Author Archives: Haig Hovaness

Links 10/12/2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Drone Evolution

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.

Links 10/5/2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Stopping START

For the first time in over half a century, the United States and Russia operate without a single binding limit on their nuclear arsenals. As New START approaches expiration in 2026, the collapse of strategic arms control threatens a new arms race, erodes global trust, and invites a perilous era of nuclear instability.

Haig Hovaness: Why Naked Capitalism Matters

NC Is an oasis of intelligence and reason in a desert of manipulated media.

Links 9/28/2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Laser Weapons

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.

Links 9/21/2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Plinking Narcos

The Trump administration’s stepped-up military actions in Latin America resemble “plinking”—casual target practice against weak opponents. From strikes on drug traffickers to potential aggression toward Panama or Venezuela, these moves serve domestic political theater rather than strategy. This analysis explores the motives, historical parallels, and potential fallout of treating the hemisphere as a free-fire zone.

Links 9/14/2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Dragon’s Teeth

Military analysts expected China to showcase advanced weapons at its latest Beijing parade, and the display did not disappoint. From hypersonic missiles and stealth aircraft to universal VLS cells and drone swarms, the event highlighted qualitative leaps in Chinese military power. The parade revealed not just new systems, but a doctrine of deterrence by denial that directly challenges U.S. strategic assumptions.

Links 9/7/2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Two Faces of Palantir

The powerful software tools developed by Palantir are sold to defense and intelligence agencies to protect against exteranl threats, but they also have the destructive potential of enabling domestic political repression.

Links 8/31/2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Misguided Marines

The Marine Corps’ new Pacific island strategy, articulated in its Force Design 2030 planning documents, envisions small units deployed across the Pacific island chain, armed with missiles and sensors to strike Chinese shipping and contest maritime access. Branded as Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), the concept seeks to adapt the Corps to great-power competition by […]