By Robbin Laird On April 17–18, 2026, the high desert terrain around Twentynine Palms, California became the operational environment for Assault Support Tactics 3, one of the defining field evolutions of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26. The photographs from those two days capture what WTI is at its best:…
By Robbin Laird In the early 2000s, a billion-dollar Predator drone circled over a combat zone, its high-definition cameras capturing perfect imagery of enemy positions below. On the ground, a Special Forces operator, weighted down with 80 pounds of gear and under enemy fire, was effectively blind. He knew the…
By Robbin Laird When visiting Bahrain some years ago, I made a point of seeing the Portuguese fort. Standing inside those ancient walls, looking at the stonework — Arab foundations overlaid with Portuguese military engineering — I was struck by a simple but powerful thought: the strategic logic that drove…
By Robbin Laird In the clear desert night over Arizona, a CH-53K King Stallion slid into position behind the tanker, its rotors biting into thin air as the crew prepared to take the hose once more. Below, the Sonoran Desert stretched away in darkness. Above and around, the aircraft was…
When I worked on German reunification in the 1980s, one of the core concerns was not simply whether the two German states could be brought together institutionally, but whether the deep historical and cultural gap between East and West Germany could be bridged in any meaningful way. The question was…
Fifteen photographs from April 13, 2026, at the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range in California document the most operationally complex exercise in the WTI 2-26 series: Assault Support Tactics 1. The photographs span the full operational picture from contractor technicians assembling threat-representative UAS at a mountain observation point, through ground…
By Robbin Laird The numbers tell a stark story. In early 2026, the United Kingdom fields a Royal Navy whose surface combatant force has shrunk faster than its modernization programs can backfill, while Iran has assembled a numerically larger and, in some respects, more dynamically evolving regional fleet. This is…
By Robbin Laird Six photographs taken through night vision devices on April 6, 2026, at Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, California, document one of the most operationally consequential integration exercises in WTI 2-26: the nighttime off-load of an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System from a KC-130J Hercules. The photographs…
