• ARGUMENT: A ROBUST HOMELAND AIR DEFENSE NETWORKMending Fences: Strengthening Homeland Defense through Integrated Civil-Military Air Surveillance

    A 1953 advertisement for the U.S. Air Force’s civilian Ground Observer Corps described America’s air defenses as a “10 mile high fence full of holes.” Thane C. Clare argues that in the seventy years since then, not much has changed – and that the United States “is not currently prepared to face a growing number of national security threats and challenges, including from the air.”

  • DEPORTATIONSTrump Has Promised to Build More Ships. He May Deport the Workers Who Help Make Them.

    By Nicole Foy

    President-elect Donald Trump has promised to increase the pace of U.S. military shipbuilding. But his pledge to also clamp down on immigration could make it hard for shipyards already facing workforce shortages.

  • THE FEW. THE PROUD.Small, Agile, Deadly: The U.S. Marine Corps and Future War

    By Andrew Rolander

    The US Marine Corps is dramatically increasing its relevance to the war fighting capability of the United States. As the world lurches into an age of renewed strategic competition, the Marine Corps understands that it must be at the forefront of innovation in high-intensity warfare.

  • CHINA WATCHSix Takeaways from the Pentagon’s Report on China’s Military

    By David Sacks

    Despite ongoing and high-profile corruption issues, China’s military continues to rapidly modernize. China has made significant strides toward building a highly modern and capable military that can threaten the United States and its allies and partners.

  • MILITARY TECHNOLOYU.S. Tech-Defense Leaders Want to Upend the Establishment

    By Bill Sweetman

    Elon Musk wants to cancel the F-35, get rid of manned combat aircraft generally and rely more on drones. But it was no surprise, however, even without Musk’s comments along those lines, that the US Air Force punted any decision on the Next Generation Air Dominance air-combat project to the next administration.

  • COUNTERTERRORISMSmart Pressure: Conceptualizing Counterterrorism for a New Era

    By Don Rassler

    When it comes to counterterrorism, the United States has been living through an inflection point. It wants to focus less on terrorism so it can place more emphasis on strategic competition, but key terrorist adversaries remain committed. The terrorism landscape and the approaches used by key terror adversaries have also been evolving

  • CHINA WATCHCalifornia Connection: How A Chinese Factory's Electronics Are Fueling Russia's War

    By Mike Eckel and Mark Krutov

    A Chinese company that owns a California electronics distributor has sent hundreds of shipments of restricted dual-use technology to Russia since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, including to sanctioned companies with ties to the Russian military.

  • CYBERTHREATSU.S. Army Cyber Command, DARPA Evaluate Advanced Cyber Threat Detection Technologies

    Joint activities through the Constellation program accelerate maturation of tactical and strategic cyber capabilities.

  • DRUG CARTELSAn Idea Whose Time Should Never Come: Using Special Forces Against the Cartels Would Be a Colossal Mistake

    By Brandan P. Buck

    While this idea is not new, it has become hazardous now given the Mexican drug cartels’ increased military capacity and tactical competence.

  • CRITICAL MINERALSGuidance for Critical Minerals Policy from ASPI’s Darwin Dialogue 2024

    By John Coyne and Henry Campbell

    Critical minerals are a focal point of international contention in an increasingly fracturing international system. These minerals underlie competition across civil and defense sectors and promise economic opportunity throughout their supply chain.

  • HOMELAND DEFENSEThe Past, Present, and Future of Homeland Defense

    By George Schwartz , Bert Tussing, and Darrell Driver

    Homeland defense issues my be referred to as seams of ambiguity which doesn’t clearly define itself as either a defense or a law enforcement issue, and our adversaries have discovered the seam and they’re playing along that seam. And that’s what thrusts us into the gray areas that we’ve been talking about for at least two decades now.

  • TERRORISMFailure in the Sahel

    By Lawrence Freedman

    There may be an element of schadenfreude in watching Russia fail in the Sahel in a major play against Western interests and get caught in a mess, from which it can only extricate itself with a loss of face. But the problem is that the result of this failure has been to turn the Sahel into a center for extremist violence that risks spreading further.

  • TERRORISMHezbollah, Hamas Down but Not Out, U.S. Says

    By Jeff Seldin

    Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Hamas, while inflicting considerable damage, has yet to strike a crippling blow to either of the Iran-backed terror groups, according to a top U.S. counterterrorism official.

  • MARITIME WARHouthis’ Lesson for the U.S. Army: How a Land Force Can Fight a Maritime War

    By Andrew Rolander

    The US Army should consider borrowing a page from the playbook of Yemen’s Houthi militants. The character of war is always changing, and the Houthis’ ongoing attacks against shipping in the Red Sea may prove to be one of the more significant inflection points in military history.

  • THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONConcerns about Elon Musk, Russia's Putin Not Fading Yet

    By Jeff Seldin

    Reports that billionaire Elon Musk has been talking on a consistent basis with Russian President Vladimir Putin are cause of concern. Musk’s companies are doing work for the Pentagon NASA. Some of that work is so sensitive that Musk has been given high-level security clearances due to his knowledge of the programs, raising concerns among some that top secret U.S. information and capabilities could be at risk.