One Voice, Three Tables: Meloni’s Letter and Europe’s Seat in the Ukraine Talks

11/07/2026 By Pasquale Preziosa and Robbin Laird Giorgia Meloni’s November 5 letter to European Council President António Costa is less a plea for one EU envoy than a demand to know who may commit Europe to what. She asked that leaders take up the question at the informal summit in Dublin next week, and that the December European Council formalize a… Read more »

The Philadelphia Test: Allied Shipbuilding Comes Ashore

11/06/2026 By Robbin Laird The American debate about shipbuilding has hardened into a simple choice: build warships at home or buy them from allies abroad. That framing makes good politics. It is poor strategy. The more useful question is whether the industrial know-how of allied shipbuilders can be brought into American yards quickly enough to make a difference for the fleet.… Read more »

The Fiji Decision: Bluebottles as Sovereign Assets and the Test of the Service Model

11/05/2026 By Robbin Laird When I interviewed Ocius founder and CEO Robert Dane on September 30, I listed the "Fiji decision" as one of the next tests of the Bluebottle program, along with the San Diego exercise, the Baltic winter trials and the opening of the company's new operations centre (Second Line of Defense). Three weeks later, the decision arrived. On… Read more »

The Engine Gap: Who Can Cast, Machine and Test the Turbine

11/04/2026 The shipyards had their hull gap. The makers of cheap long-range weapons now appear to have an engine gap, and the evidence is stronger on the supply side than on any collapse in output. What the Geran line is actually made of Russia's jet-powered Gerans are a lesson in how little of the weapon is the weapon. Ukrainian military intelligence… Read more »

Order Within Chaos: Managing Disruption, Recognizing What Is Emerging

11/03/2026 Are we so absorbed in managing disruption that we miss what is forming inside it? It is the right question for my book called Mastering Chaos, and it sharpens the book's argument. A question worth taking seriously After reading my article, “The Forces of Change: Why the Post-Industrial Thinkers of the 1970s Still Matter in the Age of Chaos,” Deborah… Read more »

From Prototype to Production Line: France’s SMOKERS Tender and Saab’s CB90 CX Point to the New Small Combatant

11/02/2026 Two announcements on either side of Euronaval 2026 show European navies trying to answer the same question in different ways: how to put more expendable or optionally crewed combat capability on the water quickly, and how to produce it at the rate a long fight would demand. In France, the Direction générale de l'armement (DGA) has gone out to industry… Read more »