On a cool night in April 2024, the Iranian military surprised American and coalition war planners. It launched a massive salvo of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel, following an Israeli air attack on an Iranian...

USNORTHCOM’s Role and Place in a Changing Circumpolar Security Environment Executive Summary The United States has quickly adapted to the new security environment in a changing Arctic, as the region must deal with geopolitical tension stemming from Russia, the...

  The 12-Day War between Iran and Israel in June 2025 exposed critical weaknesses in the Islamic Republic’s military, strategic, and ideological frameworks, marking a turning point for the regime. The Iranian government’s failure to achieve its political and...

  Introduction There are two remarkable stories about defenses during the war between Israel and Iran in June 2025. One is the failure of Iran’s much-discussed air defense system; the other, the success of the Israeli missile defense system....

Executive Summary  In 2015, a new space race began. Blue Origin, a privately owned company, landed a booster on a launch pad back on earth, after lifting an object 100 kilometers into the atmosphere. SpaceX quickly followed suit, landing its own Falcon booster back on a pad for use again for later space...

    “There is perhaps no better example of the rapidly evolving strategic environment than the emergence of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) as a threat to infrastructure and personnel in the homeland. The availability and utility of small...

Introduction The Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China announced that their friendship had “no limits” and “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation” in 2022. That summit between President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping...

  Atlantic Bastion represents the Royal Navy’s future plan for anti-submarine capabilities, defending the North Atlantic against the threat from the Russian submarine fleet. First formally revealed in the United Kingdom’s recent Strategic Defence Review, the program brings in...

This report is published in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), also available on their website.  Introduction The 2024 Taiwan presidential elections marked a historic third consecutive win for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)—the first time a party...

  Introduction This report analyzes Russia’s use of diplomatic, military, and economic instruments of statecraft to advance its interests in the Indo-Pacific region and examines how China perceives it. As with all reports in this series, this one defines...