By Robbin Laird In the United States, the news cycle belongs almost entirely to Donald Trump. In the Mother Country, it belongs, once again, to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. After six years in Montecito, Harry and Meghan are heading back to Britain, settling this fall in the Cotswolds…
By Robbin Laird A light rain fell over the parade field at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point on the morning of June 16, 2026, but it did nothing to slow the proceedings. Under a covered pavilion ringed with the stadium-style red seats that mark official functions on the station,…
By Robbin Laird The official photographic record of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26, running from March through late April 2026 at MCAS Yuma and across a range of training sites in the American Southwest, is more than a set of public affairs images. Examined systematically, it constitutes a documentary…
By Robbin Laird and Ken Maxwell For the past several years, Western policymakers have comforted themselves with a story: that economic interdependence with China would eventually civilize the relationship, that trade would do the work diplomacy could not, and that rising Chinese power would express itself the way past rising…
By Robbin Laird The photos accompanying this article were taken at Pinal County Airpark near Marana, Arizona on April 4, 2026, during the Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course 2-26, hosted by Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1). They tell a story worth examining carefully not just as…
By Robbin Laird The United States Marine Corps is in the midst of the most consequential transformation in its modern history. That transformation is not, at its core, about new platforms or revised force structure tables, though both are part of the story. It is about something more fundamental: a…
By Robbin Laird A recent CSIS conversation between the Honorable Michael Obadal, Under Secretary of the Army, and the Honorable Ryan McCarthy, former Secretary of the Army moderated by Jerry McGinn of CSIS’s Center for the Study of the Industrial Base offered a candid look at how senior Army leadership…
By Robbin Laird Eight photographs from April 4, 2026, at Combat Village near Yuma, Arizona, document an AH-1Z tactics exercise with an unusual premise: the attack helicopter pilot as the person being recovered. The simulated personnel recovery exercise conducted by Maj. James Turner, an AH-1Z Viper pilot with MAWTS-1, turns…
