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Tracing the Future Soldier's Tech Stack

Movies, shows, and books have long been at the forefront of imagining the future of war. If you were to picture the “future soldier,” you’d likely picture

Winning by the Rules: Optimizing Weapons Reviews in the Age of Technological Innovation

We spare the reader another detailed story from Ukraine to establish the now-familiar point that battlefield technology changes faster than militaries can

Washington's Foreign Equity Bets Need Better Governance

What do a rare earth mine in Brazil and a graphite mine in Mozambique have in common? Both have received significant United States government funding. The

An Army General Talks Fusing Sensors and Shooters on the Eastern Flank

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Brig. Gen. Steven P. Carpenter, the commanding general of Multi-Domain Command - Europe, the U.S. Army's

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This Is Not Your Father’s Nuclear Flight Test Vehicle

For decades, the United States’ nuclear weapons enterprise has wrestled with an institutional paradox. On one hand is the imperative to make the complex

Automating the Action Officer: Between Bureaucracy and Technology

If there is a revolution brewing in the automation of white-collar work, you wouldn’t know it at the Pentagon. Here, the typical action officers, staff

The Strategic Fiber of America: Kevlar’s Impact on Warfighters

Editor’s note: This is the tenth and final article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on

European Resilience in Digital Infrastructure: The Changing Nature of State-Business Relations

As the war in Ukraine progressed, Russian strikes increasingly degraded Ukraine’s terrestrial communications infrastructure, steadily deepening Kyiv’s

A Rulebook for Surprises: Commanding Autonomous Aircraft

My greatest challenge while flight testing collaborative combat aircraft was not troubleshooting errors at high speed in the cockpit. It was when, in a

The Quantum Stack and the Countdown to Q-Day

Quantum's hype obscures a reality with real geopolitical stakes: the technology works and is advancing every day. Cameron Chehreh (IonQ), JD Dulny (Booz

Betting on Autonomous Aircraft

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Brandon Tseng, the co-founder and president of Shield AI and a former Navy SEAL, whose company builds the

Betting on Autonomous Aircraft

This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Brandon Tseng, the co-founder and president of Shield AI and a former Navy SEAL, whose company builds the

War: Watt Is It Good For?

Military analysts are captivated by how the material nature of war is transforming in Ukraine. Unmanned systems have captured Russian infantry units,

Blanchard's Lathe and the Long Arc of American Manufacturing

Editor’s note: This is the ninth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader

The True Cost of Cheap Chips

Given the relentless demand for computing power, electronic components are in scarce supply. Prices for certain memory chips, known as DRAM, have surged

Hyman Rickover and the Birth of Nuclear Power

Editor’s note: This is the eighth article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader