The Arithmetic of Reinforcement: What Getting NATO to the Northern Nordics Actually Takes

10/18/2026 A new study of the Northern Nordics argues that the alliance's northern flank will be won or lost at the transfer nodes, long before the battlefield. By Robbin Laird Every kill web has a substrate. We spend our days on sensors, shooters, decision cycles and the speed at which a distributed force can see, decide and act. We spend far… Read more »

India’s Middle Power Problem: Hedging Between Russia’s Decline and China’s Rise

10/18/2026 By Robbin Laird In 2026 India concluded a free trade agreement with the European Union, struck an interim tariff deal with the United States, absorbed a Gulf war that upended its oil supply, sent its air force to train with Japanese fighters, and hosted both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at a BRICS summit in New Delhi. Eleven days before… Read more »

Adaptation Is Built, Not Briefed: A Conversation with the Nevada Guard’s Land Component Commander

10/16/2026 By Robbin Laird   This week I had dinner with Brig. Gen. Randy Lau, the Land Component Commander of the Nevada Army National Guard and his Sgt Major. We talked about leadership, warfighting, and how to prepare people and organizations for a world that doesn't follow the plan. Afterward, Lau summed up the evening in a line better than anything… Read more »

The Bluebottle Program in the Hull Gap: Robert Dane on Service, Learning, and the Capital Ship

10/16/2026 By Robbin Laird When I spoke with Robert Dane, founder and CEO of Ocius, on September 30, the Bluebottle program had moved past the "will it work" phase. It is now in the harder phase of deciding how navies and border agencies should build a force around a system that works. Dane does not use my vocabulary. He never mentions… Read more »

When the Signal Lies: GPS Interference and the Next Phase of Maritime Domain Awareness

10/15/2026 By Robbin Laird Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency has just told shipowners something that would have sounded alarmist a decade ago: satellite navigation can no longer be taken for granted in some of the world's busiest shipping regions. In a new Marine Guidance Note, MGN 719, the MCA warns that interference across the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Middle East… Read more »

Stalin, Putin, and Ukraine: Two Faces of the Same Imperial Logic

10/14/2026 Vladimir Putin has spent much of the past decade insisting that Ukraine has no independent claim to nationhood, that it is, in his formulation, an artificial construct carved out of "historical Russia." It is worth remembering that this is not a new argument. It is Stalin's argument, updated for a different century and pursued by different means. What connects the… Read more »