Author Archives: Haig Hovaness
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.
Read more...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.
Read more...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 […]
Read more...Links 8/24/2025
Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Vanishing Foot Soldier
Armored knights vanished when gunpowder weapons made them ineffective, and cavalry vanished when motorized transport and tanks arrived on the battlefield. I believe infantry will likely be the next category of warriors to disappear. History shows that survival, cost-effectiveness, and competitive advantage dictate military force composition—not tradition. The lessons are clear: when a combat role […]
Read more...Links 8/17/2025
Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Trouble with ALIS
The F-35 fighter jet is the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history, but one of its biggest failures isn’t in the air — it’s on the ground. The Pentagon’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), conceived as an ambitious plan to revolutionize fighter jet maintenance and logistics, collapsed under the weight of bad design, poor […]
Read more...Links 8/10/2025
Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Iran Has the Bomb
Theodore Postol is a retired MIT physics professor who was a consultant to the Pentagon on nuclear weapons and missile defense. He recently published a presentation on Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, which he summarized in a YouTube interview. Professor Postol explains, in considerable detail, how the construction of a deliverable fission bomb is well within […]
Read more...Links 8/3/2025
Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Money Weapon
Let’s talk about money, specifically the use of bribery as a weapon in war and geopolitics. Like any weapon, it has technical characteristics and operational effects. In the ancient world bribery was practiced openly in the form of tribute paid by subject states to dominant powers. Masters were bribed to “protect” their subjects. In the […]
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