but throughout American history, U.S. troops have demonstrated their capacity for extraordinary innovation and determination.
One of the most powerful examples of that determined spirit came during the Civil War, when Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant constructed an enormous pontoon bridge across the James River.

The U.S. Army has exhausted its entire stockpiles of the new Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) since the initiation of military operations against Iran, when the missile saw its first ever combat use to strike targets deep inside the country from positions in the Persian Gulf. Head of the Transformation Department at the U.S. Army’s Center of Excellence for Fire Support Jimmy Arter observed regarding the expenditure of the missiles: “We used up all our PRSM arsenal at the beginning of the war, but we’re already receiving new ones.

This video describes the military situation in

What happens when one of the defense industry’s leading technology integrators partners with one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture firms? Bryce Pippert of Booz Allen and Matt Cronin of Andreessen Horowitz join Ryan to unpack their new partnership and discuss how the United States is trying to tap into the tech ecosystem. The conversation gets into venture capital’s growing role in national security, how this partnership is supposed to work in practice, and why getting real technology into government hands is still harder than it should be.

Satellite imagery has revealed that the Algerian People’s National Army is rapidly constructing underground bunkers and hangars near the Moroccan border, in an apparent response to the shift in ground warfare brought on by advances in drone and loitering munition technologies that has been widely observed in the Ukrainian theatre.

The recent news that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death was caused by epibatidine — a South American frog toxin — has reignited interest in state use of poisons and toxins in assassinations. Although state use of such compounds has a long history, the erosion of the norms prohibiting assassinations and chemical and biological weapons increases the likelihood of future assassinations using poisons and toxins.

What happens when a country at war stops seriously debating its own strategy and goals?In Israel today, that scenario is no longer theoretical. In the aftermath of Hamas’ surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, Israel’s strategic decision-making ecosystem has been progressively undermined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political associates.Netanyahu has surrounded himself with pliable officials and supportive voices, including the defense minister and the leaders of the Mossad and the Internal Security Agency (Shin Bet).