Retired Army Special Forces officer Mike Nelson criticized Hegseth's rhetoric, stating, 'That's a necessary end to achieve goals through military force - you have to kill people to achieve them. That's not the end. It's a weird obsession with death for the sake of it.'
The economics are hard to ignore. Shooting down a drone with AeroVironment's LOCUST laser system costs less than $10, using just two to five seconds of laser energy. Compare that to the interceptor missiles currently used against Iranian drone swarms, which cost orders of magnitude more and are in short supply across allied arsenals.
Giulio Douhet proposed a revolution in warfare, stating that victory would come from large-scale aerial bombardments targeting civilians and infrastructure rather than just combatants.
The conduct of War is, therefore, the formation and conduct of the fighting. If this fighting was a single act, there would be no necessity for any further subdivision, but the fight is composed of a greater or less number of single acts, complete in themselves, which we call combats, as we have shown in the first chapter of the first book, and which form new units.
I have been working in Ukraine since 2019, first as an active Green Beret advising in an official capacity, then after leaving that service, directing special operations on the ground and more recently carrying hard-won lessons back to NATO before they are forgotten or overtaken by the next news cycle.
I was giving these scenarios, these Golden Dome scenarios, and so on. And he's like, 'Just call me if you need another exception.' And I'm like, 'But what if the balloon's going up at that moment and it's like a decisive action we have to take? I'm not going to call you to do something. It's not rational.'
We've got no shortage of munitions. Our stockpiles of defensive and offensive weapons allow us to sustain this campaign as long as we need. Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation.
Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.
Lead without authority. You may not have direct reports, yet you shape architecture, quality and the roadmap. Your leverage comes from artifacts, reviews and clear standards, not from title.I started by publishing a lightweight architecture template and a rollout checklist that the team could copy. That reduced ambiguity during design and cut review cycles by nearly 30 percent
In the latest episode of IPWatchdog Unleashed, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ted Wood-a unique figure whose career spans military service, engineering and patent law. After spending time both in-house and at Am Law 100 firms, today Ted is Managing Partner of Wood IP. Our conversation, which took place August 8, was not only interesting and fun but a testament to the diverse pathways one can take to success, both in life and, specifically, in the engineering and patent law fields.
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, emphasized that vesting war powers in Congress rather than the President represented a crucial safeguard against concentrated executive authority and the potential for individual flaws in judgment affecting national security decisions.
China's drive to modernize its military to rival the US armed forces is running parallel with an aggressive purge of its senior leaders. The People's Liberation Army has been repeatedly shaken by a massive anti-corruption campaign led by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Now, the military leadership is under renewed scrutiny after one of China's most senior generals was placed under investigation.
Though the 83-year-old (who will turn 84 in two weeks) is rarely spotted in the Capitol these days, his vocal opposition to President Donald Trump on a myriad of issues is louder and more present than ever when deemed useful for the motivated liberal press. For instance, McConnell was quoted far and wide last month after he criticized Trump's desire to acquire Greenland, a move the Kentuckian suggested would "incinerate" the threadbare alliance that remains between the United States and NATO.
Active-duty force size is a tally of a country's uniformed troops: airmen, soldiers, sailors, special operators, and Marines. Armies, in particular, depend on size to gain and occupy ground. Militaries can also be a tool of domestic repression, a focus that undercuts its capabilities against an external foe. North Korea, for example, is one of the world's most repressive states, led by a dictator who has repeatedly threatened neighboring South Korea.
Over the weekend, it emerged that authorities in China have opened investigations into two senior figures at the top of the People's Liberation Army for "serious disciplinary violations" a phrase commonly used in Chinese official communications to refer to corruption. Those affected include top general Zhang Youxia, who is one of President Xi Jinping's closest allies in the military and one of the two deputy chairmen of the powerful Central Military Commission. Another senior general, Liu Zhenli, is also being investigated.
The US is mounting its largest military buildup in the Middle East since 2003. Here's a list of the weapons and hardware that it's sent to the region as the Trump administration pressures Iran to strike a deal that would limit its nuclear and military capabilities.At least a dozen warships collectively worth an estimated $50 billion have been deployed to the region.
But logistical consistency, like coherence and gravitas, does not characterize the new NDS. It is a document that supposedly nests within the National Security Strategy, explaining at greater length the implications of overall policy for the armed forces. The 2026 version does not do that. Rather, it restates some of the basic priorities of the Trump administration but for the most part confines itself to flattery of the president, insults, and bombast.
