#indo-pacific-command

#indo-pacific-command

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 U.S. has discovered that air superiority and missile defense systems designed to counter tens/hundreds of aircraft and missiles is insufficient against asymmetric attacks of thousands of drones.

The Iranian choke hold on the Strait of Hormuz evidently had a lot to do with it. By cutting off roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supply over the past five weeks, Iran's blockade of that narrow waterway caused an energy crisis and fears of a global recession that the White House could not abide for long.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit India in May, focusing on trade and security to limit the impact of the US-Israel war with Iran.

The E-3 Sentry, with its distinctive rotating radar dome, is a flying command center that allows American forces to see and coordinate the battlefield. In recent weeks, Iran destroyed one on a runway in Saudi Arabia and reportedly damaged another.

The major shift in the NDS lies in the shifting approach of the US Defense Department, which considers security of the homeland and Western Hemisphere its primary concern. The document noted that the US military would be guided by four central priorities: defend the homeland, push allies around the world away from reliance on the US military, strengthen defence industrial bases and deter China as opposed to a policy of containment.

U.S. defense planning rests on the assumption that wars are fought abroad, by expeditionary forces, against defined adversaries. For decades, those assumptions held. But today, many of the most consequential security challenges facing the United States violate all three. They occur closer to home, below the threshold of armed conflict, and in domains where sovereignty is enforced incrementally. The shift has exposed a chronic mismatch between how the United States defines its defense priorities and how it allocates resources and respect.

OPINION - The 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS) follows closely the 2025 National Security Strategy, as it should. It also falls in line with the Department of Defense's narrative and the actions they have taken regarding priorities. The NDS has four lines of effort: Defending the U.S. Homeland - Homeland defense is the top priority, with the Western Hemisphere elevated above other regions. This includes border security, open lines of transportation (Panama Canal and Greenland), counter-narcotics operations, and countering adversary influence.