Remembering Mike Wynne: He Never Wanted a Fair Fight

10/20/2026 By Robbin Laird Mike Wynne, the 21st Secretary of the Air Force, died this past weekend. He was my boss, my colleague and my friend, and he was one of the very few people I have known who understood how to lead, and how to drive real military transformation. “If you are ever involved in a fair fight, it is… Read more »

Rethinking How the Army Fights: Key Takeaways from AUSA 2026

10/20/2026 The central question of this series is a simple one. Is the U.S. Army transforming, or is it acquiring new equipment and calling that transformation? The two are not the same. A force can buy drones by the hundreds of thousands and still fight the way it did a decade ago. It can also change how it organizes, trains, sustains… Read more »

Desert Forge 2026: Exposing Gaps, Building Readiness

10/19/2026 By Robbin Laird The public account of Desert Forge 2026 describes a statewide training event built around a notional cyberattack, telecommunications outages, and an attack on a power-distribution station near Hawthorne. Those events were scenario injects. The exercise was designed to expose weaknesses and opportunities inside the formation: how leaders make decisions under pressure, how units communicate and operate when… Read more »

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 »