Modern War Institute

NATO just wrapped up its 2026 summit in Ankara, Turkey. Over two days of meetings and other events, the leaders of the alliance's thirty-two member states discussed a range of issues and challenges facing the alliance. But what did we actually learn from the summit? In a period that has been marked by intra-alliance friction, were there signs of closing fissures or do divisions remain? And were th...

For years of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, US Army forces, along with their joint and coalition counterparts, benefits from a logistics enterprise that ensured every supply need was met. That enterprise—extending from installations at home, through sea and air lines, and all the way to small units in contact—operated largely without disruption by enemy forces. A major war with a pee...

In 1973, the US military took an enormously consequential step when it adopted an all-volunteer force model. That decision has produced the most professional, capable joint force in history. But it hasn’t come without costs—from the large budgets required to maintain it to a shrinking recruitment base that has serious implications for civil-military relations. So what does the all-volunteer force’...

Shortly after taking power in Moscow, Vladimir Putin began consolidating his authority over the Russian intelligence services that had long been deeply embedded in Russian and Soviet politics and a pervasive influence in society. The degree to which he succeeded was striking, ultimately transforming them into organizational assets that remained effective at what they did but were entirely loyal to...

For more than a week, the United States and Israel have struck a wide range of targets in Iran with air and missile strikes. Iran’s response has included missile and drone attacks against targets in neighboring states in the Middle East—both US military and diplomatic facilities and public sites including Dubai’s airport. What weapons, on both sides of the conflict, have defined the conflict so fa...

What were the strategic calculations that drove the United States and Israel to launch a military operation aimed at a wide range of targets in Iran? And are the fundamental objectives of the two partners fully aligned? Inside Iran, as the regime's resilience and the military's capability are under more pressure than they have been in decades, how are institutions responding? What drove the decisi...

The United States has a new National Defense Strategy. Released about every four years, the document offers a window into the way senior defense officials view the global threat environment and identify US defense objectives. But how will the new strategy be interpreted by allies and partners? What about adversaries and competitors? And does formally delineating US priorities offer a degree of pre...

Examined exclusively as a military operation, the US raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was a stunning success. In the course of just a few hours, the force package launched, accomplished its objective, and returned to base. But before that could happen, planning and rehearsals that likely took place for months set the stage for the mission’s brief execution. To share their per...

Both training and education have always been key elements of the US Army’s readiness. But as new battlefield challenges arise and new technologies emerge, the character of warfare is changing—and it’s changing faster than ever. Keeping up with those changes—and keeping ahead of adversaries we might fight—means that we have to get training and education right. The Army’s success in tomorrow’s wars...

Late on the night of September 9, twenty-one medium-sized, fixed-wing drones entered Poland’s airspace. Several were shot down, while others crashed, some deep inside Polish territory. Later that month, a series of drone sightings were reported around airports and military installations in Denmark, even forcing a brief suspension of flights. Beyond suspicion of Russian involvement and the fact tha...

Almost since the very beginning the war in Ukraine triggered by Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the conflict took on characteristics of a technological arms race, with each side seeking to innovate to gain a battlefield advantage. As the war has continued, that contest for advantage has taken place on an increasingly rapid scale. The rollout of a drone optimized for a new mission, the developm...

The United States is engaged in a strategic competition with China. On issues ranging from Taiwan's security to the question of which country will most shape the geopolitical order in the years and decades to come, Washington seeks to secure its objectives, promote its interests, and deter Chinese aggression. But what are China's core objectives? And more fundamentally, how does Beijing conceptual...

The US Army is in a period of transformation. And much of that transformation centers on technology—from artificial intelligence and robotics to drones and directed-energy weapons. But leaning forward technologically brings both advantages and new challenges. To explore the way the Army is approaching those challenges and pursuing technology-driven battlefield advantage, John Amble is joined on th...

The US government established the National Defense Stockpile in 1939 to ensure that in the event of a major conflict, there would be enough raw materials on hand to continue production of vital equipment. Since the end of the Cold War, it has steadily shrunk, now just a tiny fraction of its peak size. Moreover, while its original purpose was stockpiling materials like steel and rubber, US military...

When the United States conducted Operation Midnight Hammer, a series of strikes against Iranian nuclear targets, it did so with two key pieces of exquisite hardware: the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator and the B-2 Spirit strategic bomber. But how does the GBU-57 actually work? And what’s it like to fly this type of long-range bomber mission in a B-2? To examine those questions, John Amble is jo...

The defense industrial base is a critical component of US military readiness. But how should we conceptualize it in the information age, when it isn't just physical materiel like weapons, vehicles, and ammunition that are vital, but also data and software? How have globalization and the consequent emergence of long, complex supply chains extending around the world changed the way defense planning...

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it galvanized both NATO and the European Union, doing more to unify much of Europe than any event in recent history. But how has political and strategic unity translated to improvements of collective European defense and deterrence? Amid uncertainty about continued US support for Ukraine, which European states are stepping into leadership roles...

For more than three years, journalists, researchers, and military professionals have sought to describe the key dynamics of the war in Ukraine and determine what they tell us about the future of warfare. One of the sharpest observers has been retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan. He joins this episode to share some of his thoughts about the ongoing war—and what it indicates about the ch...

National security professionals often conceptualize a continuum of conflict as a framework to understand the wide variety of ways in which conflict can manifest itself. It extends from relative peace on one end, terrorism and low-intensity conflict, up through large-scale combat, all the way to strategic rivalry in which nuclear weapons even come into the picture. But what if that cognitive framew...

When the Chinese company DeepSeek recently released an artificial intelligence model called R1, its surprisingly advanced capability and the efficiency with which DeepSeek claimed to have trained the model sparked a wave of discussion about how rapidly Chinese AI development was progressing. But how is the competition to achieve superior AI technologies between China and the United States shaping...

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 is an important discussion taking place about what role security force assistance should play for the United States in the very different strategic environment that is taking shape. Will it be a mission that we'll be required to do in order to...

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 rebel groups. And then, rebels launched a lightning offensive that saw a series of Syrian cities—including, ultimately, the capital Damascus—fall. Assad was gone and more than a half-century of rule by his family came to an end. To explore how that happe...

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 than—their adversaries, Ukrainian defenders held out for three months. As the Russian siege of the city intensified, Ukrainian forces defended a shrinking perimeter with a command post in the Azovstal steel plant. One of those Ukrainian defenders was...

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. Professional military writing is the way we share information, new ideas, and creative solutions to collective problems. It’s the way we drive bottom-up change. And it’s vital if the Army is to be prepared for the challenges of tomorrow’s battle...

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 previous conflict. This was largely because of the care they received—beginning at the point where they were wounded and continuing through evacuation to medical facilities in theater and transport to military hospitals at Landstuhl, Ge...