Latest in @theatlantic.com The Ukrainians are now longer pretending that Donald Trump's USA is their friend. Their honesty is important as they seem to understand how much Trump is helping Putin and how important it is that Europe stick together. Gift Link. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Ukrainian Magura V7 surface drone (USV) with maximum quadcopter hangars.
Federal law enforcement agents shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 according to local police officials. DHS told Fox News that the man was “armed with a gun”. A video of the shooting appears to show that a gun was taken from the man before the first shot was fired. x.com/BillMelugin_...
Feels like something cracked today in the transatlantic alliance. Europeans have been swallowing their pride, bitting their tongues, and bending the knee. That strategy may have bought them time but it has now clearly failed. It also had a major cost - it has made the WH think Europe will cave. 1/
"American dominance" is our new foreign policy. And it will create a counter-reaction, everywhere.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Catching up on the national security podcasts' predictions for 2026 from like 5 days ago and they're all wrong already
Some thoughts on what Trump has done in Venezuela and what it might mean for US national security. Caveat: not a Latin America scholar so this is focused on US policy. Clearly huge consequences for Venezuela that others can address.
First, despite the buildup, I didn't think Trump would do it.
1/
To all my 🇬🇧 readers, I translated my recent article on the 🇷🇺-🇺🇦 war entering the fourth year into English and posted it on Substack.
substack.com/@gustavgress...
“Most Europeans believe their country’s state pension system will soon become unaffordable – but they also think the current scheme is not generous enough, and do not support options for overhauling it such as raising the retirement age.”
Make it make sense.
**BREAKING**
Images of a Chinese merchant vessel with containerised missile launchers, radar/comms and close in defense are legitimate. Collaborated via other sources. Sobering.
Merry Xmas
Die letzte Folge des Jahres 2025 ist online. Wir packen die Glaskugel aus und schauen, was die nächsten 5 Jahre bringen könnten.
Plus Buchempfehlungen UND Sicherheitshinweise.
sicherheitspod.de/2025/12/20/f...
»Hätte man eine Zeitmaschine und sammelte jeweils einen Infanteristen aus den beiden Weltkriegen, dem Vietnam- und dem Irakkrieg 2003 ein, so wären die vier sich schnell einig, dass sie trotz der 90 Jahre Zeitdifferenz alle das gleiche Handwerk ausübten. Es ging – im Kern – um das Kämpfen auf Sicht«
“The EU will set up a ‘drone alliance’ with Kyiv, backed by €6bn in financing to ‘transform Ukrainian ingenuity into battlefield advantage and into joint industrialisation’, von der Leyen said.”
We made that argument almost a year ago, and I'm glad to see it gaining traction at the highest level.
Der Podcast zum Vortrag. Demnächst dann auch der Film zum Hörbuch. Alles Multiplattform, auf allen Socials, logo, klar, Hallo ihr Lieben. Like and Subscribe.
@rikefranke.bsky.social
If even a fraction of this is true, it’s a remarkable achievement & a mark of how far Ukr deep strike has come. ‘An operation by Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) has hit ‘more than 40" Russian bombers at air bases “in the rear of the Russian Federation”…’ kyivindependent.com/enemy-bomber...
Ukrainian dep def minister says his country producing 10m drones per year. Drones do 80% of damage in battlefield he says. Ukrainian made FPV IS $500, he says, in contrast to $1,500 for foreign models. Low-cost interceptor drones at $5,000 “affordable alternative” to traditional SAMs.
Sehr guter Text, in dem @drfranksauer.bsky.social die "Realisten" zerlegt.
Public Service Announcement.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine is gaining expanded access to European intelligence and certain European ammunition stockpiles. He also mentioned an urgent meeting in a "close circle" regarding the troop contingent.
The original study is here:
www.ndc.nato.int/download/dow...
Very flattered to see The Economist discuss the findings of the research that, together with my co-authors, we have carried out on the effects of climate change for submarine warfare.
www.economist.com/science-and-...
🧵Intercepting and neutralizing Russian recon and strike UAVs:
🛸The scope of ZSU FPV drone interceptions has rapidly grown.
Artem's new article breaks down a detailed dataset of these interceptions, providing insights into trends and technological advances. #FPVDrones
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Interesting on how climate change will affect anti-submarine warfare. "We find that acoustic detection will become more difficult in most areas but is going to become significantly more difficult in the North Atlantic than in the Western Pacific." www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.ph...
“In the best-case scenario, it will ultimately take almost twenty years before Germany has airborne signals intelligence again after the end of the Breguets in the summer of 2010. It is an unprecedented failure.”
ZEIT with a good long read on the Global Hawk/Triton/Pegasus… acquisition catastrophe
Russian accuses of Norway “militarising” Svalbard (www.reuters.com/world/europe...). A reminder of Russian activity in Svalbard from a few years ago, below (jamestown.org/program/russ...)
Keep calm and ReArm.
We should have no illusions: Just as it is now doing with Ukraine, the Trump administration will try to force the Europeans into line if they resist a deal on American (or rather Russian?) terms.
