Admiral Brad Cooper: A Kill Web Practitioner

03/23/2026 By Robbin Laird The kill web concept, which Ed Timperlake and I have been developing and writing about for more than a decade, is fundamentally about replacing the linear kill chain with a distributed, interactive combat architecture. Rather than sequencing effects through a fixed hierarchy of platforms, the kill web operates through interlocking nodes, sensors, shooters, decision-makers, and enablers ,… Read more »

The Maritime Regime: Autonomous Systems and the Enforcement of Iranian Demilitarization at Sea

03/23/2026 By Robbin Laird No strategy to structurally constrain Iran’s military options is complete without the maritime dimension. For decades, Tehran has treated the Strait of Hormuz, the northern Gulf, the Bab al-Mandab, and the Red Sea as chronic pressure points, instruments of coercion against adversaries and leverage over the global economy. The IRGC Navy and affiliated forces have harassed commercial… Read more »

The 2025 Books: Contributions to Portuguese and Brazilian History

03/22/2026 By Robbin Laird The 2025 publications in the Portugal and Brazil Confront the Contemporary World series represent a pivotal consolidation of an ambitious intellectual endeavor, one that repositions Portuguese and Brazilian historical experiences as central rather than peripheral to understanding global modernity. Three substantial volumes appearing this year demonstrate how historically grounded scholarship can illuminate contemporary global disorder while challenging… Read more »

Building the Kill Web: GCC-Israel Security and Deterrence Architecture

03/21/2026 By Robbin Laird If the first strategic challenge is to define the demilitarization objective and the coalition that enforces it, the second is to build the kill web that gives that coalition real deterrent teeth. Deterrence in the post-war Middle East cannot rest on declarations or episodic deployments. It requires persistent, integrated, and credible architecture or security, deterrence and kill… Read more »

The “Super B 1B”: Hypersonics, Kill Webs, and the Revival of a Legacy Bomber

03/20/2026 By Robbin Laird The “Super B‑1B”: Hypersonics, Kill Webs, and the Revival of a Legacy Bomber In earlier work, I argued that hypersonic weapons would only become strategically meaningful when embedded in a wider kill‑web construct what my colleague Ed Timperlake described as the evolution of S‑cubed, where speed, stealth, and situational awareness are fused into a 21st‑century strike enterprise. Hypersonics, in… Read more »

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 »