The Army’s Way Ahead and the Marine Corps’ Impact Force

08/06/2026 By Robbin Laird A recent CSIS conversation between the Honorable Michael Obadal, Under Secretary of the Army, and the Honorable Ryan McCarthy, former Secretary of the Army moderated by Jerry McGinn of CSIS's Center for the Study of the Industrial Base offered a candid look at how senior Army leadership is thinking about the service's future. I listened to it… Read more »

The AH-1Z and Personnel Recovery: When the Hunter Becomes the Rescued

08/04/2026 By Robbin Laird Eight photographs from April 4, 2026, at Combat Village near Yuma, Arizona, document an AH-1Z tactics exercise with an unusual premise: the attack helicopter pilot as the person being recovered. The simulated personnel recovery exercise conducted by Maj. James Turner, an AH-1Z Viper pilot with MAWTS-1, turns the standard relationship between the attack helicopter and the rescue… Read more »

An Odyssey, Not the Career: A Prologue to Two Twentieth Century Men in the 21st Century

08/04/2026 By Robbin Laird I have never had a career. I want to say that plainly, at the start, because it is the truest thing I know about my own life, and because it took me the better part of four decades to be able to say it without apology. A career is a path. It has rungs. Someone above you… Read more »

The Way Ahead for the US Army: A CSIS Baseline Discussion

08/03/2026 By Robbin Laird A colleague recently recommended that I listen to and read through a CSIS discussion between two senior Army officials, the Honorable Michael Obadal, Under Secretary of the Army, and the Honorable Ryan McCarthy, former Secretary of the Army, moderated by Jerry McGinn of CSIS's Center for the Industrial Base. Having done so, I found it a genuinely… Read more »

Remembering the Village d’Auteuil: Franklin and the American Debt to France for American Independence

08/02/2026 By Robbin Laird As we mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, it is worth pausing on one of history's more consequential ironies: the survival of the American republic was purchased in no small part by the treasury, the diplomacy, and the officer corps of an absolute monarchy that would itself be swept away within a generation. Louis XVI,… Read more »

The Osprey Assault Support Cycle: WTI 2-26 in the Desert

07/29/2026 By Robbin Laird A series of photographs taken on April 6, 2026 in the early weeks of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26 documents an Osprey assault support tactics evolution in the desert near Yuma, Arizona. Taken together, the images tell a complete operational story: departure from the flight line, low-level formation flight, arrival at an expeditionary desert site, planning… Read more »