Drones dominate the discourse in conversations on the current state of war and the implications for future warfare. Yet, the discussion rarely examines drone warfare in the context of how they contribute to strategically decisive outcomes in conflict and war. This article critically analyses the impact of drone warfare's ability to generate control of territory in land wars and the impact of that outcome in determining the winners and losers in war. This article finds that whilst drones are game-changing, they cannot generate the effects to fuel advantageous strategic outcomes. Thus, policy-makers must approach military innovation from the position of advancing strategy towardss policy goals and not just adopting new technology for the sake of appearing innovative.
This study examines how Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Ground Forces commanders learned during the first five months of the "Tekuma" War and engaged with the Ground Forces' operational learning system. Based on a survey of 119 commanders, it finds that battlefield learning was widely regarded as important and was routinely integrated into combat practice. Before combat, commanders preferred drills and collective staff learning over individual study. During operational pauses, learning centred primarily on unit-level, self-directed lessons learned, rather than on lessons from parallel units or technical reviews of weapon systems. Respondents reported high familiarity with debriefings disseminated through the learning system and assessed them as useful for operational planning and casualty prevention. Commanders strongly preferred collective discussion and tangible learning aids over digital platforms. The findings suggest that, under combat conditions, learning functions not merely as information transfer, but as a socially embedded process that reinforces cohesion, trust, and sensemaking.
This article examines the formation of Turkish anti-submarine warfare capacity between 1937 and 1943 through domestic security concerns, institutional adaptation and British military assistance. It argues that the submarine threat perceived in the Marmara and eastern Mediterranean compelled T & uuml;rkiye to treat anti-submarine warfare as a matter of coastal defence, maritime communications and wartime neutrality. Drawing on Turkish and British archival material, the article traces the connection between unidentified submarine incidents, the loss of Refah, the establishment of training arrangements, the introduction of ASDIC-equipped vessels and the planning of harbour defence systems. Particular attention is given to indicator loops, harbour defence asdic, boom defences and technical advisory missions after the Adana meetings. The article shows that Turkish anti-submarine warfare emerged through a gradual process shaped by threat perception, limited resources, British technical expertise and the strategic constraints of the Second World War.
Classical deterrence emphasises denial and punishment, strategies that small allies cannot deliver autonomously. This article develops strategic exposure as a mechanism within extended deterrence: the deliberate publicisation of vulnerabilities and dependencies to shape alliance reinforcement - its speed, credibility, and political resolve - and, in turn, an adversary's expectations. The framework specifies three mechanisms (performed vulnerability, reputational binding, and normative framing) and identifies necessary scope conditions: alliance cohesion, credible normative alignment, and disciplined messaging. Drawing on directed qualitative content analysis and process tracing of Lithuanian doctrinal texts and elite statements (2022-2025), the article shows how vulnerability is used to mobilise NATO interdependence and frame defence as a shared responsibility. The findings suggest that strategic exposure can accelerate denial/punishment instruments where commitments are institutionally anchored, but may backfire where cohesion is contested, clarifying how managed visibility can augment deterrence in asymmetric contexts.
Recent debates on defence industrial policy focus on resilience, strategic autonomy, and alliance co-operation, often assuming that these goals reinforce one another. How they interact within allied defence-industrial supply chains, however, remains insufficiently examined. This contribution explores the conditions under which alliance integration strengthens, rather than constrains, defence-industrial resilience in middle powers. The analysis compares Italy and Canada, allies embedded in distinct transatlantic industrial settings. Italy combines domestic system-integration capacity with participation in European frameworks, whilst Canada relies more heavily on United States-centred industrial ecosystems. Attention is given to governance arrangements, system-integration authority, and supply-chain dependencies to show how different forms of alliance embeddedness shape resilience outcomes during rearmament and geopolitical fragmentation. Delegated sovereignty describes alliance-based industrial arrangements in which key functions are externalised while operational credibility is preserved through access to allied ecosystems. Defence-industrial resilience emerges less from control or integration alone than from the capacity to manage dependence.
This article examines Europe's evolving maritime engagement in the Indo-Pacific amid intensifying great-power competition and pressures on the global maritime order. It situates the Indo-Pacific as strategically central to European security and prosperity, prompting key European states and institutions to recalibrate their respective strategic outlooks. The analysis assesses both national and collective European approaches to maritime statecraft, focusing on defence policies, naval capabilities, and operational deployments. Findings indicate that European efforts to uphold freedom of navigation, the rules-based maritime order, and regional stability are increasingly visible, but constrained by limited naval capacity, strategic fragmentation, competing regional priorities, and operational overstretch - factors compounded by Russia's war against Ukraine and uncertainty about U.S. security commitments. At the same time, growing maritime awareness, more frequent and robust force projection with partners, and enhanced defence-industrial co-operation present opportunities for deeper engagement. The article concludes by evaluating whether European maritime forces will become more strategically consequential in Indo-Pacific security.
This article looks at the evidence of two recent cases of war involving nuclear powers: Russia-Ukraine and Iran-Israel. It arrives at three conclusions. First, nuclear weapons, even when they are reinforced by second-strike capability, do not prevent limited attacks on homeland territory below the threshold of invasion. Second, nuclear powers did not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons after these retaliatory attacks. Third, the strategic balance was not directly relevant to leaders' calculations in any of these cases. The empirical evidence suggests that theories of deterrence, developed in the historical and cultural context of the Cold War, do not translate well into other contexts and need revision. It may well be that nuclear weapons deter some kinds of behaviour, but not others, and that the use of one set of instruments to deter one kind of threat makes the prevention of another more difficult.
Five years ago, first-person view (FPV) racing drones were exclusively used in sports. Since then, the Ukraine-Russia war has taken those commercial technologies and applied them in asymmetric ways for military advantages. Continued adaptation of these FPV drones as a contested and potent autonomous military capability will critically depend on key technologies that arguably have yet to be realised. Here, we research the rapid technological evolution of FPV drones by examining their current state and anticipating future developments to forecast their readiness for wider applications. The analysis employs a comprehensive literature review, facilitated by tools such as Litmaps, open-source intelligence, and targeted industry engagement to trace the decade-long development of multi-rotor control systems and the peak of Autonomous Drone Racing research. The method developed is novel, and the predictions for Autonomous Drone Racing applications are insightful for anyone working on technological prediction in drone development.
The longstanding tensions between Iran and Israel escalated into a low-intensity conflict in 2024. The defining characteristic of this conflict was its nature as an aerial warfare, in which both parties conducted intermittent, short-duration operations targeting each other's military assets by using rockets, missiles, and aerial systems over an extended period - without formally declaring war. Throughout the conflict, each side tested the other's capabilities and resources, leading to what can be described as a form of "probing" war. This study examines the 2024 Iran-Israel war through the lens of probing war characteristics and analysing the Air and Missile Defence (AMD) capabilities of both countries, as well as the operations they employed during the conflict. It also aims to identify crucial air defence lessons emerging from the war, and to discuss the essential requirements for an effective IAMD architecture.
The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has faced difficult strategic conditions since democratisation in 1994. These included the end of the Cold War and apartheid, ambiguity pertaining to external threats, democratic regime change, the integration of former non-statutory forces, a declining defence budget, and the acquisition of new prime mission equipment. In an attempt to cope with these conditions, the SANDF adopted the mission-based approach as a threat-independent "coping mechanism" for military strategy. The aim of this paper is to discuss the SANDF's selection and use of this approach. This is done to give more clarity to strategy gaps and why the SANDF finds it difficult to achieve a balance amongst strategic variables. It is argued that in the absence of clear strategic guidance to make difficult trade-offs, the finalisation of military strategy has become a dragged-out process to avoid decisions that could threaten the retention of legacy and core military capabilities.
This first-hand account by then-US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, Colin Kahl, recalls how he helped manage the Fall 2022 Crisis with Russia. It is as such both a piece of evidence, as well as an interpretation of the events in late 2022. Kahl argues that US deterrence messaging, dissuading Moscow from potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, appeared to break through at some point in the crisis. He also points to the potential effects of simultaneous messaging by US allies, by India and China. With the evidence from Ukraine in mind, Kahl concludes that as long as nuclear weapons exist, every great-power war carries the shadow of catastrophe. It is therefore the highest collective obligation of the international community to deter and de-escalate the conflicts and conventional wars that could lead down this disastrous path.
This paper examines how the public record of events during the Fall 2022 Crisis fits with what was previously known, or thought to be known, about the Russian threshold to nuclear use. In light of the events during the 2022 crisis, the paper describes three distinct hypotheses about that threshold: a school of state existence, a school of desperation, and a school of escalate-to-deescalate. Even though neither school can be completely validated though the public record on the 2022 crisis, the event does show how the school of desperation and the school of escalate-to-deescalate have been disproven by the events thus far in Ukraine. The paper concludes by identifying known unknowns when deciphering nuclear thresholds.
During the Fall Crisis of 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered three main speeches containing explicit or thinly veiled nuclear threats. A detailed interpretation of the three speeches reveals significant differences, particularly as regards their potential to be treated as nuclear threats. His first speech in September delivered the most explicit nuclear threat of the war. His second speech, nine days later, though widely interpreted as conveying another nuclear threat, did not threaten possible Russian use of nuclear weapons. Putin's speech in late October, finally, can be interpreted as backtracking from earlier threats. With the successful Russian retreat from Kherson, there was no plausible need for Putin to authorise nuclear detonations. A close reading of the three speeches reveals that not every nuclear insinuation should be treated as a threat.
