Designed In, Not Bolted On: Barrett’s Third Lesson for the Autonomous Systems Age

09/02/2026 By Robbin Laird When I sat down with then Chief of the Australian Navy, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett, in 2017, one of the quieter points he made has aged into one of the more prescient ones. Amid the launch of the largest Royal Australian Navy recapitalization since the Second World War, Barrett was already pushing his service away from a… Read more »

From AIS to Intelligence Authority: Windward and the Challenge of Maritime Domain Awareness in an Age of Chaos

09/01/2026 By Robbin Laird When I spoke recently with Ami Daniel, the CEO and co-founder of Windward, I came away convinced that his company has been building toward something that most of the defense and intelligence establishment has been too slow to grasp: that in an era when no single navy can police the world's oceans, the only viable path to… Read more »

MUMS-14 and the Impact Force: Closing the Gap Steel Knight Exposed

08/31/2026 By Robbin Laird On June 16, 2026, under a covered pavilion at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, the Marine Corps activated Marine Unmanned Maintenance Squadron 14 — MUMS-14 — as a subordinate command of Marine Aircraft Group 14, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey F. Carben took command; Sergeant Major Tavaris J. Douglas became its senior enlisted leader;… Read more »

Exports, Alliances, and Ukraine: The Politics Behind France’s Arms Sales

08/28/2026 Paris - France won €21.2 billion ($24.7 billion) of export orders for weapons in 2025, helped by India’s contract for 26 Rafale fighter jets and related armaments, the annual report of the armed forces ministry to parliament said. That 2025 value fell slightly from foreign arms orders of €21.6 billion in the previous year. “With €21.2 billion of orders, the… Read more »

The USMC as an Impact Force: From Crisis Management to Chaos Management

08/27/2026 The post-Cold War period shaped a Marine Corps optimized for the wrong war. Built around a "crisis management" paradigm — one that assumed sanctuary, permissive logistics, and a knowable adversary, the Corps found itself increasingly cast as a maritime bus service for land-centric CENTCOM operations. The threat environment has since moved on, and so has the Marine Corps. What is… Read more »

South Korea as a Middle Power: Shaping a Global Arms Strategy

08/25/2026 By Robbin Laird South Korea has spent the past four years converting itself from a net importer of weapons into one of the ten largest arms exporters on Earth, and it has done so with a speed that has unsettled established Western suppliers and delighted frontline states looking for equipment now rather than in five years. But the more interesting… Read more »