Paradoxically, therefore, even as navies invest heavily in autonomous systems and digitalization, the requirement for a ...

For the first time in decades, the United States is being forced to think seriously about naval shipbuilding as an allied industrial problem. Years of delayed programs, strained yards, maintenance ...

Counting ships, missiles, bases, and shipyards is how most would measure power at sea.1 But a second measure gets far less ...

Eventually, reality catches up. The Hai Kun enters service, joins the fleet, and validates the ceremony in retrospect. Or the ...

When China threatens to close its fist, the world listens. In August 2025, Li Chenggang, Beijing’s chief trade negotiator, didn’t bother with euphemism. If the United States continued tightening ...

Instead of hoping for different results from the same approach to force design by balancing competing requirements and ship construction, it is time to return to first principles to ask what unique ...

Between June 24 to July 31, Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2026 took place on and around the Hawaiian Islands. RIMPAC is the world’s largest international exercise. In this, its 30 th iteration, ...

In December 2025, a journalist asked President Donald Trump whether the United States would recognize Somaliland, as Israel had just done. He answered with a single word: “No.” Then, as he often does, ...

There is an episode of Star Trek (S1:E2) that has always chilled me to the bone, called “Armageddon”. The premise is that wars are too costly, so they are gamed out using a computer simulation.

In January 1974, in the tail end of the Vietnam War, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Republic of Vietnam Navy briefly clashed over control of the Paracel Islands in what became known in ...

The recent discovery of covert methamphetamine laboratories in southwestern Nigeria should not be viewed simply as another successful drug raid. Instead, these operations provide a glimpse into an ...