We have soldiers for land, sailors for sea, airmen for air, and guardians for space. But in cyberspace, a borderless domain where American forces are engaged with adversaries every day, we still do not have a military service whose central purpose is to build a quality, expert force, equipped with the most cutting-edge capabilities, for war-fighting in the cyber domain.

For more than a decade, Washington has tried to patch this problem instead of fixing it. Congress has granted U.S. Cyber Command new authorities. The Pentagon has adjusted organizations, budgets and training pipelines. Senior leaders have made the current structure work better than it should. But those reforms have not changed the basic fact that there is no military service that sees organizing, training and equipping forces for the cyber domain as its first and primary priority.

Cyber Command’s job is to employ cyber capabilities in military operations. But it still depends on the existing services to recruit, train, retain, and develop the people who carry out those missions and equip them with the capabilities to do so. In the rest of the military, that division of labor is clear: services build forces, and combatant commands employ them.

Cyber remains the exception. The Navy must build fleets, the Army must build land power, the Air Force must attain air superiority, and so on. Each service has cyber responsibilities, but each also has core missions that naturally, and appropriately, come first. Cyber matters to all of the services, but it is not the central organizing mission of any of them.

The result is a weaker cyber force than the country needs. The military’s cyber enterprise still struggles with inconsistent recruiting and retention problems. A young American who can write code, spot weaknesses in software or understand how digital systems break may be exactly who the country needs, even if that person does not fit the standard mold the existing services were built to recruit, promote and retain.

Cyber talent does not grow by accident. It must be recruited deliberately, trained continuously and retained through a career model that rewards technical mastery, instead of forcing top operators to move into command or management roles just to advance. The country needs people who can spend years becoming experts in offensive and defensive cyberspace operations, not personnel forced through systems that were never built for the mission.

The threat is evolving too quickly to justify continuing marginal fixes to the current system. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and criminal actors are targeting U.S. networks, critical infrastructure and military systems. Artificial intelligence will only increase the speed and scale of cyber operations. The United States cannot keep relying on a cyber force stitched together across multiple services, each with different priorities, incentives and personnel rules.

A new report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows how to build a Cyber Force with a clearly defined mission, not a sprawling bureaucracy. Its job should be to organize, train and equip forces for offensive and defensive cyberspace operations. It should not take over every military information technology network or absorb every technology function inside the Department of Defense. The existing services should continue to operate and secure the networks and systems tied to their own missions.

A Cyber Force would also strengthen Cyber Command. Too much of this debate treats a new service as a judgment on Cyber Command’s performance. It is not. Cyber Command houses some of our nation’s most talented cyber warriors. What they need is a better force-generation system behind them.

The U.S. military has adapted before when new domains became central to warfare. The Air Force was created because airpower became too important to remain secondary to another service’s priorities. The Space Force was created because space needed its own culture and focus. Cyberspace has reached the same point: American forces are already in daily contact with adversaries online, cyberattacks can disrupt military operations and civilian infrastructure alike, and artificial intelligence is making the domain faster and more dangerous.

For too long, cyber has been treated as everyone’s responsibility, and therefore no one’s first priority. Our adversaries are not waiting for us to get organized. They are building capabilities, probing our defenses, and preparing for the next conflict. The United States should not enter that fight with cyber forces generated as a side mission by services built for other domains.

If cyberspace is truly a domain of warfare, it deserves its own service built to fight in it.

Dr. Erica Lonergan is an assistant professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and previously held several positions at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy and is now the senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

They both served on the CSIS-FDD Commission on U.S. Cyber Force Generation.

Europe does not have an idea problem. Its challenge is turning ideas into mass-produced capability, and the joint ventures (JVs) meant to do that too often stall before they deliver.

The logic of a JV is sound: pair a fast-moving innovator with an incumbent that has factories, program relationships, and government credibility, and you can field capability faster than either could alone. A JV is often the right structure precisely where a full acquisition is not, whether because of national-security rules, foreign-ownership scrutiny, or a desire to prove the partnership works before committing permanent capital. A JV is not a compromise; it is a deliberate way to solve problems no other structure handles as well.

The deals that are progressing show what good looks like: Rheinmetall and ICEYE set up a satellite-manufacturing venture in 2025, and more recently, Helsing and OHB have teamed up to fuse battlefield AI with satellite-building in their KIRK venture. Both are promising because each side brings something the other cannot easily replicate. KIRK itself grew out of an earlier alliance, a reminder that the strongest partnerships tend to deepen over time rather than arrive fully formed.

So why do others lose momentum? Two reasons are well understood, and two are easy to miss.

Familiar challenges

First, speed. For an innovator, time is the most valuable asset. Approval cycles that are routine for a large organization can consume an innovator’s cash runway and slow the rapid iteration that modern, software-defined warfare rewards. A venture that moves only at the larger partner’s tempo loses much of its purpose.

Second, control. Software is improved through constant, rapid iteration. If the venture is set up so that routine technical decisions must clear the incumbent’s approval processes, speed is the first casualty. The structure looks balanced on paper, but development slows, decisions stall, and the partnership can lose momentum before anything reaches the field.

Overlooked challenges

The third is a difference in how the two sides measure value. A large defense group naturally values what it can see on a balance sheet: factories, order books, and assets depreciated over decades. But much of an innovator’s worth sits elsewhere, in software, algorithms and the ability to rewrite a product in weeks.

Helsing, for example, has been valued above €12 billion, and ICEYE above €10 billion, with almost none of it attributable to tangible assets. Applying a hardware-centric, revenue-based framework to a software-defined business understates the innovator’s contribution and misaligns incentives. The more useful approach treats an innovator’s commercial traction and demonstrated demand as real evidence of value, not something to discount until a defense contract is signed.

The fourth tends to surface only years later: who owns the technology, and the data it generates. If core intellectual property is not clearly ring-fenced at the outset, an innovator can become tied to a single partner and constrained from selling elsewhere, which limits its own value and can strain the relationship as circumstances change. This is why valuation is not a closing formality. Left unmanaged, a misalignment that seems minor at signing compounds quietly and can destabilize a partnership long after formation. Ownership, licensing, and exit terms are far easier to resolve at the start, when incentives are aligned, than once commercial pressures have set in.

None of this calls for financial engineering. It asks both sides to be clear about what each brings and what each receives: the innovator quantifying the value of reaching a certified production line and skipping years of procurement friction; the incumbent quantifying the capability it would otherwise have to build in-house; and both agreeing in advance how the economics adjust if the technology proves decisive in winning a program.

One pattern is worth watching. Partnership activity is not spreading evenly across the market; it is coalescing around a handful of industrial platforms, with groups such as Rheinmetall recurring as serial JV partners across multiple capability areas. As these alliances mature from loose market-access arrangements into named ventures with real equity at stake, valuation discipline stops being optional. Europe’s procurement ambitions will be met by partnerships built to last, where ownership, control, value, and exit are settled before the ink dries rather than after the friction starts.

Milko Pavlov is a managing director and Anita Bucanac is a director in Houlihan Lokey’s Financial and Valuation Advisory business.

Cutting U.S. troops in Europe places transatlantic trade and investment ties in jeopardy, but additionally, the decision represents a potential missed opportunity – Washington risks giving away something for nothing. Russia wants U.S. troop reductions in Europe, and it’s not too late for the United States to get something in return from Moscow.

Cutting U.S. troops in Europe now carries great risk, but if troops must leave, bargaining with Russia makes far more sense than cutting unilaterally. Doing so could reduce the threat posed by Russian forces to NATO, it could facilitate an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and it could lower the risk posed to the transatlantic trade and investment relationship.

Earlier this month, the United States notified its NATO allies that it would reduce the number of forces it makes available to NATO for the implementation of the alliance’s operations plans. These plans – approved by all allies – were developed by NATO’s American-led military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, and they are largely focused on the defense of allied territory against Russia. The alliance uses the plans to build a list of the required military forces, and then those requirements are apportioned among the individual allies, building a country-by-country capability target list.

The reduced commitments unveiled by the United States earlier this month were, in many ways, expected. They’ve been signaled by American leaders for at least a year, most notably in February 2025 when Secretary of Defense Hegseth announced that Europeans would need to take the lead in conventional defense of Europe.

But keen observers of NATO understand that this trend has been unfolding for years. Between 2017 and 2025, the proportion of all capability targets assigned to the United States dropped from 46 percent to 38 percent. At the same time, the number of high-end, “exquisite” capabilities provided by the United States, such as advanced air defense, were reduced from 13 (out of 26 total) to 5.

In other words, America has long been on the path of reduced commitments in European defense planning, in the name of fair burden-sharing as well as the shifting of U.S. resources to the Indo-Pacific. The latest changes are the result of dialogue between American and European defense planners as well as between U.S. military officials based in Europe and those based in the Indo-Pacific.

These latter discussions, and the analyses that informed them, were necessary to truly assess what was needed by American military leaders based in the Pacific. It should come as no surprise therefore to see that naval and air forces are reportedly on the list of what the United States will no longer make available to fulfill the NATO operations plans.

Coincidentally and largely unrelated to American capability targets and NATO plans, the United States also announced in early May that it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Europe. This decision, in contrast to the one described above, reportedly came as a surprise.

Initially, American military leaders decided that the largest portion of those 5,000 troops would come in the form of a 4,200-person tank brigade deployed to Poland on a rotational basis. However, that decision was quickly reversed following conversations between top American and Polish leaders. Now American military officials in the Pentagon and in Europe are wrestling with how to implement the cut, perhaps considering drawing down U.S. forces that are permanently stationed (usually with families) in places like Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Turkey or the U.K.

Reducing American troops stationed in or rotationally deployed to Europe makes little sense for several reasons. First, most of those troops are ground forces, which are unlikely to be as important for a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Second, basing U.S. troops in Europe can be cheaper than stationing them in the United States, especially when European allies like Poland or Lithuania pick up the costs. And third, U.S. reductions while Russia’s war in Ukraine rages on sends the wrong message to allies and enemies alike.

Even if none of these things were true and it made great sense operationally, fiscally, and strategically to withdraw U.S. forces from Europe, doing so in exchange for nothing amounts to a very bad deal.

Moscow has made clear it doesn’t want U.S. forces based in Europe, so why not bargain with Russia and get something in exchange?

This is precisely what U.S. officials did a generation ago as the Cold War came to an end – they negotiated simultaneous reductions in conventional and nuclear arms with Moscow.

It’s not too late – if Washington is intent on reducing troop levels in Europe, it can still wield this bargaining chip. In exchange for a 5,000 troop cut in U.S. forces based in Europe, Washington could demand Russia end its war in Ukraine, eliminate the military bases it’s been building up near NATO borders, or cease its hybrid war against U.S. and European interests across Europe and North America.

Something – really, anything – is better than nothing.

John R. Deni is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a nonresident senior fellow at the NATO Defense College. The views expressed are his own.

Today, that question resurfaces regarding Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. The prospect of NATO safeguarding freedom of navigation prompts predictable objections: Hormuz is not NATO territory, and Iran is not attacking an ally.

Therefore, the argument goes, NATO should stay out. At first glance, this position appears prudent. In reality, it reflects a surprisingly short institutional memory.

For much of the last three decades, NATO has operated on the assumption that allied security cannot be defined solely by geography. For a generation, the alliance spent more time conducting operations beyond its borders than preparing for territorial defense within them.

From Bosnia and Kosovo to Afghanistan, and from Operation Active Endeavour to Operation Ocean Shield off the Horn of Africa, NATO repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to protect allied interests beyond the Washington Treaty area. These were not exceptional departures from NATO’s mission; they became an integral part of it.

The alliance formally codified this evolution. The 1999 Strategic Concept introduced crisis-response operations beyond Allied territory. The 2010 Strategic Concept went further, establishing collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security as NATO’s three core tasks.

Significantly, that same document identified the proliferation of ballistic missiles as a direct threat, explicitly highlighting Iran’s missile activities and nuclear ambitions. This was not an American talking point — it was agreed NATO policy, adopted unanimously.

How far is there to go until the US and Iran end the war?

The suggestion that developments in the Gulf fall entirely outside NATO’s sphere of concern requires a degree of historical selectivity—or, perhaps more accurately, strategic amnesia.

The geopolitical logic behind those earlier assessments has only strengthened. The world has become more interconnected.

Economic security, critical infrastructure, supply chains, energy resilience, and maritime access have moved from the periphery of security debates to their very center. Yet when one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints enters the discussion, many suddenly revert to a narrow geographical definition of security.

The Strait of Hormuz may be geographically distant from Europe, but strategically and economically, it is anything but. A significant share of global energy trade passes through it.

Disruption affects energy prices, industrial output, defense production, and ultimately military readiness across the Euro-Atlantic area.

None of this means NATO should return to the expeditionary ambitions of the early post-9/11 era. Collective defense must remain the alliance’s primary task, and Russia remains the most immediate military threat to allied territory.

The defense of Europe is NATO’s center of gravity. But there is a significant difference between maintaining priorities and embracing what psychologists might call a strategic tunnel vision.

France moves carrier into Red Sea ahead of potential Hormuz mission

The increasingly popular “not our war” argument promises discipline but often produces paralysis. Applied consistently, it becomes difficult to distinguish between strategic restraint and outright disengagement.

If the alliance divides the world into exclusive regional compartments, it gradually loses its ability to address security challenges whose consequences do not respect borders.

NATO has confronted this dilemma before. The famous phrase “out of area or out of business” emerged precisely because the alliance recognized that relevance required more than territorial defense alone. Security challenges rarely ask permission before crossing regional boundaries.

What makes today’s debate particularly peculiar is that allied practice has already moved ahead of rhetoric.

European navies — even under EU command — operate routinely close to, in, and around the Gulf. NATO maintains partnerships across the region, and individual allies regularly contribute to maritime security efforts beyond Europe. The practical question was largely settled years ago; what remains unsettled is the narrative.

A future mission supporting freedom of navigation in Hormuz — whether NATO-led, NATO-enabled, or conducted by a coalition of allies with NATO political backing—would represent continuity rather than a revolutionary expansion of the alliance’s role. It would reflect patterns of behavior and political commitments that NATO has developed over decades.

The real issue is not whether NATO can operate beyond its borders—it has done so repeatedly. The real issue is whether the alliance is prepared to acknowledge openly what its own history demonstrates: that defending Allied security sometimes requires action beyond Allied territory.

Otherwise, NATO risks repeating a familiar mistake — not mission creep, but strategic amnesia. And history suggests that forgetting past lessons is often more dangerous than applying them.

Vytautas Leškevičius, previously Lithuania’s ambassador to NATO, is chief policy advisor at GSSC, a Vilnius-based think tank.

The same censorship apparatus the Party built to control its people is now corrupting the AI systems its leaders depend on. The United States, by leaning into an open marketplace of information and ideas, will gain advantage as it takes a different path.

AI is increasingly training newer, faster AI models. This typically involves scraping the internet for content and then loading it into datasets for new programs. The problem: online content used for training is increasingly generated by AI. As a result, each generation of technology drifts from reality.

AI researchers refer to this as “model collapse,” a phenomenon in which models trained on their own synthetic outputs degrade over successive generations. The only defense is a constant influx of fresh, honest, human-generated information. Without it, the system folds in on itself.

China’s Great Firewall cuts off that influx, expediting the impact of model collapse within its borders. The first generation of large language models worldwide was trained on massive datasets of publicly available human-generated text. These human-derived pieces of information built an algorithmic approximation of how people think, argue, explain, and communicate.

Now, the internet is filling with AI-generated content at a rate inconceivable five years ago. Marketing copy, product descriptions, social media captions and news summaries are increasingly produced by AI systems and published online. They’ve all become generic and detached from human signals.

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With each cycle of new AI, the models drift further from their human origins. The newer systems amplify the patterns AI systems favor while losing nuance and amplifying existing biases. Each successive AI generation is one step further removed from the humans these programs were originally built to serve.

In China, the Great Firewall accelerates this problem. The Chinese Ministry of Public Security built the Great Firewall of China in the late 1990s to censor the Chinese people. It is now the most sophisticated information control infrastructure in human history. The Great Firewall does not just restrict what Chinese users can see. It shapes the data used to train Chinese AI systems. By design, it strips out politically sensitive events, dissenting viewpoints, and independent reporting. Left behind is a curated record of reality aligned with the Party’s narrative. That filtered record of information becomes the raw material for LLMs.

The training data fed into LLMs in China does not contain any criticism of the government, fair reportage of controversial topics, or accurate information about Chinese history. Events such as the the Uyghur detention camps exist inside the Firewall only as the state chose to describe them.

Now add model collapse on top of this. Chinese AI companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, ByteDance and dozens of others aggressively deploy AI-generated content across their platforms. This material becomes training data for the next generation of Chinese AI models. With independent reporting locked out, model collapse expedites inside the Great Firewall with no escape valve. The practical consequences of this divergence are already visible and will accelerate.

Chinese LLMs struggle with tasks that require new observation, original synthesis or human complexity that the training data was designed to suppress. If asked about repression in Chinese history or controversial current events such as the Uyghur detentions, these LLMs either do not answer or produce a response indistinguishable from a Party press release. A Chinese trade official relying on domestic AI to model the economic impact of Western sanctions is working from a system incapable of providing an honest account of how those sanctions functioned or failed in comparable historical cases.

The West has a milder version of this problem.

Western AI models are trained on increasingly synthetic content, but human reporters regularly push new information into the ecosystem. Free and open societies have structural advantages to retain the capacity to reason about what is happening in the world rather than what previous AI systems described. When asked about Tiananmen Square, Western accounts typically focus on the 1989 protests and the crackdown. By contrast, Chinese models either refuse to answer or return state-aligned language. This information gap becomes part of the training data for the next generation.

To maintain a competitive AI advantage over China, Washington should treat human-generated data as a strategic asset and invest in journalism, open web archives, and synthetic-content labeling. Preserving the integrity of American training data is a defense imperative, not a tech problem.

Chinese leaders deploying AI products to make decisions about economics, geopolitics, and public health will make those decisions based on systems trained on what China’s information control apparatus wants people to believe. That is not an intelligence system. It is a mirror. And the tragedy of model collapse is that a mirror that has been looking at itself long enough no longer reflects anything.

Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army colonel and the author of “When Every Word Counts: How to Earn Trust, Command Attention, and Communicate Clearly in Any Situation.”

Why didn’t the president’s maximalist threats work? Indeed, his bombastic form of diplomacy appears to have undermined the prospects for peace between the United States and Iran. To understand why Trump has failed to change Iran’s behavior, it is necessary to examine his approach to diplomacy.

Trump relies on a version of the “madman theory” in many of his disputes. His approach resembles a distorted, MAGA version of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous maxim – that is, scream loudly and swing a big golf club.

In practice, it often amounts to boisterous threats without a clear or credible strategy behind them.

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And despite the president’s rather novel use of the theory, it does have a sketchy if unsuccessful history.

While President Nixon’s political aide, H. R. Haldeman, popularized the term “madman theory,” it was developed more fully by economist and deterrence theorist Thomas Schelling and military analyst Daniel Ellsberg. The madman theory is a deterrent technique, to be used in limited circumstances: it signals to an adversary, “Do not take this action, or the consequences will be severe.”

To succeed, however, the adversary must believe the threat will be carried out. The more frequent or outlandish the threats, the more the madman’s credibility deteriorates. Success stories of the madman theory are few and far between. Richard Nixon signaled that he would use nuclear weapons against North Vietnam in 1969 to bring it and the Soviet Union to the negotiating table. It failed. Nikita Khrushchev’s nuclear blackmail were unconvincing for NATO forces to withdraw from West Berlin. Saddam Hussein cultivated ambiguity about weapons of mass destruction to deter Iran and the United States from invading. And that story did not end well for him.

Given its lackluster record, it is unclear why policymakers continue to rely on this approach.

Besides the madman theory being flawed, the U.S. lacks the will and capabilities to back up President Trump’s threats. Iran’s leadership is likely aware of the American people’s unwillingness to fight another ground war in the Middle East.

Trump’s threat to destroy Iran produced massive backlash from the American public, including his base. Such public disapproval of madman behavior undermines its credibility and effectiveness. What’s more, American munitions are in short supply and rapidly depleting.

Take Tomahawk cruise missiles. In just slightly over four weeks, the United States launched about 850 of these missiles against Iran out of the total 3,100 missiles in its inventory, and only produces around 90 missiles per year. These two facts already rendered Trump’s threats kaput.

Trump’s frequent use of bombastic rhetoric further erodes that credibility. He has issued sweeping threats across multiple contexts—from “fire and fury” toward North Korea to threatening to withdraw from NATO, as well as to “take” Greenland. Over time, this creates a “boy who cried wolf” dynamic, making it difficult to take his most worrisome threats seriously.

Compounding the problem is Trump’s misapplication of the madman theory itself.

Trump continues to tell Iran, “Do this, or I’ll blow up everyone.” This rhetoric reflects what Schelling described as “compellence”—an effort to force an adversary to change its behavior—rather than deterrence, which seeks to prevent an action in the first place. But compellence is typically more difficult to achieve, as it requires the target to abandon the status quo, of which humans are psychologically inclined to prefer. Deterrence, by contrast, reinforces it. This distinction helps explain why threats that might prevent an action often fail to reverse one already underway.

President Trump’s overuse and misapplication of the madman theory has placed the United States in a difficult position. The risk of deeper involvement in the Middle East is rising at a time when the margin for error in U.S. foreign policy is limited. Yet the current approach offers few clear pathways to either de-escalation or success.

The United States is stuck with an inept form of coercion in its war with Iran—one that generates heat but no leverage. Trump’s use of the madman theory has failed to produce security or stability. It has only revealed the madness of America’s current policy towards Iran.

Benjamin Giltner is a Policy Analyst in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute, where he works on issues related to U.S. military strategy and foreign policy, great-power competition, nuclear weapons and deterrence.

That is why the German government, and particularly the newly created National Security Council, started early in assessing options for a credible European nuclear deterrence mechanism in addition to the U.S. nuclear umbrella, as long as it holds.

As Berlin weighs next steps, here is an overview of the various channels through which the conversation about nuclear weapons — namely those of France and the United Kingdom — is progressing.

Firstly, the U.K.-France nuclear talks, which have been ongoing since 2010, were taken to a new level with the “Northwood Declaration” of July 2025. The communiqué put a “coordination” of both nations’ nuclear forces on the table for the first time.

Secondly, in October 2024, the defense ministers of Germany and the U.K. agreed on a German-British defense cooperation framework, the “Trinity House Agreement,” which was also intended to cover nuclear issues. However, this dialogue is still at a rudimentary stage.

Thirdly, Chancellor Merz and President Macron have agreed on a Franco-German nuclear dialogue. A high-level Steering Group is to conduct regular exchanges on all nuclear-related issues and develop opportunities for cooperation.

The fourth dialogue to start soon is based on the proposal of Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron to extend the bilateral dialogue to other European NATO member states. Poland, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece have already expressed interest. Should the U.K., Europe’s second nuclear power, join this initiative, it would result in an all-encompassing European nuclear dialogue modeled on the NATO Nuclear Planning Group.

These processes are only just beginning, and the initial focus is on developing a common understanding and formulating shared objectives within the various formats. In this regard, the British-French dialogue differs from the other formats because here two nuclear powers can discuss their respective nuclear doctrines on an equal footing, exchange nuclear-related data, or coordinate their operational principles and targeting.

The German-British, German-French and multinational dialogues, meanwhile, put their initial focus on the exchange of information and the building of trust between nuclear and non-nuclear states. Such trust is essential when it comes to matters such as the sharing of sensitive data or documents.

The conversations aren’t merely a dialogue for dialogue’s sake, but rather the development of a credible European deterrent based on the capabilities of France and the U.K. and – for as long as the U.S. so wishes – remaining linked to the American nuclear umbrella.

German considerations in that direction envision the following steps:

To begin with, the German-British and German-French dialogues can only be a starting point. Both formats must be expanded to include other European states as soon as possible. Only in this way can potential political reservations be overcome regarding the predominance of a Paris-London-Berlin connection as well as France’s history of a strictly national nuclear policy. Furthermore, representatives from the U.S. and Canada should always be invited to this expanded dialogue to underpin the transatlantic link.

Moreover, the dialogue should initially focus on political issues – such as the willingness of nuclear states to make a nuclear security pledge to their non-nuclear allies. The U.K. has already done so within the framework of NATO’s “extended deterrence,” while France has consistently opposed this concept and intended its nuclear weapons solely for the protection of its own territory.

Most recently, however, President Emmanuel Macron has proposed an idea of “advanced deterrence” (dissuasion avancée), thereby cautiously moving toward extended deterrence, albeit without explicitly saying so.

Furthermore, political guidelines could be drawn up for consultations between nuclear powers and their non-nuclear allies in the event of an imminent nuclear strike, as has been the case within NATO since 1962 — the so called “Athens Guidelines.” This does not restrict the nuclear states’ sole right to decide, but gives the allies the assurance that, in the event of a strike, they will at least be heard.

Non-nuclear states can provide various forms of compensation in return for the nuclear protection afforded to them. These could, for example, take the form of direct financial contributions. In the case of Germany, the Research Service of the German Parliament had already recognized in May 2017 that such nuclear co-financing is legally possible.

Nevertheless, a European nuclear deterrent, however it is structured, also requires adequate conventional defense. Here, Germany, as Europe’s largest economic power, bears a special responsibility. France and the U.K. are equally called upon, as a division of labor between the nuclear-armed states, which are left to focus on strategic forces while the other allies ensure sufficient conventional forces, is not realistic.

This will require painful steps in London and Paris to establish new financial priorities.

Karl-Heinz Kamp was a special advisor in the German Ministry of Defense and is an associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Tehran’s goal is to impose persistent economic and political costs until Washington concludes that continuing the war is not worth it. To achieve that, Iran is exploiting a gap in U.S. Air Force doctrine — the distinction between air superiority and air denial, and between the blue skies and the air littoral. So far, it is working.

Air superiority — the control that permits operations at a “given time and place without prohibitive interference from air and missile threats” — is what the United States has achieved over southern and western Iran and is now working to extend eastward. That control allows large-scale strikes and freedom of maneuver at medium and high altitudes. As Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted on Tuesday, “Given the increase in air superiority, we’ve successfully started to conduct the first overland B-52 missions.”

By that measure, the campaign has been a success. But the strait is still closed.

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Air superiority is meant to assure freedom of action not just in the air, but across all domains for the entire joint force.

Air Force Doctrine Publication 3-0 is explicit on this point: air superiority “prevents enemy air and missile threats from effectively interfering with operations of friendly air, land, maritime, space, cyberspace, and special operations forces.” That includes the Navy’s ability to escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

By that measure, the United States does not have air superiority where it counts.

Iran’s drone and missile campaign has already forced American forces back. In 2003, the bulk of U.S. combat and support aircraft operated from forward positions in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia while carriers patrolled the Persian Gulf. Today, carriers increasingly operate from the Red and Arabian Seas while land-based airpower has shifted toward bases farther from the strait, leaving U.S. forces positioned for the high-altitude fight over Iran, not the persistent-close-in coverage the strait requires to keep shipping lanes open under continuous drone and missile threat.

Iran’s strategy of air denial is why.

Air denial is a strategy of contesting control of the air without achieving air superiority outright. It leverages the advantages of large numbers of low-cost and mobile systems employed in a distributed way to keep the air domain too dangerous, too costly and too uncertain for joint forces to operate. Critically, the barriers to achieving air denial are considerably lower than those required to gain and sustain air superiority, yet it can impose disproportionate costs.

In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is putting this strategy into practice. Tehran is exploiting the air littoral above the strait, employing drones and missiles capable of reaching oil tankers and naval vessels in minutes. Iran has struck more than 20 commercial vessels in and around the strait since the war began, killing at least seven sailors. This action has effectively halted traffic through the strait, except for a handful of ships that Iran has let pass — in many cases, for a hefty fee. The U.S. Navy has reportedly declined requests from the shipping industry for military escorts, citing the ongoing threat.

Iran’s strategy appears to be working. Gas prices have risen a dollar a gallon in a month, U.S. stock markets have entered correction territory, and the White House is under growing pressure to wind down the conflict. Iran planned for exactly this.

Tehran built this playbook, funded it, and watched it succeed. The lessons come straight from the Red Sea, where Houthi proxies used cheap, distributed drones and missiles to impose costs that more than 800 U.S. airstrikes between 2024 and 2025 could not eliminate. Now, Iran is running the same playbook over the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States has no ready answer. Achieving and maintaining air superiority in the air littoral above the strait demands the very layered defense capabilities in which the Pentagon has systematically underinvested: large numbers of low-cost, attritable systems to continuously attack launch locations and dispersed manufacturing; mobile air defenses rapidly and persistently deployable near threatened waterways; low cost persistent airborne platforms capable of detecting and destroying waves of drones; and interceptors capable of sustaining high engagement rates without exhausting inventories.

These are precisely the capabilities decades of procurement choices never built at scale, in favor of the small number of exquisite platforms that have performed so well in the blue skies above Tehran. The gap is not an accident. It is the result of choices. The Strait of Hormuz is one of their consequences.

Addressing this gap requires building low-cost, attritable systems at scale to contest and control the air littoral — not in small numbers as an afterthought, after the high-end aircraft are bought and paid for, but as a core mission — which inevitably means scaling back legacy platforms. The window to absorb that lesson is open now, while the cost is measured in closed shipping lanes and rising gas prices.

Maximilian K. Bremer is a nonresident fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and head of Mission Engineering and Strategy for Atropos Group.

Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and adjunct professor in the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University.

It is an early glimpse of a broader problem that many organizations would prefer not to acknowledge: As AI is rushed into critical systems, it is introducing new failure modes faster than they can understand or control them.

For defense organizations increasingly integrating AI into mission-critical systems, the implications are far more consequential.

When organizations pause to consider these risks at all, they often reach for a familiar reassurance: there will be a “human in the loop.” The idea is that even if the system is complex or unreliable, a person will catch mistakes before they matter.

German army eyes AI tools to expedite wartime decision-making

This reassurance is dangerously misleading. A “human in the loop” whose sole function is to approve a machine’s actions is not a safeguard but a design failure. Attention wanes because nobody can concentrate on a job that is mostly doing nothing, and over time the operator’s skills atrophy to the point that they cannot meaningfully supervise the system. What remains is the appearance of oversight rather than the reality.

In military contexts, this kind of degraded human involvement is not just inefficient but operationally dangerous.

This pattern is not new. Engineers have seen it before, most famously in the Therac-25, a radiation therapy machine introduced in 1982. It combined the functions of two predecessor systems in a smaller, more convenient package, and its improved automation made it faster and easier to operate. Safety was “guaranteed” by the presence of a human operator who had to confirm actions – in effect, a “human in the loop.”

The system failed anyway. Patients began developing severe radiation burns. Hospitals dismissed the possibility of machine error, and the manufacturer insisted overdoses were impossible. Only after sustained investigation was it discovered that the machine contained multiple safety-critical software flaws. By then, six overdose accidents had occurred, three of them fatal.

The deeper problem was not just faulty code but faulty design. The machine frequently halted with poorly explained error messages, requiring operators to “press P to proceed” to continue treatment. Because these errors were common and rarely meaningful, operators became habituated to restarting the system dozens or hundreds of times a day. When real malfunctions occurred, the act of “operator confirmation” had already lost its meaning. In one case, an operator restarted the machine multiple times, unknowingly delivering repeated overdoses. The presence of a human operator did not prevent the failure; it normalized it.

Today, we are repeating this mistake. Computer scientists are rushing to incorporate poorly understood AI systems into safety-critical environments, and when concerns are raised they are often waved away with the same phrase: there will be a human in the loop. This assumption is now appearing in discussions of defense systems, from decision support to autonomous operations.

People will argue that AI is fundamentally different, and in one sense they are right. We have never before deployed systems whose behavior is explicitly probabilistic and nondeterministic in high-stakes environments. In defense contexts, where uncertainty compounds quickly and errors can cascade across systems, this is especially concerning. But AI is also not different in the ways that matter most. It is still software, embedded in larger systems composed of people, processes, and machines. It cannot act in the real world without that surrounding system, and those systems fail in ways that are already well understood. Engineers and operators have spent decades studying how complex, tightly coupled systems behave under pressure.

What we are seeing now is not a new class of failure but a familiar one, accelerated. The software industry is once again demonstrating an inability to learn from its own history. That would be unfortunate if we were only talking about Spotify recommendation algorithms. It becomes dangerous when these same patterns are introduced into the systems that organizations — and nations — depend on.

Recent Pentagon leaks suggest that AI systems may already be influencing where bombs land. In such environments, the illusion of human oversight is worse than no oversight at all. It creates confidence without control.

If we spend the next decade hiding unsafe systems behind the fig leaf of the “human in the loop,” the consequences will not be theoretical.

Mikey Dickerson was the founding administrator of the U.S. Digital Service and is a crisis engineer at Layer Aleph. He is a co-author of the forthcoming book Crisis Engineering.

The global price of oil continues to skyrocket as Iran’s missiles and drones hit vital infrastructure in Arab Gulf states. Billion-dollar American radar systems have also been targeted and destroyed across the Middle East by Iran, seemingly degrading U.S. defenses.

U.S. military presence near Iran includes dozens of locations and tens of thousands of troops in harm’s way. This raises the question: If a missile is launched from Iran toward a U.S. military base in the region, how do service members know in time to stay safe?

The United States and its allies have built a layered system to watch the skies day and night. This system uses satellites in space, radar on the ground, ships at sea and aircraft in the air. It also depends on well-trained military members from U.S. Space Command who make quick decisions with the data. As a former U.S. Air Force officer and now aerospace and national security law professor at the University of Mississippi, I’ve studied the vast network of alliances and systems that make this happen.

Patriot air defense interception is costly: Here’s how it works

Together, these tools form a missile defense network that can spot danger early and give warnings. The fastest way to spot a missile is from space. U.S. satellites, like the U.S. Space Force’s Space-Based Infrared System, circle high above Earth. These billion-dollar satellites, the crown jewels of missile defense, can spot the bright heat from a missile launch almost instantly.

When a missile is fired, it creates a strong enough heat signal to be seen in space. The satellites detect this heat using sensitive, infrared sensors and send an alert within seconds. This early warning is critical. It gives the military on the ground or at sea time to get defense systems ready.

The warning signal from space is then received on the ground by systems known as the U.S. Space Force’s Joint Tactical Ground Stations. The signal is sent from space using secure satellite communications, received by these ground stations and then quickly distributed to other parts of the missile defense network.

Radar to detect and track missiles

But satellites cannot do everything to detect and track missiles. They need help from systems on Earth. After a missile is launched, ground-based radars take over from the initial satellite signal. Radars work by sending out radio waves. When those waves hit an object, like a missile, they bounce back. The radar then uses that information to track where the object is and where it is going throughout its flight.

The U.S. uses both short and long-range radars together. One powerful, long-range radar is the AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar. It can see missiles from over 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away and track them as they travel. Another key system is the U.S. Army’s AN/TPY-2 Surveillance Transportable Radar. This radar has a range of almost 2,000 miles (3,219 kilometers) and looks more closely at the missile to provide more information about the threat. TPY-2 systems typically sit right next to weapons systems that will destroy the missile to ensure the timely relay of tracking data.

In sum, satellites spot the launch and radars follow the missile through the sky until defense systems destroy it.

However, Iranian forces recently struck both a TPY-2 in Jordan and a FPS-132 in Qatar. These systems are expensive and difficult to quickly replace. This has required the U.S. to move an additional TPY-2 from Korea to place it in the Middle East.

U.S. missile defense tracking was certainly degraded by losing these resources, but other radars are still part of the network. For example, the U.S. Space Force operates another FPS-132 in the U.K., which could potentially provide radar support to the Middle East.

In addition to ground and space-based sensors, U.S. Navy ships carry powerful radar systems as part of their Aegis Combat System, known as the AN/SPY-1, which can provide up to 200 miles (322 kilometers) of coverage. Ships can sail closer to areas where threats may come from and help fill gaps that land-based radars cannot cover.

U.S. Air Force aircraft also play a big role. Planes like the E-3 Sentry can watch large areas using radar from the sky. Drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper can stay in the air for long periods and track activity below with radar and sensors. These moving sensors help the system stay flexible. If one area needs more coverage or is degraded, ships and aircraft can move there to fill in.

Why drones are harder to catch

Drones require a different set of tracking tools and have proven more difficult to destroy than missiles from Iran. The legacy systems are simply better suited to missiles than new drone technology. To detect drones, the U.S. typically uses several tools: radar; radio signal tracking, which can pick up control signals; and cameras and other sensors, which can see drones directly.

Missiles are fast and hot, which makes them easier to detect with the current systems. Iranian drones, such as the Shahed system, are different. Their heat signature is often minimal due to using gas-powered engines not easily detected by infrared sensors. Without this heat signature, that initial warning cue is delayed, making it difficult for radar to know what to track.

Drones are usually smaller and fly low to the ground, making them hard to see on radar. They can be hidden by buildings or tough to distinguish from birds and other objects. Some are made of materials that do not show up well on radar, such as fiberglass and plastic. Others move slowly, which can make them harder to notice or stand out.

Many of Iran’s drones do not show up on radio signal detection systems because they cannot be remotely controlled. These drones are programmed with GPS coordinates and navigate themselves to a target.

Multiple methods

No single method works all the time to defend against drone attacks. Instead, these tools work together to find and track drones. The U.S. and its allies continue to improve their systems to catch both missiles and drones. For example, the U.S. is in discussions to buy acoustics sensors from Ukraine, which can hear drones coming when they cannot be seen using other methods.

New sensors, better software and faster communication will all help strengthen defenses. The goal is simple: Detect threats earlier, respond faster and hit the target faster.

Aaron Brynildson is a law instructor at the University of Mississippi.

The fires gap

The Army’s current self-propelled workhorse, the M109A7 Paladin, requires the crew to halt, emplace, fire and displace on a timeline measured in minutes — time that modern counter-battery systems are designed to exploit. Stryker Brigade Combat Teams face an even more acute problem: Their organic M777A2 towed howitzer cannot match the Stryker’s 60-mph road speed, and its displacement time after firing — up to 7.5 minutes with an 11-man crew — is a death sentence in a counter-battery environment. HIMARS sidesteps this problem by firing precision munitions from brief, mobile engagements, but at $150,000 per GMLRS rocket, sustained suppressive fire is prohibitively expensive. The Army needs a survivable howitzer that fills the gap between Paladin’s emplaced methodology and HIMARS’ precision strikes.

What makes the RCH 155 different

The RCH 155 is the world’s only turreted howitzer capable of firing accurately while in motion. Its unmanned Artillery Gun Module — derived from Germany’s PzH 2000 and mounted on a Boxer 8x8 chassis — uses a high-precision inertial navigation system to continuously track vehicle position and barrel orientation, firing at the computed moment of alignment. A gun crew can receive a digital fire mission, drive to a release point, fire and continue moving without ever presenting a stationary target.

Even from a static position, the numbers are stark. The RCH 155 can receive a mission, lay the gun and fire its first round in under 20 seconds. It can be back in motion in under 10 seconds after firing. KNDS comparison data tells the operational story directly: A battery of 24 M109 Paladins with 144 soldiers takes over 180 seconds to complete a 216-round fire-for-effect mission. A battery of 12 RCH 155s with 24 soldiers completes the same mission in 140 seconds — with half the systems and 83% fewer soldiers at the gun line. The RCH 155 also achieves a burst rate of nine rounds per minute versus the M109’s six, with a fully automated loading system that eliminates the need for a manual loader handling 95-pound projectiles.

Key capability advantages

Multiple Rounds Simultaneous Impact (MRSI): The RCH 155 can fire up to five rounds at different charges and elevation angles, with all projectiles arriving on target within a two-second window — replicating the concentrated effect of a HIMARS salvo at a fraction of the cost per mission.

Ammunition efficiency: By operating closer to the forward edge of the battle area without survivability risk, the RCH 155 dramatically improves accuracy. Against a 200x200m target at 7 kilometers, a conventional howitzer requires 516 rounds; the RCH 155 needs 216. At 11 kilometers, the gap is 727 rounds versus 353 — a saving of roughly 235 rounds per mission that cascades through the entire logistics chain.

Extended range: Firing V-LAP munitions, the RCH 155 reaches 54 kilometers versus the M109A7’s 40 kilometers with Excalibur. With the Vulcano guided round, range extends to 70 kilometers, approaching HIMARS GMLRS range.

Crew survivability: The Boxer chassis protects the two-man crew against 14.5mm rounds and 10-kilogram anti-tank mines. Because the Artillery Gun Module is unmanned and remotely operated, soldiers are separated from the ammunition and firing mechanism by armored vehicle structure — a survivability multiplier no current Western self-propelled howitzer offers.

A howitzer battery that fights like HIMARS

Six RCH 155s, each operating from its own hide site and receiving digitally transmitted fire missions, can coordinate MRSI timings so that all rounds arrive simultaneously. From the target’s perspective, the effect is indistinguishable from a HIMARS salvo. From the counter-battery perspective, six independently moving guns each presenting a fleeting radar return are nearly impossible to suppress — precisely how HIMARS batteries fight. Unlike HIMARS, however, the howitzer battery can sustain fires over time without exhausting an expensive rocket pod in a single volley.

Current status and US interest

The RCH 155 is not developmental — it is proven, fielded and combat-tested. Ukraine is operating 54 systems against one of the world’s most sophisticated counter-battery environments. Britain selected it as its Mobile Fires Platform in April 2024. Germany has structured its procurement framework for up to 500 vehicles, with approximately 360 slots available for allied nations at German contract pricing through a government-to-government arrangement.

The bottom line

The RCH 155 does not replace HIMARS — it complements it. HIMARS engages high-value targets at standoff with precision munitions. The RCH 155 takes over the intermediate-range fires fight: sustained suppression, preparation fires and counter-battery harassment that would drain HIMARS ammunition at ruinous cost. Together, they form a fires system that is survivable, flexible and cost-effective across the full range of brigade-level missions. The era of the emplaced howitzer battery is ending. The Army should procure the RCH 155 in sufficient numbers for the SBCT formation and evaluate for the remainder of the Army.

Bill Koziar is a retired field artillery officer who served as the military analyst for the I Corps Stryker Warfighters’ Forum. In that capacity, he developed the initial Operational Needs Statement for Stryker-borne fires capabilities, which was approved by the chief of staff of the Army. He subsequently participated in the competitive shoot-off at Yuma Proving Ground that evaluated candidate systems against that requirement. His analysis draws on direct experience shaping Army fires modernization from the ground up — from operational requirements development through live-fire evaluation.

Armored vehicles are quickly spotted and destroyed with either drones or artillery. Soldiers on foot seldom fare any better. Negating the other side’s drone capabilities would be a tremendous advantage, but conventional air defense isn’t good enough.

Fortunately, the U.S. has developed a solution: 30mm chain guns — traditionally mounted on Apache attack helicopters — bolted to civilian pickup trucks and connected to a portable sensor called Mobile–Acquisition, Cueing and Effector, or M-ACE.

After detecting drones, the Northrop Grumman-made system calibrates programmable shells to detonate mid-air, meaning the system, which is cost-friendly compared to other solutions, can destroy quadcopters and dismantle swarms without hitting them directly.

Such an answer to some of the evolving drone challenges seems too good to be true, but its viability has been vetted in recent years.

Ukraine has already deployed M-ACE on the battlefield in small quantities, along with Australian “Slinger” systems, which use the same chain gun. Taiwan has also expressed interest in the system, iterations of which have recently been fielded by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.

A key shortcoming with these systems, however, is driving nonmilitary vehicles in war zones. While the mounted gun may be able to stop drones, the vehicle’s crew would have effectively no protection from landmines, artillery or gunfire.

To make these counter-drone platforms truly effective, systems should be mounted on remotely operated vehicles. Enter the Tesla Cybertruck.

The Cybertruck’s usefulness for Ukraine cannot be unpacked without acknowledging its failure on the civilian market. Elon Musk promised hundreds of thousands of sales each year; Tesla fell short by 92% in 2025, barely selling 20,000 of the widely mocked pickups.

Consumers have a slew of reasons to avoid Cybertrucks. In addition to political controversy surrounding Tesla’s CEO, the truck’s design has been slammed for poor visibility, accelerator pedals that get stuck, warranties voided by car washes, dysfunctional windshield wipers and trunk doors that have gone viral for safety concerns.

Such issues, however, would be mostly irrelevant should the vehicle be used to aid the Ukrainian military.

Low demand, meanwhile, has left over 10,000 Cybertrucks sitting unsold in dealership lots. With Tesla modifying its “Gigafactory” in Austin to build a quarter-million units each year, Cybertrucks could, in theory, be delivered quickly to Ukraine — and in large quantities.

Availability isn’t the only factor that makes Tesla’s pickup a good choice. With systems like M-ACE limited by the vulnerability of crew members, Tesla could bypass the supervision requirement of the vehicle’s self-driving capability.

With remote operation, Cybertrucks on the battlefield would add a layer of safety other M-ACE-equipped pickups can’t provide. These vehicles are also easier to mass produce than any purpose-built unmanned ground vehicle rated to handle 30mm autocannons.

Today, two UGVs fit this role — the Estonian-made THeMIS and the U.S.-made Textron Ripsaw M5. Per-unit prices are not publicly available, but it’s safe to assume that these systems cost hundreds of thousands: THeMIS has sold for several million dollars, and the Ripsaw M5’s civilian variant has a starting price of $295,000.

If the Cybertruck is a viable substitute for these UGVs, an $80,000 price tag seems like a bargain. Beyond its availability and self-driving mode, the Cybertruck also offers the benefit of electrical power.

EVs have several logistical and functional advantages over fuel-powered trucks. The lack of moving parts and fuel requirements make them easier to maintain and cheaper to operate. They also create less noise and less heat, key for avoiding attention from Russian forces — especially those with thermal cameras.

A fleet of Cybertrucks equipped with chain guns and sensors to clear the skies of small drones could significantly affect the war and tilt certain battlefields in Ukraine’s favor.

Defanging enemy drones would, at worst, make the war effort more sustainable by reducing casualties and buying time for Europe to supplement Ukraine’s efforts.

More optimistically, these systems could give Ukraine’s ground forces more flexibility to move on drone-saturated front lines.

There’s no sign that an end to the war, or an improvement in Cybertruck sales, will come any time soon. Ukraine could be the best backup plan for Tesla’s misplaced investment.

Alex Lee is a recent graduate from Washington University in St. Louis, where he majored in political science and minored in writing.

Unlike in most oceans, the U.S. does not have territory in the Indian Ocean. Therefore, it relies on the U.K. to provide access to Diego Garcia, a centrally located base for military operations both westward to the Middle East and eastward to the Pacific. Mauritius, a small-state former British colony, has waged a longstanding diplomatic and legal campaign contesting the U.K.’s sovereignty over the Chagos Islands, which include Diego Garcia.

Some analyses have framed the debate in partisan terms, with former Trump adviser John Bolton criticizing the Biden administration’s position on the issue as “international law theology overriding legitimate U.S.-U.K. national security interests.”

However, this argument neglects to mention the bipartisan reality: Both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration in 2021 backed the U.K.’s sovereignty over the islands, rather than Mauritius’ claim, due to the importance of Diego Garcia. Importantly, no allied boots on the ground moved despite Mauritius’ successful legal campaign for the islands.

Fast forward to 2024, when the Biden administration announced support for the U.K.’s agreement with Mauritius which permits the use of Diego Garcia, and to 2025 and 2026 when the Trump administration twice endorsed it.

What, then, accounts for the change in the U.S. position? Real-world developments in international law changed the U.K.’s calculus. In a separate case, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea resolved the maritime border dispute between Mauritius and Maldives in 2023, while its 2021 Special Chamber judgment recognized the “legal effect” of a non-binding 2019 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that the U.K. should vacate Chagos.

Simply put, the U.K. could ignore an advisory opinion, but not binding legal judgments. This was clear motivation for former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss who kickstarted discussions with Mauritius in 2022 when it became apparent the winds were changing for the U.K.’s position. Labour Prime Minister Starmer pointed to negative consequences for the U.K. at UN agencies such as electromagnetic spectrum management, while other examples concern overflight rights.

The China card has also been invoked by critics. The assumption that Mauritius could be cajoled by China’s influence indicates little understanding of the multidimensional ties between Mauritius and India, which holds deep threat perceptions of China — seen in border crises this decade resulting in fatalities. Not only are Indian officials involved in Mauritius’ national security establishment, the Indian Navy also conducts operations in Mauritius’ exclusive economic zone. While Mauritius will continue to have economic relations with China, as do most countries, India will ensure that its strategic place for Mauritius remains paramount.

For its part, India is designated as a Major Defense Partner by the United States, and both renewed their 10-year defense framework agreement in October 2025. Furthermore, the U.S. has excellent relations with Mauritius, which had even offered a 99-year lease directly to the U.S. for Diego Garcia.

Certainly, there are legitimate arguments against the Chagos agreement such as its cost and insufficient involvement by displaced Chagossians. There is also criticism that the U.K. should not worry about potential international legal consequences. Is it worth accepting them? If the treaty is not ratified, then such scenarios will be tested and critiques should be evaluated.

Regardless of what happens with the current agreement, Trump reinforced his support of it by stating he’ll secure Diego Garcia in the event of threats to the base. As articulated, his statement will have weight beyond his presidency, similar to the Carter Doctrine prohibiting external interference in accessing the Persian Gulf as a vital U.S. interest. However, misunderstanding legal issues and exaggerating Chinese influence in Mauritius obfuscate what is a clear national security priority — maintaining U.S. access to Diego Garcia for the next century.

The Starmer government’s information-sharing about the U.K.’s calculus has been poor, while misinformation abounds.

There have been many twists and turns over the years in this dispute, including a recent claim by Maldives to the Chagos, and President Trump’s differences with Prime Minister Starmer over Greenland and Iran.

Yet for current transparency and future accountability, what’s required is a better understanding of what will follow after finalizing the treaty — compared with inaction on the issue — and how it preserves U.S. national interests in Diego Garcia and more broadly, the dynamic Indian Ocean region.

Nilanthi Samaranayake is an Adjunct Fellow at the East-West Center in Washington. The views expressed are solely those of the author and not of any organization with which she is affiliated.

A January 2026 report by researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies indicates that this war has now claimed 325,000 Russian lives and 875,000 wounded (or missing). For context, roughly 15,000 Soviet military personnel were killed in the ten-year Afghan war.

How do economists place a value on fatalities and wounded people? We typically do so by using the value of a statistical life (VSL). Economists derive VSL estimates by analyzing everyday tradeoffs people make between income and small changes in their probability of death. For example, numerous studies have analyzed how much people are willing to pay in the product safety market (air bags and seat belts) for reductions in fatality risk. In other studies, researchers have analyzed the connection between labor market fatality rates and wages.

Decades of research by economists have found that Americans, on average, are willing to pay about $140 for every one per 100,000 reduction in fatality risk. This equates to a $14 million (in 2026 dollars) VSL. But that’s for Americans. What are the values for Russians?

VSL estimates across countries track directly with per capita income. For example, a 10% rise in income adjusts the VSL upward by 10%, with the opposite being the case for decreases. Russia’s per capita income is 18.3% that of the United States. This suggests that Russian lives should be valued at approximately $2.6 million. Therefore, the total loss from Russian military fatalities is: 325,000 x $2.6 million = $845 billion.

As for valuing the losses to 875,000 wounded Russians, economists apply similar methods to estimate injury valuations. The Department of Transportation recommends using a value of 10.5% of the VSL for “serious” injuries. That would translate to about $270,000 per wounded Russian. Therefore, the total loss from Russian wounded soldiers is: 875,000 x $270,000 = $236 billion.

Besides casualties, other direct Russian military costs include equipment losses and funding for military operations (such as fuel and munitions). MinFin, which reports official government statistics, documents the following Russian losses: 12,000 tanks, 24,000 armored fighting vehicles and 400 planes, among others. Total Russian equipment losses are estimated to be $125 billion.

In a December 2023 RAND report, researchers estimated Russian operational costs in Ukraine at $3.1 billion per month. Extrapolating this value over four years of war yields an estimate of $149 billion for Russian operating costs.

What is the war’s overall impact on Russia’s economy? Since the invasion, many economic headwinds have battered Russia. International sanctions and an exodus of 650,000 Russians moving abroad have exacerbated the economic difficulties. In addition, various international organizations have frozen $340 billion worth of financial assets. Furthermore, an October 2025 report from the World Bank documents serious pressures on the current Russian economy, including year-over-year inflation running at 9.5% and interest rates at 20%.

Given the amount of negative economic information, it is difficult for analysts to obtain a specific value on economic losses. To simplify matters, we focus on a July 2025 study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. That study uses pre- and post-invasion professional forecasts for GDP rates in the Russian Federation to approximate the economic impact of the war. Their estimates suggest post-invasion Russian GDP losses of $281 billion per year on average. Using these values yields a cumulative GDP loss of $1.124 trillion since the invasion.

Combining casualty figures, equipment and operational costs, and GDP losses indicates a total cost of approximately $2.5 trillion for the Russian Federation. To put that number in perspective, we note that it exceeds Russia’s $2.2 trillion GDP.

How do these costs compare to the benefits? We measure “benefits” as the land grab by Putin. Estimates based on data from the Institute for the Study of War show that Russia has gained approximately 28,000 square miles since the start of the war — a territory equivalent to about 10% of the size of Texas. Conquering a territory of this size has come at a cost of approximately $90 million per square mile in blood and treasure.

Of course, these costs, while borne by Russian society largely through conscription and lower living standards, are not borne in the same way by Putin himself. Napoleon, the inventor of modern conscription, was once told that a planned operation would cost too many men. He replied, “That is nothing. The women produce more of them than I can use.” Possibly Putin has a similar attitude.

David R. Henderson is a research fellow with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Ryan Sullivan is an associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, the U.S. government or any other institution with which the authors are affiliated.

Two carrier strike groups are converging on the region. Fighter squadrons are flowing into bases from Jordan to Qatar, bridged across the Atlantic by aerial refueling. Submarines and destroyers armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles patrol nearby waters. Patriot and THAAD batteries have been rushed forward. B-2 stealth bombers stand ready in Missouri.

Now consider how long it has taken to assemble.

The buildup began in late January. The full force will not be in place until mid-March. This is six to seven weeks to assemble a force capable of imposing meaningful costs on Iran. The reason is simple: aircraft fly, but mass sails. When commanders needed more airpower, they drew on the joint force — two carrier air wings, surface ships, Army interceptors, and sixty-plus land-based strike aircraft sent to Jordan — proving that airpower is bigger than the Air Force.

US military assets flock to Middle East amid Iran standoff

Some analysts will see this surge as proof the United States needs a larger Air Force. They misdiagnose the problem. Airpower is not the same as the Air Force, and the pursuit of ever more exquisite aircraft has left the service less relevant to the airpower mission it claims to own. Air denial increasingly falls to the Army, electronic warfare to the Navy, and persistent strike capacity to ships and submarines.

Consider each service’s contribution. Air control remains the Air Force’s core mission — but it is increasingly a joint effort. In the event of Iranian retaliation, air control means air denial, defeating the ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and long-range drones Iran is most likely to fire. That mission runs primarily through Army Patriot and THAAD batteries, backed by Navy destroyers. Air Force fighters play a supporting role, intercepting drones and slower missiles first, reducing the volume that surface-based interceptors must engage. That is not the offense-first, air-superiority mission the Air Force prizes. It is a layered defensive fight in which the Air Force is one layer among several — and not necessarily the most important one.

Electronic warfare (EW) tells a similar story. The most capable tactical EW platform in the joint inventory is the Navy’s EA-18G Growler. Six of them operate from Jordan alongside Air Force Wild Weasel F-16CJs armed with high-speed anti-radiation (HARM) missiles and Angry Kitten jamming pods. The F-35 still lacks a fully integrated anti-radiation missile like the AGM-88 HARM or its successor. If Washington strikes Iran, destroying Iranian radar sites depends on a Navy platform. Electronic warfare was once an Air Force strength. The Navy now leads its most critical element.

Exquisite platforms buy exquisite capability for a narrow target set. They do not buy persistence — and persistence is what strategically effective airpower requires. Punishment, as Thomas Schelling argued, depends on the credible threat of continuing pain. What compels an adversary is not a single devastating blow, but the belief that costs will keep coming. Denial aims to degrade capabilities and foreclose retaliation. Both require sustained presence over time, which in turn demands mass.

Washington should have learned this lesson from the last strike on Iran. After a long planning and buildup period, the single night of B-2 strikes last June damaged facilities Iran had spent years building. Months later, however, the United States is assembling its largest regional military force since 2003 to re-engage. The parallel to the no-fly zone over Iraq in the 1990s is hard to ignore: Episodic airpower, while tactically impressive, is strategically inconclusive. Strategic effects require sustained pressure, persistent presence, and continuous operations that force an adversary to make acute choices rather than simply absorb a blow and wait.

The gaps this buildup exposes are not in Air Force strike capabilities. They are in the Army’s ability to sustain air denial at scale, in the munition inventories required for persistence, and in the tanker fleet that keeps U.S. warplanes airborne. More B-21s and F-47s address none of these shortfalls. No procurement strategy centered on $700 million bombers or $300 million fighters can generate sustained presence at scale.

The Air Force does need more airpower—but not the kind it is buying. Persistent presence requires large numbers of lower-cost drones that can absorb losses, deep stockpiles of low-cost munitions that can sustain fires over time, and uncrewed aerial refuelers that can keep fighters and bombers over target areas. These are the capabilities that generate sustained effects at affordable cost—and they are consistently deprioritized in favor of the next exquisite crewed platform.

The deeper problem runs beneath procurement. Washington has long treated “airpower” and “Air Force” as synonymous. They are not. Air control — the ability to deny an adversary the use of the domain while preserving one’s own — is increasingly accomplished by Army interceptors, Navy strike platforms, drones, and munitions fired from ships and submarines. The Air Force’s preferred model — manned fighters striving for air superiority so manned bombers can reach their targets — has yet to demonstrate the scale and stamina needed to bring a conflict to an end.

Until budget priorities reflect that reality, the United States will keep buying the Air Force it prizes and underinvesting in the airpower it needs.

Maximilian K. Bremer is a nonresident fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and head of Mission Engineering and Strategy for Atropos Group.

Kelly A. Grieco is a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center and adjunct professor in the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the return of high-intensity competition to the High North, a region that was perceived as a peripheral corner of global geopolitics for much of the post–Cold War era. As the United States and NATO Arctic allies hold intense debate about security throughout the region and begin to integrate drones for collective defense and deterrence, they face an uncomfortable reality: Russia is moving faster.

A growing gap has emerged between the alliance’s ambition to defend the High North and its ability to field Arctic-capable uncrewed systems at scale. The future of Arctic security will hinge not only on submarines, missiles, fighter jets and icebreakers, but on the capacity to deploy, sustain and counter uncrewed systems in extreme conditions and unprecedented numbers.

In this specific competition, Russia can leverage a significant edge. It fields the world’s largest industrial-scale drone ecosystem outside China and is institutionalizing combat lessons from Ukraine. Like Kyiv, Moscow has established a dedicated branch for uncrewed systems, expanded mass-training of drone operators, and is forming new drone units across the joint force, including within the Northern Fleet. It is also investing in Arctic-adapted platforms and command centers for long-range maritime drones. Annual production now exceeds 1.5 million units, with Western intelligence services expecting sharp increases driven by Chinese industrial support and sanctions evasion.

In the Arctic, Russia is likely to use drones as integrated force multipliers: enabling persistent ISR along Arctic littorals and the Northern Sea Route, cueing Bastion coastal defense systems, supporting anti-submarine and anti-surface operations and conducting long-range strikes with one-way attack drones alongside traditional missiles. These activities will be tightly coupled with aggressive cyber and electronic warfare to degrade allied sensing, targeting and command-and-control capabilities.

For NATO, uncrewed systems may matter more in the Arctic than in any other theater. Vast distances, sparse infrastructure and extreme weather constrain human presence and amplify gaps in domain awareness and response times. Traditional crewed platforms such as maritime patrol aircraft, submarines and ice-capable vessels remain essential but are limited in number and costly to sustain. Even with renewed investments, they cannot alone provide the persistent surveillance, logistics, and targeting required by NATO’s regional defense plans.

Drones help fill this gap. They can offer unmatched persistence, scalability, and flexibility at lower operational cost and risk to personnel, conducting a wide array of tasks, from reconnaissance and surveillance to logistic and resupply, casualty evacuation, mine and countermine operations, strike and more. In short, uncrewed systems are no longer niche enablers but indispensable elements for strengthening deterrence and defense in the Arctic.

Technology does not work in a vacuum

Procuring advanced platforms, however, does not automatically translate into usable capability. NATO faces structural challenges that limit its ability to exploit drones in the High North.

First, most systems are not designed for Arctic conditions. Extreme cold degrades batteries, icing affects propulsion and sensors, communications become unreliable, and corrosion accelerates wear. As a result, NATO suffers from a shortage of uncrewed systems certified for sustained cold-weather operations.

Second, infrastructure is sparse, complicating logistical support. Airfields, ports, and repair facilities are limited, while satellite coverage above 75°N is degraded and less reliable. Therefore, any robotization strategy must include adequate sustainment across the board. These challenges make reliance on autonomous features and GNSS-denied navigation essential, though the latter raises system complexity and costs.

Third, NATO’s problems are not only technical but also institutional and organizational. Doctrine, training, and innovation pathways have not kept pace with the rapid evolution of uncrewed technology and its military use.

Doctrine, personnel and other “unsexy” things

Despite recent updates, NATO doctrine still treats drones largely as supplements rather than as core elements of deterrence and defense. Commanders lack mature concepts for integrating uncrewed systems into multidomain operations against a drone-enabled adversary like Russia. The Arctic environment magnifies these gaps and demands greater efforts to develop shared approaches to human–machine teaming, standardized tactics, deployable sustainment, and counter-uncrewed systems operations.

Recent initiatives to support concept development, standardized training and operational experimentation are promising but insufficient.

Personnel challenges compound the problem. With many NATO allies struggling to recruit and retain people, the skilled operators, software specialists and specialized maintainers required for Arctic drone operations are in high demand but few in numbers.

Russia, by contrast, is rapidly expanding its training pipelines and embedding uncrewed expertise across its force structure. Autonomy can mitigate but not fully resolve the personnel problem. The human element and doctrine remain decisive to leverage the technological edge that uncrewed systems provide.

Innovation pathways across the alliance also remain slow and fragmented. While NATO experimentation initiatives are growing, they struggle to scale results. At the same time, private capital is beginning to play a larger role, with venture capital firms and European public–private mechanisms such as the European Defence Bank and European Investment Fund (EIF) increasingly backing uncrewed systems and AI startups.

However, as we explain in a recent report, harnessing this momentum will also require procurement reforms that favor speed, scale, and interoperability over risk-averse procurement programs and industrial protectionism.

A strategic imperative

For NATO as well as Arctic allies, the central question is whether they can absorb the institutional, organizational, and operational change required by large-scale robotization. The priorities are clear: field Arctic-ready uncrewed systems that are modular and interoperable by design; connect the battlespace through resilient command and control structures and high-bandwidth data pipelines; devise robust personnel and sustainment strategies and develop doctrinal tenets and concepts to effectively integrate uncrewed systems into the force structure and multidomain joint operations in an austere environment; and procure collectively and at scale, including through a mix of national and multilateral initiatives.

Without a strong demand signal for key platform categories such as tactical ISR drones, loitering munitions and uncrewed logistics vehicles, allies will continue paying premium prices for bespoke systems while Russia floods the region with battle-proven, mass-produced platforms.

These steps demand resources and urgency but also a solid understanding of what drones can and cannot do. Decision-makers need to move beyond the misleading quantity versus quality debate and focus on both elements, for uncrewed systems are neither silver bullets nor replacements for traditional lethality. Instead, their value lies in complementarity.

Effective Arctic defense requires a balanced high–low mix in which uncrewed systems extend and multiply the effectiveness of traditional forces rather than substitute for them.

Federico Borsari is a fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He focuses on defense technology and military affairs.

Gordon B. “Skip” Davis Jr is a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a retired U.S. Army major general, and former NATO deputy assistant secretary general for defense investment.

The latest rounds of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran are going well enough for now, according to the steady drip of public statements from the main parties involved.

“I think they want to make a deal,” said U.S. President Donald Trump on the eve of the latest round of discussions held in Geneva on Feb. 17, 2026. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, noted progress over the “guiding principles” of the talks.

Such optimism was similarly on display during initial talks in Oman earlier in the month.

Negotiators push for more talks after US and Iran convene in Oman

But as someone who has researched nonproliferation and U.S. national security for two decades and was involved in State Department nuclear diplomacy, I know we have been here before.

Optimism also existed in spring 2025, during five rounds of indirect talks that preceded the United States bombing of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as part of a broader Israeli attack. Pointedly, Iran noted in February that a climate of mistrust created by that attack hangs over the efforts for a negotiated deal now.

And underpinning any pessimism over a deal now is the fact that talks are taking place with a backdrop of U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf region and counteraction from Iran, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz for a live-fire drill.

Red lines

But it is more than mistrust that will need to be overcome. The positions of both the U.S. government and Iran have ossified since May 8, 2018 — the date when the first Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.

Iran continues to be unwilling to even discuss its ballistic missile program. This is a red line for them.

Yet the United States continues to demand limits to Iran’s ballistic missiles and the ending of Iran’s support of proxy fighters in the region be included in the nuclear talks, in addition to having Iran fully abandon enriching uranium — including at the low civilian-use level agreed on under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The talks are taking place amid a wider trend toward the end of what can be called the “arms control era.” The expiration of New START — which until Feb. 5, 2026, limited both the size and status of U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons and maintained robust verification mechanisms — together with the increasing willingness to engage in military actions to achieve political goals heightens the challenges for diplomacy.

Military brinkmanship

So why the apparent public optimism from the U.S. government?

Trump believes that Iran is in a weaker position than during his first term, following the largely successful Israeli attacks on Iran’s regional proxies as well as on Iran itself. The strategic capabilities of Tehran’s two main sponsored groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, are clearly diminished as a result of Israeli action.

The U.S. may also still feel it has the upper hand following the June 2025 Operation Rising Lion, in which Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was attacked in response to an International Atomic Energy Agency’s report that Iran’s stockpile of near-weapons grade enriched uranium surged by over 50% in the spring.

The reopening of talks now also comes in the immediate aftermath of Iran’s bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, leaving thousands of protesters dead.

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group was deployed near Iranian waters in January as a signal to the protesters of U.S support. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that successful talks must include topics beyond Iran’s nuclear program, including the “treatment of (its) own people.”

Trump continues to consider military options against Iran, warning that “if they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep.”

Yet there is a danger that Washington may be overestimating its position.

While the United States maintains that Iranian nuclear sites were “obliterated” in the June attack, satellite imagery indicates that Iran is working to restore its nuclear program. And while Tehran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon are severely degraded, Iranian-supported militias in Iraq, including the Kataib Hezbollah, have renewed urgent preparations for war — potentially against the U.S. — and the Houthi rebels have threatened to withdraw from a ceasefire deal with the United States.

Moreover, Iran’s commitment to its ballistic missile program is stronger than ever before, with much of the infrastructure already rebuilt from Operation Rising Lion.

No returning to the 2015 deal

Iran maintains that the talks must be confined only to guarantees about the civilian purpose of its nuclear program, not its missile program, its support of regional proxy groups or its own human rights abuses.

And that is incompatible with the U.S.’s long-held position.

This disagreement ultimately prevented the U.S. and Iran from renewing the now-defunct 2015 political deal during the Biden administration. Signed by China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.K., the United States and Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) halted Iran’s development of nuclear technology and stockpiling of nuclear material in exchange for lifting multiple international economic sanctions placed on Iran. Ballistic missile technology and Iran’s proxy support for regional militias were not included in the original agreement due to Iran’s unwillingness to include those measures.

The parties to the Iran deal ultimately decided that a nuclear deal was better than the alternative of no deal at all.

There was a window for such a deal to be resumed in between the two Trump administrations. And the Biden administration publicly pledged to strengthen and renew the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2021.

But by then, Iran had significantly increased its nuclear technical capability during the four years that has passed since the JCPOA collapsed.

That increased the difficulty: Just to return to the previous deal would have required Iran to give up the new technical capability it had achieved for no new benefits.

The window closed in 2022 after Iran removed all of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s surveillance and monitoring under the deal and started enriching uranium to near weapons levels and stockpiling sufficient amounts for several nuclear weapons.

The IAEA, the U.N’s nuclear watchdog, currently maintains only normal safeguards Iran had agreed to before the JCPOA.

Even with the 2025 U.S. strikes, Iran currently has the ability to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb within weeks to several months. This is up from over a year under the 2015 deal.

US and Iran talks today

Although most analysts doubt that Iran has developed the weaponization knowledge necessary to build a nuclear bomb — estimates vary from several months to about two years due to the lack of access to and evidence on Iran’s weaponization research — Iran’s technical advances reduce the value for the U.S. government of returning to the 2015 deal. Iran’s knowledge cannot be put back into Pandora’s box.

But talks do not necessarily need an end point — in the shape of a deal — for them to have purpose.

With the increased military brinkmanship, talks could help the U.S. and Iran step back from the edge, build trust and perhaps develop better political relations. Both sides would benefit from this stabilization: Iran economically, from being reintegrated into the international system, and the U.S. from a verifiable lengthening of the time it would take Iran to break out.

None of this is guaranteed.

When I worked in multilateral nuclear diplomacy for the U.S. State Department, we saw talks fail in 2009 regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, after six years of on-and-off progress. The consequence of that failure is a more unstable East Asia and renewed interest by South Korea in developing nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, the same dynamic appears here. The shape of a potential new deal is unclear. As time passes with no deal, both sides harden their negotiating starting points, making a deal less likely.

Military escalations may lead to a new willingness to compromise on the part of Iran or precipitate its decision to build nuclear weapons.

But even should the talks prove a failure, the effort to dampen the confrontational responses and heightening tensions would still be valuable in reducing the possibility of regional conflict.

Nina Srinivasan Rathbun is a professor of international relations at Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto and USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

It does not, and forcing the issue actually weakens U.S. national security.

Much of this is tied to the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, though specific details of the program have yet to fully emerge. House and Senate appropriators noted in the fiscal defense appropriations bill that “due to insufficient budgetary information, the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees were unable to effectively assess resources available to specific program elements and to conduct oversight of planned programs and projects for fiscal year 2026 Golden Dome efforts in consideration of the final agreement,” even given that they “support the operational objectives of Golden Dome for national security.”

Additionally, Greenland is repeatedly mentioned in the Trump administration’s recent National Defense Strategy as a place where the U.S. needs guaranteed military access.

US military has a long history in Greenland, from WWII to Cold War

But based on the originating executive order released by the White House in January 2025 and the few related unclassified discussions, Golden Dome is intended to be a multilayered system that would protect the United States from all types of threats: ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons and even drones. It would be a system of systems that would incorporate many of the existing missile defense architecture’s elements, including the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, intended to defend against ICBMs. It is reported to entail four interceptor layers — three land based, one space based — plus 11 short-range missile defense batteries scattered across the U.S. And it would use various sensors, including one that has been part of the U.S. early-warning network for decades: the ground-based radar at the Space Force’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland.

But let’s say that the U.S. decides it must expand the U.S. military footprint in Greenland in order to meet (as yet undefined) Golden Dome architecture plans. The terms of the 1951 agreement between the U.S. and Denmark are very flexible. It says that the U.S. has the right “to improve and generally to fit the area for military use” and “to construct, install, maintain, and operate facilities and equipment,” as well as having “the right of free access to and movement between the defense areas through Greenland” and “the right to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over those defense areas in Greenland.”

Precedence exists about how the U.S. and Denmark have dealt with changing missile defense priorities. When the George W. Bush administration wanted to upgrade its radar there, a request to the Danish parliament was unanimously approved in 2004. However, none of the reporting about Golden Dome indicates that new ground-based sensors would be created as part of it, with the focus instead on building space-based sensor networks.

What about placing interceptors in Greenland? Again, under the current military agreement, the U.S. could already do this. But even so, Greenland is not needed as a new interceptor site. The U.S. has 44 GMD interceptors fielded in Alaska and California, and the Missile Defense Agency has received funding to create a third basing site for GMD interceptors at Fort Drum, New York.

This accommodates any need for a more northern position without the requirement to have a site outside the United States. Plus, the number of fielded GMD interceptors has been 44 for over 20 years; these are expensive to build, operate and maintain, and MDA has been focused more on working on upgrades (and struggling to do so) than building out the supply. So it’s not like there is a waiting warehouse full of GMD interceptors. And the GMD system is the only system intended to defend against ICBMs.

Further, forcibly annexing Greenland does nothing to bolster U.S. national security — rather the opposite.

By menacing a NATO ally, the U.S. weakens a military alliance that has served us well for over seven decades. Space Force officials have repeatedly said that one of our strongest assets are our international partners and allies. This move kneecaps strategies put in place by the Space Force to utilize them, including its International Partnership Strategy released in July 2025. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said at the time, “Spacepower is the ultimate team sport. … Therefore, if the service is to achieve its mission to secure our nation’s interests in, from, and to space, then it absolutely must cultivate partnerships with partners upon whom it can depend on.”

Golden Dome is problematic for many reasons, including its astronomical cost, technical complexity and contribution to the weaponization of space. Don’t let it be used to justify the annexation of a NATO ally’s territory as well.

Victoria Samson is chief director of space security and stability for the Secure World Foundation where Krystal Azelton is senior director of program planning.

On Jan. 1, an order went into effect providing Russian companies with expanded income tax incentives for buying Russian unmanned aerial vehicles. For every ruble they spend on UAVs, those companies can deduct two rubles from their income taxes. On its face, it’s a pretty good deal, especially for those companies hoping to contribute to the state’s war machine.

But the reality, including what this means for Ukraine and the West, is more complicated.

Russia’s decade-plus domestic tech push shows that Russia can excel at software development but often fails miserably at hardware, yielding persistent efforts to steal Western technology components and growing dependence on buying Chinese ones. Even UAV-focused tax incentives are unlikely to fix that dynamic. At the same time, pushing Russian firms towards Russia’s UAV sector could help prop up those companies, supplying the cash to keep charging ahead. And it could ensure even fewer Russian firms can commercialize outside the security state’s reach —giving Moscow further leverage over technologies it can weaponize against the West.

Over the last decade, Russia has accelerated its push to promote a domestic technology sphere —one driving towards autarky and securitization. This mixed-success effort has sought to expel Western technology (seen as a foreign espionage threat) and build up Russia’s technology sectors. Since February 2022, Western sanctions have only catalyzed Russia’s technological isolation, both encouraging and forcing it to double down on domestic technology to mitigate its crumbling economy and keep fueling its war machine. This led to the creation of the high-tech tax incentive list in July 2023.

Enter this latest update to boost the Russian drone industry. It’s no secret that Russian UAVs have played a central role in the Putin regime’s full-scale, illegal war on Ukraine, and Ukraine’s defense against it, over the past four years. A January report from one of Latvia’s intelligence agencies estimated that drones are responsible for 70-80% of injuries and deaths on both sides of the war in Ukraine. Changes are rapid: Sam Bendett, a leading expert on Russian and Ukrainian UAVs, has assessed that Ukrainians and Russians are developing functionally distinct versions of UAVs and UAV defenses on innovation cycles ranging from two weeks to three months. Now, some battlefield UAVs are increasingly using AI models to chase and strike targets.

But where the components in Russia’s drones come from spells out precisely why Russia’s new policy may make little difference to Ukraine’s war effort and those in the West supporting it.

Not all Russian-used UAVs have entirely been, in components or design, Russian. The Kremlin’s security apparatus has smuggled countless microelectronics and other components from the West into the country’s military systems and machinery. Russia continues to buy more and more technology from China to funnel into its defense and technology base, including to support its UAVs. Even Russia’s most recent UAV battlefield innovations allegedly contain European, Chinese, and apparently US-made components — hardly symbols of Russian technological autonomy. Meanwhile, Iran remains a major global producer of attack UAVs and has played a significant role, both as a supplier and a teacher, in helping Russia bolster its drone manufacturing. Countries Russia could buy UAVs or UAV parts from, such as China and Turkey, have replicated Iran’s cheap, simple Shahed-136 design, too.

These trends are corroborated by a key lesson from Russia’s decade-plus domestic technology effort: Russia can excel in many ways at software development, such as building an alternative operating system to Microsoft Windows; however, it has failed time and time again, sometimes with embarrassing spectacle, to stand up domestic hardware manufacturing without significant informational or technological help from the outside. For the West, the tax incentive for UAV purchases may therefore be a better signal of the Kremlin’s intent — keep leveraging drones in all-out war on Ukraine — than of long-term self-sustainability. Hence, Ukraine, the European Union, and other players can keep putting pressure on Russia’s illicit procurement networks and on the other governments, including China and Iran, enabling its UAV innovations.

Simultaneously, the Russian government pushing Russian firms towards Russia’s UAV sector could help supply those companies with funds they will not get from, say, participating in the Western arms market or organically spreading into civilian marketplaces. Those additional revenues for large and small UAV developers alike could be meaningful, giving them the capital they need under early-day or stressful innovation cycles to keep retaining talent and (probably illicitly) acquiring the needed non-Russian tech. In response, the West may find itself trying to undercut Russian UAV efforts that hinge more on Russian domestic incentives further out of their reach. Limiting sales of Western UAV components to known Russian fronts, for example, is at least more in the power of Washington, London, Berlin, or Kyiv than trying to use sanctions and other tools to reach within Russia and shift internal market dynamics on wartime UAVs.

But perhaps the biggest strategic implication for the West may be the latest tightening of the Putin regime’s grip over technology in Russia. The Kremlin has spent decades continually bolstering its ability to capture and coerce domestic technology actors to do its bidding—or to at least stay in line. Especially since February 2022, however, it has become increasingly difficult for companies to seriously commercialize in Russia without turning to the military-industrial complex. That’s bad news for the West. Ventures whose capital needs are high up front are more likely to turn to the defense base for funding. Companies looking to sell internationally know they will need to not just bend the knee if asked but actively court Russian defense contracts.

And even though a tax incentive didn’t cause many Russian UAV firms to eagerly support the Putin regime’s slaughter in Ukraine, it certainly won’t encourage them to stop it.

Justin Sherman is the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a DC research and advisory firm, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, and the author of “Navigating Technology and National Security.”

The United States is seemingly moving toward a potential strike on Iran.

On Jan. 28, 2026, President Donald Trump sharply intensified his threats to the Islamic Republic, suggesting that if Tehran did not agree to a set of demands, he could mount an attack “with speed and violence.” To underline the threat, the Pentagon moved aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln — along with destroyers, bombers and fighter jets — to positions within striking distance of the country.

Foremost among the various demands the U.S. administration has put before Iran’s leader is a permanent end to the country’s uranium enrichment program. It has also called for limits to the development of ballistic missiles and a cutting off of Tehran’s support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Iran puts ‘fingers on trigger’ as US armada arrives in Middle East

Trump apparently sees in this moment an opportunity to squeeze an Iran weakened by a poor economy and massive protests that swept through the country in early January.

But as a scholar of Middle Eastern security politics and proliferation, I have concerns. Any U.S. military action now could have widespread unintended consequences later. And that includes the potential for accelerated global nuclear proliferation – regardless of whether the Iranian government is able to survive its current moment of crisis.

Iran’s threshold lesson

The fall of the Islamic Republic is far from certain, even if the U.S. uses military force. Iran is not a fragile state susceptible to quick collapse. With a population of 93 million and substantial state capacity, it has a layered coercive apparatus and security institutions built to survive crises. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regime’s military wing, is commonly estimated in the low-to-high hundreds of thousands, and it commands or can mobilize auxiliary forces.

After 47 years of rule, the Islamic Republic’s institutions are deeply embedded in Iranian society. Moreover, any change in leadership would not likely produce a clean slate. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged as much, telling lawmakers on Jan. 28 that there was “no simple answer” to what would happen if the government fell. “No one knows who would take over,” he said. The exiled opposition is fragmented, disconnected from domestic realities and lacks the organizational capacity to govern such a large and divided country.

And in this uncertainty lies the danger. Iran is a “threshold state” — a country with the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons but that has not crossed the final line of production.

A destabilized threshold state poses three risks: loss of centralized command over nuclear material and scientists, incentives for factions to monetize or export expertise, and acceleration logic — actors racing to secure deterrence before collapse.

History offers warnings. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s produced near-misses and concern over the whereabouts of missing nuclear material. Meanwhile, the activities of the A.Q. Khan network, centered around the so-called father of Pakistan’s atomic program, proved that expertise travels – in Khan’s case to North Korea, Libya and Iran.

What strikes teach

Whether or not regime change might follow, any U.S. military action carries profound implications for global proliferation.

Iran’s status as a threshold state has been a choice of strategic restraint. But when, in June 2025, Israel and the U.S struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, that attack — and the latest Trump threats — sent a clear message that threshold status provides no reliable security.

The message to other nations with nuclear aspirations is stark and builds on a number of hard nonproliferation lessons over the past three decades. Libya abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 in exchange for normalized relations with the West. Yet just eight years later, NATO airstrikes in support of Libyan rebels led to the capture and killing of longtime strongman Moammar Gaddafi.

Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal in 1994 for security assurances from Russia, the U.S. and Britain. Yet 20 years later, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, before launching an outright invasion in 2022.

Now we can add Iran to the list: The country exercised restraint at the threshold level, and yet it was attacked by U.S. bombs in 2025 and now faces a potential follow-up strike.

The lesson is not lost on Mehdi Mohammadi, a senior Iranian adviser. Speaking on state TV on Jan. 27, he said Washington’s demands “translate into disarming yourself so we could strike you when we want.”

If abandoning a nuclear program leads to regime change, relinquishing weapons results in invasion, and remaining at the threshold invites military strikes, the logic goes, then security is only truly achieved through the possession of nuclear weapons — and not by negotiating them away or halting development before completion.

If Iranian leadership survives any U.S. attack, they will, I believe, almost certainly double down on Iran’s weapons program.

IAEA credibility

U.S. military threats or strikes in the pursuit of destroying a nation’s nuclear program also undermine the international architecture designed to prevent proliferation.

The International Atomic Energy Agency was, until the earlier Israel and U.S. strikes, functioning as designed — detecting, flagging and verifying. Its monitoring of Iran was proof that the inspection regime worked.

Military strikes — or the credible threat of them — remove inspectors, disrupt monitoring continuity and signal that compliance does not guarantee safety.

If following the rules offers no protection, why follow the rules? At stake is the credibility of the IAEA and faith in the whole system of international diplomacy and monitoring to tamp down nuclear concerns.

The domino effect

Every nation weighing its nuclear options is watching to see how this latest standoff between the U.S. and Iran plays out.

Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia, has made no secret of its own nuclear ambitions, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly declaring that the kingdom would pursue nuclear weapons if Iran did.

Yet a U.S. strike on Iran would not reassure Washington’s Gulf allies. Rather, it could unsettle them. The June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iran were conducted to protect Israel, not Saudi Arabia or Iran. Gulf leaders may conclude that American military action flows to preferred partners, not necessarily to them. And if U.S. protection is selective rather than universal, a rational response could be to hedge independently.

Saudi Arabia’s deepening defense cooperation with nuclear power Pakistan, for example, represents a hedge against American unreliability and regional instability. The Gulf kingdom has invested heavily in Pakistani military capabilities and maintains what many analysts believe are understandings regarding Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Turkey, meanwhile, has chafed under NATO’s nuclear arrangements and has periodically signaled interest in an independent capability. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan questioned in 2019 why Turkey should not possess nuclear weapons when others in the region do. An attack on Iran, particularly one that Turkey opposes, could well accelerate Turkish hedging and potentially trigger a serious indigenous weapons program.

And the nuclear cascade would not likely stop at the Middle East. South Korea and Japan have remained non-nuclear largely because of confidence in American extended deterrence. Regional proliferation and the risk of a destabilized Iran exporting its know-how, scientists and technology would raise questions in Seoul and Tokyo about whether American guarantees can be trusted.

An emerging counter-order?

Arab Gulf monarchies certainly understand these risks, which goes some way toward explaining why they have lobbied the Trump administration against military action against Iran — despite Tehran being a major antagonist to Gulf states’ desire to “de-risk” the region.

The American-led regional security architecture is already under strain. It risks fraying further if Gulf partners diversify their security ties and hedge against U.S. unpredictability.

As a result, the Trump administration’s threats and potential strikes against Iran may, conversely, result not in increased American influence, but in diminished relevance as the region divides into competing spheres of influence.

And perhaps most alarming of all, I fear that it could teach every aspiring nuclear state that security is attainable only through the possession of the bomb.

Farah N. Jan is a senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Pennsylvania.

This gap between tactical brilliance and strategic stalemate reveals the central flaw in the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy: America can project overwhelming force anywhere on Earth, but increasingly lacks the sustained presence to turn military victories into enduring outcomes.

The Jan. 24 National Defense Strategy, or NDS for short, confronts a hard reality: the United States cannot simultaneously deter China in the Taiwan Strait, defend the Panama Canal, guarantee European security, and extend nuclear deterrence over South Korea with current force levels.

The Pentagon’s answer is to prioritize homeland defense and Western Hemisphere dominance while maintaining First Island Chain denial and providing “critical but more limited” support to Europe and Korea.

The problem isn’t the diagnosis — it’s that the cure may be worse than the disease.

When priorities collide with physics

The math simply doesn’t work. Taiwan contingency planning alone would consume most available naval and air defense forces before accounting for Western Hemisphere or European commitments. Western Hemisphere defense requires separate force packages: airlift, amphibious platforms, intelligence systems, special operations units, and surface combatants. Current force levels were designed for sustained global commitments, not for simultaneous hemispheric dominance and Indo-Pacific denial while maintaining credible deterrence elsewhere.

The Venezuela operation proves this constraint. America demonstrated it can strike anywhere, but the strategic outcome remains unresolved precisely because the new strategy deprioritizes sustained commitments outside priority theaters.

But the force structure gap is only half the problem. The transition period while allies build capacity creates its own dangers.

The transition window problem

The strategy assumes NATO and South Korea can take “primary responsibility” for regional defense within acceptable timeframes. But Europe faces daunting barriers: aggregate debt at 90% of GDP limits defense spending increases, limited indigenous production of precision munitions and advanced air defense creates capability gaps, and untested casualty tolerance raises questions about political sustainability. This creates a 3-5-year vulnerability window. Europe cannot operate independently while U.S. support is reduced.

South Korea’s challenge is even more acute. The claim that Seoul can take “primary responsibility for deterring North Korea” with “critical but more limited U.S. support” assumes conventional superiority can replace a nuclear guarantee. It cannot. North Korea’s growing arsenal creates advantages in any escalation scenario that conventional forces cannot counter. “Critical but more limited” support undermines confidence in the fundamental question: Would Washington trade Los Angeles for Seoul? This ambiguity could prompt Seoul to reconsider its nuclear stance, triggering exactly the proliferation cascade nonproliferation policy seeks to prevent.

When strategy becomes personal

Perhaps most troubling, the NDS ties its framework explicitly to “President Trump’s vision,” mentioning him 47 times across 24 pages. Enduring strategies frame objectives around persistent national interests, not individual leadership. Containment — articulated in George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” and NSC-68, two pivotal documents of the early Cold War era —survived nearly 50 years across nine administrations because it addressed Soviet threats to American interests.

When strategy becomes synonymous with a single leader, it becomes vulnerable to reversal. If allies and adversaries believe this framework expires in 2029 or 2033, they adjust behavior accordingly: allies delay defense investments awaiting policy reversals; adversaries simply wait us out.

The adversary gets a vote

The strategy’s viability depends on adversaries accommodating American repositioning rather than exploiting vulnerabilities during the transition. History offers little comfort. Britain’s 1937 Imperial Defence White Paper articulated clear priorities, but this didn’t prevent Germany from exploiting the transition period before Allied rearmament.

By designating certain theaters as lower priorities during allied capacity-building, the NDS creates a 3-5-year window for adversaries to test resolve.

The 2026 NDS offers overdue strategic clarity in diagnosing resource constraints. But it fails to show how America bridges the gap between current commitments and future capabilities without creating exploitable vulnerabilities.

The Venezuela operation crystallizes the dilemma: overwhelming tactical capability without strategic staying power. Until the Pentagon shows how it protects allies during the transition — or candidly acknowledges the risks they must accept — this strategy raises more questions than it answers.

Strategy documents set intentions; adversary responses determine outcomes. On current evidence, significant gaps remain.

Richard Berry is a national security strategist who served as senior advisor to six U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Special Operations Command (2010-2025).

Our president and secretary of war understand that wars are won before they are fought. The first battle of the next war began last April when President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth unleashed sweeping reforms to modernize our military. The Army heard that order loud and clear, and we’ve been battling complacency, calcification and decades of contorted decision-making ever since.

In September, Hegseth stated, “Standards must be uniform, gender-neutral, and high. If not, they’re not standards — they’re just suggestions, suggestions that get our sons and daughters killed.”

That has been the Army’s lodestar over the past year, but also since our founding, over 250 years ago: prepare our soldiers to dominate the battlefield, raise their quality of life while they’re home and remove any obstacles to achieving that goal. Giving our soldiers anything less, then sending them to war, is unconscionable.

Nearly a year later, we are proud to say that we have made substantial progress toward our goal of preparing soldiers to dominate on the battlefield.

Operationally, soldiers are innovating and driving change. Units like the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell are leveraging cutting-edge technologies, such as 3D printing, to create drones tailored to their missions.

The Army Software Factory is empowering soldiers to develop software solutions that enhance operational effectiveness. Transformation in Contact units are embedding engineers and coders directly into operational environments, closing the innovation loop and iterating quickly to ensure soldiers have the tools they need to succeed in dynamic and unpredictable battlespaces.

Institutionally, we’ve made fundamental acquisition reforms to take operator feedback and quickly deliver what soldiers need. Inspired by the president’s call for modernization and Secretary Hegseth’s mandate to eliminate inefficiency, we cut bureaucracy and delegated decision-making authority to Program Acquisition Executives, enabling them to move quickly and scale validated capabilities. FUZE, the Army’s venture funding model, identifies, seeds, tests and matures promising technologies.

Advanced manufacturing initiatives led by Army Materiel Command allow us to produce equipment organically, respond rapidly to demand and keep our force ready. These reforms ensure soldiers have access to the best tools and technologies to dominate the battlefield.

Culturally, we’ve promoted a mindset of lethality, innovation and uncompromising standards. Secretary Hegseth’s declaration that “standards must be uniform, gender-neutral and high” has guided our efforts to enforce rigorous training and empower leaders at every level.

Soldiers, from overseas deployments to basic training, are experimenting, learning and pushing lessons learned all the way to the Pentagon. Everywhere we go, soldiers report there is a tangible change — they can feel it in their formations — and it’s absolutely refreshing.

Soldiers make sacrifices for our nation, but their quality of life should not be one of them.

We are aggressively supporting Secretary Hegseth’s “Clean, Comfortable, Safe” mandate to improve living conditions in our barracks. Army-wide housing inspections are underway, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated to address deficiencies.

Free barracks WiFi initiatives are expanding rapidly, starting with Fort Riley, to ensure soldiers stay connected.

In partnership with leaders like Robert Irvine, we are launching campus-style dining options that provide convenient, affordable and healthy meals, expanding to five installations this year. Improving soldiers’ quality of life is not just a moral obligation — it is essential to maintaining a ready and resilient force.

We’ve reduced barriers to these reforms, but we need help.

Within our Title 10 authorities, we aggressively tore down bureaucratic obstacles. We moved funding away from wasteful spending and obsolete programs and aligned it toward initiatives that benefit our soldiers — like FUZE, drones and the ISV.

We cut headquarters billets, introduced automation to increase output and moved more soldiers and leaders to fighting formations. Amid record-setting recruiting and retention numbers, we raised our standards for appearance, performance and conduct.

But to sustain this momentum, we need Congress to continue to support agile funding and modernization efforts. We need help moving away from legacy platforms and toward capabilities that meet the demands of modern warfare. Most importantly, we need the American people to advocate for change and support our soldiers.

Enabling our soldiers to fight, win and return home is in every American’s interest. It is incumbent that our efforts bolster the Army’s ability to remain the most lethal and capable fighting force in the world.

We made great headway in 2025 to prepare our soldiers, improve their quality of life and reduce barriers — but we have only scratched the surface. These changes will manifest, they will compound and our Army will be stronger than ever.

Our adversaries are relentless and will not hesitate to challenge our way of life. American soldiers stand ready to face that challenge, but they cannot do it alone. We must all ensure they are ready to fight, win and return home.

Daniel P. Driscoll became the 26th secretary of the U.S. Army on Feb. 25, 2025. A native of Boone, North Carolina, he oversees operations, modernization and resource allocation for nearly one million active, Guard and Reserve soldiers and more than 265,000 Army Civilians. He is a former Army officer who led a cavalry platoon of the 10th Mountain Division in combat in Iraq. He subsequently received a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School and became a business leader in the private sector.

Back then, the debate quickly died down. President Trump put a lot of pressure on the Europeans to raise defense spending, but he did not question America’s nuclear commitment to Europe. Moreover, most experts agreed that if the U.S. were indeed to disengage from European security, a model based on the British and French nuclear arsenals would be the most plausible “Plan B.”

Although such an arrangement would face numerous challenges, it still appears to be the most reasonable alternative in the event of the loss of the traditional Atlantic option. In particular, it would not encourage the emergence of new nuclear powers.

Alas, the debate about German nuclear weapons is back again. Fueled by transatlantic disagreements, most recently over Greenland, the idea of Germany acquiring its own nukes appears to have again gained salience. Proponents argue that thinking about a German bomb must no longer be a political taboo, since it is the logical consequence of a ruthless realpolitik assessment of the situation. But is it?

The demand for a German bomb is rarely put forward in clear terms. Apart from the bizarre proposal by a German expert that Germany should simply buy 1,000 nuclear warheads from the United States (which would result in the immediate end of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), most German commentators remain vague. They refer to the new security situation, which, they argue, was obliging hard-nosed analysts to “think the unthinkable.”

Some maintain that the treaties in which Germany has committed itself to permanently renouncing weapons of mass destruction were created under conditions that no longer apply. Once these outdated legal obstacles were removed, acquiring the bomb would become mainly a question of financial resources and technical know-how. Consequently, like Japan and South Korea, proponents of the bomb argue that Germany should invest in “nuclear latency”, i.e. in maintaining the basic technologies necessary for a national nuclear weapons program.

However, Germany’s exit from nuclear power generation has left the country with very little “nuclear latency.” As the British and French experience shows, the financial costs of a national nuclear program would be staggering. The timeframe for developing a true nuclear option (which must also include command systems, including satellites, and delivery vehicles, such as missiles or submarines) will be 20 years or more, which would seem too long to deter a belligerent Russia.

And there is more. Proponents of a German bomb usually skirt around the question of what would happen if Poland, Italy, and other larger European countries followed Germany’s example and initiated their own nuclear programs. Even if Washington would drop any objections to allied countries acquiring nuclear weapons, a German bid for the bomb could trigger a political earthquake with unforeseeable consequences. If Berlin were to commit to a national nuclear weapons option, old resentments among Germany’s neighbors, which up until now have been contained, would resurface. The European Union might well fracture.

A Germany that withdraws from several major international treaties would cause more fear among many Europeans than Moscow’s nuclear weapons. And although the German public’s attitude toward nuclear weapons remains fickle, the idea of their country building its own bomb would hardly meet with widespread approval. Hence, whatever the reasoning for a German nuclear arsenal, no German government will go down that road. The disadvantages of such a step would far outweigh any tangible security gains.

Even if a German national nuclear option remains unrealistic, however, the debate holds an important lesson: The U.S. “nuclear umbrella” remains far more important than some analysts and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic dare to admit. It spares Europe a destructive debate on a nuclear-driven re-nationalization, and it spares the U.S. the prospect of having to deal with a multi-nuclear Europe.

Hence, both sides of the Atlantic should refrain from loose talk, be it about the diminishing credibility of the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” or about the desirability of new national nuclear options. Before starting to think about the “unthinkable”, one should first try the “thinkable” – and let Dracula rest in his coffin.

Michael Rühle worked for over 30 years in NATO’s International Staff, including as a speechwriter for six secretaries-general, as well as in policy planning, climate and energy security, and hybrid threats.

The new NATO expenditure targets are driven by a threat environment that is both severely challenging and dynamic, broadly speaking, and related to biological threats specifically. Russia is bending many norms in its war against Ukraine, including regular use of chemical agents that NATO nations now believe indicates a serious lack of restraint in their willingness to conduct illegal chemical and biological attacks.

Beyond looming Russian threats, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technologies are transforming the landscape of who is capable of developing and engineering biological weapons for a broader range of distinct purposes.

While it is clear that this threat environment will require concerted biodefense investments, active, ongoing discussions focus on what to count as core defense spending — the focus of NATO’s new target of 3.5% of GDP annually — and what should count as the non-military portion of societal resilience, for which NATO nations have pledged to spend 1.5% annually of GDP by 2035. This question has arisen in part because most countries have rarely (if ever) quantified their biodefense spending, and because many of the tools for addressing biological threats can be used for both military purposes and civilian functions. This includes resilience to pandemics and general emergency response.

As such, let’s focus on the 3.5% for core defense spending. Generally, this includes funds to man, train, equip and command military forces, or others, such as the coast guard or national police, when used for military purposes. It can also cover the stockpiling of equipment and supplies for wartime reserves, research and development for military purposes and common infrastructure, such as command-and-control networks and surveillance systems, along with personnel costs.

Military biodefense capabilities fall into this category in a clear-cut way.

Many NATO nations have laboratories operated by defense agencies that are central to detecting, characterizing and defending against biological threats (in addition to chemical weapons and other militarily significant threats). These include the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in the United States, the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology in Germany, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in the United Kingdom and others.

These labs are essential for addressing biological weapons threats and deterring the development and use of prohibited biological weapons.

Likewise, investments in biological threat detection and characterization equipment, personal protective equipment and medical countermeasures for military forces fall squarely within the 3.5% as part of equipment and supplies under operations and maintenance. Because these types of items are often stockpiled, they are easily quantifiable. For example, the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile contains enough doses of smallpox vaccine for the adult population, and many nations subscribe to the 100 Days Mission goal of developing diagnostics and countermeasures for a newly emergent pathogen within 100 days. Such goals can be easily tailored for military requirements and what is needed to support them directly.

Similar to how NATO maintains situational awareness for space and cyber, a biodefense capability target should focus on ensuring that every NATO nation’s military base has biological threat detection and early warning assets in place, as soon as possible. Basic capacity should be cost-effective to set up. For example, wastewater sequencing and other approaches have scaled incredibly in recent years. For wastewater and environmental monitoring, as well as other early warning tools, the analytical approaches used to characterize pathogen threats are rapidly growing more powerful and cost effective.

The capability targets set by NATO in this space should also ratchet up over time. Examples could include plans to scale the number of sites with metagenomic sequencing-based early warning systems; and decreasing the time to detect and characterize a novel, engineered pathogen to hours rather than days.

Additionally, investments that aim at biological weapons attribution and verification of noncompliance by adversaries with the Biological Weapons Convention clearly apply to core defense and deterrence. Russia’s sustained, flagrant treaty violations need to be monitored and called out.

Yet another biodefense expenditure category is military training and exercises, for both responding to a biological weapons attack and preparing to maintain operational force readiness during outbreaks, even if the source of the causative pathogen has not yet been determined. Indeed, such exercises should also be used to incorporate evolving technological developments so capability targets can be refined to ensure NATO force readiness against biological threats. Exercises and related public affairs activities aimed at increasing awareness of biodefense efforts, both for deterrence and to pre-bunk information threats, are a crucial part of core defense spending.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it demonstrates that NATO countries have many clear starting points for detailing a full suite of biodefense capability targets and quantifying investments in those capabilities. This will help ensure that NATO meets core biological defense and deterrence needs effectively, in the face of rising biological threats.

Hon. Andy Weber is a senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks and previously served as assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs.

Christine Parthemore is the CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks and previously served at the Pentagon.

Nearly three months later, it is not clear what, if anything, has been done to advance the president’s intent.

His brief announcement nonetheless sent the arms control community into an apoplectic frenzy. Critics deem a resumption of testing unnecessary and certain to trigger a new arms race. Neither claim withstands scrutiny, but they have succeeded in diverting attention away from common sense arguments in favor of testing.

The claim that testing is unnecessary places great weight on the annual certification process in which the nuclear weapons laboratories attest to the “safety, reliability, and performance” of the arsenal.

Though informed by advanced computer simulations, the annual certifications ultimately reflect human judgments which, by their very nature, are susceptible to error. They do not provide proof that the weapons, some of which contain components nearly 50 years old, will function as intended. Only real-world testing can provide such certainty.

Yet the annual certifications are taken as gospel by the anti-test crowd. This is an odd way to think about any complex mechanical device — nuclear or otherwise — that involves thousands of component parts. Nobody would entrust their family’s safety to an emergency home generator that has been “certified” to work but not fully tested in over three decades.

The charge that a resumption of U.S. nuclear weapons testing would unleash another “arms race” is another false narrative.

U.S. State Department reports indicate Russia — and most likely China — have conducted low-yield nuclear explosive tests. Senior Russian officials have publicly admitted doing so.

Moscow and Beijing evidently believe testing is necessary to ensure the reliability of their own arsenals. And they have undertaken them in the absence of U.S. testing, which lays bare the fallacy of the action-reaction dynamic implied by the “arms race” metaphor.

Critics of nuclear testing often point out that the U.S. conducted just over one thousand tests — far more than China or Russia — prior to suspending the drills in 1992. However, they fail to add that only a fraction of those tests are relevant to assessing the health of today’s arsenal.

The world has changed dramatically — and clearly for the worse — since the U.S. last conducted an underground test.

The feel-good vibes that characterized U.S.-Russian relations in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War have long since dissipated. Multiple attempts to “reset” the relationship have since failed. Moscow has relentlessly modernized its nuclear arsenal, developing exotic weapons such as a transoceanic nuclear-armed torpedo, while pursuing its expansionist ambitions in Georgia, Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

It would be dangerous enough if the U.S. just had to face one powerful nuclear adversary, as it did during the Cold War, but this is no longer the case with the growth of Chinese military power.

For decades after China’s first hydrogen bomb test, Beijing appeared content to maintain a small number of nuclear weapons. Not anymore. China’s wide-ranging nuclear expansion is on a growth trajectory projected to rival America’s arsenal in less than a decade.

The president’s instincts are correct. The case for resuming nuclear weapons testing is stronger now than ever, given the deterioration of the security environment and the uncertainties inherent with assessing the health of an aging nuclear arsenal.

It is odd, indeed, to require every weapon in the U.S. arsenal be fully tested except for the nuclear weapons on which our ultimate deterrent rests.

Getting the U.S. ready to test after more than 30 years of not doing so is no small feat. The required infrastructure and technical know-how have atrophied. The nuclear labs need to proceed with a sense of urgency and develop plans. For its part, Congress must adequately fund their efforts and ensure resources are not siphoned away from other critical strategic modernization programs.

Even a limited resumption of testing will require extensive planning and preparation, including the construction of underground cavities to limit environmental impacts. Building such facilities from scratch will take time — which is all the more reason to begin now.

James H. Anderson and David J. Trachtenberg both formerly served as deputy and acting under secretaries of defense for policy during the first Trump Administration.