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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
