Latest Episodes

Why Security Force Assistance Only Sometimes Works
After twenty years of America’s post-9/11 wars and the US military’s struggle to build capable and effective security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, there...

How the Assad Regime Fell
For well over a decade, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad managed to hold onto power during a complicated civil war involving a number of anti-regime...

Inside the Battle of Azovstal
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, one of its first targets was the city of Mariupol. Despite being outnumbered by—and less well equipped...

Amateurs Talk, Professionals Write
Writing is often treated as a peripheral activity in the military, but it is a defining characteristic of any profession—including the profession of arms....

Casualty Care in Tomorrow's Wars
During the United States’ post-9/11 counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, many US service members survived wounds that would have been fatal in any...

The Maven Smart System and the Future of Military AI
Both military practitioners and scholars believe that artificial intelligence will influence the character of war in the future. But it’s difficult to know how...