Author Archives: Haig Hovaness

For over a century, U.S. warships projected power through the simple act of showing up offshore. That age is ending. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, conceived as the modern tool of gunboat diplomacy, has collapsed under the weight of strategic obsolescence. This article examines the LCS program’s structural failures, the rise of anti-access/area denial technologies, and recent real-world challenges in Venezuela and Yemen that reveal why coercive naval presence no longer works.

Every era promises a single decisive weapon. From Greek fire and the V-1 to nuclear arms, stealth, and hypersonics, new systems arrive with grand claims, then meet rapid countermeasures. This essay explains the cycle and shows how the Ukraine war fits a long record of belief, propaganda, and adaptation.

The U.S. military relies on rare earth elements across missiles, radars, jet engines, submarine propulsion, and advanced magnets, yet the supply chain is fragile and concentrated abroad. This article explains why REEs matter, their role in a trade war with China, and the cost of substituting domestic production or rare earths and other strategic materials.

Drone warfare in Ukraine now evolves at startup speed. Field hacks turned into industrial lines, FPVs pierce armor, and long-range systems impose steep defensive costs. A compressed feedback loop, from Internet to battlefield, rewards rapid adaptation over pedigree. Airpower is no longer confined to manned jets and billion-dollar missile programs, it is distributed, expendable, and persistent.

High-energy laser weapons (HELs) are moving from lab demos to real defenses. Israel’s Iron Beam—likely the first HEL to see combat—promises near-zero cost per shot against drones and short-range rockets, easing the strain on interceptor stockpiles. But lasers aren’t miracle weapons. Power and cooling demands, weather, line-of-sight limits, and maintenance of delicate optics constrain performance, and attackers can counter with obscurants and saturation. This piece explains the tech, the trade-offs, and how Iron Beam fits alongside Iron Dome in a layered defense that could reshape the economics of air defense in the Middle East.