Among the vineyards seeded with improvised explosive devices in Zhari, Kandahar, there was no possibility of maneuver. By 2012, the Taliban had place so many improvised explosive devices in the area that any attempt at doing the battle drills taught by the U.S. Army to suppress and maneuver on an enemy were suicide. The Taliban were innovative. They...

Released to the public on Sept. 12, the Department of Defense’s 2023 Cyber Strategy differs from its predecessors in its lack of bold new buzzwords. The 2015 strategy reimagined deterrence for the cyber domain, and the 2018 strategy articulated “defend forward” as a new foundational concept. But despite being informed by years of major cyber developments...

Over the past 10 years, the U.S. defense community has produced a tremendous volume of analytical work on the military balance between the United States and China. Think tanks, scholars, and military institutions have weighed in, contributing valuable insights. Unsurprisingly, though, there remain noteworthy disagreements, gaps, and unquestioned assumptions...

Concern over the Kessler syndrome — in which destroying satellites creates an impenetrable field of debris that blocks all access to space — has generated considerable public opposition to anti-satellite weapons. Nevertheless, a number of countries, the People’s Republic of China foremost among them, continue to actively research, develop, and test...

A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it. *** Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took a rare trip beyond his country’s borders to Russia, where he...

The U.S. Department of Defense recently unveiled an ambitious initiative aptly named Replicator, aimed at rapidly scaling capabilities in the face of strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China. Replicator’s first task will be to quickly scale and field thousands of attritable autonomous systems within the next 18 to 24 months, leveraging...