Ukraine as a Kill Web Laboratory: Democratic ISR Grids Enabling Adaptive Drone Warfare

04/03/2026 By Robbin Laird The war in Ukraine represents the first full-scale laboratory for kill web operations in modern warfare, where the rapid adaptation of drone systems and tactical innovation proceeds not in isolation, but anchored by a sophisticated ISR grid provided by diverse democratic allies. This coalition ISR ecosystem, spanning American, Japanese, Nordic, and European space-based sensors, surveillance aircraft, and… Read more »

Beyond Total Victory: Security in an Era of Permanent Rivalry

04/02/2026 By Pasquale Preziosa The deployment of additional U.S. troops to the Gulf signals not only a possible military escalation. Above all, it reveals a deeper transformation: contemporary warfare no longer follows the logic of short campaigns and decisive victories, but rather that of duration, permanent competition, and the political-narrative construction of the outcome. All scenarios remain open. The deployment can… Read more »

The Architecture of Multi-Polar Authoritarianism: How We Got Here and What It Means

04/01/2026 My previous article, “From Post-Cold War Settlement to Contested Global Order”, brought together the arguments of two books, 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 Global China That article argued that the unipolar moment has ended, that… Read more »

Doubling Down on Missiles: Inside MBDA’s €5 Billion Bet on Europe’s Defense Revival

03/31/2026 By Pierre Tran Paris - MBDA, a European missile maker, will double investment to €5 billion ($5.7 billion) in 2026 to 2030 to boost production, and expects to increase output some 40 percent this year, chief executive Eric Béranger told March 26 a press conference on 2025 financial results. That increase in capital expenditure follows a previous plan to invest… Read more »

Looking Back at Iran’s Military Modernization: How China and Russia Transformed Tehran into a Precision-Strike Power

03/31/2026 By Robbin Laird Iran's military modernization is no longer primarily a story of indigenous ingenuity and sanctions evasion. It is a story of a deepening trilateral alignment in which China supplies the industrial, navigational, and chemical backbone; Russia contributes combat-tested operational doctrine and high-end sensor architecture; and Iran manufactures, deploys, and diffuses the resulting capabilities across a network of proxies… Read more »

What the Past Tells Us About Iran: Arms Transfers, Technology Flows, and the Architecture of a Threat

03/30/2026 By Robbin Laird The campaign against Iran's nuclear and military infrastructure did not emerge from a vacuum. It was the culmination of a strategic trajectory that, if one had been paying close enough attention, was legible for decades. I have been paying that attention through fieldwork, through analytical commissions, and through the kind of practitioner-driven research that rarely makes the… Read more »