From Global Navy to Boutique Force: Britain’s Shrinking Fleet

06/29/2026 By Robbin Laird The numbers tell a stark story. In early 2026, the United Kingdom fields a Royal Navy whose surface combatant force has shrunk faster than its modernization programs can backfill, while Iran has assembled a numerically larger and, in some respects, more dynamically evolving regional fleet. This is not a claim that Tehran has eclipsed London as a… Read more »

Fires by Air, Fires at Night: The HIMARS KC-130J Night Off-Load at WTI 2-26

06/26/2026 By Robbin Laird Six photographs taken through night vision devices on April 6, 2026, at Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow, California, document one of the most operationally consequential integration exercises in WTI 2-26: the nighttime off-load of an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System from a KC-130J Hercules. The photographs exist entirely in the monochrome grain of NVG imagery —… Read more »

The UH-1Y’s Full Day at WTI 2-26

06/26/2026 Thirteen photographs from April 7, 2026, document a full operational day for the UH-1Y Venom near Yuma, Arizona, as part of Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 2-26. The day moves from the MCAS Yuma ramp through rappelling operations in the rocky desert mountains, a hot-pad turnaround at a forward site, door gun employment across the desert floor, and into the… Read more »

Competitive Coexistence in a Fractured World Order, Authoritarianism, and the Kill Web Revolution

06/24/2026 By Robbin Laird This article is the convergence point of several analytical projects I have pursued in recent years: the breakdown of the post–Cold War order and the global war in Ukraine, the reconfiguration of power across key middle states such as Australia and Brazil in the shadow of China’s rise, and the emergence of a multi-polar authoritarian architecture that… Read more »

Building the MISR WTI: An Interview with VADM (Retired) Miller

06/23/2026 By Robbin Laird When the history of the Navy’s transition from kill chain to kill web is written, the creation of the Maritime ISR Weapons and Tactics Instructor — the MISR WTI — will be recognized as one of the foundational moves. The program did not emerge from a requirements document or a program of record. It emerged from a… Read more »

Keeping AI Online in Combat: The Striveworks Approach to Operational AI for the Defense Community

06/22/2026 By Robbin Laird James (Jim) Rebesco is the co-founder and chief executive of Striveworks, an Austin, Texas-based company now seven years old that works with the U.S. Army, Navy, and defense intelligence community to deploy and sustain artificial intelligence in operational environments. His background is as a PhD in computational neuroscience and applied AI, followed by years building algorithmic trading… Read more »