We are not living through a passing disturbance. We are living through the Age of Chaos — a systemic transition from one global order to another whose destination remains fiercely contested. The familiar language of a "rules-based international order" trending toward liberal norms no longer describes the world that democratic…
U.S. Marines assigned to Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS1) install airfield surfacing systems during an Expeditionary Airfield Practical Application as part of Weapons and Tactics Instructor course 2-26, at Auxiliary Airfield II, Yuma, Arizona, March 14, 2026. WTI is a seven-week training event hosted by MAWTS-1 which…
By Robbin Laird No strategy to structurally constrain Iran’s military options is complete without the maritime dimension. For decades, Tehran has treated the Strait of Hormuz, the northern Gulf, the Bab al-Mandab, and the Red Sea as chronic pressure points, instruments of coercion against adversaries and leverage over the global…
By Robbin Laird The 2025 publications in the Portugal and Brazil Confront the Contemporary World series represent a pivotal consolidation of an ambitious intellectual endeavor, one that repositions Portuguese and Brazilian historical experiences as central rather than peripheral to understanding global modernity. Three substantial volumes appearing this year demonstrate how…
By Robbin Laird If the first strategic challenge is to define the demilitarization objective and the coalition that enforces it, the second is to build the kill web that gives that coalition real deterrent teeth. Deterrence in the post-war Middle East cannot rest on declarations or episodic deployments. It requires…
By Robbin Laird The “Super B‑1B”: Hypersonics, Kill Webs, and the Revival of a Legacy Bomber In earlier work, I argued that hypersonic weapons would only become strategically meaningful when embedded in a wider kill‑web construct what my colleague Ed Timperlake described as the evolution of S‑cubed, where speed, stealth, and situational…
U.S. Marines with Combat Logistics Battalion 6, Combat Logistics Regiment 2, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, participate in a slippery driver training course in Setermoen, Norway, Jan. 26, 2026. This Norwegian-led course provides drivers with essential techniques for operating tactical vehicles safely in icy and snowy conditions in preparation for exercise…
By Robbin Laird Hitchcock's classic movie, The Birds, offers four core lessons that map almost too neatly onto modern drone swarms. No front lines. In Bodega Bay, danger comes from the sky, not from a defined direction of advance. Likewise, drone swarms turn the battlespace into an enveloping condition rather than…
