Commentaries
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Human Judgment is the Artificial Intelligence Edge
By Jonathan Aberman, Defense Opinion Writer. The Department of Defense (DoD) is moving fast on artificial intelligence (AI). Very fast. With $13.4 billion requested for AI and autonomous systems in fiscal year […]
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Fix the Jones Act—Don’t Scuttle It
By Steven Wills, Ph.D., Defense Opinion Writer. The maritime legislation commonly known as the Jones Act of 1920 requires vessels moving goods between U.S. ports to be U.S.-built, U.S.-flagged, and U.S.-crewed. Critics […]
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Batteries, Critical Minerals are a Major U.S. Vulnerability
By Michael Purzycki, Defense Opinion Writer. Rivalry between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is likely to be a defining characteristic of international affairs for many years […]
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Keeping Defense Operations Connected
By Michael Chappell, Defense Opinion Writer. Military personnel frequently operate in austere environments. They face unreliable communications, limited bandwidth, and unexpected disruptions to connectivity. The situation is so common that […]
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How Drone, Missile Threats are Changing Emergency Medical Services
By Raphael Herbst, Defense Opinion Writer. Ongoing security threats across the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf are forcing emergency medical systems into prolonged periods of high-intensity emergency […]
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Breaking China’s Rare Earth Hegemony
By Mathew August, Defense Opinion Writer. When China imposed export controls on heavy rare earths and permanent magnets in April 2025, the disruption that followed was not the cause of […]
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Reform Opportunities Hiding in the Pentagon’s Reorganization
By Joseph Gagnard, Defense Opinion Writer. The news media wrote up January’s Pentagon reorganization as another org-chart shuffle. But read alongside the Department of Defense’s $20 billion budget request for […]
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The Solution for Fixing a Command and Control Failure
By Robbin Laird, Defense Opinion Writer. Operation Epic Fury highlighted a structural command and control failure. Namely, that U.S.- and Israel-led coalition was fighting a single battle from multiple unconnected air […]
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What Operation Epic Fury Revealed About Air and Missile Defense
By Robbin Laird, Defense Opinion Writer. Somewhere over Kuwait during the dense barrage phase of Operation Epic Fury, Kuwaiti air defense operators tracking a cluttered radar picture identified a flight […]
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Shielding U.S. Forces from Spies that Use Location Tracking
By Brett Harrison and Shaun Moore, Defense Opinion Writers. Americans serving abroad often carry devices that can share precise location data across multiple commercial apps, services and data-broker systems, frequently […]