War On The Rocks

Russian forces in Ukraine are suffering casualties at more than 400,000 per year — enough to pack the house at the world’s four largest stadiums. Losses like these have been fuel for simultaneous talk of inevitable Russian defeat or victory…

Within months of the Cuban Missile Crisis, weapons designers at Los Alamos National Laboratory began engineering what would become the longest-serving and most adaptable weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal. Although it was ballistic…

Down in Tampa on the sidelines of SOF Week, Ryan spoke with Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, vice commander of Special Operations Command, in front of a live audience about how America’s special operators are leading the way on the the future of…

Panic wouldn’t help. Anger would make things worse. So, I stared out at the endless fields of northern Nigeria and thought, “I’m a pawn in their chess game. They were never rooks in mine.” In 2014, I served as an embedded advisor to…

Once more unto the breach, India struck inside Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack. Once more, the two sides escalated — again to unprecedented levels — before agreeing to a ceasefire. It is tempting to consider this latest crisis as…

Since spring 2022, Russia has been prevented from reinforcing its navy in the Black Sea by a near-antique international convention and some very contemporary Turkish politics. A ceasefire could change that. After more than three years of…

Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below. *** China On May 12, the United States and China…

By some estimates, 60 to 70 percent of casualties in Ukraine now come from drones — cheap, disposable first-person view drones piloted from miles away. They dive into trenches, slip through windows, and snake into hatches of armored…

<!-- category --> May 14, 2025 In 2022, Dr. Janko Šćepanović of the Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) wrote “The Sheriff and the Banker: Russia and China in Central Asia,” where he described the dynamic between…

“I have come to talk to you about Europe. ‘Again,’ some might exclaim.” These were the words with which French President Emmanuel Macron, just a few months after taking office, opened his famous Sorbonne speech in September 2017. He called…