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Iran may have damaged US F-35 in first reported hit on American warplane
A US F-35 fighter aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing at an American base in the Middle East after a combat mission over Iran, in an incident that may mark the first time Iranian forces have successfully struck…
Macron and Merz to discuss FCAS as pressure grows on Europe’s flagship fighter project
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are expected to discuss the troubled Future Combat Air System on the margins of the EU summit, as industrial conflict between Dassault and Airbus raises fresh doubts over one of Europe’s…
EU weighs stronger Aspides role as Hormuz crisis tests Europe’s maritime reach
Foreign ministers are discussing whether to reinforce the EU’s Aspides naval mission as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz exposes the limits of Europe’s ability to protect key shipping routes. The European Union is once again confronting the gap…
“No Winston Churchill”: Keir Starmer’s Credibility Shrinks with the Royal Navy
For a man who has spent much of his premiership cultivating the image of sober competence, Sir Keir Starmer is discovering that global politics has little patience for managerial caution. His refusal to send Royal Navy warships to help secure…
From Guernica to Kyiv: How Strategic Bombing Doctrine Evolved from Hitler to Putin
From the shattered Basque town of Guernica to the pulverised apartment blocks of modern Ukraine, aerial bombardment has evolved from experimental terror tactic to grimly familiar feature of industrialised war. Yet the philosophy behind it has changed markedly since the…
The Shkval question: how an old Soviet torpedo entered the Hormuz war debate
One of the more unusual weapons to re-emerge in discussion of the current Gulf crisis is the Soviet-designed VA-111 Shkval, a supercavitating torpedo whose speed once made it a subject of intense Western interest. Its Iranian counterpart, widely identified as…
The Cartridge Debate Revisited: How Modern Ammunition Is Reinventing the Infantry Soldier
It is easy to assume that the defining technologies of modern warfare are those that dominate the headlines: drones hovering silently above contested frontiers, satellites mapping every inch of terrain, or hypersonic missiles racing across continents. Yet the infantry soldier…
Tradition, Loyalty and a Modern Battlefield: The Enduring Bond Between Britain & The Gurkha
On a bitter February morning at Gamecock Barracks in Nuneaton, a group of young men stood immaculately aligned on the parade square, their breath visible in the winter air. For them, the cold was incidental. The real significance lay in…
Steel in the Rotor Wash: Two Decades of the Modern Battlefield Helicopter
For much of the twentieth century the battlefield helicopter symbolised mobility and immediacy. From the jungles of Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq, the image of rotor blades beating the air above advancing troops became inseparable from modern warfare. Yet…
A Tale of Two Navies: France sends a Flotilla to Hormuz while Britain struggles to deploy a single warship.
When the government of France announced that it would dispatch a naval task force to safeguard shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the move carried a familiar echo of Gaullist strategic instinct: protect trade routes, demonstrate resolve, and signal that…