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Weaponized Skies and Seas: Lessons From Bodega Bay for the Drone Swarm Era

03/19/2026 By Robbin Laird Hitchcock's classic movie, The Birds, offers four core lessons that map almost too neatly onto modern drone swarms. No front lines. In Bodega Bay, danger comes from the sky, not from a defined direction of advance. Likewise, drone swarms turn the battlespace into an enveloping condition rather than a manageable front. There is no “main axis” to track… Read more »

The Coalition Framework: Enforcing the Continued Suppression of Iranian Power Projection Capabilities

03/18/2026 By Robbin Laird Trump’s Riyadh speech is seldom recalled for its strategic architecture. Most commentary at the time focused on the rhetorical framing of Islam. But strip away the atmospherics and the speech laid out a division of labor that has proven remarkably durable: Muslim-majority partners would take the lead in confronting extremism; the United States would provide the weapons,… Read more »

From Barbary Pirates to Iranian Mullahs: Here Come the Marines

03/17/2026 History rarely offers the same strategic irony twice. In 1805, a small detachment of U.S. Marines marched out of Alexandria across the North African desert to put steel on the “shores of Tripoli,” breaking the grip of Barbary pirates who believed they could hold American commerce and citizens hostage at acceptable cost. In 2026, Marines are heading eastward again, this… Read more »

China’s Djibouti Hinge and the Persian Gulf: Rethinking Access, Not Just Bases

03/17/2026 By Robbin Laird China’s presence in Djibouti has usually been read through the familiar grammar of bases and bastions, a forward military foothold that extends PLA Navy reach toward the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. That reading is not wrong, but it is incomplete. Djibouti matters less as a standalone outpost and more as a hinge in a wider… Read more »

Russia’s Strategic Insecurity in the Iran War: A Warning, Not a Win

03/13/2026 By Robbin Laird What is the impact of the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran on Russia? With Washington forced to juggle a major confrontation in the Middle East while continuing to support Ukraine, it can appear as though Moscow has successfully shifted the strategic spotlight away from its own aggression in Europe. In public debate this often sounds like a tidy… Read more »

The IRIS Shahid Bagheri: Iran’s Mobile Drone Carrier and Its Strategic Significance

03/12/2026 By Robbin Laird The destruction of the IRIS Shahid Bagheri by U.S. Central Command strikes removed from the Iranian order of battle one of the most conceptually significant vessels in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy's inventory. The ship was not a blue-water combatant in the conventional sense. It carried no heavy missiles in the fashion of a cruiser, no… Read more »

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The LVC Dynamic: A Key Force for Change in Combat Pilot Training

09/29/2025 The landscape of military aviation training stands at a critical juncture. As combat aircraft have evolved into increasingly sophisticated platforms bristling with advanced sensors, networked communications, and complex mission systems, the challenge of preparing pilots to operate these systems effectively has grown exponentially. The emergence of fifth-generation fighters has fundamentally altered the calculus of pilot… Download PDF Now »

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The Strait of Hormuz and the Long Shadow of History

03/11/2026 By Kenneth Maxwell A crisis at the Strait of Hormuz was always coming. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 10, 2026 that Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and the UAE’s… Read more »

The Iran Conflict and Russia’s Strategic Calculus: Risks, Opportunities, and the View from Central and Eastern Europe

03/09/2026 By Robert Czulda For Central and Eastern European states (particularly Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland) as well as Northern Europe (notably Finland), the primary and enduring threat remains. Russia, which,… Read more »

The Admiral at the Helm: How Brad Cooper’s Years in Bahrain Are Shaping the Iran War

03/08/2026 By Robbin Laird For most of its history, U.S. Central Command has been an Army officer’s domain. Since its founding in 1983, CENTCOM has been led predominantly by Army and… Read more »

Coalition of the Unwilling: Dassault, Airbus, and Europe’s Next Fighter

03/07/2026 By Pierre Tran Paris – The executive chairman of Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, called March 4 on Airbus to accept management leadership of the French industrial partner on a new… Read more »

From Post-Cold War Settlement to Contested Global Order

03/06/2026 My recently published books on the global war in Ukraine along with my forthcoming book with Kenneth Maxwel examining the Australian, Brazilian, and Chinese dynamic within the broader framework of… Read more »

Japan’s Defense Transformation and the Embedded Logistics Imperative: A Trilateral Opportunity for Industrial Integration

03/05/2026 By Robbin Laird A recent article by Stephen Kuper entitled, “Japan accelerates dual-use technology cooperation and development: Opportunities for allied nation industrial cooperation,” provided a thoughtful opportunity to revisst my… Read more »

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U.S. Marines Complete Cross-Border Convoy into Finland

03/18/2026 U.S. Marines with Combat Logistics Battalion 6, Combat Logistics Regiment 2, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, conduct a long-range convoy from Sweden into Finland, March 9, 2026. This movement was the… Read more »

Exercise Cobra Gold 2026 Maritime Strike

03/16/2026 U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to Task Force Tigershark, 1st Battalion, 229th Aviation Regiment, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, conduct a sea-based operation from a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk during Exercise Cobra… Read more »

HMLA-269 Conducts live fire training During MAG-29 DAO Exercise

03/06/2026 U.S. Marines with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 269, Marine Aircraft Group 29, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, conduct a live fire training event during MAG-29’s Distributed Aviation Operations Exercise… Read more »

U.S. Air Force Special Tactics Squadron

03/04/2026 U.S. Air Force Special Tactics Squadron Commander Lt. Col. Blake Jones discusses how Special Tactics Airmen remain a community of “doers and problem solvers” during an interview at Hurlburt Field,… Read more »

First Team uses Drones to Expand Signal Network

03/02/2026 Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jesse Wallace, an air and missile defense systems integrator assigned to 6th Battalion, 56th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, explains how the Battalion uses drones to expand… Read more »

Atlantic Lightning 26-1

02/17/2026 U.S. Marines with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 542 and VMFA-251, Marine Aircraft Group 14, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, conduct maritime strike training during Atlantic Lightning 26-1 at Marine Corps… Read more »

Protecting undersea Infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.

02/13/2026 Off the coast of Gotland, Sweden, scientists from the NATO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) are deploying cutting-edge acoustic sensors to see if they might help NATO Allies… Read more »

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The Second Line of Defense team provides high quality publications with regard to key global strategic developments. You can purchase these on a number of booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

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Lessons from the Drone Wars

03/01/2026 Lesson from the Drone Wars argues that the “drone wars” mark a wider transformation in warfare, where intelligent mass, mesh networks, and maritime autonomous systems are reshaping force design, deterrence,… Read more »

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