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Accepting Reality: For the Foreseeable Future, Denuclearizing North Korea May Be Unattainable
For two decades now, U.S. policymakers have sought North Korean denuclearization. In the early 2000s, it appeared to be a necessary goal, because a nuclear North Korea would threaten U.S. allies, spread nuclear weapons beyond the Korean Peninsula, damage the sanctity of the nuclear taboo, and eventually threaten U.S. territory. But the enemy gets a vote, and it is now clear that for the foreseeable future, there is nothing the United States can do, short of a direct military attack, to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
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Successful Sounding Rocket Campaign Advances Hypersonic Weapon Tech for Navy, Army
Hypersonic weapons are weapons travelling at hypersonic speed – at between 5 and 25 times the speed of sound, about 1 to 5 miles per second (1.6 to 8.0 km/s). Sandia Lab’s researchers use a new vehicle which imitates boost-glide trajectory for over a minute.
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Puma Tanks Unusable: Is Germany's Military Fit for Action?
Following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, German leaders vowed to boost the Bundeswehr and take on a leading role in NATO. But now there is yet another debacle: All of the cutting-edge Puma tanks are unfit for action.
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“It's Not Napoleon or the Wehrmacht. It's the Ukrainians”': Military Strategist Sean McFate on What Could Stop Russia
In the eyes of American military strategist Sean McFate, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February transformed a devastatingly effective strategy — from the Kremlin’s perspective, at least — into a failed blitzkrieg and a validation of his assertion that “conventional war is dead.”
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Washington’s Semiconductor Sanctions Won’t Slow China’s Military Build-Up
Advanced semiconductors underpin everything from autonomous vehicles to hypersonic weapon systems. Chips are imperative to the defense industry and technologies of the future. By targeting this critical input, the Biden administration aims to freeze China’s semiconductor suite at 2022 levels and impede its military development. Despite the bleak short-term outlook, it is wrong to assume that US controls will hobble China for years.
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Ukraine War: Drones Are Transforming the Conflict, Bringing Russia on to the Frontline
Russia and Ukraine have deployed a wide range of military and commercial drones since the early days of the war. But their increasingly frequent – and effective – deployment indicates a potential new stage of escalation with important consequences for Ukraine and its western backers.
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How Doctrine and Delineation Can Help Defeat Drones
As Iranian-made drones continue to spread destruction across Ukraine, observers have been reminded once again of the dangers unmanned aerial systems pose. Nicholas Paul Pacheco writes that the United States, to its credit, has made significant progress in bolstering its capabilities to combat this threat, particularly through the investment of the Pentagon and the defense industrial base in counter-drone research and development. But “there remain two areas that have not been properly tackled: base defense and warfighter-policymaker synergy,” he writes.
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The Global Race to Secure Critical Minerals Heats Up
The World Trade Organization last week ruled that Indonesia had no right to ban the export of nickel or to require that raw nickel ore be refined in Indonesia. Handing a comprehensive victory to the complainant, the European Union, the WTO decision highlights the clash between national security and global trade rules over critical minerals.
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How a Notorious Mercenary Company Scours Siberian Prisons for Soldiers to Fight in Ukraine
Desperate to replace dead and wounded Russian troops in Ukraine, the Kremlin, in addition to mobilization, has also turned to less traditional methods to bolster troop numbers. That includes loosening age and other physical requirements for newly mobilized soldiers, as well as outright recruitment of new volunteers. And since at least July, that effort has included recruiting some of the estimated 470,000 inmates in the custody of the Federal Penitentiary Service. Leading that effort is the Vagner Group, the private company owned by a Kremlin-connected businessman.
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Drones Employed in the Ukraine War
Unmanned systems have revolutionized modern warfare – and pilotless aircraft have had a significant impact in the war in Ukraine.
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Anticipating Chinese Reactions to U.S. Posture Enhancements
What are the key factors that U.S. policymakers and military planners should consider when assessing how China is likely to react to planned or proposed U.S. posture enhancements in the Indo-Pacific region?
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Three Charged with Giving Secrets to China, and Selling DOD Chinese-Origin Rare Earth Magnets
DOJ charged three residents of Kentucky and Indiana with sending technical military data drawings to China, and then unlawfully supplying the U.S. Department of Defense with Chinese-origin rare earth magnets for aviation systems and military items.
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It’s Time to Designate Wagner Group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization
The international sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine have not targeted a key component in the Kremlin’s toolbox for international terror and coercion: the private military company (PMC) Wagner Group, which is owned by Vladimir Putin confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin. Wagner Group’s activities in Ukraine have been notorious since 2014, but they also have had a persistent presence in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), and—most recently—Mali.
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U.S. Imposes Sanctions on Network Supplying Russia with Weapons Tech
The United States has imposed sanctions on a network of entities and individuals that it says are involved in supplying Russia with military technology to use in its war against Ukraine.
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“We’ve Got to Change”: U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff
The U.S. Air Force chief of staff is warning that the U.S. military must “change” if it wants to stay ahead of China and Russia.
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More headlines
The long view
Walking the Artificial Intelligence and National Security Tightrope
Artificial intelligence (AI) presents nations’ security as many challenges as it does opportunities. While it could create mass-produced malware, lethal autonomous weapons systems, or engineered pathogens, AI solutions could also prove the counter to these threats. Regulating AI to maximize national security capabilities and minimize the risks presented to them will require focus, caution and intent.
North Korea’s Coming Breakout
Bad news for the world is often welcome relief to North Korea, a country that thrives in the shadowy cracks of the international system, Jonathan Corrado writes. Recent international developments have played into North Korea’s hands. “History shows that North Korea cannot be ignored. The more preparation is done today, the easier the answer will be tomorrow,” Corrado concludes.
The U.S. Government Should Stockpile More Critical Minerals
The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes China as America’s “most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades.” Yet, Gregory Wischer and Jack Little write, the United States is unprepared to fight a major war against the Chinese. “A longer, more intense U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan would expose even deeper cracks in the defense industrial base and undermine the U.S. military’s ability to defeat the Chinese military: The United States lacks sufficient stocks of critical minerals to support the defense industrial base, from nickel in superalloys for jet engines to rare earth elements in magnets for guided munitions,” they write.
American Grand Strategy, Realism, and the Russo-Ukraine War
Choices in foreign policy are never simple and are always sub-optimal. The choice faced now is whether to continue to support Ukraine fighting a messy, tragic war, which it may take time to win, or to let it carry on alone, with the prospect of an even more tragic conclusion from which the Western Alliance, let alone Ukraine, might never recover. As Western countries are not actually doing the fighting and have the resources to sustain Ukraine in its struggle, in the end this is not that difficult a choice to make. No, Ukraine is not another Vietnam.