By 2021, plans call for Japan to have eight Aegis destroyers, four of them capable of launching the SM-3 Block IIA missiles, whose second successful test in a row comes as a vindication after two previous failures.

Smart missiles to strike hard targets hundreds of miles away. Wireless links to pull data from stealth fighters and foot soldiers alike. Command posts agile enough to coordinate it all — not only in open war, but in the ambiguous “grey zone” of hacking, proxy warfare, and Twitter trolls. That’s just a few of the… Keep reading →

There are times and places in the history of war in which improvements in firepower force anyone in range to take cover instead of advancing, as machineguns and howitzers did a century ago on the infamous Western Front. The fundamental difference today is the width of the killing zone would be measured, not in hundreds or thousands of yards, but in hundreds or thousands of miles.

After five years of talks and a wall of Russian denials, NATO and Washington call Putin’s bluff and say they’re ready to do something about Russian violations of a 31 year-old arms control treaty. But Europe is worried.

After waiting almost three decades to audit itself, the Pentagon still failed miserably in its first attempt. Despite top officials brushing the failure off an an expected learning experience, real questions remain over whether it can fix itself.

Rep. Adam Smith called into question the decades-old backbone of US nuclear policy, while calling for a “total redo” of the Nuclear Posture Review the Pentagon released earlier this year.

Despite increasing uncertainty over President Trump’s surprise proposal to cut $33 billion from defense, the Pentagon’s R&D chief says he’s confident more cash will be pumped into laser weapons and new space capabilities.

“Long-range precision fires… would provide us the capability (to) either, for example, support the Air Force by suppressing enemy air defenses at hundreds upon hundreds of miles or support the Navy by engaging enemy surface ships at great distances as well,” said Army Secretary Mark Esper. But those examples are two distinctly different missions, each most relevant to a different theater of war.

The defense budget may be caught between doves on the left and budget hawks on the right, but so far Army Secretary Mark Esper isn’t ceding any ground.

INF proponents emphasize the risk of nuclear weapons. But, despite its name, the treaty bans a wide range of conventional weapons as well — and it’s non-nuclear, precision-guided missiles that have changed how war is actually waged.