A Forecast International blog about the arms trade, geopolitics, defense and security, and military spending.
The Context On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran. The conflict that followed has caused a tremendous strain on the global …
Strait of Hormuz Under Threat of Mines: Are Littoral Combat Ships the Solution? Read More
AI as Organizational Technology In his 2025 book, AI, Automation, and War, Anthony King implores the reader to understand artificial intelligence (AI) as a phenomenon most closely related to organizational …
AI in Iran: It’s Not (Just) About Capabilities Read More
A U.S. Army AH-64 Apache launches an Anduril Altius 700 Medium-Range Launched Effect (MR-LE) at Yuma Proving Ground during a recent concept exercise. Image–Courtesy Photo via DVIDS. The big three …
Rotorcraft Resilience: Strong Deliveries and Next-Gen Tech Drive U.S. Market Read More
With U.S. and Israeli operations expanding in scale, the war in Iran is testing the limits of tactical military success. The ongoing campaign has severely degraded Iranian capabilities, but it …
Tactical Success and Strategic Ambiguity in the Iran War Read More
Admiral Naveed Ashraf, Chief of the Naval Staff of Pakistan, and Rear Admiral Shahin Mammadov, Commander of the Azerbaijan Naval Forces, meet at Naval Headquarters in Islamabad to discuss maritime …
Azerbaijan and Pakistan Build Naval Capacity for Trade Read More
Defense technology often attracts people who are inclined to pay attention to the various stages of a normal technology’s lifecycle: its technical underpinnings and development; its relationship with existing techniques; …
Defense Tech Enters a New Era: The Case of Anthropic and the DoD Read More
The FY26 defense appropriations bill signed into law earlier this month included a significant injection of new resources from Congress to support a mix of core capabilities and advanced technology …
Analyzing the Final FY26 Defense Appropriations Bill Read More
Chinese Project 093B (Shang III) Submarines – Source: Chinese Government Media Last week, the U.K.’s International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank issued a landmark report concluding that between …
Production and Power: China Outpaces U.S. in Nuclear Submarine Construction Read More
Echoes of Project Maven This past January, Reuters reported that American Large Language Model (LLM) developer Anthropic had reached a standstill in its dealings with the U.S. Department of Defense …
Anthropic and the U.S. DoD: Unusual Dynamics in an Unusual Time Read More
Illustration of the PAC-3 MSE interceptor. Source: Lockheed Martin The U.S. is significantly expanding production of missile systems, including PAC-3 MSE, Tomahawk, Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), SM-3, and SM-6, …
Accelerating U.S. Missile Development and Naval Posture in the Indo-Pacific Read More