Expert Analysis

I had seen the cliff coming for six months before I eventually fell off it, and I thought I had prepared myself well for the fall. I was wrong. Having spent the preceding 14 years in the army, the last five with special operations, I was looking forward to a slower-paced and simpler life with […]

The Army is looking to replace their fleets of the aging UH-60 Blackhawk vertical lift helicopters and wants their replacements, with an eye toward possible conflict with Russian or Chinese forces to be bigger, faster and much more maneuverable. The Army is calling this new development the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRRA) and it is […]

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” Isaiah 6:8 As a matter of fact, January is the month of such awareness. While it’s a distinct honor to have an entire month dedicated to awareness of the scourge that […]

Somewhere in the vicinity of Baghdad, 4 Navy HH-60Hs lift out of a FOB, their cabins packed full of SOF assaulters. As the birds lift, the engines whine, struggling to perform in the hot summer air. The targeted individuals are all members of an al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) cell, and tonight we know where they […]

A recent influx of headlines about the U.S. Army failing to hit its recruiting goals last year and the U.S. Air Force facing a longstanding pilot shortage prompted a resurgence in concerns about how to effectively draw young Americans to the clarion call of service. You’ll find proposed solutions (“give them more money!”) to assigned […]

Editor’s note: Erik Meisner served in Attack Company, 2nd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment as a rifle team leader with deployments to the Middle East, Central America and Asia. He is also a licensed pilot. When I was a member of 2/75 Ranger, we trained with several forms of close air support. A-10’s, AH-64 Apache’s and […]

It can sometimes be easy to lose perspective when talking about historical events. Once timelines stretch beyond the horizon of our own recollection, they tend to get fuzzy. Most people would be surprised to know, for instance, that Cleopatra’s lifetime was actually closer to ours than it was to the construction of the pyramids, or […]

At this point, it is not news that the President of the United States is a fan of tariffs. He has gone so far as to (sarcastically or not) christen himself “Tariff Man,” in a tweet earlier this month. What is also not new is that President Trump seems to fundamentally misunderstand how international trade […]

In 2013 MSNBC host Rachel Maddow authored a book titled “Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power.”  The book explores America’s steady march towards perpetual war, one that has echoes of George Orwell’s famous novel 1984 in which propagandized citizens recite that, “we are war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia.”  […]

There’s no denying that technology has changed the way we fight wars, but as we take stock of the various ways in which new gear has made it easier to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy, we often lose sight of the ways technology has hindered the modern war fighter as well. The ever-present […]

With the recent news that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will be vacating his position sooner than originally stated in his resignation letter, Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan will be stepping into the Acting SECDEF role on January 1, 2019.  President Trump will now be actively engaged in finding a full-time permanent replacement.  […]

New details have begun to emerge about Lockheed Martin’s two-fold attempt at closing the capability gap presented by new Chinese and Russian hypersonic missile platforms. Hypersonic missiles, or missiles that are capable of sustaining speeds in excess of Mach 5, are widely believed to be a disruptive technology to the global warfighting status quo. Their […]