Indian Strategic Studies: 09/08/25

8 September 2025

Technological Discord and Tactical Misjudgment: India’s Military Setback in the May 2025 Crisis

Tahir Azad

Victory in multi-domain warfare depends on the effective integration of military resources within a contested battlespace, not merely their quantity. The May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict highlighted India’s challenges in managing technologically fragmented platforms. India’s reliance on diverse Russian, Western, and indigenous systems—such as American-Israeli electronics, Russian S-400 air defense systems, and French Rafale jets—created operational discord. Conversely, Pakistan leveraged a cohesive Chinese-backed arsenal, including J-10C and JF-17 fighters, localized drone swarms, and electromagnetic warfare (EMW) tactics unified by a centralized Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) framework.

This essay analyses Pakistan’s tactical edge through Chinese technology and EMW, India’s limited success with BrahMos missile strikes, and how India’s doctrinal and technical fragmentation undermined its military effectiveness. In doing so, this essay highlights both sides’ strengths and weaknesses in a shifting regional context.

India: Perils of Non-Integration

India’s diversified procurement from Russia, France, Israel, and the United States was intended to safeguard strategic autonomy and reduce the dependence on a single supplier. Such assets as the Israeli Heron drones, American surveillance platforms, French Rafale jets, and the Russian S‑400 air defense system offered advanced capabilities but lacked interoperability. Even the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a leading Indian think tank, underscored same in 2023, when it noted that India’s military modernization is hampered by service-specific preferences resulting in the weak integration of weapons and intelligence systems, limiting their ability to conduct network-centric warfare. Military analyst Michael Dahm echoed similar concern by underlying India’s absence of unified architecture for sensor-to-shooter continuity, which constrained its air defense grid. India’s air force, though large, suffers from interoperability issues due to its diverse fleet of aircraft and missile systems from multiple countries. Dahm argues this complexity hinders real-time coordination and has turned strategic variety into a liability in today’s fast-paced, AI-driven warfare environment.

The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unraveled

Mujib Mashal, Tyler Pager and Anupreeta Das

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India was losing patience with President Trump.

Mr. Trump had been saying — repeatedly, publicly, exuberantly — that he had “solved” the military conflict between India and Pakistan, a dispute that dates back more than 75 years and is far deeper and more complicated than Mr. Trump was making it out to be.

During a phone call on June 17, Mr. Trump brought it up again, saying how proud he was of ending the military escalation. He mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor for which he had been openly campaigning. The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr. Modi should do the same.

The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr. Trump that U.S. involvement had nothing to do with the recent cease-fire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan.

Mr. Trump largely brushed off Mr. Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr. Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term.

The dispute has played out against the backdrop of trade talks of immense importance to India and the United States, and the fallout risks pushing India closer to American adversaries in Beijing and Moscow. Mr. Modi is expected to travel to China this weekend, where he will meet with President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people in Washington and New Delhi, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a relationship that has far-reaching implications for both sides, with Mr. Trump eroding a strategic relationship and India alienating its biggest trading partner as it tries to keep its economy afloat.

Kabul Will Never Be the Same Again

Freshta Jalalzai

I was finally, truly, in love.

Just before the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021, I had made the decision to return to Kabul. I had long dreamed of owning a home in my hometown, tucked somewhere between the storied Jewish quarter and the city’s ancient Hindu temples, resting along the rugged slopes of Koh-e Asamai, the mountain at the heart of Afghanistan’s timeless capital.

In the evenings, the mountain blazes like a ball of fire, lit by the lanterns and bulbs of the homes clinging to its sides, and as the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, echoes through the valley, the entire landscape turns majestic.

That is where I was born, on a rainy evening, and was carried home from the hospital wrapped in a newspaper, as my parents were unprepared for my arrival, much like the city itself, never quite ready to hold me. For most of my life, I have lived unmoored, never fully rooted anywhere, and after years away, working as a journalist in Eastern Europe, I had decided it was time to go back. It was time to build a home, to reclaim love, a place, and a part of myself I had left behind.

But returning to Kabul meant facing memories I had tried to bury.

The last time I had stood in Kabul was only three years before, in August 2018, a visit shrouded in grief. I had buried three colleagues lost to the violence engulfing the city, and I was reminded of many others who were silenced before them.

Kabul continued to bleed in a war not of its own making.

I had become witness to the heavy cost our city and its people had paid.

Kabul was grim, the air thick with the smell of smoke and gas from heavy military vehicles and tanks roaming the streets.

The Aragalaya Protest Movement and the Struggle for Political Change in Sri Lanka

David G. Timberman

From early 2022 to late 2024, Sri Lanka went through an intermittent, uncertain, but ultimately momentous change in its political leadership. In early 2022, in response to a severe economic crisis, massive protests forced from office then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and other members of the powerful Rajapaksa political dynasty. He was succeeded by Ranil Wickremesinghe, another member of the discredited political elite, who held office for the next two years. In late 2024, new elections brought to power a leader and political party that had been long opposed to the country’s traditional political and economic elites. Sri Lanka’s political transition is notable both because it is a rare democratic success story in an era marked by democratic backsliding around the world and because it highlights the potency, though also some of the inadequacies, of political protest movements.

The 2024 elections, won by Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition, represent a dramatic repudiation by Sri Lankan voters of the country’s deeply entrenched political establishment. While it was the electoral process in 2024 that ultimately resulted in the rejection of the government headed by Wickremesinghe, it was the Aragalaya (Sinhala for “struggle”) protest movement during the first half of 2022 that dealt the initial body blow to Sri Lanka’s political establishment by demanding the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa and other members of the political elite and calling for fundamental changes to the country’s political system (what protesters called “system change”). In just four months—between March and July 2022—the Aragalaya movement succeeded in forcing from office first prime minister and former president Mahinda Rajapaksa (the president’s brother) and then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself.1

In the wake of these resignations, Ranil Wickremesinghe, a prominent member of Sri Lanka’s political elite, first was appointed by Gotabaya Rajapaksa as prime minister and then was selected by Parliament to succeed him as president.2 Wickremesinghe’s ascendancy to the presidency (technically called the “executive presidency”) was an adept political feat made possible by the political disarray created by Aragalaya as well as the close-knit nature of Sri Lanka’s political elite. As soon as Wickremesinghe came to power, he repressed the protests, arrested protesters, and refused to hold local elections that almost certainly would have weakened his political position.

China’s war technology on parade

Arathy J Aluckal, Han Huang and Greg Torode

Unmanned operations group displays the AJX002 unmanned underwater vehicles during a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in Beijing, China, September 3, 2025 - REUTERS/Go Nakamura TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

China on Wednesday staged its first major military parade in six years, showcasing progress in its long-running military modernisation in weapons ranging from torpedo-like sea drones to long-range missiles.

Ahead of the parade, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, Chinese officials said the military was displaying how it could harness technological advances to win future wars. Foreign analysts said they were watching closely to see how effectively China could deter and intimidate not just the United States and its allies but other rivals too.

Military hardware

This year China unveiled progress on all fronts, including the vital battle management and communications systems it would need to tie all its weaponry together in a conflict.

An earlier “Victory Parade” in 2015 showcased progress on its nuclear-capable missile arsenal and another display in 2019 revealed drones among the weaponry on show for the first time.

China’s Victory Day Parade Rekindles Cross-Strait Battle Over WW2 Narratives

Meredith Oyen

World War II casts a very long shadow in East Asia. Eighty years after ending with Japan’s surrender to Allied forces on September 2, 1945, the conflict continues to stir debate over the past, in the context of today’s geopolitical tensions.

China’s high-profile military parade commemorating the conclusion of what Beijing calls the “War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression” is a case in point.

In the run-up to the September 3, 2025, event, the Chinese Communist Party has been criticized in Tokyo for stoking anti-Japanese sentiment and in the United States for downplaying the U.S. role while playing up Russia’s.

But as an expert on Taiwan-China relations, I’m interested in the battle over the narrative between Taipei and Beijing. During World War II, China’s Communists and Nationalists became uneasy internal allies, putting their civil war on pause to unite against Japan. Afterward, the Communists prevailed and the Nationalists fled to Taiwan, where they continued to run their own government – one the mainland has never recognized.

Months of bickering over the commemorations shine a light on how both sides view their respective roles in defeating Japan – and what the show of military force by Beijing signals today.

To Whom Did Japan Surrender?

A peculiarity of the current commemorations is that Japan did not actually surrender to Communist China, or technically to China at all. On September 9, 1945, a week after agreeing to the terms laid out by the Allied forces, Japan, at a ceremony in Nanjing, formally surrendered to China’s National Revolutionary Army – the military wing of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek.

And this gets to the heart of why many in Taiwan – where the Nationalists fled at the conclusion of China’s civil war in 1949 – are unhappy with Beijing’s projection of the Communists as the victors against Japan.

China’s Victory Day Message Points to Struggle Ahead

Vincent K. L. Chang

In September 2015, the People’s Republic of China held its first major military parade to mark victory in World War II.

On September 3, 2025, President Xi Jinping is scheduled once again to host world leaders in Beijing for the commemoration of Victory Day in what is formally known in China as the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.”

At first glance, Beijing’s messaging appears similar to 10 years ago. But a closer look indicates increased uncertainty about what lies ahead.

Anticipating Great Victory

In 2015, China appeared ready to realize its long-anticipated rise as a global superpower – a goal officially branded as “national rejuvenation.”

During a milestone meeting in June 2013, Xi and then-U.S. President Barack Obama agreed to establish a new model of great power relations, emphasizing pragmatic cooperation and the constructive management of differences.

Earlier that year in Moscow, Xi established the foundation for a personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and what would later be described as a “limitless” strategic partnership between their countries.

Closer to home, Xi conducted “landmark” and “ice-breaking” meetings with his Indian and Japanese counterparts in 2014. These coincided with a period of notable warmth in cross-strait relations, culminating in an unprecedented face-to-face summit between Xi and Taiwan’s president in November 2015.

These diplomatic successes, along with expectations of continued rapid economic growth, influenced Beijing’s evolving perspective on its position in the current global order as well as official accounts of the nation’s past.

China’s New DF-61 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Breaks Cover

Joseph Trevithick

What looks to be a new Chinese road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) dubbed the DF-61, or at least a transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) for it, has emerged amid last-minute preparations for a massive military parade in Beijing. There have been reports for some time now that China has been developing next-generation ICBMs, including a successor to its road-mobile DF-41 ICBM, as part of a larger buildup of its nuclear deterrent arsenal.

Imagery showing 16-wheeled TELs loaded at least with canisters marked DF-61 (whether or not there is an actual missile inside is unknown) is now beginning to circulate online. It is currently early morning on September 3 in Beijing. Preparations for the imminent parade, which will mark the 80th anniversary of the country’s victory over Japan in World War II, have been going on for months now, and various new capabilities have already surfaced.

No hard details have yet to emerge about the DF-61, and it is unknown at this time whether or not it is said to be in service. A point of reference, the DF-41 was first shown to the public at another major parade in 2019, but its development is understood to have started before 2000, and it had reportedly begun entering operational service in 2017. The DF-41 is some 20 meters long, has an estimated range of between 12,000 and 15,000 kilometers, and can be loaded with up to 10 multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) warheads, according to the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.

DF-41s, or at least their TELs, at a previous Chinese military parade. via Global Times

A story last year from The Washington Times said that references to a DF-41 successor, referred to at that time variously as the DF-45 and DF-51, have appeared on the Chinese web since at least 2020. That piece came after U.S. Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, reportedly told members of Congress that China was developing a “new generation of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles” at a closed-door hearing.

“Sometimes called the DF-45 or DF-51, it is clearly intended to outperform the DF-41,” Rick Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center think tank, told The Washington Times at that time. “Such an ICBM would not be much larger than a DF-41 to preclude a road-mobile version.”

Xi Jinping’s anti-American party

YOU MAY think the place where national leaders gather to talk about the state of the world is Washington, or perhaps the UN Headquarters in New York. In fact, as President Xi Jinping showed when he hosted over 20 presidents and prime ministers in China this week, a new reality is taking hold.

Next Steps for DoD to End U.S. Reliance on China for Rare Earth Elements

Jeffrey Jeb Nadaner

In becoming a majority shareholder of MP Materials, the Trump administration demonstrated the salutary thought that no radical free-market orthodoxy should prevent the United States from taking decisive action, including direct investment of taxpayer dollars, to secure domestic sources of industrial materials vital to our national defense. It is encouraging that Apple, long known for its Chinese assembly operations, followed up with a $100 billion investment in U.S.-based supply chains, including a significant expansion of MP Materials to furnish magnets for Apple production.

These public-private actions are beginning to remedy a glaring weakness in American industrial infrastructure. MP Materials operates what had been the only significant U.S. mine and processing center for rare earth elements. These are the seventeen indispensable critical minerals essential to multiple major U.S. military weapons systems, plus manufacturing, medicine, infrastructure, and other essential functions of modern American life.

Consistent with being America’s first true “builder” commander-in-chief, President Trump can further reduce America’s rare earth vulnerability by using his executive authorities to grow a finished rare earth element stockpile and begin the construction of processing plants within the United States.

America received its wake-up call on rare earths in April, when China imposed restrictions on the export of several rare earths. China accounts for more than 60 percent of rare earth production and, most alarmingly, over 90 percent of the rare earth processing — the indispensable phase of the mineral supply chain that turns mined raw materials into usable and essential industrial products.

Without rare earth magnets used in brakes, steering, and fuel injectors, U.S. automobile production would stall in a scenario far more damaging than the relatively brief COVID-era semiconductor shortages. Neither the civilian nor military sectors can function without access to the seventeen rare earth elements on the periodic chart – from Cerium (Number 58) to Ytrium (Number 70).

Xi, Putin and Kim stand united at Beijing military parade in historic show of authoritarian strengt

Nectar Gan, Brad Lendon, Jessie Yeung, Simone McCarthy

Xi Jinping staged a staggering show of China’s military power on Wednesday before some of the world’s most powerful authoritarian leaders, rallying them behind his vision for a new world order as US President Donald Trump wages a global trade war and shakes up American alliances.

From atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing, Xi presided over a 70-minute parade to mark the end of World War II – flanked by a strongman waging Europe’s bloodiest conflict since 1945 and an Asian leader funneling him troops and weapons.

To many in the West, the defining image of the spectacle is not the parade of stealth fighter jets, nuclear-capable missiles or troops marching in perfect synchrony – but the sight of Xi, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un standing side by side, in an unprecedented show of solidarity against the US and its allies.

They formed the defiant face of a growing bloc of illiberal leaders determined to push back against Western rules and tilt the global balance of power in their favor.

“The Chinese nation is the great nation that is never intimidated by any bullies,” Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, told the leaders of 26 countries, thousands of troops and more than 50,000 spectators gathering in the heart of Beijing.

At various moments throughout the parade, Xi, Putin and Kim – who had never appeared together in public before – were seen leaning toward one another, sharing a smile and even overheard chatting about immortality and longevity on the way to the Tiananmen rostrum.

The deliberate display of unity is a pointed rebuke to Trump’s faltering attempt to end Russia’s war in Ukraine – and an open challenge to America’s waning global leadership under the US president.

Nuclear power, cyber troops and robot wolves - China's army of the future on full display

Michael Drummond

China's status as a military superpower was on full display as Beijing marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

Tens of thousands of troops, tanks and armoured vehicles moved through Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, along with a fearsome array of missiles. Fighter jets soared overhead.

While ostensibly a day to mark the decades since the end of the world's biggest war, it's clear that Xi Jinping was looking towards the future in the message he sent to the West.

"They want to advertise to the world that they're doing old and new," military analyst Michael Clarke told Sky News. "So they were showing the enormity of what they've got in in traditional terms, but also some of the new things."

Indeed, the event featured many weapons and equipment that had never been seen in public before.

In this story, Sky News looks at what units and military hardware were on display in the Chinese capital.

The Donbas Question

R. Jordan Prescott

The Russian-Ukraine War is a tragic echo of the devastating conflicts of the twentieth century and its resolution is an urgent endeavor. President Trump's summitry in Anchorage and Washington, D.C., whether a vainglorious bid for the Nobel Peace Prize or a genuine aspiration for world peace, is commendable. Success would be a historic accomplishment that would cement his legacy and affirm the power of American diplomacy. However, the achievement could also revive the hyperbole of America the indispensable nation. Such hubris poisoned post-Cold War American foreign policy and, more perilously, a new peace superintended by the United States would entangle it in a Europe that would be poised for tensions not seen since the First World War.

Two key developments marked the Anchorage meeting. Trump shifted his position on a ceasefire as a precondition and he agreed the process should instead move toward a comprehensive peace settlement. Putin reiterated his maximalist demands laid out at Istanbul in June, but he reportedly signaled his readiness to accept Western security guarantees.

Subsequent to the Washington summit, Trump endorsed security guarantees for Ukraine but stopped short of endorsing membership in NATO -- notional assurances would be Article V-like, not full guarantees. Moreover, American forces would not be deployed in support.

European leaders, who were otherwise disappointed by the ceasefire concession, praised the development concerning security guarantees; Macron asserted delineating America's role would be "first and most important."

The fate of occupied provinces in Eastern Ukraine remains the most challenging and consequential dispute.

According to Zelensky, he and Trump inspected a map showing Russian-occupied territories, commenting they argued about the percentages depicted. Prior to the summit, the Administration rejected surrendering occupied territory; however, afterward, Trump stated, via Truth Social, that "Ukraine must be willing to lose some territory."

White-Collar Warfighters: Can the US Military Learn from the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces’ Bold Pitch to Young Professionals?

Adel S. Hussain

A surge in enlistments earlier this year, has diminished concerns about the recruiting crisis that plagued the US military in recent years. From a raw numbers perspective, this is good news—but numbers are only one part of the military recruitment equation. The other part is a question of whether the talent recruited matches the needs of modern warfare. Future conflicts will be fought not only by warfighters on land, at sea, and in the air, but also in the information environment, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum. Quite rightly, the US Army has responded by expanding recruiting efforts for cyber, intelligence, and electronic warfare specialties. But the service, and others in the joint force, face challenges—stiff competition from the private sector, for example, as well as a public that is increasingly disconnected from, and consequently less inclined toward, military service. Overcoming those challenges will depend not just on doing a better job recruiting the young men and women who have family that have served—the demographic that provides a disproportionate number of service members—but drawing on an expanded population that includes the skills required by the modern battlefield.

One source of lessons can be found in Ukraine, where a military at war has taken a radically different approach to attracting digital professionals capable of filling specialized military career fields.

Ukraine’s Manpower Challenge

Three and a half years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s armed forces continue to struggle with manpower shortfalls along a front line stretching over six hundred miles. Mobilizing military-aged men has become increasingly unpopular, and has yielded diminishing returns. This challenge is epitomized by the ill-fated Anne of Kyiv Brigade, which experienced high desertion rates even after receiving specialized training from the French Army.

Trump Is Crossing a Line That Dates Back to the Revolution

Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan, Jonathan Lemire, and Shane Harris

The black-and-white video President Donald Trump released yesterday was, in some respects, familiar. The grainy clip, only 30 seconds long and taken from a U.S. aircraft, shows a small boat skipping across the waves, bracketed by crosshairs. The crosshairs move in closer. Seconds later, a missile explodes, engulfing the boat in fire and destroying everything and everyone on board. That missile, Trump said, killed 11 “narco-terrorists” on an illicit smuggling mission that threatened American lives.

In the near-quarter-century since the 9/11 attacks, four presidents have launched strikes against suspected terrorists in at least seven nations, including Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan. But with this week’s air strike in international waters in the southern Caribbean, Trump expanded the counterterrorism campaign’s mission to a new part of the world, against a different kind of threat. And in doing so, he drew the military even deeper into crime fighting, work that has traditionally been outside its scope.

Both domestically and internationally, the U.S. armed forces are tackling threats once assigned to police officers, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Coast Guardsmen, and other law-enforcement personnel. They are escorting immigration officers as they arrest undocumented immigrants in American cities, combatting crime with their presence in the U.S. capital, and stopping drugs at the southern border. Off the shores of Venezuela, U.S. ships are massing in a show of force against drug traffickers, a threat long addressed through interdiction at U.S. points of entry or in international or U.S. waters—not through lethal strikes.

“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up—and it’ll happen again,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters today. “Maybe it’s happening right now.”

The new tactics represent a shift away from the vision, dating back to the colonial revolt against an overbearing superpower, that U.S. armed forces should defend the country from external threats but not be used to routinely enforce the law.

Israel playing with fire in Yemen

Elfadil Ibrahim

“The war has entered a new phase,” declared Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, after Israeli jets streaked across the Arabian Peninsula to kill the group’s prime minister and a swathe of his cabinet in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

The senior official from Ansar Allah, the movement commonly known as the Houthis, was not wrong. The strike, which Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz promised was “just the beginning,” signaled a fundamental shift in the cartography of a two-year war of attrition between the region’s most technologically advanced military and its most resilient guerrilla force.

The retaliation was swift, if militarily ineffective: missiles launched towards Israel disintegrated over Saudi Arabia. Internally, a paranoid crackdown ensued on perceived spies. Houthi security forces stormed the offices of the World Food Programme and UNICEF, detaining at least 11 U.N. personnel in a sweep immediately condemned by the U.N. Secretary General.

The catalyst for this confrontation was the war in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, which provided the Houthis with the ideological fuel and political opportunity to transform themselves. Seizing the mantle of Palestinian solidarity — a cause their leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, frames as a “sacrifice in the cause of God Almighty ” — they graduated from a menacing regional actor into a global disruptor, launching missiles toward Israel just weeks after Hamas’s attacks and holding one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes hostage.

The chessboard was dangerously rearranged in May, when the Trump administration, eager for an off-ramp from a costly and ineffective air campaign, brokered a surprise truce with the Houthis. Mediated by Oman, the deal was simple: the U.S. would stop bombing Houthi targets, and the Houthis would stop attacking American ships. President Trump, in his characteristic style, claimed the Houthis had “capitulated” while also praising their “bravery.”

The deal was, in reality, a propaganda victory for the Houthis, allowing them to claim they had faced down a superpower and emerged unshaken. For the U.S., it was a transactional exit that prioritized halting expenditure over achieving the previously stated goal of “annihilating” the group. Crucially, the deal was cut without consulting Israel or the internationally recognized Yemeni government, leaving both parties exposed.

The Real Limits of Ukrainian Power

Nataliya Gumenyuk

It should not have been a surprise that the August 15 summit in Alaska between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump failed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. It had long been clear that Putin was not prepared to offer any terms that would allow a credible peace to take hold and that a meeting thousands of miles from the conflict that did not include Ukraine had little chance of yielding a meaningful outcome. Above all, it had almost no relation to what is happening in Ukraine itself.

Peace deal dead, new war drums beating for Ukraine

Stephen Bryen

There is growing evidence that not only have the Ukraine peace talks stalled, but NATO has won over Washington to not only continue the war but to expand it.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin has flown off to meet with his two buddies, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, in China on an unprecedented four-day jaunt, NATO, with full US backing, is stepping up its effort to hand the Russian army a major defeat and, following that, introducing NATO troops to “stabilize” Ukraine.

What is the evidence? First and very noticeable is the US decision to ship 3,350 missiles to Ukraine, ostensibly to be paid for (someday?) by the Europeans (which ones are not defined). These are known as Extended Range Attack Munitions (ERAM), a type of air-launched cruise missile.

The Aviationist reports that “Ukrainian Air Force’s F-16s, Mirage 2000s and its fleet of Russian-origin MiG-29s, Su-25s and Su-27s would be able to operate it. This new weapon would be an addition to the AASM Hammer and GBU-39 SDB already employed by Ukrainian fighters.”

According to open source intelligence, ERAMs have a range of 250 miles (402 kilometers). However, that is the range once launched by an aircraft. Washington says it opposes Ukrainian missile attacks on Russian territory, and while it is restricting the use of long-range HIMARS, it is not restricting the use of ERAM.

ERAM reportedly carried a 500-pound (227-kilogram) warhead, far larger than any Ukrainian UAV and more than double any of the different HIMARS missiles (M31 Utility Warhead, ATACMS warhead). It may be that ERAMs can be fielded with cluster munitions, although much about the ERAM is uncertain.

Ukraine has also introduced a new cruise missile called Flamingo (FP-5). Developed by a Ukrainian company called Fire Point, the missile has a range of 3,000 kilometers and carries a massive one-ton warhead.

The US allegedly has no control over the use of Flamingo.

Syria’s Minority Killings Aren’t Accidents – They’re Strategy

Ore Koren

In the aftermath of Bashar al-Assad’s fall in Syria, the U.S. and several European Union countries legitimized Ahmed al-Sharaa. Better known as al-Julani, he is a Sunni Muslim and former Al-Qaeda and ISIS commander leading Syria’s postwar government. At first, Al-Julani appeared able to achieve stability. Foreign governments lifted sanctions, resumed aid, and normalized diplomatic ties. In recent months, al-Julani’s forces have carried out brutal campaigns against Syria’s Alawite and Druze communities. Al-Julani did not target these minorities at random. The real story behind the recent violence against minorities in Syria paints a much more gruesome picture of Al-Julani’s leadership.

Alawites, a minority group that made up roughly 15% of Syria’s population under Assad, shared his ethnic background. As a result, the Alawites had privileged status within Assad’s regime. Like the Alawites, the Druze, an even smaller group concentrated in the south, resisted al-Julani’s military from entering their areas. Community leaders saw securing autonomy as protection from retribution, or more broadly, to avoid living under a rebranded Islamic State.

Plausible-Deniability Strategy

And yet, the violence against minorities in Syria is not a story of sectarian chaos. Rather, it exemplifies plausible-deniability repression – a strategy of state violence that deliberately relies on non-state actors to obscure responsibility. Governments use militias and auxiliaries—armed groups with minimal or officially unacknowledged ties to the state—to deny responsibility for violence, since observers cannot directly trace these groups back to the regime. Although presumed to be unaffiliated with the state, these organizations often maintain informal or semi-official ties and sometimes operate under little more than shifting bureaucratic labels.

Governments use militias and auxiliaries—armed groups with minimal or officially unacknowledged ties to the state—to deny responsibility for violence, since observers cannot directly trace these groups back to the regime.

Ukraine Promises New ‘Deep Strikes’ Into Russia

Jack Buckby

-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced that “new deep strikes have been planned” against targets inside Russian territory, signaling a bold new phase in the war.

-This new offensive posture is a direct retaliation for Russia’s relentless bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

-The shift is made possible by Ukraine’s burgeoning domestic drone and long-range weapons industry.

-By using its own weapons instead of those supplied by the West, Kyiv can strike deep into Russia without needing prior approval from Washington and with a reduced risk of escalating the conflict to involve NATO directly.

Ukraine Is Ready for a New Phase of War with Russia

Hot off the back of a “show of solidarity” summit attended by the leaders of Russia, China, and India, Ukraine has vowed to launch new strikes “deep” into Russian territory. The news comes as Putin looks for support from China and India amid peace talks with Washington, and as the White House looks to slap new sanctions and tariffs on Russia and its global trading partners.

Following a meeting with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskiii, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Sunday that plans are underway to strike targets deep within Russian territory. The plans were described as a retaliation to recent Russian drone bombardments that killed and injured dozens of Ukrainians in recent weeks and left 60,000 without electricity.

Writing on X, Zelenskyy specifically described planned Ukrainian assaults as a response to the strikes, which saw Russian drones target four energy facilities in Ukraine’s Odesa region in one night. The strikes hit the port city of Chornomorsk the hardest, with residential and administrative buildings damaged and destroyed during the attacks.

Ukraine’s Fight at Home

Daria Kaleniuk and Olena Halushka

Ukrainians know how to make their voices heard—and to make their leaders listen. They will never accept capitulation to Russia, whether in the form of the surrender of Ukrainian land or the abandonment of Ukrainian citizens to Russian occupiers. President Volodymyr Zelensky knows this. It is why he avoided making unacceptable concessions to U.S. President Donald Trump in his latest visit to the White House.

Defending against Russia’s unlawful aggression is not the only way that Ukrainians fight for their future. Lately, Ukraine’s people have also had to pressure their government in matters of domestic politics. During two whirlwind weeks in July, Zelensky’s administration moved to strip two of the country’s key anticorruption institutions, the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), of their independence. On July 21, security services and the office of the prosecutor general conducted searches, all without court warrants, of more than 50 sites linked to NABU investigators, claiming these raids were “an operation to neutralize Russian influence in the agency,” but they presented little evidence of such influence to the public afterward. The next day, parliament adopted a law, which Zelensky immediately signed, granting the country’s politically appointed prosecutor general control over all NABU investigations—an authority that had been turned over to the independent SAPO in 2016. In effect, the moves set back Ukraine’s anticorruption reforms by a decade.

Ukrainians responded by taking to the streets. They perceived Zelensky’s swift attack on these institutions as an assault on the country’s anticorruption project and on the EU accession process, in which the formation of NABU and SAPO are important steps. On the same day that legislators voted to empower the prosecutor general, a large crowd of protesters, most of them in their teens and early 20s, gathered near the president’s office with handmade signs to demand that Zelensky veto the law. Their message was clear: Ukrainians would not allow backsliding on democratic, transparent governance, even—or especially—amid a brutal war.

A Palestinian State Would Be Good for Israel

Richard Haass

More than a half century after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 242—which established the principle by which Israel would give up territory it gained in the war in exchange for peace and security—the Israelis and the Palestinians have made no meaningful, much less lasting, progress on their core differences.

It is time for this to change. What little opportunity still exists for realizing progress toward a durable agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians—one that would serve both parties’ interests—is fast fading. Political and physical barriers to compromise will soon pass a tipping point.

Israel, mostly owing to its own efforts, now finds itself in a favorable security environment, in which threats along its borders and in the region have been seriously weakened, if not eliminated. The country has never been in a better position to address the strategic challenge posed by Palestinian nationalism, which will require a response with political as well as military dimensions.

But such an environment cannot last forever. Although Israel has a friend in the White House who is prepared to back it in important ways, long-term U.S. and European support for Israel is not guaranteed, especially if even more Americans and Europeans come to view it as a pariah state denying rights to others.

Ukraine’s New War Strategy: ‘Bleed’ Russia Into Peace

Georgia Gilholy

Key Points and Summary – If the early years of the war cast Ukraine as a nation under siege, its current strategy shows a country willing to go on the offensive.

-From a daring, multi-base drone raid dubbed “Operation Spiderweb” that damaged strategic bombers, to a temporary seizure of Russian territory in Kursk, and even a strike on a nuclear power plant, Kyiv’s attacks are growing bolder.

-This new phase of the war aims to raise the economic and political costs for Moscow and demonstrate to the West that Russia’s perceived invulnerability is a myth.

Ukraine’s Attacks On Russia Are Getting Bolder

Ukraine’s recent Independence Day was marked not merely by parades and speeches but by the fallout from one of Kyiv’s boldest operations yet.

Moscow accused Ukrainian forces of sending dozens of drones into the Kursk nuclear power plant complex, sparking a fire and halving the capacity of one reactor. As usual, Kyiv did not publicly confirm that they were behind the attack.

Still, attacks that are clearly masterminded by Ukraine are getting bolder.

One of the most ambitious missions, dubbed Operation Spiderweb, unfolded in June. After more than a year of planning, Ukrainian security services unleashed 117 drones on Russia’s long-range aviation bases, ranging from the Moscow region to far-flung Siberia.

Concealed inside trucks on Russian territory, the drones managed to evade Moscow’s defences and cause confirmed damage. Even U.S. president Donald Trump reportedly described the attack as “bad***”.

Equally symbolic was Ukraine’s temporary seizure of territory in the Kursk region last year. Kyiv’s forces advanced across the border to capture 28 settlements, holding roughly 1,000 square kilometres before being pushed back by a counteroffensive.

Generative Artificial Intelligence is Rapidly Modernizing the U.S. Military

Nicolas Chaillan

As global threats evolve and the pace of technological innovation accelerates, the Department of Defense faces mounting pressure to enhance decision-making, streamline operations and achieve digital readiness across domains.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a force multiplier in this effort, reshaping how missions are planned, executed and sustained and making digital readiness a reality from the halls of government to the battlefield. A technology capable of autonomously creating added content, such as code, text or designs, generative AI leverages vast datasets and advanced machine learning models to accelerate innovation and decision-making processes.

As the Pentagon works to operationalize AI and data at scale, generative AI is driving efficiency and mission-readiness across the military services.

Automating time-intensive tasks

One of the immediate benefits of generative AI is the ability to automate labor-intensive workflows, freeing up personnel to focus on higher-value tasks. For example, generative AI can speed up the process of achieving Authority to Operate (ATO), or official government confirmation that a system meets the necessary security and compliance standards required for secure operation. The process traditionally requires significant manual effort, yet AI can automate document creation, ensuring accuracy, consistency and compliance with the latest standards in a fraction of the time it would take human operators.

Generative AI is also speeding up acquisition workflows, a notoriously complex and time-consuming area. By automating document generation, compliance checks and contract reviews, generative AI reduces labor hours and accelerates delivery timelines. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also ensures that critical resources are deployed faster to meet mission needs.

Another recent example is the Army’s recent generative AI-driven reclassification of 300,000 personnel records. A task that would have taken an estimated 5.7 years was completed in just one week.

Transforming audio and video reconnaissance

Army Looks for Help to Boost Paladin Lethality

Scott R. Gourley

When the Army accepted delivery of the first low-rate initial production M109A7 Paladin howitzer from BAE Systems in April 2015, service representatives highlighted improved performance features and logistics commonality with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

One characteristic that was not highlighted was increased range.

A significant contributor to field artillery range involves the length of the cannon, with longer tubes allowing greater expansion of propellant gases, making for longer ranges.

Tube length is expressed as a “caliber” multiple of the bore diameter. The M109A7, for example, featured the same 39-caliber length 155mm tube as its predecessor, the M109A6.

The 39-caliber barrel length 155mm tube was first introduced on the M109A1.

While the Army explored an impressive 58-caliber length tube for its separate Extended Range Cannon Artillery program, other industry efforts focused on the potential of placing a 52-caliber length tube on the M109A7. That focus led to the development of a prototype platform designated by BAE Systems as the M109-52.

In June, the company announced a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement partnership with the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center to further advance the M109-52 prototype design.

“The M109-52 is a lethality upgrade to the M109A7,” Dan Furber, product line director for artillery programs at BAE Systems, said in an interview.

“Essentially, we’ve taken the proven M109A7 that’s in production today and integrated the 52-caliber Rheinmetall L52 cannon. It’s still a 155mm cannon, but at that 52-caliber size, it almost doubles the [maximum] range of the 39-caliber M109A7 with a non-precision munition and more than doubles the range of the M109A7 when it comes to precision fires,” he said.

The company has been working on the concept “for several years” and has invested “several million dollars” in the design work to date, he added.

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