Confident Enough to Disagree: What NATO 3.0 Can Learn from How the Cold War Ended

10/25/2026 — By Robbin Laird
Near the end of his Ditchley Foundation Annual Lecture on September 16, 2026, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said something that deserves more attention than his...
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MUMS-14 and the Impact Force: Closing the Gap Steel Knight Exposed

10/24/2026 — By Robbin Laird
On June 16, 2026, under a covered pavilion at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, the Marine Corps activated Marine Unmanned Maintenance Squadron 14 — MUMS-14...
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Regenerative Airpower: The Next Generation Is an Enterprise, Not a Platform

10/23/2026 — By Robin Laird
The word “generation” has been doing a lot of quiet work in airpower for three decades. We speak of fourth-generation and fifth-generation aircraft, and now of...
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Key Developments
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Re-Thinking Strategy

Insourcing versus Integration: Toyota, BYD, and Two Roads to the Global Market

10/22/2026
By Robbin Laird

In a recent Defense.info piece, “BYD, Batteries, and the Architecture of Dependence,” I looked at BYD…

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Maritime Dynamics

From Truck to Toolkit: AUKUS Payloads and the Hull Gap Decade

10/20/2026
By Robbin Laird

Australia’s first public unveiling of the AUKUS Pillar II payloads for Ghost Shark, Speartooth and Bluebottle…

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Re-Thinking Strategy

NATO 3.0 and the Unfinished Pillar: What Rutte Did Not Say at Ditchley

10/18/2026
By Robbin Laird

When NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte delivered the Ditchley Foundation’s 62nd Annual Lecture on September 16,…

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Re-Thinking Strategy

Building Depth: How Indo-Pacific Allies Are Hardening for a Long Contest

10/15/2026
By Robbin Laird

The headlines in the Indo-Pacific tend to focus on the visible: carrier movements, missile tests, coast…

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Re-Thinking Strategy

NATO 3.0 and the Long Road to a European Pillar

10/11/2026
By Robbin Laird

On September 16, 2026, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte delivered the Ditchley Foundation’s 62nd Annual Lecture…

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Re-Shaping Defense & Security

Beyond Arms Sales: Building the Taiwan Mesh Fleet Where the Fight Will Be

10/09/2026
By Robbin Laird

Major Joseph Potter’s new essay for the Center for International Maritime Security, “Arming Taiwan: America First…

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Special Reports
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The Requirement for Air Combat Mass and Depth in the Indo-Pacific

For three decades, "generation" has been a word we attach to aircraft: fourth, fifth, now sixth. The label...
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Book Review
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07/26/2026

Before the Pivot: John Blaxland’s The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard and the Long Road to Today’s Force

John Blaxland's The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard (Cambridge University Press, 2014) is, on its surface, a work of institutional history. It covers 35 years from Gough Whitlam's election in 1972 to John Howard's defeat in 2007 and catalogues...
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Featured Defense System
Fighters

France and the UAE Revive the Rafale F5 Partnership

10/24/2026
By Defense.info

France and the United Arab Emirates have signed an intergovernmental agreement tied to the Rafale F5, reopening a partnership that had stalled over money and technology. President Emmanuel Macron announced it at a press conference on October 21, during his Gulf tour. He said the visit had consolidated the defense relationship through "an intergovernmental agreement and a set of agreements to have a common strategy on the fifth generation of Rafale." No details were given, financial or otherwise. What Was Signed Infodefensa reports that two documents were exchanged in Abu Dhabi on October 20, in the presence of Macron and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The first is a Strategic Defence Partnership Framework, signed by UAE Minister of State for Defence Affairs Mohamed bin Mubarak Al...

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