From the Franco-German Engine to a Networked Pillar

10/22/2026 The last installment closed on a specific claim: that if strategy is a wager continuously remade as conditions shift, then the question of where strategic weight sits within an alliance can't be treated as fixed either. This installment picks up exactly that thread — the geography of European defense, and how far it has moved from the framing Robbin Laird's… Read more »

When Ships Can’t Buy What Chaos Requires: Naval Power, Maritime Governance, and the Rise of Commercial Intelligence Authority

10/21/2026 By Robbin Laird A recent essay in the Center for International Maritime Security, Hervé Auffret's “What Naval Power Cannot Buy,” makes an argument that should unsettle anyone still planning maritime strategy around hull counts and missile inventories. Ships, he writes, can deter a competitor, compel a rival, and escort a convoy. What they cannot do is build the institutions, relationships,… Read more »

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 »