The Osprey Assault Support Cycle: WTI 2-26 in the Desert

07/29/2026 By Robbin Laird A series of photographs taken on April 6, 2026 in the early weeks of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26 documents an Osprey assault support tactics evolution in the desert near Yuma, Arizona. Taken together, the images tell a complete operational story: departure from the flight line, low-level formation flight, arrival at an expeditionary desert site, planning… Read more »

From Raw Block to Precision Part: Inside the Digital Machine Shop Powering Today’s Defense Industrial Base

07/28/2026 By Robbin Laird In a modern defense and industrial ecosystem, the journey from raw material to a flight critical component is often invisible to strategists, policymakers, and even operators who depend on these parts every day. Yet it is precisely in places like this machine shop, captured in the photos accompanying this article, that industrial resilience, precision, and human skill… Read more »

Why Military Superiority Is Always a Snapshot, Never a Destination

07/27/2026 By Robbin Laird There is a seductive fallacy embedded in how we talk about military technology. Every generation produces its own version of it. The airplane will make armies obsolete. Precision strike will end the fog of war. Network-centric warfare will lift the battlefield veil permanently. Each claim, when it arrives, carries the intoxicating logic of finality, the idea that… Read more »

Plugging Into the Kill Web: How VMFA-251 Is Rethinking F-35 Sortie Generation

07/24/2026 By Robbin Laird A photograph taken at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma on April 13, 2026, shows a Marine avionics technician from VMFA-251 connected to an F-35B cockpit via the aircraft’s Internal Communication System cable, a 600-inch tether that is, in many ways, a window into how the Marine Corps is rethinking the ground side of fifth-generation aviation. The image… Read more »

The U.S. Navy’s New “Hybrid Fleet” Can Deliver MCM Capability

07/22/2026 By George Galdorisi The conflict in the Middle East has reminded nations and navies of the importance of naval forces in ensuring that the global commons is relatively free of strife and that nations can trade freely and energize the global economy. The role of navies in ensuring the security and prosperity of all nations has never been greater—nor under… Read more »

The Coming of the MV-75: How a New Tiltrotor Can Contribute to North Atlantic Defense

07/21/2026 By Robbin Laird A new special report brings together three strands of analysis on the MV-75 Cheyenne into a single argument about the future of trans-Atlantic defense. Over the past several weeks, I have written a series of pieces tracing how the U.S. Army's MV-75 Cheyenne tiltrotor can help reshape the operational geography of the North Atlantic, the Nordic Arctic,… Read more »