War on the Rocks

In 2019, Steve Fetter wrote “A Cheaper Nuclear Sponge,” in which he argued that building a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was unnecessary for strengthening U.S. land-based deterrence. A…

11h ago

As a naval shipyard commander, my mandate from Navy leadership is straightforward: return warships to the fleet as quickly as possible. Neither my shipyard nor many other public and private shipyards…

21h ago

On Jan. 5, 2025, my volunteer platoon attached to the 23rd Special Purpose Battalion of the Presidential Brigade entered a 1-kilometer-long tree line called CHAI, on the outskirts of Kotlyne, a few ki…

21h ago

Collective-defense pacts are meant to make war less likely. Poorly designed ones can do the opposite. If allies make sweeping promises without the military integration, decision-making mechanisms, and…

22h ago

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum, only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selectio…

1d ago

China’s marine scientific research ships are expanding their operations around Taiwan, and they are not just there to advance the frontiers of human knowledge. Their operations serve to undermine Taiw…

1d ago

The first institution Nicaragua’s National Assembly called to testify on the constitutional reform ending competitive elections was the army. On July 29, 2026, Gen. Julio César Avilés appeared before…

1d ago

Editor’s note: This is the tenth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This ser…

2d ago

When Israeli warplanes struck the Abu al-Duhur airbase in Syria on Aug. 18, 2026, the smoke rose over the demolition of an old geopolitical assumption about the Middle East. This time, Israel directly…

2d ago

Arms trafficking in the Caribbean has soared in recent years, with many states now ranking firearms trafficking as the number one public safety and security threat. As new methods of arming individual…

2d ago

On Aug. 25, at the People’s Palace in Damascus, Mazloum Abdi announced the dissolution of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which he had commanded for a decade. Speaking first in Arabic and then in Kurdis…

5d ago

War has always been a brutal engine of medical innovation, running on a feedback loop: Civilian breakthroughs are adapted for the battlefield, while battlefield necessity pushes advances back into civ…

6d ago

We played a wargame using AI players. Two nuclear-armed nations — Red and Blue — with a long-standing, fierce border dispute were placed into a militarized crisis. Over the course of several turns, th…

6d ago

As a new convoy of Russian armored vehicles arrives from the port of Lomé to support Russia’s Africa Corps deployment in Mali, that mission has entered its fifth year. Russia’s investment of blood and…

6d ago

In 2025, Michael Hunzeker and Yuster Yu wrote, “Taiwan’s Biggest Problem in Steeling Itself for War With China is Cultural,” where they argued major cultural changes were needed in both Taiwan’s milit…

Sep 2

As the war in Ukraine progressed, Russian strikes increasingly degraded Ukraine’s terrestrial communications infrastructure, steadily deepening Kyiv’s dependence on SpaceX’s Starlink. The satellite co…

Sep 2

In August 2024, special forces from five Ukrainian military intelligence units crossed the Black Sea to raid Russian-held Kinburn Spit. The commandos of these units — Chimera, Aratta, Stuhna, Paragon,…

Sep 2

The summer of 2026 has raised questions once again among politicians, diplomats, and academics about whether Germany might be about to dither on Russia. Last month, a drone attack on German soil seeme…

Sep 2

Date: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026Time: 12:00-1:00 PM ETThe second joint webinar by RUSI and War on the Rocks: Two leading defense publications from both sides of the Atlantic present their expert panel.…

Sep 1

My greatest challenge while flight testing collaborative combat aircraft was not troubleshooting errors at high speed in the cockpit. It was when, in a single keystroke, my job shifted from pilot to s…

Sep 1

Editor’s Note: While War on the Rocks has a high standard for allowing pseudonyms, this is an unusual case: U.S. Army Special Operations Command requires its uniformed personnel to use pseudonyms when…

Sep 1

In April, President Donald Trump issued two Defense Production Act determinations covering grid infrastructure and large-scale energy infrastructure. One found that the country’s constrained electric…

Sep 1

Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum, only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selectio…

Aug 31

Quantum’s hype obscures a reality with real geopolitical stakes: the technology works and is advancing every day. Cameron Chehreh (IonQ), JD Dulny (Booz Allen), and Ben Gianni (GDIT) join Jonathan to…

Aug 31

Walk into the Pentagon, climb the escalator, and an Uncle Sam-style poster points at you: “I want YOU to use AI.” It worked. GenAI.mil hit 1.5 million users in six months, and I have heard enough Open…

Aug 31

Editor’s note: This is the first article in a new occasional series featuring battles that just didn’t matter, may look important, but in fact had negligible strategic or political effects or were abs…

Aug 28

Cyber security remains a persistent concern for public and private sector organizations alike. Given the potential impact of cyber threats from criminal groups, adversarial states, and extremists, the…

Aug 27

“Unthreatening and respectful.” That is how the president of the United States described North Korea on Aug. 16, 2026, in his social media post ordering his secretary of defense to scale back joint ex…

Aug 27

In 2025, Rob Geist Pinfold wrote, “The March Massacres Show That Syria Urgently Needs Solutions, Not Sanctions,” in which he argued that sanctions relief was a major way the West could positively enga…

Aug 26

The Marine Corps just released its plan to fight against adversaries on land, and Ryan had the two architects of the plan, Ground Combat Element 2040, on the show to talk about it. They discuss drones…

Aug 26