The Questions as Part of Epochal Change

05/04/2026 In a recent piece I published on Defense.info, I argued that what changes most profoundly in a genuinely epochal transition is not the answers societies hold, but the questions they consider worth asking. The analyst who clings to the old question-space does not simply get wrong answers. He asks questions that are increasingly beside the point, technically competent, intellectually coherent,… Read more »

Japan’s Strategic Pivot: How Sanae Takaichi Is Reshaping the Indo-Pacific Alliance Architecture

05/03/2026 By Robbin Laird Something has changed in Japanese strategic culture, and the world has been slow to notice. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Japan's first female prime minister, holder of a commanding two-thirds supermajority in the Diet, and a politician who came of age studying American power in Washington, is executing a transformation of Japan's defense posture and alliance relationships that… Read more »

Speartooth Comes to America: What the C2 Robotics LUUV Sale Tells Us About the Future of Undersea Mass

05/02/2026 By Robbin Laird In August 2025, the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport, issued a sole-source solicitation for three C2 Robotics "Speartooth" Large Uncrewed Underwater Vessels, 11-metre variant. The justification was blunt: Speartooth was the only autonomous underwater vehicle that met Navy design, size, and mission requirements for long-range, stealthy undersea delivery of ordnance and other kinetic effects. The… Read more »

From Prototypes to Operational Realities: Australia’s Maritime Autonomous Systems Unit and the Tasks That Cannot Wait

05/01/2026 By Robbin Laird Australia’s Maritime Autonomous Systems Unit, the MASU, stands at an inflection point. The period of experimentation and prototype evaluation that has defined the past several years of Australian engagement with unmanned maritime systems must now give way to something harder to achieve and more consequential: operational delivery. The pressure is not abstract. Australia faces a significant hull… Read more »

The Interconnected Deals No One Is Calling a New World Order

04/30/2026 By: Alexandra Brooks On May 13, 2025, President Donald Trump stood before Saudi ministers, Gulf investors, and technology executives at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh and delivered what may be remembered as one of the defining foreign policy speeches of the decade. The event was written off as another investment forum; the speech was something else entirely.… Read more »

Britain “Underprepared and Underinsured”: Lord Robertson’s Warning and What It Actually Means

04/29/2026 [caption id="attachment_149311" align="alignnone" width="962"] Screenshot[/caption] When a former NATO secretary general warns that Britain is “underprepared, underinsured, under attack” and “not safe,” it is more than a routine shot in the Westminster blame game. Lord George Robertson’s recent intervention goes to the heart of the United Kingdom’s war‑fighting credibility in an era of state‑on‑state confrontation. His message is stark: the… Read more »