Now they're quibbling with me over the exact wording of my travel receipts because there's tax added onto my flight ticket cost. Peak Germany 🤌🏻

This is really great news but you also gotta, like, build more Virginias so if you could fix that, cheers asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/tr...

The always excellent @salisbot.bsky.social for @fpri.bsky.social :: The Return of Subic Bay open.substack.com/pub/behindth...

The Americans are back in Subic Bay after three decades - and I wrote about the how and the why www.fpri.org/article/2025...

The corrected version too, gotta write it out a hundred times before sunrise

In today's edition of "war changes, war stays the same" - Kesselschlacht or encirclement. This is how you do it 🙌🏻

Nerd Alert - I have a cool piece on Subic Bay coming out on Monday!

"You all have to watch me do 7 push-ups while I yell at you about being woke, for lethality." www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Doing my favourite copyediting thing today in a piece about the USMC - correcting "Marines" to "marines"

"We'll have more ammunition than any country has ever had... missiles, the speedy ones, the slow ones, the accurate ones - we have everything." 14/10 new favourite Trump quote www.pna.gov.ph/articles/125...

Famously no war has ever been world, much less twice

From Rasmus Jarlov, chair of Denmark’s Defence Committee:

I submitted a piece on Friday that mentions Russian incursions into NATO airspace and I keep having to email my poor editor to add to the list of countries www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Guess I need to stock up on Tylenol to boost my autism before I lock in on my next detailed project, really juice it up to the max

Show this to anyone who doesn't believe we should support Ukraine with everything we can

This is still straight-up murder, in case anyone is wondering. There are several methods that the Trump administration might try to use to justify this but they are all, if you'll excuse the technical term, bollocks. www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-...

I've always wanted one of these for some reason, thanks to Windracers for fulfilling my oddly specific wish

I'm incredibly honoured to have been asked to give the keynote speech at the Trafalgar Day dinner hosted by the National Liberal Club in London - a career highlight for any British navalist!

Poland, Romania, Estonia - Putin is probing our borders and our willpower. This isn't an immediate precursor to an invasion, but rather a cheap and easy way for him to sow discord within NATO and generally provoke us. Nice alliance you have there, would be a shame if something were to happen to it.

Taking back Bagram is the next big idea, huh?

Welp

I would not have gone a bridge too far, I simply would have gone the correct number of bridges

Some thoughts from me on the why and how of Rheinmetall buying a shipbuilder ⬇️ www.tectonicdefense.com/icymi-rheinm...

The German reputation for efficiency does not survive contact with the Bundeswehr, who just reached out today to finally pay me for something I did in... June.

I wrote a primer on the UK-Norway deal for Type 26 frigates, check it out for a deeply nerdy summary www.fpri.org/article/2025...

Rheinmetall are getting into shipbuilding, we love to see it www.rheinmetall.com/en/media/new...

As history matters, a short thread on Horst Wessel - a Nazi paramilitary member whose murder in 1930 was turned into propaganda by Goebbels and Hitler.

I'm spending my day writing about the Type 26 deal with Norway and it's a refreshing change to be able to be positive about UK shipbuilding - especially in a context where we won out over the French, the Americans, AND the Germans. Proud! 🇬🇧

Just tried to check the U.S. Code (the repository of federal law) for something and got this. *stares into camera*

Several of my American friends: "Why are you so worried that Trump won't defend NATO, it's just bluster!" Me:

If you're a War on the Rocks member, you can listen to me talking with the wonderful Nicole Wiley about British grand strategy ⬇️ warontherocks.com/episode/the-...

I just received an invitation to go to Da Nang - which I'm very sadly unable to do - but it got me thinking about how many places around the world I only know of as a military history nerd. I very much hope to be able to correct that someday, and to know these places for what they are now too.

Testing our boundaries, in classic Putin fashion - I expect to see a lot more of this. www.ft.com/content/0dc7...

It's not a tank unless it's from the Tank region of France - otherwise it's just a sparkling armoured fighting vehicle

Moi, droning on about drones, as per.

DSEI - spoke on a cracking panel, had excellent chats, here's an OPV, 14/10

Just got the moderator's notes through for my DSEI panel tomorrow and I am introduced as "academic and strategist" (😍) and I want to be able to go back in time to my younger self and tell her that the imposter syndrome wasn't reality.

As there are tube strikes in London this week, I'm deeply looking forward (derogatory) to watching hordes of non-Londoners trying to navigate the bus system to get to DSEI

The DoD still hasn't released any details about how the Venezuelan speedboat was destroyed. As far as I can tell, there are 3 USN warships in the area - 2 Burke-class destroyers and a Ticonderoga-class cruiser. Apart from being illegal, using any of these to hit a *speedboat* is vast overkill.

I know this is a deeply British reference but every time I read about changing the name of the Department of Defense, this echoes in my brain:

A commission for a piece about the Type 26, you say?

Just talked with a friend in DC and my chosen American meeting/email sign-off is now approved as "apart from the rising fascism I hope you have a great rest of your week"

For all the Americans discovering this debate, I give to you the British insult for someone who gets a bit weird about this stuff, the last two types on this list - "flag-shagger"

Me: I'm all done with my tasks, now I can focus on my new project! Peer review request:

Perky email from lobbyist: "We hope you're enjoying the resumption of Parliamentary business!" Me, three hours into the resumption of Parliamentary business:

This is really good news for the UK! www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2...

My new conspiracy theory is that the Trump administration hates autistic people because we tend to have a strong sense of justice and be very detail-oriented, neither of which pair well with them www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...