Now that we have entered the fifth year since Putin’s launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is becoming clear that Russia’s war is progressing very poorly. Indeed, 2026 might be the worst year so far for Putin. Therefore, I wanted to propose a thesis about Russia’s war trajectory and examine it with similar rigour to my recent ‘Turning the Corner’ article published here.

The thesis I wish to test is as follows:

Vladimir Putin is losing — not in one or two dimensions of the conflict, but in every dimension by which one might honestly measure strategic progress — military, cognitive, moral, industrial, and economic. His only viable claim to advantage at present is the disposition of the American president.

If the evidentiary case for this holds, it is an extraordinary strategic indictment of Russian strategy, Russian military capacity and Putin’s leadership. If it is even partially true, it should force an in-depth rethink of how Western governments and analysts have been narrating Russia’s position, and how they prepare for a Russia that could lose this war. And of course, it should drive further support for Ukraine and Western nations bringing still greater pressure to bear on Russia and its enablers.

On previous occasions I have used a structured framework of measures of success and failure to assess Ukraine’s war effort. These consistent measures of success and failure are useful because they set benchmarks for performance against which evidence can be gathered, and assessments made against whether success or failure is clear.

It should be noted however that there is no perfect method for assessing a war in progress. Besides the inherent uncertainties in war, systemic difficulties are present in any assessment process. In their book, Assessing War, Blanken, Rothstein and Lepore examine these difficulties in some detail, with political friction, bureaucratic friction, as well as motivational and cognitive biases being some of the biggest obstructions. That said, assessment is still vital to inform the evolution of strategy, the prioritisation of resources, the mobilisation of societal will and the maintenance of alliances.

For this assessment, I have used a method similar to my recent assessment on the trajectory of the war for Ukraine. You can read that assessment at this link. This assessment examines five dimensions — military, cognitive, moral, industrial, and economic — and measures Russia’s performance against each, before turning to the failure conditions that could still rescue Moscow’s strategic position.

Russia’s War in 2026: Measuring Strategic Failure

A useful foundation for the assessments in this article was my late 2025 examination of Russia’s 2025 Spring and Summer offensives, and the overall trajectory of its war effort. In that piece I concluded the following:

Russia has however demonstrated an ability to learn and improve its performance since the beginning of the war. It has evolved its higher command and control arrangements and has significantly improved their industrial support for the war. The Russians have also experimented with force structure changes and tactics.

This year offers another good case study of a Russian military institution, that despite its gains in learning, industrial production and ability to exploit the support of supporters such as China, North Korea and Iran, has failed to effectively leverage its advantages in a way that creates a decisive impact on the ground or in its aerial assaults on Ukraine.

On its current trajectory, it does not appear able to win this war.

That has profound implications for how this war should now be prosecuted and how Ukraine’s supporters might provide the assistance to allow Ukraine to achieve its strategic goals of sustaining national sovereignty, denying undue Russian influence over its politics and society and establishing a robust deterrent against future Russian aggression.

Now, what do the five dimensions of Russian power — military, cognitive, moral, industrial, and economic — look like against the context of the war in Ukraine in 2026?

Dimension 1: Military — Russia’s “meat grinder” and massed aerial attacks are consuming Russian resources for minimal return. The central premise of Putin’s military strategy since 2023 has been attritional: trade bodies and equipment for territory at a rate Ukraine and its supporters cannot sustain, while bringing Ukraine under sustained aerial attack, until Ukrainian resistance collapses or Western will fractures. That strategy requires Russia to absorb casualties at a rate it can replenish and for its aerial campaign to support battlefield gains with impacts on Ukraine’s defence industry and civilian morale. In 2026, the arithmetic of that calculation has turned against the Kremlin.

Assessment: One of the most significant military data points of early 2026 is that Russia’s current offensive operations are yielding few gains. Indeed, over the past three months, territorial gains have favoured Ukraine and not Russia (see graph below from Russia Matters). For Russian commanders, given the enormous commitment of manpower along the front line, this is a very worrying trend as they progress into the summer months. This shortfall in territorial gains, contrary to recent comments by Putin who on 5 June claimed that Russia has seized territory four times the size of Ukraine, is exacerbated by combat losses.

Now, for the first time since the invasion began, Russia is losing more troops than it is mobilising. Since the start of 2026, according to Ukrainian General Staff estimates, Russian forces lost over 160,000 personnel killed or seriously wounded. March 2026 alone produced 35,000 Russian casualties — a single-month record for the entire conflict. The Kremlin had targeted daily recruitment of between 1,100 and 1,150 personnel; the actual figure has fallen to approximately 940. For four consecutive months from December 2025, Russia’s losses have exceeded its intake.

The cost of territorial gain has also risen sharply. According to figures from Russia Matters and the Ukrainian General Staff, Russia suffered 200 casualties for each square mile taken in 2025. But, in the first five months of 2026 with a net gain of 17 square miles, it suffered over 9600 casualties for each. In the past three months, the capture of territory has moved in Ukraine’s favour.

Russia’s spring offensive against the Fortress Belt opened in mid-March with large, armoured column attacks and produced catastrophic losses in its opening days, with the Institute for the Study of War assessing that the seizure of the Belt in 2026 is unlikely. Russia has been forced to redeploy elite Airborne and naval infantry units southward to respond to Ukrainian counterattacks — cannibalising its offensive timetable to plug defensive holes. Putin’s “meat grinder” is grinding through Russian men faster than Russia can produce them without much in the way of results on the battlefield.

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This week, President Zelenskyy wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin, publishing it a day after Ukrainian drones lit up an oil terminal in Putin’s home city during his showcase economic forum. Moscow answered with one of the heaviest combined strikes of the year and with the studied indifference of a Russian leader who believes time is on his side.

In the Indo-Pacific, defence chiefs gathered in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue while China’s defence minister stayed home for a second year, and China continued its intensive propaganda campaign against Japan.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Five.

The War in Ukraine

An open letter from Zelenskyy. On 4 June, Zelenskyy did something he had not done since 2022. He addressed Putin directly, in an open letter published by the Office of the President and circulated widely in the Ukrainian and international press. The document was striking less for its proposal than for its tone, which was that of a man cataloguing his enemy’s decline. Zelenskyy wrote that:

Almost half of your 26 years of power in Russia you have spent in the war against Ukraine…Whatever you say about NATO, geopolitics and the Russian language, this war is your personal choice, a war without a real reason. This is how history will remember it.

Zelenskyy framed the letter around Ukraine’s strength and Russia’s exhaustion. Russian losses in May, he claimed, again exceeded thirty thousand killed and seriously wounded, with sixty-three per cent of frontline losses killed rather than wounded, a ratio he called unsustainable for any twenty-first-century army. He reminded Putin that Ukraine’s long-range drones had “visited the opening of your forum in St. Petersburg, having overcome a distance of more than 1,000 kilometres” and that this distance “is not the limit of our capabilities.” He noted also that Russia now leans on North Korea for troops and is “completely dependent on China,” the first time in Russian history, he argued, that a Russian ruler has been so reliant on Beijing.

The substance was familiar. Ukraine, Zelenskyy wrote, is “ready to cease fire completely” for the duration of negotiations, ready for an “all for all” prisoner exchange, and ready to meet on neutral ground in Switzerland, Turkey or an Arab capital. “The front line now is the line from which diplomacy should begin.” He invited Putin to set “a clear date” and ruled out Moscow or Kyiv as venues. The closing lines abandoned diplomatic register entirely: “Do not be afraid to get out of the war. Enough of the war. Ukraine offers to end this war.”

As Ukrainian commentators noted, the letter was not really written for Putin. Its audience was Putin’s inner circle, the Russian elite, and the wider world watching Washington’s attention drift toward Iran. By placing responsibility for the war on Putin personally, and by offering a concrete path out, Zelenskyy was constructing a record of who refused peace.

Of course, another audience was the Trump administration in Washington DC. While Zelenskyy and his advisors no longer hope for Trump to say anything against Putin, they can at least ensure he has no reason to doubt Ukraine’s willingness to engage in the peace process. Thus, the open letter also had President Trump as a key audience.

Putin Closes the Door. But Putin was having none of this. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Zelensky could “come at any time to Moscow,” a venue the Ukrainian leader had pre-emptively rejected. Putin, who said he read the letter on the morning of 5 June, was dismissive at the St. Petersburg forum, telling editors that the West and Kyiv “are simply not willing to talk to Russia as an equal partner,” before adding, “We are in no hurry.”

Zelenskyy responded by inviting Putin to Kyiv. US President Donald Trump, asked about the exchange, offered only that it would be “great” if the two met and that talks were close to being settled, leaving the parties to “deal” between themselves. The door to a ceasefire and a war termination agreement, in other words, remains firmly closed, and both sides know it.

Russian Terror from the sky. The diplomacy unfolded against a backdrop of sustained bombardment. Overnight on 2 June, Russia launched what officials called one of the largest aerial attacks of the war, firing 73 missiles and 656 drones at cities across the country. Ukraine’s air force reported intercepting or suppressing the great majority, but enough broke through to kill at least twenty-three people and injured more than one hundred and thirty. Kyiv and Dnipro bore the worst of it, with sixteen killed in Dnipro, several when a residential block collapsed, and six in the capital.

The pattern continued into the following days, with further waves striking Kyiv, Dnipro and Kamianske and the partial collapse of a nine-storey building in the capital’s Podilskyi district. Ukraine requested an emergency session of the UN Security Council, to convene on Monday, with Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha arguing that “Moscow continues to choose escalation over peace, and terror over diplomacy.”

There has been a slow but noticeable increase in the Russian use of Shahed drones. As the May update from Shahed Tracker shows, May 2026 hit an all time high for Russian Shahed attacks against Ukraine with 7476 Shahed detected attacking Ukraine. Against this, Ukraine achieved a 92% interception rate. But even with this high rate, just under 600 made it to their targets.

Putin this week also confirmed the obvious about Russia’s use of its Oreshnik intermediate-range missile, telling the forum that the May strike on Kyiv Oblast had been a test rather than a true combat use: “We simply struck where it was convenient to observe the results.” The nuclear-capable Oreshnik can carry up to thirty-six submunitions across six independently targetable warheads at speeds around Mach ten. Putin’s casual description of Ukrainian cities as a proving ground is its own kind of message.

Of course, it is not all one-way traffic with strategic strikes. Ukraine continues its deep strike operations including several strikes this week against St. Petersburg. And there were useful strikes on the Russian missile corvette, Boikiy, Russia’s 15th Naval Arsenal, the Antipinsky Oil Refinery and more Russian air defence locations.

The Frontline. For all the action in the skies and behind the frontlines, there was minimal exchange of territory in the past week. From Russia Matters, Russian forces surrendered a net 93 square miles of Ukrainian territory over the four weeks to 3 June, roughly double their losses in the preceding month, while Ukraine’s own DeepState monitors recorded a near-static line, a net Russian gain of about three square miles. Over the year to early June, Russia’s net territorial gain is 1,427 square miles, around six tenths of one per cent of Ukraine.

The decisive ground remains the Donbas, where Russia’s summer campaign is once again organised around the Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk axis and the fortress belt that anchors the roughly one fifth of Donetsk Oblast still in Ukrainian hands. The clearest Russian progress this week lay in the Kostiantynivka to Druzhkivka tactical area, with the Russians seeking progress against the fortress belt on several axes concurrently.

While it is true that drones cannot seize and hold ground, they still play a crucial role. Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Reaction Corps reported that its drone strikes in the Pokrovsk direction destroyed more than 105 Russian artillery systems in May, twice April’s tally, and a Kremlin-affiliated milblogger conceded that Ukrainian drones are preventing Russian forces from rotating troops into their forward infiltration positions, blunting the advance before it begins.

Strangling the Road to Crimea. If Russia’s focus this week was terror raining down from the skies, Ukraine’s was Russian operational logistics. The most important development on the Ukrainian side is the maturation of what Ukrainian planners now call the “middle strike,” the systematic destruction of Russian supply lines in the operational depth between roughly fifty and two hundred and fifty kilometres behind the front. On 27 May, Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced a “logistics lockdown,” allocating an additional five billion hryvnia, around 112 million US dollars, directly to brigades to buy mid-range strike drones through a points-based system that rewards the most effective units.

The campaign’s effects are now visible along the land bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea. Ukrainian drones have taken aerial control of the R-280, M-14 and N-20 highways running through Berdiansk and Melitopol, turning the corridor into what one analysis described as a road of burning fuel trucks. In May alone, observers counted at least seventeen destroyed fuel and military trucks on the Melitopol to Crimea stretch, and occupation authorities in Sevastopol and across Crimea imposed fuel rationing.

The French open-source analyst Clément Molin has logged more than a thousand geolocated Ukrainian strikes deep in the Russian rear since the start of 2026, with around thirty-five per cent hitting ammunition, fuel and equipment depots, twenty per cent hitting transport and seven per cent striking air defence. Western analysts count more than 125 destroyed trucks on the key route, and the Washington-based CEPA aptly titled its assessment “Russia’s Land Bridge is Becoming a Highway to Hell” which noted that:

With no single point of failure, the Kremlin believed its logistics network was more secure. But certainties don’t last long in the Ukraine war. Hornet drones were initially used selectively and in limited numbers. Their widening use by more brigades now suggests production is increasing and access is spreading.That advantage may not last forever. Russia will almost certainly develop countermeasures over time, making the current period especially important.

Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate announced fire control over the Crimea to Donetsk corridor on 29 May, and the 3rd Army Corps reported strikes in Luhansk Oblast as far as 205 kilometres from the front on 31 May. The Institute for the Study of War has geolocated drone flights along highways in Donetsk Oblast roughly a hundred kilometres deep, assessing that the strikes complicate Russia’s use of the Rostov to Crimea route. Its analyst George Barros argues that these mid-range strikes degrade Russia’s ability to mass forces and sustain the front, with Ukraine holding a slight but meaningful advantage in drone innovation.

In a 4 June article, military expert Viktor Kevliuk estimates that Ukrainian drones have already destroyed something on the order of seventy-five thousand general-purpose vehicles in the Russian rear, achieved by AI-guided systems which acquire and home on targets autonomously in the terminal phase even under electronic-warfare suppression.

This mid-range strike campaign is not just focused on military vehicles. It is also hitting Russian ships carrying cargo into occupied ports in southern Ukraine. On the evening of 6 June, the Ukrainians hit five Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov, as part of this campaign.

This is operational art. And it is integrated with tactical ground operations and long-range strategic strike to form a unified military strategy.

As reported by Fortune, long-range strikes reduce the volume of fuel Russia can refine, while mid-range strikes degrade its ability to move what remains. Gasoline shortages in occupied Ukraine are, for now, having only a limited effect on Russian forces, but the analysts noted that “more militarily consequential diesel shortages are beginning to materialise.”

The week also brought a strike that Ukraine called the first of its kind in modern history, the destruction of a Russian drone base at the occupied Donetsk airport.

The Technology Race: Closing the Interceptor Gap. A decisive contest in this war is industrial. The Snake Island Institute’s latest Defence Tech Monthly lays out the structural problem. Ukraine deploys around eight Patriot batteries against an assessed requirement of twenty to twenty-five and has received only a little over six hundred PAC-3 interceptors across four years of war. Russia produces around a thousand ballistic missiles a year, including some sixty Iskander missiles each month. The arithmetic has forced Ukrainian crews to abandon the doctrinally sound practice of firing two to four interceptors per target and to engage with a single missile, accepting lower kill probability because the magazine is too shallow for anything else.

The war in Iran has made this worse. By the Institute’s count, the United States military and its partners expended an estimated 1,060 to 1,430 Patriot interceptors out of a pre-war stock of 2,330, and Washington has since withdrawn Patriot batteries from South Korea, delayed deliveries to Switzerland, and asked Poland to transfer its interceptors to the Middle East. The most important sentence in the report points directly across to the Pacific: the interceptors consumed against Iran are the same ones required for deterrence against China. A single global magazine now serves three theatres, and it is running dry.

Ukraine’s partial answer is to build its own interceptors. President Zelenskyy has set a target of intercepting a ballistic missile with a domestically produced system by the end of 2027, at an engagement cost of between 500,000 and one million dollars, more than four times cheaper than a PAC-3 engagement. The most concrete expression of that ambition surfaced this week. On 3 June, the Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point published a test flight of its FP-7.X ballistic-missile interceptor, the core of a programme the analyst Fabian Hoffmann examined in detail.

Known as Project Freya, the system is derived from the Soviet-era 48N6 used in the S-400 and assembled from off-the-shelf European hardware, with radars from Hensoldt, Thales and Leonardo, command and control from Kongsberg, and a seeker likely drawn from Germany’s Diehl Defence, all integrated through NATO’s Link 16. The economic case is crucial. As Hoffman describes in his article, even with a modest intercept probability, a salvo of one-million-dollar Ukrainian rounds could cost a fraction of an equivalent Patriot engagement. Hoffmann’s caution is worth heeding, however. The history of the Patriot and the SAMP/T shows that ballistic-missile defence performance is not instant but instead hard-won through many years of operational iteration, and reaching even a thirty per cent intercept rate quickly will be difficult.

The same Snake Island update mentioned above also catalogues the breadth of Ukraine’s indigenous military developments. These include:

• An An-28 turboprop has been converted into an airborne interceptor carrier, launching cheap P1-SUN and Merops drones to kill Shaheds and having already downed 222 with its guns alone.

• The 412th Nemesis Brigade conducted the world’s first interception of a Shahed by an interceptor launched from an unmanned surface vessel, opening a maritime air-defence layer over the Black Sea.

• Ukraine is contracting some 25,000 ground robotic vehicles in the first half of 2026, double the entire 2025 total, with the number of units operating them rising from 67 to 167 and the goal of taking over all frontline logistics.

• A new fast-track procurement model lets the defence ministry buy and battlefield-test innovations before they meet full standards, with combat validation replacing committee approval.

The common theme here is a deliberate shift from dependence on scarce, expensive Western systems toward cheap, scalable, domestically produced mass.

Ukraine Assessment

Zelenskyy’s letter was published as an instrument of strategy rather than a genuine expectation of talks. By documenting Russia’s dependence on Pyongyang and Beijing, its mounting losses and its domestic fatigue, and by offering a concrete and reasonable path to a ceasefire, Kyiv is building the diplomatic record it will need when negotiations eventually recommence, while shifting the burden of refusal onto Putin. The Kremlin’s dismissive reply, demanding capitulation dressed as an invitation to Moscow, confirms that no settlement is near. Putin still believes strategic patience favours him.

On the frontline and in rear areas, Ukraine is executing an increasingly industrialised strike complex that pairs deep strikes on refineries with a middle-strike campaign now choking the land bridge to Crimea. Neither will be decisive alone, but both play an important role in ensuring that, as Zelenskyy noted this week “Russia must have less money, and there must be more pressure on Russia.”

The key Ukrainian vulnerability remains air defence. With the global interceptor magazine drained by Iran and a standing requirement for holding war stocks for deterrence in the Pacific, Ukraine’s race to field a sovereign anti-ballistic capability may matter more to the war’s outcome than any single offensive. The side that solves mass first, in interceptors and in strike, will have a big say in whatever peace eventuates.

In the coming week, I will be publishing a special assessment about Russia’s prospects for success (if there are any) for 2026.

The Pacific

China’s Monthly Air and Sea Operations Around Taiwan. The monthly update on Chinese military operations around Taiwan was released by Secure Taiwan Associate Corporation this week. This was accompanied by analysis from K. Tristan Tang, who wrote that:

Although routine PLA activity around Taiwan does not appear to be escalating, the overall force posture increasingly resembles that seen during the Strait Thunder-2025A and Justice Mission 2025. Joint Combat Readiness Patrols follow recurring patterns, while PLA Navy carrier and amphibious task groups operated in the Philippine Sea. Meanwhile, Taiwan National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu disclosed on May 23 that China had deployed more than 100 PLA Navy and China Coast Guard vessels around the First Island Chain. Together, these developments suggest that even without publicly announcing large-scale exercises, Beijing can increasingly achieve many of the same training and rehearsal effects through routine and dispersed operations.

The full update is shown below.

China’s New Operation Against Taiwan. China’s Ministry of Transport announced a “special maritime traffic law enforcement operation” in waters east of Taiwan on June 6. The operation will involve the Fujian and Guangdong Maritime Safety Administrations, East China Sea Navigation Service Center, and East China Sea Rescue Bureau. The Chinese are using the new operation to exercise maritime administrative jurisdiction, strengthen distant-sea patrols, and protect “national rights and interests.” This is a classic example of Chinese application of its Three Warfare’s concept(media, psychological and legal) to shape international perceptions about Chinese legitimacy in claiming Taiwan as one of its provinces.

Beijing’s Narrative War Against Japan. 2026 marks the eightieth anniversary of the Tokyo Trials, and China is building a sustained narrative casting Japan’s rearmament as the revival of wartime militarism. At his 1 June press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian argued that Japan’s defence orders had tripled in five years and that Tokyo, by deploying longer-range missiles, easing its ban on lethal-weapons exports and revising its Constitution and three core security documents, sought to “breach the postwar international order” and conceal “military expansionist ambitions,” dismissing Japan’s professed interest in dialogue as “performative.” State media, in the Global Times, accused Japanese right-wingers of waging “cognitive warfare to whitewash war crimes,” and the Defence Ministry’s spokesman charging Tokyo with “instigating bloc confrontation and building small circles.”

The campaign’s origin lies in November 2025, when Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could amount to a survival-threatening situation justifying a Japanese military response. Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the remark a line “that must not be touched” and demanded its retraction. Seven months on, Japan has refused to withdraw the statement, and Beijing has refused to let it go, folding each subsequent Japanese move, from defence-export liberalisation to the foreign-investment screening law passed on 29 May to joint exercises with partners, into a single story of a nation sliding back toward militarism. What began as a reaction to one sentence has hardened into a standing information front.

This week the campaign incorporated the Japan-Philippines partnership. After Takaichi and Marcos agreed on 28 May to negotiate the delimitation of their overlapping exclusive economic zones, spokeswoman Mao Ning insisted the waters in question lay “east of China’s Taiwan island,” and a CGTN commentary branded the talks a “geopolitical farce” and the Philippines a “strategic pawn” of resurgent Japanese imperialism. More strikingly, Chinese outlets again questioned Japan’s sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands and even the Ryukyus, the chain that includes Okinawa.

Tokyo is playing a different game. At the Shangri-La Dialogue, Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi rejected the label directly: “There is a country that has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and strategic bombers. Japan has neither of such weapons, and yet Japan is labelled new militarism. Isn’t it strange?” This rebuttal exposes the purpose of Beijing’s narrative, which is less about the past than the present. By branding Japanese rearmament as illegitimate, China seeks to split Tokyo from Washington and from its new partners in Manila and Canberra, to delegitimise the defence build-up that Takaichi’s government treats as deterrence, and to assemble an international coalition around the analogy to Imperial Japan.

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It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included articles on the collaboration between Russia and China, initial lessons from the war in Iran, and how the Chinese Communist Party controls the narrative about the massacre in Tiananmen Square. There are also articles on American endurance in war and on the global AI competition between America and China.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. The China-Russia Strategic Nexus

China and Russia continue to develop their relationship across the economic, diplomatic and military spheres. In this article, the authors propose that “policymakers and other observers in the democratic world suffered from a failure of imagination over the past decade, dramatically underestimating the danger and destructive potential of strategic alignment among authoritarian powers, and particularly between Moscow and Beijing.” The report doesn’t just identify the problem, but also concludes with useful policy recommendations. You can read the full report here.

2. The AI Races and Global Security

In this article, the author argues that the rapid development of artificial intelligence has produced two barely controlled AI races. One is underway between a handful of companies, and the other race is between two superpowers. Neither race is in any meaningful sense regulated, so that the only constraints are financial and physical. The author explores the implications of this, and what might be done to address the situation. You can read the full article at this link.

3. America’s Military Marathon

In this excellent piece published by Foreign Affairs, the author argues that “modern wars are seldom swift affairs. Instead, they are generally long, and they rarely end decisively…The past year has also illustrated that the American military remains highly capable of carrying out complex, targeted operations. But the Iran war shows that the U.S. military needs to be ready for marathons, not just sprints.” The full piece is available to read at this link.

4. Initial Lessons from Iran

A useful initial set of lessons from the war in Ukraine. While time will tell whether these insights are enduring, it is never too early to start learning in war. You can read the article at this link.

5. China’s New Tiananmen Narrative

This week on 4 June was the 37^th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) brutal suppression and massacre of unarmed pro-democracy protestors in what is remembered internationally as the Tiananmen Massacre. As this article explores, China has recently evolved its narrative about this event. The author describes how “the CCP’s efforts to rewrite Tiananmen history have apparently recently entered a new phase. Instead of suppressing memory through censorship, it has now undertaken an effort to reimagine the events altogether. In 2022, CCP propaganda images began portraying the PLA soldiers as the real heroes of Tiananmen.” The full piece is available here.

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Today, my new report on the systemic learning disorder in western military organisations - their inability to learn and adapt quickly from other people’s wars - is published by the Lowy Institute. Key findings in the report include the following:

• Western military institutions exhibit a systemic learning deficit that prioritises exploitation of existing competencies over exploration of new solutions. The result is dangerously slow adaptation to battlefield innovations, demonstrated in Ukraine and Iran despite unprecedented access to openly available evidence.

• The inability to rapidly implement proven innovations is a failure of organisational culture, of promotion systems that reward conformity over innovation, and of political leadership that fails to demand institutional accountability for learning.

• If Western nations are to compete with the new authoritarian learning and adaptation bloc formed by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, an array of rapid organisational, cultural, technological, and leadership philosophy changes is needed in military institutions, including in Australia.

Below is the introduction to give you a taste for the contents of my report.

In 2023, a Russian A-50 airborne early warning aircraft was attacked on the ground at the Machulishchy airbase near Minsk. Located 200 kilometres from the Ukrainian frontline, the Russian Air Force had not imagined, nor prepared for, an attack on this location. In March 2026, a United States Air Force (USAF) E-3 Sentry airborne early warning aircraft, parked in the open at a Saudi Arabian airbase approximately 700 kilometres from Iran, was destroyed during Operation Epic Fury, the American–Israeli campaign against Iran.^[2] There was one key difference between these attacks: the USAF had years of warning about the threat, which it did not heed. It demonstrated a lack of learning from other people’s wars.

At the strategic level, an even more recent glaring failure to learn is obvious. The Trump administration has failed to learn the central political lesson from the war in Ukraine: even supposedly much weaker nations in a war have agency. Such belligerents can demonstrate the will to resist foreign military aggression for years, if needs be. This has been the case for over four years in Ukraine and appears to be the case in the Iran war.^[3]

The contrast between Western institutional learning inertia and the speed of adversarial learning is one of the defining strategic facts of this decade. Western governments and militaries have been slow to institutionalise the lessons of Ukraine and Iran. Their adversaries have not. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have built an authoritarian knowledge market in which battlefield insights — from drone employment to electronic warfare, from industrial mobilisation to strategic coercion — flow more rapidly than many Western institutions have acknowledged. When one member of this bloc learns, all of them can learn.^[4]

Organisations can exhibit persistent failures to learn. The foundational work of theorists [CC1] [MR2] Chris Argyris and Donald Schön distinguished between “single-loop” learning — correcting errors within existing frameworks — and “double-loop” learning, which requires questioning the underlying assumptions themselves.^[5] Military institutions are archetypal single-loop learners. They excel at tactical adaptation within doctrinal boundaries but can be structurally resistant to revising core doctrines. Organisations can fall into “competency traps” where they reinforce familiar routines even when those routines no longer serve the environment.^[6]

While military units in the West have demonstrated an admirable vigour to learn the lessons of foreign wars, this same energy has not been apparent in their broader military and political institutions. Indeed, mainly because of the speed of change, much of the transformation in war of the past half-decade appears to have eluded defence bureaucracies. This deficit of learning is due to a combination of emphasis on pre-existing ideas, failure to accurately understand what occurs in foreign wars, application of disputed or misleading lessons, and failure to sustain the implementation of useful lessons.^[7]

A learning deficit afflicts Western military institutions, including the Australian Defence Force (ADF).^[8] This is not a resource problem nor a deficit of relevant information. It is a challenge of organisational culture, individual and institutional humility, leadership philosophies, and political inattention. In an era when war has never been more visible, choosing not to learn is a strategic decision with grave consequences.

This paper contains four sections. The first examines the nature of military learning and why it is so difficult to do well in peacetime. The second and third sections offer case studies in Western learning failure: the counter-drone war and the evolution of offensive operations.^[9] The fourth section draws together the analysis into recommendations for the Australian Government and the Department of Defence. The paper concludes with a call for a different kind of institutional leadership, one prepared to nurture “responsible rebellion”.^[10]

You can read the full report (for free) at this link.

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Notes

^[1] Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History 1500 to Today, (Gotham Books, 2006), 471.

^[2] Tyler Rogoway, “Russian A-50 Radar Jet Intact after Claimed Drone Attack in Belarus”, The War Zone, 28 February 2023, https://www.twz.com/first-image-of-russian-a-50-radar-jet-after-claimed-attack-in-belarus; Tyler Rogoway, “Images Show E-3 Sentry Totally Destroyed from Iranian Strike (Updated)”, The War Zone, 29 March 2026, https://www.twz.com/air/images-purportedly-show-e-3-sentry-totally-destroyed-from-iranian-strike.

^[3] While not a specifically military lesson, this is worthy of additional study, as are the links between political and military learning deficits. TheIranian regime, since the commencement of hostilities in February 2026, has steadfastly refused to surrender or concede to the Trump administration’s multiple threats. See: Lorenzo Tondo and Jason Burke, “Iran Rejects Trump’s Demand for Unconditional Surrender as a ‘Dream’”, The Guardian, 8 March 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/07/iran-trump-unconditional-surrender-war-masoud-pezeshkian.

^[4] Mick Ryan, Adaptation War: Confronting the New Adversary Learning and Adaptation Bloc, (Special Competitive Studies Project, 2025), 4–5.

^[5] Chris Argyris and Donald A. Schön, Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, (Addison-Wesley, 1978).

^[6] Barbara Levitt and James G. March, “Organizational Learning”, Annual Review of Sociology 14, (1988), 319–340.

^[7] Brent L. Sterling, Other People’s Wars, (Georgetown University Press, 2021), 275–280.

^[8] It was not until three-and-a-half years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that the Australian Minister for Defence commissioned a lessons study from the war or dispatched a military attaché to Kyiv to facilitate structured learning. The Australian Defence Force currently deploys few drones and no armed drones, and its capacity to conduct counter-drone operations for deployed forces and critical infrastructure is, in practical terms, very limited.

^[9] The case studies of failed learning in this paper might be joined by others. One example is how Ukraine has transformed war at sea with its operations in the Black Sea. Other areas for further study might include the conduct of cognitive warfare, combat medical evacuation, and national resilience in war. Coverage of Ukraine’s war in the Black Sea includes David Kirichenko, “Step by Step, Ukraine Built a Technological Navy”, USNI Proceedings, Vol. 151/5/1,467, May 2025, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2025/may/step-step-ukraine-built-technological-navy; Peter Dickinson, “Ukraine is Shaping the Future of Drone Warfare at Sea as Well as on Land”, Ukraine Alert Blog, Atlantic Council, 12 June 2025, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-is-shaping-the-future-of-drone-warfare-at-sea-as-well-as-on-land/; and, H.I. Sutton, “Timeline of Ukraine Invasion: War in The Black Sea”, Covert Shores, 8 May 2026, https://www.hisutton.com/Timeline-2022-Ukraine-Invasion-At-Sea.html. On cognitive warfare, see Frank Hoffman “Assessing Cognitive Warfare”, Small Wars Journal, 14 November 2025, https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/11/14/assessing-cognitive-warfare/; and, Cognitive Warfare, NATO, https://www.sto.nato.int/wp-content/uploads/chief-scientist-report-cognitive-warfare-final.pdf.

^[10] Martin Dempsey, No Time for Spectators: The Lessons that Mattered Most from West Point to the West Wing, (Missionday, 2020), 185–205.

It has been another fascinating week to observe the practice, and evolving theories, of modern war.

In Ukraine, the strategic and operational landscape shifted in ways that show the strategic initiative is slipping away from Russia. A Ukrainian drone campaign against Russian logistics along the southern land bridge to Crimea has entered a new phase of scale and ambition, formalised by Kyiv into what Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has labelled a “logistics lockdown.”

On the evening of 29-30 May, Ukrainian forces struck the aviation facilities and port at Taganrog, destroying two Tupolev Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft and an Iskander launcher in one of the most significant single strikes of the war. On the diplomatic front, President Zelenskyy convened a high-level strategic session on 30 May to consolidate Ukraine’s posture as US-mediated talks stall and European partners step up.

In the Pacific, Taiwan formally stands up its new Littoral Combat Command on 1 July 2026, an organisational reform that integrates anti-ship missiles, coastal radar, and unmanned systems under a single command for the first time. China appears to have constructed more than 80 launch pads and hardened bunkers near its ICBM silo fields in Xinjiang, revealing the scale of Beijing’s second-strike nuclear modernisation.

And we await a resolution to the war in Iran.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Five.

Ukraine

The Logistics Lockdown: Targeting Russia’s Southern Land Bridge. The most significant development of the past week in Ukraine has not taken place along the front line. It has unfolded 100 to 200 kilometres behind it, along the highways that connect Russia’s occupied south to Crimea and, through that peninsula, to Russia. What has brought this issue to the fore was Ukrainian Defence Minister Fedorov on 27 May formalising what had previously been a covert campaign into a declared strategic programme, announcing a $113 million initiative he called the “Logistical Lockdown.” The programme is designed to massively scale up mid-range drone strikes against Russian supply networks deep behind the front line, with the stated objective of depriving Russian forces of the ability to conduct active assault operations.

This approach is hardly new. In western doctrine it is known as Interdiction. The concept of destroying second and third echelon forces, their logistics and C2, was a key aspect of the Cold War era Air-Land Battle developed by the U.S. military. Then, long-range ground fires (such as MLRS) and air force aircraft were central capabilities. Now, drones – for ISR, strike and battle damage assessment – are the key effector for interdiction, or as it is now known, mid-range strike.

The campaign is targeting the R-280 highway, also known as the M-14 and renamed by Russian occupation authorities as the “Novorossiya” route. This road runs from Rostov-on-Don in Russia, through occupied Mariupol, Berdyansk, and Melitopol, and into Crimea. It is Russia’s primary land line of communication to the peninsula. It has only grown in importance since the Kerch Bridge has been progressively degraded by Ukrainian strikes. As the Centre for European Policy Analysis has noted, Russia has invested around $11.8 billion between 2024 and 2026 on roads, railways, ports, and industrial projects across occupied southern Ukraine because it sought geographical dispersion and redundancy to protect its logistics from Ukrainian interdiction. The current Ukrainian mid-range strike campaign is slowly degrading that concept.

But it is not only logistics routes that are the targets of this campaign. Russian headquarters, training camps, air defence, ammunition and fuel storage and other military infrastructure up to 100 kilometres behind the front line are targets. The strikes this week on Russia’s 3^rd Army training ground in occupied Luhansk, and 36^th Army training ground in occupied Zaporizhzhia, are examples of the broader scope of this campaign.

The Ukrainian instrument that is central to this campaign is a growing family of Ukrainian middle-strike drones. This includes fixed-wing systems designed to bridge the gap between short-range first-person-view strike drones and the deep-strike platforms used to hit targets inside Russia itself. On 26 May, Ukraine’s 412th Nemesis Brigade of the Unmanned Systems Forces disclosed details of a domestically produced drone called the MORRIGAN, which it described as having operated repeatedly in Crimea and against Russian air defence and logistics assets along the Mariupol-to-Crimea corridor. The AI-assisted Hornet drone, reported previously to be capable of autonomous strikes up to 100 miles or more behind the front line, has also been central to the campaign.

The scale of destruction documented by open-source analysts is considerable. By 30 May, the monitoring group Oko Gorahad documented at least 86 burned trucks and fuel tankers on the M-14 and H-20 highways over the preceding three weeks. An analyst cited by CEPA placed the total of destroyed trucks far from the front line at more than 125, most destroyed during May. The Defence Intelligence of Ukraine reported that its drone operators had established fire control over sections of the highway linking Berdiansk, Melitopol, and Dzhankoi, using RAM-type UAVs (a loitering precision munition) and other domestically produced strike systems to hit fuel tankers, military vehicles, and logistics hubs up to 150 kilometres behind the front.

For an in-depth review of this campaign, see the long thread posted on 30 May by Clement Molin here.

The strategic logic of this campaign is simple. Almost all Russian logistics for the southern front and Crimea are land-based. Russia’s investment in the Azov Ring was intended to provide redundancy, but that network’s very success at concentrating supply flows has created chokepoints. Ukraine, by directing this campaign at the highways themselves, is seeking a form of operational-level interdiction that previous attempts were not able to achieve.

The middle-strike campaign fills an operational gap between tactical defensive and counter-attack operations and the long-range, deep strike activities of the Ukrainian military. By conducting all three forms of operations concurrently, they place increasing pressure on Russian forces, degrade their offensive capabilities, and shape the battlespace for future Ukrainian offensive operations in later 2026 and in 2027.

Strategic Strike Extended. Overnight on 29-30 May, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces conducted a strike against the Taganrog aviation complex and port in Russia’s Rostov Oblast. Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi of the Unmanned Systems Forces announced the operation, stating that the 1st Separate Unmanned Systems Centre destroyed two Tupolev Tu-142 long-range maritime patrol aircraft, including a rare Tu-142MR strategic radio-relay variant used to communicate with submarine forces, as well as an Iskander operational-tactical missile launcher, according to United24 Media.

The strike was attributed to the newly established Unmanned Systems Forces Deep Strike Centre. Drone attacks on the Taganrog port simultaneously set fire to a tanker, a fuel storage tank, and an administrative building, with the Rostov region governor confirming fires and two civilian injuries. A separate strike hit an oil depot in Armavir, Krasnodar Krai.

The Taganrog Aviation Plant is one of Russia’s important aviation industrial hubs, and houses the Beriev Aircraft Company, the 325th Aircraft Repair Plant, and facilities supporting the Tu-95MS and Tu-142 families. The reported loss of two Tu-142 aircraft, including the rare MR submarine communications variant, would represent a significant blow to Russian naval aviation. Taganrog has been struck multiple times in recent months; satellite imagery previously showed the destruction of an A-60 laser aircraft and an A-100LL airborne early warning platform at the Beriev plant in late 2025, and the 325th Aircraft Repair Plant was reportedly targeted on 27 May, days before the overnight strike. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, noting the simultaneous strike on Armavir some 500 kilometres from the border, wrote that Ukraine was “rightfully bringing the war back to where it came from.”

One wonders how much longer the commander of air defence at Taganrog will keep his job.

The Ground War. Along the front line, the picture remains one of grinding pressure. In the north, Russian forces have continued offensive operations in Sumy Oblast, probing and advancing incrementally through forested terrain using infiltration tactics. Russian offensive operations also continue in northern Kharkiv Oblast, where Ukrainian forces were conducting counterattacks.

The capture of Ukraine’s fortress belt remains the Russian main effort on the ground. While the Russian plan continues to seek an operational double envelopment, Russian ground forces are also attacking from the east to draw Ukrainian forces east and fix them in place. As the maps below demonstrate, Russia has made some progress on this axis since January 2026, but it is not significant and has come at a massive cost in manpower and resources.

The broader picture for the past month, as analysed by the Russia Matters newsletter, shows a deterioration for Russian forces. In the four weeks ending 26 May 2026, Russian forces registered a net loss of 100 square miles of Ukrainian territory, with a net loss of 26 square miles in the preceding four-week period. In the week of 19-26 May, Russia lost 38 square miles. Ukraine’s mid-range drone campaign appears to be exerting effects on Russian operational capacity in the south.

Russia’s Spring Campaign may be taking small parcels of land in different parts of the frontline, but as a cohesive major campaign, it has not generated the tempo or momentum necessary to change the situation on the ground. Further, the Ukrainian resistance on the eastern and southern fronts, and Putin’s pathetic ‘please don’t attack my Victory Day parade’ plea, have had an impact on Russian strategic influence operations. It is probably obvious by now, but Putin’s ’inevitable victory’ narrative seems to now be firmly in the dustbin of history.

President Zelenskyy held a staff meeting in mid-May to analyse intelligence on Russian planning in the Chernihiv-Kyiv direction, stating that Ukraine was “preparing responses to every possible course of enemy action” and that forces in the northern sector would be increased. He also directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare additional diplomatic measures regarding Belarus, which Russia might use as a staging ground to expand the war. The concern about a northern axis is not new, but the formal intelligence assessment and public communication of preparations signals Kyiv’s seriousness about the threat.

Zelenskyy’s Strategy Session. On 30 May, President Zelenskyy convened what he described as a “special meeting on next steps” with Ukraine’s top defence, intelligence, and government officials. The session, as reported by the Kyiv Postand also the subject of a social media post from the Ukrainian president, included Head of the President’s Office Kyrylo Budanov, National Security and Defence Council Secretary Rustem Umerov, and First Vice Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal. The meeting’s stated focus was on immediate priorities across international diplomacy, frontline procurement, and humanitarian operations. The session represented an effort to consolidate Ukraine’s strategic posture and assess the implications of a significantdiplomatic recalibration.

This is important because, according to The Economist, Ukraine expects the war to continue for the next two to three years. Reviewing existing strategies and setting the right ones for the way forward is crucial.

The diplomatic context is shaped by growing U.S. disengagement from mediation. The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has acknowledged a lack of progress in Washington’s brokered talks, stating that “if someone else would like to handle it, they should,” as the Kyiv Independent reported in its coverage of the stalled peace process. The most recent trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia, and the United States took place on 16 February, with a follow-up round postponed when US-Israeli strikes on Iran began. Moscow has pushed in negotiations for Ukraine to withdraw from the four oblasts it claimed to annex in 2022, a demand Kyiv has categorically rejected.

Against this backdrop, European partners are stepping up. In May, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed Zelenskyy’s invitation to the NATO summit in Ankara that will be held in July. The Russian drone strike in Romania this week has strengthened the need for European unity. And just this week, Ukraine and Sweden announced the provision of Gripen fighters, including training, support and weapons, for Ukraine’s air force.

Ukraine Assessment

A better appreciation of Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s southern logistics network, as well as interdiction operations on the eastern front, is the key development of the past week. This is not because Ukraine is demonstrating a new military capability, although that is important. These strikes are a key development because for the first time in this war, Ukraine is executing a synchronised, concurrent series of campaigns against Russia in the close, mid-range and deep battles.

What began as a covert operational experiment has now been formalised into a declared strategic programme. The mid-range strike campaign represents a maturation of Ukrainian drone doctrine. These are sustained, systematic efforts to degrade the operational capacity of Russian forces along the most important ground supply corridor of the war. The strikes hit at the connective tissue between Russia’s strategic industries and the Russian units on the front line. Hitting all three elements of Russia’s warfighting capacity simultaneously is a crucial development in this war.

The ground war remains a brutal slog-fest, with Russian forces failing to achieve operational breakthroughs despite sustained pressure. The monthly territorial figures in May strongly suggest Ukrainian forces have improved their defensive performance compared with earlier in the war. The risk of a Russian effort to open a northern axis through Sumy or toward Chernihiv cannot be dismissed, and Zelenskyy’s public preparation signalling serves both deterrence and domestic communication purposes.

On the diplomatic front, Ukraine’s situation is difficult but not desperate. The stalling of U.S. mediation, and the Trump administration’s distraction with a war in Iran and preparations for more Western Hemisphere operations (Cuba, Greenland?), may relieve the pressure on Kyiv to make territorial concessions it would otherwise be unable to accept politically. The coming NATO summit in Ankara will be a significant test of whether the alliance can articulate a coherent approach to Ukraine’s security in an environment of declining American engagement and where preparations are being made for a post-ceasefire environment that does not yet exist.

The Pacific

Taiwan’s Littoral Combat Command. On 1 July 2026, Taiwan will formally stand up the Littoral Combat Command (LCC), a structural reform of the Republic of China Navy that integrates anti-ship missile units, coastal and mobile radar, and unmanned systems into a single unified force for the first time. President Lai Ching-te is expected to preside over the establishment ceremony. As Noah Reed and Chris Dayton document in the Taiwan Security Monitor, the LCC’s headquarters will be located along Taiwan’s west coast in Huwei Township, Yunlin County.

Once established, the command will be responsible for the defence of the seas surrounding Taiwan and its outlying islands, inheriting several anti-ship missile and radar positions on the Penghu and Matsu Islands.

The LCC represents a doctrinal and organisational shift. Taiwan’s defensive military strategy, which posits a layered, coastal defence approach against a PLA amphibious assault, depends on the integration of anti-ship missiles, coastal surveillance, and unmanned systems into a coherent operational architecture. Previously, these capabilities sat across separate commands, reducing their effectiveness as a coordinated force. The creation of the LCC addresses the command and control gap, bringing together the Hsiung Feng II and III anti-ship missile systems with their associated coastal radar and uncrewed maritime capabilities under a single commander with unified operational authority.

Taiwan is standing up this command at a time when the strategic environment is increasingly demanding. The LCC establishment signals Taipei’s determination to develop indigenous approaches and capabilities that do not depend solely on the continuity of U.S. security guarantees.

Taiwan Defence Budget Approved. Taiwan’s Legislature approved a 2026 special defence procurement budget of more than NT$8.81 billion (US$258.7 million) on 29 May to fund purchases of U.S. weapons. According to the budget, funding will be allocated for M109A7 self-propelled howitzers, High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and anti-armour drones. The other two weapon systems are Javelin anti-tank missiles and TOW 2B anti-tank missiles.

China’s Nuclear Second-Strike Architecture. Reuters has published a major investigative piece documenting the construction of more than 80 concrete launch pads, at least two large octagonal installations, armoured bunkers, and fibre-optic-linked command nodes sprawling across thousands of square kilometres of the Xinjiang desert near China’s existing ICBM silo fields at Hami. The reporting draws on commercial satellite imagery assessed by three independent security analysts.

The security scholars interviewed by Reuters broadly agreed the infrastructure supports China’s nuclear programme, although significant uncertainties remain over which specific weapons will be deployed and whether the octagonal compounds house truck-mounted ballistic missiles or nuclear warhead assembly facilities. Military exercises involving heavy vehicles were documented around the northern octagon as recently as 11 May 2026.

The scale and design logic of the new infrastructure points toward a second-strike hardening programme. China has long maintained a minimum deterrence posture, but the combination of new ICBM silo fields, mobile missile launch pads, and command node construction suggests a deliberate effort to ensure the survivability of its land-based nuclear forces against a US or allied first strike. This assessment comes in a particularly sensitive global nuclear context: the last bilateral strategic arms limitation treaty between the United States and Russia, New START, expired in February 2026 with no replacement in place, and no treaty has ever covered China’s nuclear arsenal.

The Reuters investigation may intensify pressure on Washington and allied capitals to articulate a credible approach to nuclear risk management with China that goes beyond the bilateral US-China crisis communications frameworks agreed in recent years. The strategic implications of a China with a hardened, survivable second-strike capability are significant for deterrence calculations across the Indo-Pacific.

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It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included articles on the war in Iran, China’s cognitive warfare against Japan and its allies and a good piece on the language of war. There is also a interesting report on nuclear command and control and an article that explores America’s contemporary ‘way of war’.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. Forever War in Iran?

This excellent piece from Dr Lawrence Freedman published in Foreign Affairs examines the Trump administration’s war against Iran, the unexpected resilience of the Iranian regime and its military, and how the war is yet to achieve any of its initial political objectives. As Freedman notes, “the lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that any leader who is offered a plan for a quick and easy victory should first ask, “How can you be so sure?” and then, “What happens if you are wrong?”. It is good advice. You can read the full article here.

2. China’s Cognitive Offensive Against Japan

This is an interesting piece from The Jamestown Foundation that examines how China has responded to Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi’s push for transformation of Japanese defence strategy. As the author notes, “Beijing has turned to a playbook of cognitive warfare. Its sanctions and media distortion primarily seek psychological effects, and the efficacy of such are hard to quantify.” The full article is available at this link.

3. Getting the Language of War Right

An important piece of advice that the author of this article published by The Atlantic, Eliot Cohen, provides is that “we should be wary of lazy pronouncements, festooned with questionable analogies and tired catchphrases.” He then takes on some of the most commonly used words that are applied to modern conflicts, and asks that strategists and writers re-think the use of terms such as “winning”, “losing” and that old favourite, “quagmire”. In war, as in all other aspects of life, words matter. This is a terrific article that explores why that is so. You can read it here.

4. Nuclear Command and Control

This week, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments published a new report that examines how the American nuclear command, control and communications endeavour needs to shift from a focus on one major peer competitor to an era where America has two major nuclear power competitors. As the author, Eric Edelman describes it, “the United States is facing a novel and even more challenging version of the problems that past cohorts of policymakers confronted during the Cold War. The United States must now simultaneously deter two nuclear peers –something it has never done.” The full report is available to read at this link.

5. Needed - A New Way of War?

I thought this was a pretty interesting commentary on the contemporary U.S. way of war. Written by Ivo Daadler, a former ambassador to NATO, it is a useful critique of how a generation of U.S. administrations have approached war. His core critique is that “Washington treats war not as a continuation of policy but as the failure of policy — a last resort that is reached when diplomacy collapses, often with no set political outcome in mind. The results are always the same: force deployed with no clear ends, and no answer to a question that should precede every decision to fight — what does winning actually look like?” It is a fascinating piece where the author concludes that “the U.S. keeps losing not because its military is weak but because it keeps choosing its instruments before defining its objectives.” The full piece is available at this link.

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of The Big Five. I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to bringing you another edition next week.

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This year, I invited a group of experts who examine topics such as military strategy, drone warfare, the war in Ukraine, military transformation, and the security situation in the Pacific to write guest articles for publication here at Futura Doctrina. The first piece, written by Dr Frank Hoffman, covered the important topic of AI and critical thinking. It was published in February, and can be read here. The second, from Dr Oleksandra Molloy, an Australian-Ukrainian expert on uncrewed systems and drone operations, is available here.

Today, Dr Hoffman returns. In this article he explores the early 21st century debate on war, the various theories on the ‘end of war’ and how the past five years have overturned the hypotheses of various ‘endists’. It is a brilliant article, and I am sure you will find it as insightful and interesting as I did.

There is an ancient axiom that the first casualty in war is the truth.^[1] However, in the case of the Russo-Ukraine War, the fundamental truth about the persistent nature of war was confirmed. Some security studies scholars found fault with pre-war predictions about whether or not Putin would attack and how quickly Russia might win.^[2] Many in the field did not anticipate Putin’s recklessness or Ukraine’s capacity to resist the Russian war machine.

Eliot Cohen and Phillips O’Brien characterized this as a serious analytic failure. Since I thought Putin was bluffing and compounded that flawed insight by assuming that Russia would quickly win, I am guilty. But the bigger shock for many was the notion of a large-scale war at all or the occurrence of a state-on-state war in Europe. War turned out to be more resistant to its presumed demise than had been loudly proclaimed.

Is War Obsolete?

The idea that major interstate war was a thing of the past is an old debate going back to Professor John Mueller from Ohio State and promoted by Professor Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins University.^[3] These provocative articles began a debate about the implications of the end of the Cold War. Mandelbaum subsequently adjusted his position after observing the revisionist strategies of China, Russia and Iran.^[4] They began an interesting intellectual exercise about the value of violent force as an instrument of policy in this century. This phase culminated with Chris Fettweis’s sharply written book which observed “It is possible that war could be a thing of the past.”^[5]

Another round in the debate kicked off in 2011 by the Harvard psychiatrist Steven Pinker with his bestselling bookThe Better Angels of our Nature.^[6] Pinker defines several drivers and a host of data elements to explain mankind’s evolution from a Hobbesian world of brutish, short and violent lives to today’s more benign environment. These drivers include the formation of states, extended trade, feminization, and the reason and empathy brought about by the Enlightenment (for that small portion of the globe that it impacted). Pinker pummels his reader with an exhaustive number of statistics and myriad arguments.

This led some scholars to adopt Pinker’s line of thinking without absorbing his caveats against predicting the future. One author, a well-regarded European strategic analyst, quipped that “war as we know it, long thought to be an inevitable part of the human condition, has disappeared.” ^[7] Bruno Tertrais acknowledged that war will not disappear but would be “a marginal phenomenon.”^[8] He admitted that the danger of major war in Asia and the Middle East remained, but then immediately asserted that “massive, organized conflict is now an exceptional feature of human society and on the verge of becoming a historical relic.”^[9] Implicit in this assessment is the assumption that continued progress is inevitable.

Many scholars assessed the early 2010 decade in positive terms, despite the ongoing challenges in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Others professed that we live in “a world with fewer violent conflicts…than at virtually any other point in human history.”^[10] Others contended that the world today is “less violent than at any point in human history,” due allegedly to “a host of global alliances, a near-universal consensus on international rules and norms guiding the use of force, and no true military or political competitor to American power.”^[11] Policy officials or security analysts who differed with this assessment were labeled as a part of the ‘Threat Industrial Complex’ and guilty of rampant threat inflation to prop up the defense budget.^[12]

Pinker’s thesis generated a number of critiques. One computational social scientist found that war initiation really did go down a lot at the end of the Cold War, with peace probably fostered by a period of unipolar US dominance, and the end of great power funding for proxy wars.^[13] He found no statistical validity to the notion that war had receded looking over the period 1815 to 2014. Another set of authors accused Pinker of being “fast and loose” with empirical data,^[14]and employing “very bad history.”^[15]

Looking both forward as well as backward is useful. Almost a decade ago, a study team from RAND issued a comprehensive study of future conflict drivers which assessed that “projections in this report depict a continued decline through 2040, with interstate conflict down to extremely low levels and a much lower incidence of intrastate conflict.^[16](emphasis added) Coming from one of the Pentagon’s think tanks, such a conclusion suggested that Pinker and his acolytes were on to something.

Pinker’s study drew attention across the Atlantic. The United Kingdom’s futures team concluded that “evidence suggests that the frequency and intensity of wars, as well as the number of violent deaths, has been declining sharply and is likely to continue to fall.^[17] The British team, citing Pinker as their sole source, noted the past trend of the previous decade (both frequency and lethality) and judged that they were likely to continue. Ironically, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea and Donbas occurred that same year.

There are grains of truth in the upbeat assessments. There was a period when wars were declining or shifting in character to proxy/surrogate contests. Human violence, broadly defined, had declined, and especially in the developed world. But a longer perspective on human conflict would show that progress can be uneven and even be reversed. For this reason, the late Professor Chris Coker chided what he termed the “Endists” for thinking that mankind had evolved to the point that war was extinct.^[18]

The Pinker thesis and its underpinnings were not without numerous counterarguments from scholars. Sir Lawrence Freedman faults it for failing to account for the most basic of factors to an international relations or security scholar–the power structure of the international system. ^[19][20] The most serious charge finds that Pinker’s work is not rigorous empiricism or even decent statistical analysis but extensive anecdotal aggregation by the famous risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author The Black Swan.^[21] Pinker’s argument was a compilation of material from various disciplines, but the final product is not analytically sound and thus less compelling than it appears at the surface.

The prognostications above fail to account for growing potential dangers and are misleading when one looks at the context of the emerging security environment. Trends are not ineluctably linear or preordained; they are the consequence of multiple drivers. Contrary to assertions about linearity in past patterns, trends are not immutable nor proceed in only one direction. Instead, they are the product of a dialectic of numerous variables. Neither global peace nor persistent conflict is preordained, it is the product of the myriad drivers.

Professor Azar Gat, an accomplished Israeli scholar, posited an interesting compromise assessment. He divides the world into a ‘zone of peace’ and the zone of war (largely the undeveloped world). He developed a theory, which he titled The Modernization Peace, to explain why states in the developed world no longer view war as a rational means of securing their interests. He is optimistic that a Modernization Peace in the developed world will continue to abate outbreaks of violence. It’s a theory heavily weighted with economics and rational thinking. More perceptively, Dr. Gat asked the most critical question–Will war rebound?^[22]

Thinking Forward

That’s the right question. The past is not always prologue, but it does generate a perspective about what factors to look for and what questions to ask. What factors or drivers might cause wars to rebound or evolve along different lines? What dark forces might appreciably bend the trend lines from what Pinker et al assumed was a linear pattern of progress?

Read more

War does not pause for summits.

In the Pacific, beginning with the Trump summit and concluding with Putin’s, Xi has been basking in what the CCP portrays as China’s emergence as a global stabilising influence.

But in Ukraine, the front-line grinds through its 1,551st day. The war on the ground remains a ferocious attritional conflict punctuated by large-scale deep strike operations and diplomatic performances that have produced prisoner exchanges but no real move towards peace. Russia has continued demanding its maximalist objectives for the war while executing its long-range strike campaign against Ukrainian cities, including the use of an Oreshnik IRBM against Kyiv last night.

In the Middle East, the U.S.-Iran ceasefire has held, with some violations, since April. As Bloomberg reported on 23 May 2026, Iran has signalled progress on ensuring fighting ends on all fronts, with remaining points of contention to be resolved at a later stage. And, in the past few hours, both the Americans and Iranians have signalled that a resolution might be very close. Whether this leads to a durable agreement matters for the economies of the world dependent on Middle East oil, natural gas, urea and helium. But it also has major impacts on the strategic resources that Washington can allocate to Ukraine and the Pacific theatre.

Welcome to this week’s Big Five!

Ukraine

The Front Line. The picture on the front line this week is one of sustained, high-intensity combat in which Ukraine has achieved notable local advances while the broader positional map remains contested. According to the Russia Matters War Report Card of 20 May 2026, Russian forces registered a net loss of 69 square miles of Ukrainian territory over the four weeks from 21 April to 19 May. In the single week from 12 to 19 May, Russia lost a net 29 square miles, a significant reversal that analysts attribute partly to Ukrainian interdiction of Russian logistics across southern Ukraine and partly to Ukrainian counterattack operations in the north.

In northern Kharkiv Oblast, Ukrainian forces have achieved meaningful advances. The ISW assessment of 19 May 2026 reported that Ukrainian forces had recently advanced in northern Kharkiv Oblast as well as in the Kupyansk and Hulyaipole directions. These are not spectacular breakthroughs, but they represent Ukrainian forces seizing and holding local initiative in a sector where Russia’s subordinate main effort is to push Ukrainian forces back from the international border with Belgorod Oblast and threaten Kharkiv City from the east.

This was followed up by Ukrainian forces reportedly executing a mechanised counterattack in the Borova direction and advancing up to five kilometres into the Russian defences. According to the latest report from the Institute for the Study of War, Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked forward positions of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army, while Russian forces were regrouping. The Russian’s exaggerated claims of success from military leaders like Gerasimov are providing opportunities for Ukrainian forces to exploit weak points in Russia’s defensive line.

Notwithstanding these Ukrainian gains, the operational tempo of the Russians remains very high. Ukrainian General Staff reporting for 21 May 2026 recorded 233 combat engagements in a single day, alongside 98 Russian airstrikes dropping 325 guided aerial bombs, the deployment of 8,902 Shahed kamikaze drones, and over 3,000 attacks on populated areas and military positions. Earlier in the week the figure reached 9,645 drones in a single 24-hour period. Russia launched more than 8,000 drones in April alone, the highest monthly total on record, according to Russia Matters.

Rubio and the Diplomatic Stasis. The diplomatic picture this week was defined by a rare moment of candour from Washington. Speaking on 22 May 2026, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged publicly that peace negotiations on Ukraine had stalled and produced no results. Ukrainska Pravda, reporting from Kyiv on 22 May 2026, quoted Rubio directly: ‘We’re not interested in endless meetings that lead to nothing.’ He acknowledged the process has so far failed to deliver progress, but said Washington remained prepared to play a mediating role if talks could be made productive. ‘If we see an opportunity to pull together talks that are productive, not counterproductive, and that have the chance to be fruitful, we’re prepared to play that role,’ Rubio said, adding pointedly that ‘there are no such talks occurring at this time.’

The Kyiv Post reported on 22 May 2026 that Rubio’s public position was that the war would not end through outright military victory by either side, and that a negotiated settlement remained the only viable path. Rubio stated that “this war will not end with a military victory by one side or the other …We hope that will change, because that war can only end with a negotiated settlement.” He added that Ukraine was “getting more support than ever” through ongoing security assistance programmes.

At a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, Rubio delivered a set of messages that both reassured and unsettled European allies. Rubio ended the talks with a blunt message to European allies: Washington’s military footprint on the continent will shrink over time, but the US insists its commitment to NATO’s collective defence remains intact.

Rubio pushed NATO members towards a 5 percent of GDP defence spending target, though he subsequently softened this in press remarks to a commitment to be “on a path of getting up to 5 percent at some point.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed that Ukrainian President Zelensky has been invited to attend NATO’s July summit in Ankara, underscoring continued political support for Kyiv. Rubio also acknowledged Washington’s concern over Russian drones being redirected into NATO airspace: “It’s a concerning thing, because you always worry that something like that can spark into something bigger.”

Interdiction (Middle Strike) Operations. Ukraine has been prosecuting a systematic and increasingly effective interdiction campaign against Russian logistics across southern Ukraine and along the land bridge connecting Russia to Crimea. This campaign, operating in the 50-to-150-kilometre range, is arguably the most consequential military development of recent months. Described as Middle Strike operations or Mid-Range Strike, these constitute what military doctrine defines as interdiction: military actions designed to delay, disrupt, or destroy enemy military forces, supplies and command systems behind or en route to an area of tactical engagement before they can be applied against friendly forces.

In a detailed analysis published on 17 May 2026, Stefan Korshak argued on his Substack that Ukraine has effectively found a way to cut Crimea off from the Russian mainland through drone-based interdiction of supply routes rather than the ground offensive Western analysts had anticipated.

The campaign appears to be executing operations along three lines of effort.

Line of Effort 1 appears to be Ukraine disrupting Russia’s Trans-Tavrian rail link, a new line running from Taganrog through Mariupol to Melitopol intended to provide an overland rail connection independent of the Kerch Bridge. Ukrainian special forces and the GUR began ambushing Russian fuel trains with drones from around May 2025, blocking the single-track line and destroying repair trains sent to clear it. By late 2025, Russia could only run infrequent armoured freight trains on an existing route closer to Ukrainian lines. The rail link remains out of action.

The second Line of Effort appears to be the highway from Melitopol to Mariupol, as well as other connectors to this route. From mid-2025, Ukrainian drones began patrolling the Melitopol-Mariupol highway, hunting Russian military trucks. This capability expansion reflects both the scaling up of Ukrainian drone operations in the immediate rear and the introduction of new medium-range strike systems: the Bulava, RAM-2X, and Blyskavka drones for strike and the Shark for persistent reconnaissance. Russian military bloggers have been openly complaining about the truck-hunting operations on the Melitopol-Mariupol route.

A third Line of Effort is maritime strike aimed at isolating Crimea from the east. At sea, Ukrainian forces struck two Russian patrol boats protecting the Kerch Bridge on approximately 30 April 2026, and a subsequent sea drone strike on 4 May 2026 destroyed an FSB patrol boat and its crew. These strikes degrade not just Russian naval combat capability but the security infrastructure protecting Russia’s most important Crimean logistical asset.

Ukraine’s Deep Strike. Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure reached new levels of intensity and geographic reach this week. On 21 May 2026, President Zelensky announced that Ukrainian drones had struck the Syzran oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region, more than 800 kilometres inside Russian territory. Russia’s Astra news outlet confirmed the strike on the Rosneft-operated facility.

Earlier in May, Ukrainian drones struck the Ukhta refinery in Russia’s Komi Republic, 1,750 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, in what reporting described as one of Ukraine’s longest-range attacks of the war. The Atlantic Council assessed that this sustained campaign has limited Russia’s ability to benefit economically from global energy markets and contributed to Ukraine’s most significant battlefield gains since 2024. Russia’s growth forecast for 2026 has been slashed to 0.4 percent from 1.3 percent as the war economy reels under the combined impact of Ukrainian strikes and Western sanctions.

Stefan Korshak’s 9 May 2026 Substack documented the first combined use of Flamingo cruise missiles alongside AN-196 Liutyi long-range strike drones in a single complex attack, targeting the VNIIR-PROGRESS military electronics plant in Cheboksary. The attack illustrated Ukraine’s expanding repertoire of multi-vector strike packages, combining heavier standoff weapons with smaller pilot-guided precision systems to achieve layered effects against hardened industrial targets deep inside Russia.

In a further development, Ukraine in the past 24 hours executed another strike against Russian naval assets in the Russian port of Novorossiysk Naval Base, Krasnodar Krai. According to the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Force, targets struck include a Project 1239 hover-borne missile carrier, the frigate “Admiral Essen”, an “Osa” SAM system, command posts, bases, a logistics hub, and other facilities.

Ukraine Assessment

Four patterns define the current situation in the war in Ukraine.

First, the front line has stabilised in Ukraine’s favour, with Ukrainian forces achieving local advances in northern Kharkiv. The Kharkiv advances are particularly significant because they challenge Russia’s declared subordinate main effort to threaten Kharkiv City from the east and push Ukrainian forces back from the Belgorod border.

Second, Ukraine’s systematic interdiction of Russian logistics in the south is achieving more than is publicly acknowledged. The combination of a disabled Trans-Tavrian rail link and active drone patrols on the Mariupol highway is squeezing Russian supply capacity to Crimea and southern front forces in ways that will compound over time. Civil transport along this route has been banned by the Russians.

Third, the deep strike campaign against Russian oil infrastructure is achieving dual effect: economic attrition of Russia’s war financing capacity and psychological pressure on a Russian population discovering that no territory is truly safe from Ukrainian reach.

Fourth, the peace process has now been publicly assessed by the US Secretary of State as not functioning. Rubio’s description of the talks as producing nothing and his explicit statement that there are currently no active negotiations is significant. It removes the diplomatic ambiguity that has allowed Moscow to present itself as a willing partner while still attacking Ukraine on the ground and from the air. The question now is whether these Rubio comments translate into further diplomatic initiatives, specifically the sanctions against Russia that both Rubio and Zelensky have repeatedly referred to, but the Trump administration has consistently deferred.

The Pacific

The Xi-Putin Summit. Four days after President Trump left Beijing, Vladimir Putin arrived. This was hardly a coincidence. Russia’s president visited China on 19 to 20 May 2026 for a two-day summit with President Xi Jinping, visiting his key foreign partner. As CNBC reported on 21 May 2026, Putin left Beijing with declarations of enduring friendship, a stack of bilateral agreements, but without the energy pipeline breakthrough Moscow had flagged would be “discussed in great detail.” The Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, a critical piece of Russia’s strategy to reorient gas exports towards Asia following the collapse of European markets in the past four years, remains unresolved.

The Xi-Putin summit produced around 40 deals including education, trade, technology, intellectual property, energy, media, automobiles and civilian nuclear cooperation, according to the South China Morning Post’s summit coverage. Energy remained a central theme of talks, with commitments to stable Russian oil and gas supplies to China.

With respect to the war in Ukraine, China urged de-escalation and negotiations; Russia praised China’s “objective and unbiased” position. Both leaders framed their partnership as a stabilising global force and emphasised coordination through the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS. Chinese state media reported Xi telling Putin: “The tide of unilateral hegemony is running rampant”. This is a theme that Xi employs to characterise the U.S.-led international order as the adversary against which the China-Russia partnership defines itself.

The military dimension of the summit deserves attention. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies reported on 21 May 2026 that both leaders agreed to deepen military trust and cooperation, including expanding joint exercises, air patrols and maritime patrols. Reuters reported on 19 May that European intelligence agencies have documented that China trained 200 Russian military personnel in Chinese military facilities beginning in July 2025, with Chinese military officers providing expertise in drones, electronic warfare, armoured infantry and other subjects.

Some Russian personnel who received training were instructors intending to disseminate Chinese tactics throughout Russian drone units; others had been deployed to occupied Ukrainian territories. This confirms that China is not just providing dual-use economic goods that sustain Russia’s war economy but is actively contributing to Russian battlefield capabilities.

The Xi-Putin summit, coming immediately after the Xi-Trump summit, crystallises the central strategic dynamic of the contemporary environment: China is managing two distinct but related relationships simultaneously, and doing so with some skill. With Washington, Xi pursued strategic stability and economic de-escalation. With Moscow, Xi deepened a partnership that NATO has characterised as China being a ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The two postures are, from Beijing’s perspective, complementary. China benefits from Russia continuing the war in Ukraine because it depletes Western military resources, occupies Washington’s strategic attention and demonstrates the limits of U.S. power.

Taiwan Arms Sales. Taiwan’s security environment this week was dominated by a single question: whether the United States can still be relied upon to deliver promised arms. The answer from Washington has been ambiguous in a way that has alarmed Taipei.

The Hill reported that Acting U.S. Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao told a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing that Washington was withholding a 14 billion US dollar arms package to ensure it had sufficient munitions for the Iran war. As he stated, “right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury…foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems necessary.”

The Taipei Times reported on 23 May 2026 that Taiwan’s Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo said Taiwan had not received any information about possible adjustments to the planned sale, which reportedly includes PAC-3 MSE interceptors and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems. Cao’s remarks appeared to contradict Trump’s own comments that he was still deliberating on the package, describing it as a “very good negotiating chip for us” in ongoing trade talks with China.

Congress responded immediately. The Taipei Times reported on 24 May 2026 that a bipartisan group of U.S. senatorsintroduced a resolution reaffirming the Taiwan Relations Act and the US obligation to provide arms of a defensive nature to Taiwan. The resolution (which you can read in full here) was introduced by Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Thom Tillis, with Senators Chris Coons and Susan Collins as co-sponsors.

Senator Shaheen stated that “America’s support for Taiwan is non-negotiable…the president’s failure has real costs for Americans by inviting aggression from the PRC that could cost countless lives and trigger an enormous global economic downturn.” Tillis described Taiwan as one of the US’s strongest democratic partners in the Indo-Pacific, playing a critical role in promoting regional stability.

This is becoming a test case for the robustness of the U.S. security commitment to Taiwan in an environment of competing strategic demands. Taiwan has not, it should be noted, received any official communication about the arms sale delay.

This is occurring at a critical time. The combination of a U.S. administration using Taiwan’s defensive capabilities as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with China, a U.S. Navy pause on weapon deliveries citing Iran war munitions requirements, and Beijing’s continued coercive pressure on Taipei creates the conditions for miscalculation. The bipartisan Senate resolution reaffirming the Taiwan Relations Act is a meaningful signal, but congressional resolutions do not deliver PAC-3 interceptors or drones.

China’s Rare Earth Weapon. China’s January 2026 imposition of export controls on dual-use items to Japan represents a strategically important economic coercion move, and its effects continue to ripple through Japan’s defence industrial base. The controls, announced by China’s Ministry of Commerce in Announcement No. 1 of 2026, prohibit the export of all dual-use items to Japanese military end-users or for uses that could contribute to enhancing Japan’s military capabilities. The trigger was remarks by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggesting that a Chinese military attack on Taiwan could constitute a threat to Japan’s survival.

The strategic significance extends well beyond Japan. As a CSIS analysis has noted, a number of countries that have shown support for Taiwan, including the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and members of the European Union, remain particularly reliant on China for rare earths. China’s willingness to weaponise access to these materials introduces a powerful constraint on the strategic calculus of democratic governments: the threat of export restrictions directly undermines their own industrial bases, energy security and economic growth in ways that could force governments to reassess how far and how visibly they are prepared to intervene in a Taiwan contingency. Mineral dependence has become a deterrent lever that shapes political behaviour well before any military conflict occurs.

PLA Cognitive Warfare and South China Sea Friction. The ISW-AEI China and Taiwan Update of 22 May 2026documented PRC AIS spoofing as an expanding form of cognitive warfare, and that this is now being directed against Taiwan and the Philippines. Chinese vessels broadcasting fake ship signals from Manila and New Taipei City are causing ship-tracking systems to detect phantom vessels, inflating the apparent number of PRC boats in disputed waters and wasting decision-making resources. Reuters has reported that China has also been experimenting with aerial drones broadcasting fake aircraft signals in the South China Sea. These represent a systematic Chinese effort to overwhelm and disorient the situational awareness of democratic nations in the western Pacific without breaching the threshold of kinetic attacks.

Confrontations at Second Thomas Shoal continued this week. IBTimes Singapore reported on 18 May 2026 that Chinese coast guard and maritime militia ships challenged Philippine vessels attempting to deliver supplies to troops aboard the grounded BRP Sierra Madre. The PLA Southern Theatre Command deployed H-6 bombers armed with anti-ship missiles near Scarborough Shoal during the Balikatan 2026 exercises. Beijing’s pattern of coupling allied military cooperation with intensified PLA nearby activity is a deliberate choice designed to signal that cooperation with the United States carries a cost for countries in the region.

Connecting the Theatres

The back-to-back summits in Beijing tell a strategic story. Trump arrived seeking economic de-escalation and a deal on Iran; he left with a ‘constructive relationship of strategic stability’ and no resolution on Taiwan’s arms sale. Putin arrived seeking energy pipeline commitment and military endorsement; he left with 40 limited agreements and a ‘basic understanding’ on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline that fell short of the breakthrough Moscow wanted. Xi received both leaders without committing to the full range of demands that his visitors wanted.

The most significant outcome of the Xi-Putin summit for Ukraine is the confirmation that China is deepening, not constraining, its military support for Russia. The training of 200 Russian soldiers in Chinese military facilities in drone and electronic warfare techniques is not an act of a neutral mediator. It is the act of an ally managing optics while providing substantive assistance.

As for Trump’s visit, deals were made on multiple issues. But, China did not give Trump everything he wanted, particularly with regards to Iran or Ukraine. The China – America relationship will, in the words of Zongyuan Zoe Liu, henceforth be “more transactional and potentially more unstable: managed rivalry through bilateral bargaining.”

Putin will be content for now that Xi is not abandoning him – or Iran. Russia’s war economy is under strain from Ukrainian strikes and Western sanctions, but China’s continued provision of trade, technology and now military training sustains Russia’s national capacity to fight at a level that a genuinely neutral China would not permit. We need to accept the reality that despite Xi’s rhetoric on the war, China has chosen a side.

Xi is portraying himself as the beacon of stable strategic leadership in a chaotic world.

For the Pacific, the U.S.-Iran war’s demands on American munitions stocks is creating tension in the delivery of defensive arms to Taiwan, and potential constraints on the stockpiles available for Pacific deterrence and contingencies. This is the multi-theatre pressure that America’s strategic competitors have now created. It is forcing the United States to choose priorities among simultaneous crises.

A pending U.S.-Iran peace deal, which has been discussed by Trump on social media, could partially relieve this pressure. But the munitions capacity diverted to the Iran theatre will take some time to reconstitute (although new affordable missiles might be delivered rapidly, as explained in this piece), and the credibility costs of treating Taiwan’s arms as a negotiating chip with Beijing will have an impact on all of America’s Pacific security partners’ strategic calculations. The democracies of the Pacific, Japan most prominent among them, are watching American strategic deliberations and decision-making and building their own capabilities accordingly.

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It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included articles on the Xi-Putin summit in Beijing, China’s persistent, large-scale cyber attacks, and what the Strait of Hormuz crisis might mean for the Pacific. There is also a good round up of the war in the Black Sea since 2022, and an excellent piece on military professionalism.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. The Putin-Xi Summit

It has been a big week for summits in Beijing. In this piece published by Engelsberg Ideas, the author looks at the Xi-Putin summit through the lens of historical interactions between China and Russia. As the author notes, “increasingly it is the Russians who are once again reverting to historical type as humble petitioners at the court of a Celestial Emperor.” You can read the full article at this link.

2. China’s Massed, Persistent Cyber Attacks

The first line of this article had me: “What if the next decisive intelligence advantage isn’t a recruited insider but a nation’s ability to model entire societies from its digital exhaust?” In this piece published by War on the Rocks, the author explores China’s Salt Typhoon persistent cyber campaigns against American networks and how it indicates a new approach to large scale, exhaustive and systemic intelligence collection, analysis and exploitation by the Chinese. The full article is available at this link.

3. Hormuz and the Pacific

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/hormuz-warning-indo-pacific

4. Kid Rock and Military Professionalism

The profession of arms imposes standards of behaviour, professional conduct and stewardship, and it is a topic that I have explored over many years. In this excellent piece published by War on the Rocks, the authors examine the recent conduct of a US Army helicopter crew in flying near Kid Rocks house, the subsequent investigation and the Secretary of Defense’s overturning of an investigation into their conduct. As they note, “these events did not ”highlight” the military’s professionalism. Instead, they further short-circuited the standards upon which the military’s reputation for professionalism rests, leading Caine to acknowledge in front of Congress that safety standards and procedures for review are now open to partisan interpretation.” Democracies and partisan politicians mess with the professional ethic of military institutions at their peril. You can read the full article at this link.

5. The Battle of the Black Sea

H.I. Sutton has set the standard on reporting on various elements of maritime warfare and technological developments over many years. His website, Covert Shores, is a fabulous resource for those who wish to know more about maritime developments in the Ukraine War as well as aspects of maritime operations in the Indo-Pacific. In this article, Sutton provides a timely update on the Black Sea campaign being waged by Ukraine to deny the Russian Navy the ability to influence Ukraine’s vital exports through this important body of water, and deny the Russians freedom of manoeuvre. You can read the full piece here.

Thank you for reading The Big Five. I look forward to providing you with another update and reading recommendations next week.

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In the early hours of 17 May 2026, Moscow residents woke to the sound of explosions. Ukraine launched what Russian officials described as the largest drone assault on the Russian capital in more than a year, sending more than 500 unmanned systems deep into Russian territory and striking targets within the city and across the surrounding region. At least four people were killed and a dozen injured. Fires broke out near the Moscow Oil Refinery in the Kapotnya district. The Angstrom microelectronics plant in Zelenograd, a key node in Russia’s defence industrial network, was struck. Debris fell on the grounds of Sheremetyevo Airport, Russia’s busiest aviation hub. Russian air defences claimed to have intercepted 556 drones overnight across the country, and more than 120 over the Moscow region alone. Some, as the burning refinery and the smoking ruins of residential buildings showed, got through.

This was not the first attack on Moscow, and it was not designed as purely a propaganda spectacular. The Moscow attack was the logical continuation of a Ukrainian long-range strike campaign that has been building for four years, and which is now reshaping the strategic landscape of the war in ways that Vladimir Putin cannot easily reverse.

Target Moscow: A Campaign Built Over Four Years

While Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russia has been ongoing for four years, the campaign against Moscow has a clear genealogy. It began in May 2023, when two drones exploded above the Senate Palace inside the Kremlin. This shocked the Russian public and signalled that the war that Putin started in Ukraine could reach the Russian seat of power. By July 2023, strikes had begun reaching Moscow’s commercial and financial districts. Through 2024, the campaign broadened, with attacks increasingly focusing on the infrastructure underpinning Russia’s military economy, including fuel depots and oil refineries. A major strike in March 2025 saw more than 70 drones intercepted near the capital in a single day, at that stage the largest attack of the war.

By early 2026, the cadence and scale had intensified further. Between March 14 and 16 this year, approximately 250 drones targeted the Moscow region over three consecutive days. The strikes were not just symbolic. They were operational, targeting military-industrial facilities, fuel infrastructure, and the Russian air defence system. The May 17 attack was the culmination of this progression, not an outlier.

Zelenskyy’s Signal

Those watching Ukraine’s political messaging were not surprised. On 15 May 2026, two days before the Moscow attack, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated publicly that he had met with the leadership of the General Staff, military intelligence, and the Security Service to discuss expanding long-range strike operations. He was explicit that Ukraine’s campaign against Russian oil infrastructure, military production, and logistics networks would intensify. He described these operations as Ukraine’s own form of “long-range sanctions” against Russia.

In his social media post, Zelenskyy stated that:

We are defining targets for our next long-range sanctions against Russia over this war and the strikes against our cities and villages. Ukraine will not allow any of the aggressor’s strikes that take the lives of our people to go unpunished. We are entirely justified in our responses against Russia’s oil industry, military production, and those directly responsible for committing war crimes against Ukraine and Ukrainians. I am grateful to our warriors for their dedication to defending Ukraine’s interests, and to all involved Ukrainian institutions for building a truly strong system of our long-range sanctions. This is having a tangible impact.

Russia had just delivered one of its most devastating strikes of the war. Between 13 and 14 May, Russian forces launched 1,567 drones and 56 missiles against Ukraine, killing at least 24 people in Kyiv, including three children, when a missile destroyed a nine-storey apartment building. Zelenskyy, standing at the ruins, told the world that Ukraine would respond.

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This edition of The Big Five covers the week of 11 to 17 May 2026, a period bookended by two defining events: a devastating Russian mass drone and missile attack on Kyiv that killed at least seventeen people, and the first U.S. presidential state visit to Beijing in nine years.

In Ukraine, the trajectory of the war has shifted in ways that would have seemed implausible two years ago. Ukrainian deep-strike operations now routinely reach targets more than 2,000 kilometres inside Russia, Russia is losing ground, and Russian personnel losses have outpaced recruitment for five consecutive months. Yet peace negotiations remain fragile, with Moscow insisting on territorial concessions that Kyiv regards as existential.

In the Pacific, the Trump-Xi summit produced good atmospherics, carefully hedged commitments and few significant outcomes. The summit left allies in the Pacific region to assess whether the architecture of regional deterrence remains intact. This update provides an extended analysis on this topic, as well as the normal updates on security in the Pacific region.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Five.

The War in Ukraine

The Frontline. The frontlines across eastern and southern Ukraine remained violent in the week of 11 to 17 May 2026, although there was limited exchange of territory. Ukrainian General Staff reporting, aggregated through EMPR.media and corroborated by the Institute for the Study of War, recorded 241 combat engagements across a single 24-hour period on 14 May alone, representing one of the highest daily totals since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Russian forces continue to press hardest in the Donetsk direction, with sustained assault activity reported around Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, Toretske, and along the Novopavlivka axis. Despite months of Russian effort, Ukrainian defenders have held the principal defensive lines in this sector, inflicting disproportionate casualties on attacking infantry columns.

The latest Russia Matters update notes that in the past month, Russia has lost 45 square miles. For two months running, Russia has been losing ground.

Despite this, senior Russian military commanders have put on their happy faces and briefed Putin that Russian ground forces are advancing beyond Kupyansk. The key problem with this narrative is that the Russians have not even captured Kupyansk, let alone commenced an advance west of the city. As today’s update from the Institute for the Study of War notes:

Russian Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov met with the Russian Western Grouping of Forces on May 16 and made a series of false claims about the situation in the Kupyansk, Borova, and Lyman directions.[1] Gerasimov claimed that Russian forces are advancing west of Kupyansk toward Shevchenkove… Gerasimov identified Russia’s next operational objective after the seizure of Kupyansk as Shevchenkove, but Russian forces are not close to seizing Kupyansk.

For the fifth consecutive month, Russian losses have outpaced the Kremlin’s ability to recruit replacements. Ukraine’s Defence Minister confirmed that over 35,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded in April 2026 alone, continuing a pattern that defence analyst commentary tracked on specialist platforms including Ronin’s Grips and United24 Media.

The Deep Strike Campaigns. This week, Russia conducted a massive aerial assault on Kyiv overnight on 13 to 14 May. The attack on Kyiv, reported in detail by CNN and the Kyiv Independent, involved more than 1,560 drones over a two-day period, striking residential buildings in the capital, killing at least seventeen people and injuring dozens more. The Kyiv mayor described it as the largest-ever attack on the capital. A nine-storey apartment building was struck, with rescuers working through rubble to locate survivors. Energy infrastructure, including a power substation and a high-voltage line, was also damaged.

The Ukrainian Air Force produced the following interception figures: they shot down 41 missiles and 652 UAVs, broken down to:

• 0 out of 3 Kh-47 Kinzhal aero ballistic missiles (launched from Lipetsk region),

• 12 out of 18 Iskander-M/S-400 ballistic missiles (from Bryansk and Kursk region),

• 29 out of 35 Kh-101 cruise missiles (Volgograd region) and

• 652 out of 675 strike UAVs (Bryansk, Kursk, Orel, Rostov, Crimea).

As I sit down to write this update on a Sunday morning, eastern Australian time, a Ukrainian drone attack is underway against the Russian capital. At least 50 drones have been sighted so far, although as the hours pass, we will learn more about the scale of the attack. A recent update, which appears to show a Ukrainian drone having struck a target in the vicinity of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo international airport is below.

During the week, the Ukrainian president issued a social media post about Ukraine’s thinking and intentions with its long-range strike campaign. Zelenskyy wrote that:

First, we are defining targets for our next long-range sanctions against Russia over this war and the strikes against our cities and villages. Ukraine will not allow any of the aggressor’s strikes that take the lives of our people to go unpunished. We are entirely justified in our responses against Russia’s oil industry, military production, and those directly responsible for committing war crimes against Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Ukraine’s strategic strike campaign against Russian territory has now surpassed Russia’s own long-range strike effort. As documented by United24 Media and analysed by the Atlantic Council, Ukraine launched some 7,000 long-range drones against Russian military targets in March 2026 alone, overtaking Russia in total long-range strike volume for the first time.

The Russian air alert system issued warnings 2,000 kilometres from Ukraine on 5 May, illustrating the geographic reach of Ukrainian drone operations. The Ukrainian campaign has targeted oil refineries, naval vessels, military airfields and logistics nodes. Russian aviation, once operating from bases close to Ukraine, has been forced to relocate thousands of kilometres east. Ukrainian drones have recently struck Shagol airfield in the Chelyabinsk region, 1,700 kilometres from the front line.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian port terminals and oil infrastructure during spring 2026 have disrupted Russian energy exports and damaged refinery capacity, according to reporting tracked through Stefan Korshak’s Substack and open-source analysts monitoring satellite imagery of refinery fires. This week, targets hit include:

• Taman Naftogaz terminal, near the Kerch Strait.

• The Astrakhan Gas Processing Plant.

• The Nurino Transneft oil terminal in the Volga region.

• An oil refinery in Yaroslavl.

• A large air defence radar in Donetsk.

• The Ryazan oil refinery.

• A Russian navy minesweeper and a missile boat in the Caspian Sea.

• Russian military aircraft.

  

The deeper strategic aim is clear: to make Russia’s vast geographic depth a liability rather than a shield. NATO-era doctrine always treated Russian depth as a formidable defensive advantage, but Ukrainian drone operators are systematically proving otherwise.

Interestingly, it is the ‘middle strike’ activities (strikes in the range of 20-300km from the frontline) of the Unmanned Systems Force which might generate another strategic impact: cutting off Russian land access to Crimea. As Stefan Korshak details in his latest update, Ukrainian forces have now established drone primacy over some of the southern Russian lines of communication, including the route from Mariupol to Crimea.

Korshak describes how a key contributor to this campaign has been “new strike drones that are very effective in the 50–150 km range envelope (Bulava, RAM-2X, and Blyskavka), a reconnaissance drone that operates persistently in that envelope (Shark), [and] bigger numbers of all those weapons.” While this might be a useful negotiating point for peace talks, it also useful operational shaping should Ukrainian forces wish to conduct more offensive operations in the south as well as isolate Russian forces in Crimea.

Stalled Ceasefire Diplomacy. The diplomatic landscape remains inconclusive. A U.S.-backed ceasefire during Russia’s 9 May Victory Day was observed in a limited fashion, accompanied by prisoner exchange discussions. Putin subsequently signalled in remarks to journalists, reported by Al Jazeera, that the war might be “coming to an end” and that he was prepared to meet Zelenskyy in Moscow or a neutral country.

President Zelenskyy, responding through the Kyiv Independent, called for a long-term ceasefire with reliable and guaranteed security arrangements, and directed Ukrainian negotiators to clarify Moscow’s actual terms with the US side.

Broader peace negotiations remain stalled, with the last trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia and the United States having taken place in February 2026. A follow-up round was postponed following U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran. Analysis by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace provides a detailed account of the negotiations, noting that the military track has made the most progress, with technical discussions about ceasefire implementation, troop withdrawal lines, monitoring arrangements and violation attribution mechanisms all advancing, if slowly.

Territorial negotiations, by contrast, remain “difficult and tense.” Russia refuses a cessation of hostilities without Ukraine surrendering the remaining parts of Donetsk Oblast under Kyiv’s control. Ukraine refuses any ceasefire without clearly defined security guarantees.

Ukraine Assessment

Ukraine enters the second half of May 2026 in a position of enhanced military resilience. Its deep-strike campaign has transformed the strategic geometry of the war, denying Russia any sanctuary in its ‘homeland’. Russian personnel attrition has reached a pace that is now structurally unsustainable without far more coercive domestic mobilisation measures than the Kremlin has so far been willing to impose.

These are significant achievements. Yet they have not translated into territorial recovery (yet), and the diplomatic stalemate leaves Ukrainian civilians exposed to ongoing, nightly mass Russian aerial bombardment, death and destruction, of a kind that European cities have not experienced since the Second World War.

The principal strategic risk for Ukraine in the coming months is that negotiating pressure builds from an impatient Trump administration at the same time that Russian attrition, though severe, has not yet produced a collapse in Moscow’s willingness to fight. Putin has demonstrated a capacity to absorb losses that has repeatedly confounded Western analyses.

For Ukraine, the path forward requires sustaining both military pressure and political cohesion while navigating allies whose priorities do not always align with Ukraine’s own existential interests.

The Pacific

The Beijing Summit. The most important event in the Pacific this week was the first U.S. presidential state visit to Beijing in nine years. President Trump’s two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on 14 and 15 May dominated global attention, and its implications for regional security will take weeks to fully assess. As documented by CNN Politics, CNBC and the Council on Foreign Relations, the summit was heavier on symbolism than on outcomes or commitments.

Xi described a new vision of building a “constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability,” language that CFR analysts interpreted as an attempt by Beijing to lock in a favourable détente for the remainder of the Trump term and establish a baseline against which future competitive steps could be framed as violations. Trump described the summit as resolving “a lot of different problems,” though no substantive announcements were made public on the second day of talks.

Taiwan was a key element of the summit’s strategic content. Xi described it as “the most important issue in US-China relations,” warning that:

If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.

Trump’s public comments afterwards were hedged. He told Fox News he would like to see the situation “stay the way it is,” speculated that China would not act against Taiwan during his presidency, but suggested it “might” after he left office. Critically, Trump declined to commit to continuing arms sales to Taiwan, saying only that he would “have that discussion” with Xi.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu emphasised that the island was “maintaining good communication” with Washington, and Secretary of State Rubio confirmed that long-standing US policy on Taiwan “has not changed,” though the absence of a more explicit reaffirmation from Trump himself was noted by analysts across CSIS and the German Marshall Fund. Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund warned that any rhetorical softening from Trump on Taiwan, even if ambiguous, would be “the most destabilising outcome” of the summit, potentially emboldening Beijing to take more assertive steps to erode Taiwanese autonomy.

The Taiwanese government, in the wake of the summit, vowed to maintain the current ‘status quo’,’ noting that “it is an undeniable fact that the Republic of China is a sovereign and independent democratic nation.”

On Ukraine, the Chinese readout noted that Beijing “hopes the conflict will end as soon as possible.” Georgetown professor Dennis Wilder told CNBC it was possible the summit might lead to a reduction in Chinese support for Russia’s war effort, though the historical pattern of Chinese firms transferring dual-use materials to Russia despite Xi’s explicit commitments to Western leaders means this is unlikely.

The summit also addressed Iran, trade, agricultural market access and technology, with both sides agreeing to establish a trade council and an investment council and to maintain diplomatic and military communication channels. Xi is expected to visit the United States in the autumn.

Overall, the summit appeared to focus on relationship stabilisation above other outcomes. As a Foreign Affairs summarynotes:

After a year of escalation and retaliation, including across-the-board U.S. tariffs and Chinese export controls on rare-earth minerals, both sides left the meeting touting success in stabilizing the relationship. But with the major underlying disputes between Beijing and Washington still unresolved, the future of the competition between the world’s two most powerful countries remains in flux.

Perhaps one of the better summaries of the summit was provided by the Japan Times, which noted that:

When the U.S. and Chinese leaders sat down for their high-stakes summit in Beijing this week, the atmosphere was a far cry from the frantic damage control that had defined previous encounters. Gone was the defensive crouch of a China reeling from trade volleys. In its place was a meticulously choreographed performance, where Chinese leader Xi Jinping sought to frame bilateral ties not as a struggle for dominance, but as a period of “moderate competition” with “manageable differences.” By the time U.S. President Donald Trump’s three-day visit ended on Friday, it became clear that the world’s most consequential relationship had moved into a calculated strategic stalemate, one where China now operates from a position of assumed parity.

Whether China has actually reached a position of strategic parity with America remains to be seen. But it is acting like it has, which could lead Xi and Trump alike into strategic miscalculations in the years ahead.

That said, the Beijing summit produced neither the breakthrough nor the breakdown that some analysts feared or hoped for. The constructive atmospherics are useful, and the establishment of trade and investment councils, combined with Xi’s commitment to a U.S. visit later in 2026, suggest both sides see value in managing the competition within guardrails for now. But the conditions generating competition, PLA military modernisation, Taiwan’s unresolved status, allied defence build-ups and technology decoupling, have not changed.

The most significant risk from the summit lies in ambiguity. Trump’s comments on Taiwan’s future, while not constituting a formal policy shift, were imprecise enough to generate concern among allies and security partners in the western Pacific about whether the US strategic commitment to deterrence in the Taiwan Strait remains as firm as it was a year ago. Allied governments will be watching closely whether the current U.S.-China détente produces changes in Chinese behaviour, particularly regarding support for Russia and military operations around Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

Taiwan: Deterrence Under Pressure. Taiwan’s security situation has grown more complex over the past week following the Beijing summit’s ambiguous signals on U.S. arms sales. The Trump administration’s USD 2 billion Taiwan defence package for fiscal 2026, as documented by Army Recognition, including USD 1 billion under the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative and USD 1 billion for replenishment of US inventories, represents a significant commitment. It includes co-production of unmanned systems, counter-drone technologies and joint operational planning, bypassing the slower Foreign Military Sales process. However, Trump’s failure to publicly reaffirm arms sales commitments during or after the Beijing summit was noted by Taiwan’s foreign minister as requiring careful monitoring.

Taiwan Military Structure Reforms. The Taiwan Security Monitor has commenced a new regular report which is focused on organisational change and reform in the Taiwanese military. In the latest update, reforms related to drones are covered. The Taiwanese are establishing multiple new drone units. Three independent drone battalions, subordinated to the 21^st, 58^th, and 43^rd Artillery Commands, respectively, will be established by July 2026. Additionally, in April of this year, the Army inaugurated the Unmanned Systems Training Command to integrate unmanned systems training and research between the different military services. Reserve units have also begun incorporating drone operations into mobilisation training

Reforming PLA Military Theory Development. One of the most important strategic functions of any military institution is to think through the implications of new technologies and changes in the strategic environment to develop new theories of warfighting and military operations. Every modern military organization has elements that scan the horizon for threats and then include this into work to produce new strategic policy and military doctrine. China is no different.

This week, Taiwanese scholar K. Tristan Tang published an excellent article that examines how China is evolving its military theory development system. The article explores the changes and their implications for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As Tristan notes:

The regulations mainly divide military theory work into two major categories: vertical control and horizontal division of labour. These categories cover five major areas: the management system, content and publication procedures, the full-process management chain, military theory achievements, and support and guarantee foundations. The regulations focus on building a joint operational theory system capable of adapting to future warfare. They also emphasize changes in technology, warfare, and adversaries to understand the mechanisms of victory in informatized and intelligentized warfare.

Importantly, Tristan proposes that in the short term, the PLA appears to not be planning major operations. But in the longer term, however, “observers should pay close attention to changes in PLA operational concepts and doctrine, including ideas such as dissipative warfare.” The full article can be read here.

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It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included two articles on the issues related to military operations in defence of Taiwan against a Chinese attack. There are also articles on the Russian’s views about the employment of land forces in the 21st century, the American military preparedness for a wart against China and a useful report on military adaptation.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. Island Chain Allies

This article explores how Chinese aggression in the past few years has resulted in a closer relationship developing between Japan and The Philippines. As the author notes in the article, both “Tokyo and Manila also fear the geopolitical consequences of a successful Chinese attack on Taiwan, which would shatter the “first island chain”.” You can read about this evolving security relationship in the western Pacific here.

2. Would Hellscape Work?

While the development of military theory and doctrine are vital undertakings for military institutions, it is also important to test and wargame various warfighting concepts to ensure the theory that underpins future military operations is sound. To this end, this article explores the Hellscape concept, which is designed to employ drones to conduct a round 1000 engagements per day against a PLA force that seeks to invade Taiwan. It is a very useful analysis, and can be read at this link.

3. Moscow’s views of the war of tomorrow

Military institutions are constantly scanning for future threats and honing their organisational ideas about how they will respond. In this new report from the NATO Defence College, the author explores how Russia is viewing the future of warfare. He proposes that “Russia’s vision of “tomorrow’s war” differs sharply from NATO’s. Moscow envisions not a localized conflict in north-eastern Europe but a large-scale global confrontation with geoeconomic roots with the United States as the primary driver of instability.” Read all about it at this link.

4. Adaptation in Contact

Regular readers of my articles will not be surprised that I have included a new report on military adaptation. It is the central capability for military institutions, particularly in an era where the time to imagine, develop and field weapons such as drones can now be measured in weeks and months rather than years and decades. This new report examines why effective adaptation structures and cultures are so important in military institutions. The full report is available at this link.

5. Is the United States Prepared for a War with China?

In this article from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the author argues that the Iran war has once again highlighted deficiencies in the U.S. defence industrial base and in particular, its inventories and production capacity for advanced munitions. The article proposes several urgent actions that are required to remedy this situation. You can read the full piece at this link.

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One of the things I really enjoy about the longer form interviews and conversations with podcasts is that they allow a broader coverage of specific issues than the shorter interviews on other media. Both have their place of course, but the podcast format allows some good, in-depth discussion about important strategic issues.

This week, I did two podcast interviews.

The first was with Nataly Lutsenko, a Ukrainian journalist who does interviews on the War and Politics 24 platform. We have spoken regularly in person and virtually over the past couple of years about a variety of issues related to the war in Ukraine. Our conversation this week, which you can view below, covered the Russian May Day parade, support from Europe to Ukraine and the latest trends on the frontline, middle strike operations and the respective deep strike campaigns of Ukraine and Russia.

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The second interview was with Kate Gerbeau on the Times Radio Frontline daily podcast platform. I have had the privilege to speak with Kate and her colleagues multiple times over the course of the war in Ukraine. In this interview, we not only discuss the war in Ukraine, but also the Trump-Xi summit of 14-15 May, Taiwan’s latest defence budget and issues related to Pacific security. You can view the interview with Kate below.

I hope you enjoy the conversations and find them informative.

Have a great day!

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I recently returned from a research visit to Taiwan. There, I was able to meet with a range of military and civilian organisations, and discuss issues related to national security and military affairs. One particular topic I discussed with several people during my visit was the implications of China’s one-child policy on military institutions. This article is the result of those conversations.

China’s one-child policy, implemented in 1980 and not retired until 2015, represents one of the most consequential acts of state demographic engineering in modern history. Its objectives were narrowly economic, primarily reducing the strain of population growth on development. But the downstream effects of the policy have been multidimensional, and increasingly apparent as a national security concern.

The aim of this article is to explore the impacts of the policy on Chinese military capacity. In essence, the question to be explored here is this: what are the implications for a military organisation that has a majority of personnel who are only children?

I commence the exploration of this question with a review of literature about the broader strategic security implications of China’s one-child policy. I then focus on the specific military implications, using the literature as well as interviews from my recent visit to Taiwan.

The One-Child Policy: A Short Literature Review

A range of reports have examined the topic of China’s one-child policy through the lens of national security. A 2004 study published by MIT Press / Belfer Center Studies in International Security, called Bare Branches, found that China’s sex-ratio imbalance poses serious domestic and international security risks. In 2021, a study published by the Rajaratnam School of International Studies described how China has made significant advances in military technology, but its human capital has struggled to keep pace due to recruiting shortfalls.

A 2023 study by the American Enterprise Institute found that by 2050 nearly half of China’s military-age male pool will consist of only children, meaning any significant armed conflict will carry an unprecedented risk of family lineage extinction for many Chinese households. Finally, a 2024 report from RAND, titled Fertility Decline in China and Its National, Military, Structural, and Regime Security, examined China’s demographic trends through 2050, as well as its implications including military security, fiscal strain, pension costs, economic slowdown, and regime security.

From this body of literature, and a number of other studies, several key themes from the literature are apparent.

The first finding across the literature is that China’s demographic trajectory is now essentially locked in for at least two generations. The literature emphasises that China’s fertility rate had already fallen before the one-child policy was introduced in the late 1970s. Successive policy relaxations, to two children in 2015 and three in 2021, have failed to reverse the decline. China’s fertility rate fell to the world’s second-lowest level by 2024. The population pyramid is already inverting; people over 60 now account for more than 20 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion, and United Nations projections suggest this could reach half the total population by 2100.

The second finding is that the PLA faces no immediate manpower crisis in quantitative terms. China’s youth cohorts remain larger than those of countries such as the United States.

A third finding is that these only children appear to have greater issues fitting into military environments. A paper published in 2011 called Little Emperors found that “those who grew up as only children as a consequence of the policy are found to be less trusting, less trustworthy, less likely to take risks, and less competitive than if they had had siblings. They are also less optimistic, less conscientious.”

Fourth, the PLA has acknowledged the challenge. The 2021 report on this topic by Loro Horta, and a 2024 analysis by 9DashLine describe institutional responses by the PLA. These include relaxed fitness and eyesight standards for enlistment, expanded female recruitment, and broader access to psychological support. The PLA has also loosened restrictions on smartphone use during exercises—an acknowledgement, noted with some irony in internal Chinese commentary, that soldiers otherwise risk compromising their concealment by using personal devices. These adaptations reflect an institution adjusting to the human material available to it rather than setting the terms of its own recruitment.

A fifth theme, and perhaps the most strategically significant one, to emerge from the literature is the one identified most starkly by Eberstadt and Abramsky in their 2023 study, China’s Revolution in Family Structure. As they note, if a large proportion of China’s military-age male pool consists of only children, every significant military engagement carrying substantial casualties will, for a growing proportion of those casualties, mean the extinction of a family line. This is a sociological and psychological issue with no precedent in modern warfare.

Military Implications: An Unprecedented Challenge

While military history records armies drawing on young and inexperienced recruits, there is almost no historical precedent for a force comprised almost entirely of only children. That now appears to be the situation with the PLA. The most recent estimates from Chinese sources assert that at least 70 percent of PLA soldiers were from one-child families, and the figure rises to 80 per cent among combat troops. This figure was provided by Professor Liu Mingfu of the PLA National Defence University over a decade ago. The percentage, grew from 20 percent in 1996 and continued to grow through the 1990s and 2000s and may well have stabilised now. But even if this percentage has fallen slightly in the past decade, it remains a factor that any serious analysis of Chinese fighting power and military effectiveness must account for.

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While the United States and Iran search for a mutually agreed and endurable cessation of hostilities, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, small-scale attacks continue by both sides and the rest of the world watches the price of everything rising.

In Europe, the Ukraine war has entered a new phase, defined by the systematic extension of Ukrainian strike power deep into Russian-occupied and Russian-held territory as well as reversals two months running of Russian territorial gains. Concurrently, diplomats in Washington and Kyiv trade cautious language about the prospect of a ceasefire.

During the week, Ukraine also gave Russia permission to hold its annual Victory Parade without being attacked by Ukrainian drones.

In the Indo-Pacific, the conclusion of Balikatan 2026 has marked the most significant single demonstration of allied military integration in the region in years, with Japanese combat forces operating on Philippine soil for the first time since the Second World War, American Typhon launchers firing Tomahawk cruise missiles in live conditions, and Beijing responding with carrier deployments and hostile rhetoric.

Welcome to this week’s Big Five!

Ukraine

The “No Victory” Day Parade, 2026 edition. Russia’s Victory Day parade on 9 May was a symbol of the Ukraine war’s compounding pressures. Moscow restricted mobile internet across Red Square and surrounding areas amid fears of Ukrainian drone strikes during the parade. The decision to display no military hardware at the parade, instead showing a ‘greatest hits’ compilation on screens, was noted by Zelenskyy at the Yerevan summit as evidence of Russian weakness:

If that happens, it will be the first time in many, many years…They cannot afford military equipment, and they fear drones may buzz over Red Square.

Just before the parade, the Ukrainian president signed a decree exempting a small slice of Moscow where the parade takes place from Ukrainian deep strikes. This was both clever theatre and a pragmatic display from the Ukrainian president.

The whole world saw that President Putin’s parade was only able to be held uninterrupted because the Ukrainian president decided to make it so. This is a massive humiliation for Putin and has increasingly weary armed forces. But it was also a pragmatic approach by the Ukrainians: why try and tackle four dense rings of air defences around Moscow where there are much easier pickings across Russia, against which a much higher probability of strike success can be achieved?

One part of Putin’s speech this year stands out. He describes how:

The great feat of the victorious generation inspires the soldiers carrying out the tasks of the special military operation today. They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc. Despite this, our heroes are advancing.

It is interesting because NATO would be nowhere near as capable now if not for Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And of course, Putin repeats the usual lies about Russian forces advancing - in a month when Russia again lost more territory than it gained.

Overall, each successive Victory Day parade in Russia is appearing more and more pathetic, indicative of a nation in rapid decline. The parades are also a metaphor for Putin’s power - and chances of success in Ukraine (which is currently approaching zero).

The Latest “Ceasefire”. One of the most notable developments of the week was that on 8 May, US President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social that a three-day ceasefire (9 to 11 May), had been agreed between Russia and Ukraine. The announcement came after a week of competing unilateral ceasefires, mutual accusations, and continued heavy fighting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the arrangement shortly after Trump’s post, giving credit to U.S. mediation and calling on Washington to hold Moscow to its commitments.

Russia had already announced a unilateral two-day ceasefire for 8 and 9 May, aligned with its Victory Day parade. This collapsed almost immediately, with both sides blaming the other for continued attacks. Ukraine had separately declared its own ceasefire for 5 and 6 May. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking hours before Trump’s announcement, described US mediation efforts as having not yet produced a ‘fruitful outcome’, and said negotiations had stagnated. Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, was in Miami for talks with U.S. counterparts. The series of events indicates that the diplomatic environment remains deeply contested.

That said, a prisoner exchange of 1,000 detainees each was a positive outcome. However, there is no framework for what follows.

Moscow’s conditions for a more durable ceasefire have remained unchanged. A senior Kremlin official stated this week that Russia demands Ukrainian forces withdraw from the remainder of Donetsk Oblast as a precondition for any ceasefire agreement. Given that Russian forces have failed to achieve this objective militarily in over five years of war, the Russian demand is hard to read as a serious basis for talks.

The Ground War. The frontline this week was one of sustained Russian pressure with no major advances or breakthroughs. Ukraine’s General Staff reported 245 combat engagements in a single 24-hour period on 8 May (during Russia’s ceasefire), with Russian forces using 8,189 kamikaze drones and conducting 1,936 artillery barrages. The previous day had seen 208 combat engagements, 9,113 drones, and 292 guided aerial bombs dropped.

The Kupiansk axis has seen an interesting development. The ISW has assessed that Russian forces likely no longer maintain positions in Kupiansk itself, after struggling for months to support a small and isolated group of servicemembers that infiltrated into the city. This speaks to the logistical fragility of Russia’s extended offensive operations when supply lines are contested. With Ukraine stepping up its ‘middle strike’ operations against Russian logistics across the front line (what we would previously understand as battlefield interdiction), this may be an increasing trend in the following months. See more on this below.

Meanwhile, the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area, where Russian forces first infiltrated into the outskirts of Kostyantynivka in late October 2025, has seen no meaningful Russian progress, suggesting Russian forces are finding it increasingly difficult to convert local infiltrations into sustainable territorial gains.

For the second month in a row, it appears that Russia lost ground in its overall ground campaign in Ukraine. As the latest update from Russia Matters shows, Russia lost 46 square miles of territory in April. While small in the overall picture, this reinforces Ukrainian gains of the previous month. More importantly, it reverses a long-term Russian trend of month-on-month gains in territory illegally seized in Ukraine.

Since October 2023, Russia has gained ground every successive month – until now. Is this the start of a new trend in the war, or a temporary aberration similar to Russian losses of territory in September and October 2023? The next few months will tell.

At the same time, Russia is suffering major losses in killed and wounded. That is the subject of the next section of my update.

Russia’s Growing Casualty Crisis. The release of a new estimate by Mediazona and Meduza on 9 May provides the most rigorous independent accounting yet of Russian deaths in this war. Published on Russia’s Victory Day, the estimate places the total number of Russian citizens killed in Ukraine at 352,000 from the start of the full-scale invasion to the end of 2025. The methodology is explained in the article, which you can read here.

The 352,000 figure is broken down into two categories. 261,000 are what Mediazona terms ‘regular’ fatalities, calculated using the same method as previous estimates. The remaining 90,000 are ‘late’ fatalities: servicemembers whose deaths were declared by court order, registered as missing and subsequently confirmed dead, or whose deaths were officially registered with a delay of at least 180 days, because bodies were not recovered, not identified, or not delivered. This group became visible in both the Probate Registry and Russian court records only from mid-2024 onwards, when a mass campaign of court applications seeking to have servicemembers declared missing or dead began to gather pace.

The Mediazona number exists within a broader range of estimates from governments and think tanks. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in January 2026 that Russia had suffered at least 325,000 deaths between February 2022 and December 2025, with total casualties of 1.2 million. Then-British spy chief Richard Moore placed KIAs at approximately 240,000 by September 2025. Former CIA director William Burns estimated 1.1 million total casualties in a January 2026 interview. The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service and Bloomberg-cited Western officials both estimated around 1 million to 1.2 million combined killed and wounded by early 2026. Mediazona’s 352,000 dead is consistent with and sits at the upper end of these assessments.

The monthly breakdown from Ukrainian military statistics reveals an acceleration in casualties. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence recorded 35,351 Russian casualties in March 2026 and 35,203 in April 2026. President Zelenskyy confirmed on 5 May that Russia had lost more than 35,000 killed and seriously wounded in April 2026, with each confirmed casualty individually verified. In March, he reported that Russia had lost nearly 100,000 soldiers in the preceding three months, and that 90 percent of Russian front-line casualties were being attributed to Ukrainian drones. For context, December 2024 had set the single-month record at 48,670 casualties, part of a 2024 total of 430,790, equivalent to nearly 36 motorised rifle divisions.

The full picture, combining the Mediazona estimate with the monthly Ukrainian figures, is one of Russian society sustaining losses at a pace and scale that no major power has sustained since the Second World War. Russia’s total estimated losses now represent close to one percent of the country’s entire population of 143.3 million.

Two important caveats apply. First, Ukraine’s casualty figures combine killed and wounded in a single count and cannot be independently verified; they should be read as an order-of-magnitude indicator rather than a precise tally. Second, Mediazona’s 90,000 ‘late’ fatalities are an estimate as of mid-2025; more recent ‘belated’ deaths are not yet visible in the data because of the 180-day registration delay. The actual figure for the end of 2025 and into 2026 may be higher.

The Mediazona estimate reveals that Russia’s casualty crisis is probably far larger than Moscow’s silence on the subject might suggest. The scale of loss is being recorded in the nation’s legal and administrative systems in ways that are proving difficult to conceal. Although, given these new revelations, I am sure Putin will try to now reduce access to even these sources.

Ukraine’s Deep-Strike Campaign. Ukraine struck Russian oil infrastructure at least 21 times in April alone, including nine strikes on processing facilities. The combined effect cut Russia’s crude oil processing volume to its lowest level since 2009. Russia’s Leningrad Oblast, some 600 kilometres from Ukraine, was declared a ‘frontline region’ by its governor after 243 Ukrainian drones were intercepted there in a single quarter. These strikes are part of a systematic campaign against the industrial and logistics infrastructure sustaining Russia’s war effort.

One particular operation was notable. On 8 May, the National Guard’s 1st Azov Corps released footage of reconnaissance and strike drone operations over the city of Mariupol and its surrounding logistics routes. The footage showed strikes against Russian military trucks, fuel tankers, and ammunition transport vehicles on the T-0509 Mariupol-Donetsk highway and along the M-14 highway leading toward occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. The Azov Corps statement was pointed: “There are no longer safe routes for the occupiers.”

The drones employed were Hornet fixed-wing loitering munitions, developed by Perennial Autonomy and equipped with artificial intelligence. This enabled strike operations against moving targets at extended range. Drone crews have been patrolling roads at distances of up to 160 kilometres from the line of contact, and Russian air defences have appeared to have struggled to intercept them. Russian drivers are reportedly abandoning vehicles upon identifying incoming threats, which in itself represents a degradation of logistical throughput even when physical destruction is avoided.

Ukrainian forces are reconnoitring and interdicting Russian ground lines of communication in and near occupied Mariupol, over 100 kilometres from the frontline. As I alluded to above, the Ukrainians are showing increased capabilities for deeper ISR and strike as elements of their intensifying mid-range strike campaign.

Concurrent with these strikes, Ukraine has been accelerating its targeting of Russian air defence systems. As a recent article in the Kyiv Independent notes:

Drawing on a database of more than 1,530 verified attacks across Russia and occupied Ukraine, the analysis identifies over 492 strikes on air-defense infrastructure between June 2025 and early March 2026, alongside hundreds more targeting A2AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) assets – the wider systems that support air defense, such as electronic warfare, command systems and missile units. The data shows Ukraine is systematically targeting Russian air defense systems to open gaps in coverage and reach critical infrastructure, like weapons factories, deeper inside its territory.

These strikes against the air defence system open up the range of military and economic targets that can be hit by Ukraine. They also help Ukraine seize the initiative in its deep strike operations, and force Russia into a continuous, gradually ineffective shell game with remaining air defence capabilities. Finally, these kind of strikes against military lines of communications (LOC) and air defence systems is the kind of operational shaping that can often occur before offensive operations.

Ukraine has been intensifying this campaign since late 2025, with the tempo increasing markedly since March 2026. Let’s see what other surprises the Ukrainians might have in store for the Russians in the second half of 2026!

European Solidarity. In final news related to Ukraine this week, the 8th Summit of the European Political Community convened on 4 May in Yerevan, Armenia, with over 40 European leaders gathered in what EU Council President António Costa described as a “truly historic” gathering. The summit’s message on Ukraine was clear: the European Union will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes to achieve a sustainable, just, and lasting peace, in full respect of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

President Zelenskyy arrived in Yerevan with three objectives: accelerating the €90 billion EU support loan, which the Council had formalised on 23 April 2026; strengthening air defence; and advancing Ukraine’s EU accession process. On the loan, Zelenskyy noted that implementation, not just commitment, was the priority. The €90 billion, to be repaid through Russian war reparations, represents the largest single financial commitment to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began. It covers budgetary and defence needs for 2026-2027 and provides Ukrainian forces with access to defence products from both Ukrainian and EU industries.

You can read the full statement issued at the end of the meeting by EU Council President Costa at this link.

Ukraine Assessment

The past week has reinforced two key dynamics in the Ukraine war.

The first is the maturation of Ukraine’s strike campaign into a genuine deep-battle campaign. The operations around Mariupol reflect a systematic effort to extend the range at which Ukraine can impose costs on Russian lines of communication, pushing the contested zone well behind the physical front line. The use of AI-assisted loitering munitions against moving targets at 160 kilometres depth represents a qualitative advance for Ukraine’s strike operations.

If this campaign continues to accelerate, and there is every reason to expect it will, Russia will face increasing difficulty sustaining even the limited operational tempo that has defined its 2026 Spring Offensive. Importantly, holding on to territory already seized will become more difficult for the Russians, particularly if Ukraine launches counteroffensives in the second half of 2026.

The second dynamic is the diplomatic fog surrounding the three-day ceasefire. The agreement itself, which involved America again helping to achieve a short-term respite, resolves nothing longer term in the war. Russia’s maximalist precondition, demanding Ukrainian withdrawal from all of Donetsk Oblast, remains a statement of non-negotiable objectives.

Meanwhile, discussions among European leaders in Yerevan were very different: sustained support, accelerated EU accession, and continued pressure. The gap between U.S.-brokered tactical pauses and European-supported strategic endurance represents a significant political difference among allies in this phase of the war.

The Pacific

The Xi-Trump Summit. The big focus in the coming week will be President Trump meeting Chinese president Xi in Beijing, 14-15 May. This will be the first U.S. presidential visit to China since 2017. Analysts in a variety of articles and reports have been counselling low expectations. Five issues appear likely to dominate discussions during the summit: the Iran war and Strait of Hormuz; trade deliverables, including Chinese purchases of US goods and Boeing aircraft; rare earth access versus technology export controls; Taiwan, where Beijing will press for arms sale constraints and a shift in US declaratory policy; and AI governance.

Outcomes of the summit may be modest: commercial announcements, a Board of Trade framework, and clearer communication. The summit’s value lies not in what it resolves, but in keeping the world’s two most consequential powers talking.

More on the summit in next week’s update.

PLA Taiwan Operations Monthly Update. This week, the latest monthly update on Chinese operations was published. As analyst K. Tristan Tang notes in the update:

Although overall PLA activity around Taiwan in 2026 has been lower than in previous years, recent trends suggest this reflects a transitional phase in training reforms rather than a meaningful decline in combat readiness. Naval activity remains particularly notable: despite the absence of large-scale exercises or drills, there were still two instances in April 2026 with more than 10 PLA vessels operating around Taiwan—comparable to April 2025 even outside of exercise periods.

The full update can be viewed below.

Taiwan’s Special Defence Budget Passes. On 8 May, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan approved a special defence spending package worth NT$780 billion, approximately US$24.8 billion, ending months of political deadlock over the island’s military modernisation.

President Lai Ching-te’s administration had sought NT$1.25 trillion, approximately US$40 billion, in an eight-year supplemental budget that would have funded US arms purchases alongside an ambitious programme of domestic defence industrialisation, including indigenous drone development, AI-assisted command and control systems, and an integrated air defence architecture. The opposition Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party, which together hold a legislative majority, countered with an initial proposal of NT$380 billion before settling on the NT$780 billion figure. The final legislation, as Domino Theory reported, funds NT$300 billion in arms sales already approved by the U.S. Congress, with a provision to release an additional NT$480 billion in purchasing authority once Washington provides a formal letter of offer and acceptance.

The outcome is a defence package that is substantial, but shaped in ways that might not assist longer-term Taiwanese defence planners. Key items cut by the opposition included domestic drone manufacturing investment, the AI-assisted decision-making systems that the DPP argued were the most operationally critical components of the entire package, and joint military research programmes. As the Global Taiwan Institute’s analysis has outlined, Taiwan’s self-reliance in defence production is an insurance policy against supply disruption. A budget that shifts spending almost entirely toward U.S. arms purchases introduces a dependency that has strategic implications.

The timing of the vote was significant. As the Japan Times reported, the approval came less than a week before Donald Trump’s planned visit to China. Both Washington and Beijing will draw their own conclusions about the vote and its timing. The opposition’s argument, that it was showing budget discipline rather than accommodating Beijing, is only partially true. But the impact of removing the domestic defence industry components is to slow the kind of sovereign capability development that would reduce Taiwan’s vulnerability to disruption in its external supply chain.

Balikatan 2026: The Closing Act. The 41st iteration of the annual Balikatan exercises between the Philippines and the United States concluded on 8 May, and its significance had been building across three weeks of increasingly ambitious operations. This was the largest Balikatan to date, with approximately 17,000 troops from seven nations operating across the Philippine archipelago under a genuinely combined command structure. A Tomahawk cruise missile was fired from the US Army’s Typhon launcher system, the first operational live firing from Philippine territory. Japanese Type 88 anti-ship missiles were launched in Ilocos Norte, the first time that system has been fired outside Japanese territory.

As the South China Morning Post analysed, the geographic rationale for the exercise was clear. The live-fire events in the far north of Luzon took place less than an hour’s flight from Taiwan. NMESIS anti-ship launchers were deployed to the Batanes, a feature that sits astride the Bashi Channel, through which Chinese naval forces would have to transit in any Taiwan contingency. The Multilateral Maritime Event off the western coast of Luzon, involving the Philippines, the United States, Australia, Japan, and Canada, featured anti-submarine warfare, live-fire gunnery, and replenishment at sea. Canada and France participated as active contributors for the first time. The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Poland sent military observers for the first time.

The exercises also incorporated lessons from the war in Ukraine, particularly in integrated air and missile defence and sea denial, reinforcing the analytical connections being drawn by allied militaries between the two theatres.

Beijing’s response to Balikatan 2026 followed a now-familiar pattern, but with increased intensity. The PLA Southern Theater Command deployed a surface task group consisting of a Type 055 guided missile destroyer, a Type 052D guided missile destroyer, a Type 054A frigate, and an auxiliary replenishment vessel east of the Luzon Strait, explicitly linking the deployment to ‘the current regional situation.’ Two H-6 bombers, each armed with anti-ship missiles, were deployed near Scarborough Shoal during the exercises.

The AEI’s China-Taiwan update assessed that the PRC deployment was likely designed to demonstrate China’s ability to surge military presence around the Philippines when Manila engages in defence cooperation with the United States and Japan, aligning with Beijing’s coalition-breaking goals across the region. The PRC conducted a similar deployment east of Luzon during Balikatan 2025, but this year it linked the deployment explicitly to the exercises, a more overt form of political signalling.

Japan’s Prime Minister in Vietnam and Australia. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Golden Week regional tour, visiting Vietnam from 1 to 3 May and Australia from 3 to 5 May, was the most important piece of Japanese regional diplomacy since her election victory in February. The visit came as Tokyo’s Indo-Pacific strategy was being updated: the Iran conflict has made energy security an immediate concern; American strategic reliability is a question in every allied capital; and Japan’s expanded military posture needs to be embedded in a coherent diplomatic framework.

In Hanoi, Takaichi delivered a foreign policy speech at Vietnam National University that set out Japan’s updated approach to the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, ten years after the concept was first proposed. The speech identified three priority areas: building economic infrastructure for the age of AI and data, including supply chain resilience for energy and critical materials; co-creation of economic growth through public-private collaboration and rule-sharing; and enhancing security cooperation to ensure regional peace and stability. Japan and Vietnam agreed to increase Japanese investment to $5 billion annually and target bilateral trade of $60 billion by 2030.

The Australia leg of the visit, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Basic Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, was Takaichi’s first to Canberra since taking office in October 2025. As The Diplomat’s analysis noted, the visit marked what might be understood as a new era in regional order-building, one anchored in an expanding web of partnerships among like-minded countries in which the US alliance remains central but can no longer be treated as the sole load-bearing column. Takaichi characterised Japan and Australia as “frontrunners in cooperation among like-minded countries” and used the Canberra meetings to reinforce the Quad as a key pillar of regional security.

JHoPS Brisbane: Building the Pacific’s Own Security Framework. While much of the strategic attention of the Pacific theatre is directed toward the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, a different form of relationship-building was underway in Brisbane from 28 to 30 April. The eighth annual Joint Heads of Pacific Security meeting brought together heads of police, military, customs, and immigration agencies from 24 Pacific jurisdictions.

Members agreed to seek Leaders’ consideration for JHoPS to become part of the Pacific Islands Forum’s (PIF) regional architecture, a move that would embed the forum’s operational security cooperation into the Pacific’s premier multilateral framework. Members also recommended that PIF Leaders agree to commence negotiations on a Regional Operations Deployment Framework Treaty, a mechanism that would enable coordinated regional deployments in response to humanitarian crises and security threats while preserving the sovereignty of each member state.

Pacific Theatre Assessment

The week saw a concentrated period of regional security activity.

Taiwan’s NT$780 billion special defence budget is a step forward for the island’s deterrent capacity, but the political dynamics that produced it also reveal limits. The cuts to domestic drone manufacturing, AI systems, and command and control investment are not trivial. They reflect a deeper disagreement within Taiwan’s political class about the balance between immediate procurement and long-term self-reliance. The connection of a large portion of the budget to U.S. manufacturing introduces a dependency that both Washington and Beijing will consider as part of their calculations in the lead up to the forthcoming Trump-Xi summit.

Balikatan 2026’s conclusion reinforces the developing allied deterrent network in the western Pacific. Japan’s combat participation on Philippine soil is the expression of a regional access framework that will only grow over the coming years. The deployment of NMESIS, the live Tomahawk firing, and the multi-nation anti-submarine warfare exercises off Luzon all point to a coalition that is building denial-based options across the strategic geography that would matter most in any Taiwan contingency.

China’s response, combining carrier deployments, bomber patrols, South China Sea confrontations, and aggressive diplomatic framing, follows a predictable script but is intensifying. Beijing is determined to establish that allied military cooperation in the region carries a price, and its willingness to link the Balikatan deployments to historical Japanese aggression suggests it is not simply managing deterrence but actively trying to fracture the emerging multilateral coalition.

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I had a busy week with writing and publishing.

To start the week, I submitted the final version of my PhD thesis. Oral exams have been completed, and all I await now is the final sign off by senior academics at the university where I am studying. I will let you know more in the short term.

I published another guest article here at Futura Doctrina. This time, Dr Oleksandra Molloy wrote about the development and deployment of Ukrainian counter drone technologies and tactics. It is a brilliant piece, and can be read at this link.

I had two of my articles published elsewhere during the week. First, my piece on Taiwan’s mobilisation reforms and its lessons for other nations was published by the Lowy Institute. You can read that piece here. Second, I had an article published by Engelsberg Ideas about Ukraine’s progress in the war in 2026, and whether this might mean we are seeing the early stages of a ‘turning the corner’ in Ukraine’s prospects. That article is available here.

Finally, on Friday, I submitted the manuscript for my next book. It is a follow up to my novel, White Sun War. The book will be published by Naval Institute Press in early 2027. I expect to be able to provide more details on confirmed title, cover, and contents in the coming months.

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It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included two articles on the military implications of AI including one that studied the use of AI at war colleges. There are also articles on the employment of land forces in the 21st century, the rationale for Xi’s military purges and how Russia trains its spies.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. Can AI Pass the US Army War College?

I thought this was a fascinating article. In early 2026, three faculty panels at the U.S. Army War College applied four leading commercial artificial intelligence (AI) systems to their oral examinations. Prompted without core curriculum materials, all four models passed. As the authors describe in the article, these findings challenge how the U.S. Army assesses commercial AI for strategic applications. More importantly, the use of AI evolves how we develop senior leaders, and the authors describe that “judgment—knowing which question to ask next—will define the next generation of strategic leaders.” The full article is available here.

2. Xi’s Forever Purge

This article examines the different rationales behind the leader of China’s recent purges of senior military officers. The authors examine previous examinations for these purges and find that a deeper explanation of existing theories is required. They assert that “using discipline not only as an instrument of control but also as a theory of governance: internal rules define priorities and acceptable conduct, ideological education produces more dedicated officials, inspections improve compliance, and high-level purges deter wrongdoing.” The article can be read at this link.

3. The Future of Landpower

In this article published by Breaking Defense, the author examines the utility of land power in the 21st century. The context for the piece is the changes in technology, particularly drones and AI, which mean that some legacy systems such as tanks, artillery, etc need drastically different concepts of employment or may even be obsolete. The article also examines the enduring requirement for land forces, and how they contribute to joint campaigns. The article is available at this link.

4. The implications of AI

This report adds to the growing literature of “AI and the Military” reports that are being published around the world. That said, it provides a useful contribution to the genre. As the authors note: “Despite improving autonomous capabilities, promising use cases, and various anticipated benefits, increasingly autonomous agents also raise significant societal, security, legal, and ethical risks that may threaten the successful, effective, and sustainable implementation of agentic AI if left unaddressed.” The report is available to read at this link.

5. Training Russia’s Spies

This is an interesting exploration of how Russia trains people in one part of its massive intelligence endeavour. It is a piece that looks at Department 4 of the Military Training Center at Bauman Moscow State Technical University and describes how Russia’s GRU trains students in hacking attacks and disinformation tactics. You can read this thoroughly interesting piece here.

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Australia’s recently released National Defence Strategy highlighted the need for enhanced national resilience. However, it contained no discussion about how Australia might mobilise as a nation for future threats, nor how the nation might undertake a transition from peace to conflict. A recent visit to Taiwan, including discussions with the commander of the new All-Out Defence Mobilisation Agency (ADMA), offered insights that can inform an Australian debate on these topics.

Taiwan has constructed one of the most sophisticated whole-of-society defence architectures in the Indo-Pacific. What ADMA has built over the past several years is not bureaucratic innovation for its own sake. It is a serious institutional response to a proximate military threat.

ADMA was formally established in January 2022, but its foundations were laid earlier. Between 2018 and 2019, Taiwan undertook a series of military, strategic and organisational design reviews that exposed fundamental gaps in how it would resist Chinese military campaigns and coordinate civil and military capacity in a crisis.

The reforms that followed addressed three interrelated problems: fragmented coordination across government agencies; the absence of legal frameworks for faster action in conflict; and the lack of a central body capable of integrating the full machinery of government.

While this case for reform predated Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war in Ukraine subsequently became an important reference point for Taiwan. What ADMA’s architects understand – and Kyiv’s defenders have demonstrated since 2022 – is that modern national defence is not a military problem alone. Military forces may fight, but it is societies that sustain wars. The orchestration of government, industry, and civil society into a functioning and sustained wartime endeavour matters as much as military force structure at the start of a war.

Ukraine’s influence on ADMA’s approach is openly acknowledged by the Taiwanese. The Ukrainian experience – a society mobilised in spirit, in organisation, and through the dispersal of critical functions to reduce vulnerability – shaped Taiwan’s efforts to build societal resilience.

The all-out defence mindset ADMA seeks to instil in Taiwan’s citizenry draws explicitly on this experience. Officials regard the agency’s operations as an explicit counter to Chinese cognitive warfare. By demonstrating the depth and resilience of Taiwan’s mobilisation capacity and societal will, ADMA signals to Beijing that any military campaign will not produce a quick or clean result. Officials believe the enhanced mobilisation posture has itself changed China’s strategic calculus, forcing adaptation in Chinese planning. That makes ADMA not just a coordination body but an active component of Taiwan’s strategic deterrent.

The insights from ADMA extend beyond its responsibilities. Where it sits and how it is structured are also important. ADMA is not an independent ministry. In peacetime it operates primarily as a policy body, subordinate to the Ministry of National Defence, with no direct command authority over military or civil assets.

What it does have is a cross-government mandate: it provides recommendations to the mobilisation committee of the national cabinet, for which it also serves as secretariat. That proximity to cabinet – not a large bureaucracy or direct command authority – is the source of its authority and its effectiveness.

In wartime, the agency transitions in structure and functions. ADMA would shift from its peacetime policy and secretariat role to become a joint coordination centre, linked into regional and local coordination agencies across the island. Critically, this is rehearsed regularly as part of Taiwan’s national mobilisation drills. Officials I spoke with noted that wartime coordination arrangements were being actively exercised during my visit.

The need for this frequent rehearsal of wartime functions is based on a sobering assumption: the PLA can move directly from large-scale training to military operations rapidly. The time between Taiwan’s strategic decision and the full activation of wartime structures must be measured in hours, not days. Rehearsals in peacetime are not an administrative exercise but a strategic necessity.

The full article is available to read at the Lowy Interpreter, at this link.

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In 2026, I have invited a group of experts who carry topics such as military strategy, drone warfare, the war in Ukraine, military transformation, and the security situation in the Pacific to write guest articles for publication here at Futura Doctrina. The first piece, written by Dr Frank Hoffman, covered the important topic of AI and critical thinking. It was published in February, and can be read here.

Today, I am excited to introduce my next expert who has written a brilliant article. Dr Oleksandra Molloy, an Australian-Ukrainian expert on uncrewed systems and drone operations, writes for Futura Doctrina. Oleksandra’s biography is at the bottom of the article. Her experience and publications in Ukraine, Europe, and Australia see her very well placed to write on current developments in drone-on-drone warfare, and what the future of uncrewed systems in Ukraine, and future warfare more generally, might be. Enjoy!

Closing Ukraine’s airspace has always been one of the key priorities since the beginning of russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Hundreds of drones and missiles are launched by russia at the Ukrainian cities, increasing the scale of their attacks. According to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, russia launched over 14,670 guided aerial bombs, 738 missiles, and nearly 19,000 attack drones during the winter months of 2025–2026. Most of these drones were russian-produced, Iranian-designed Shahed systems extensively used against Ukrainian cities and energy facilities.

In the final week of last winter, Russia launched over 1,720 attack drones, dropped nearly 1,300 guided aerial bombs, and fired over 100 missiles at Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy’s statement on March 1, 2026. According to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, on the night of March 24, 2026 Russia launched nearly 1,000 drones, with 94.6% being intercepted by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). This was the largest attack since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Overall interception rate of drones in March 2026 surpassed 90%, and according to the Ukraine’s War Plan, the aim is to identify 100% of aerial threats in real time and intercept at least 95% of drones and missiles. One in every three russian aerial targets destroyed over Ukraine is now brought down not by a missile or a gun but by interceptor drones costing less than a used car.

An ‘interceptor drone’ is a specially designed type of uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to detect, pursue, and destroy enemy drones. Their main purpose is to provide protection in active combat. The models are equipped with sensors and autonomous navigation systems, allowing them to perform rapid manoeuvres in the air, automatically and instantly identify targets, in order to hover with precision and neutralise threats. These drones, as a weapons category, barely existed a few years ago, but have become the fastest-growing layer of Ukraine’s air defence.

How Ukraine built the interceptor-drone layer

The official public record shows that interceptor drones did not appear suddenly in Ukraine, in spring 2026. Although similar technology to drone interceptors, like Turkish-made ‘Fedai’ capable of intercepting other drones, was presented in 2021, Ukraine reported first project of a drone interceptor appeared in October 2022. The project, named “Fowler” at the time had limited capabilities, including intercepting target within the distance of 1500m, and the height of 1000m. This was more relevant for combating FPV drones, rather than more complex ISR drones; hence no widespread attention was given to the project.

In 2023, a Ukrainian drone instructor pitched another project about a drone interceptor, which sounded to troops like ‘science fiction’, something out of ‘Star Wars’ flying drones to scout enemy’s drones midair. The soldiers thought it would be impossible to fly a small drone into a fast-moving target. This is similar to a story of how a suggestion about using drones emerged, being compared to ‘toys’ by senior military officials. What seems to be laughable has since become a low-cost and critical pillar of Ukraine’s defence.

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As the American president struggles to develop a viable theory of victory for his war against Iran, the conflict continues to exert a significant influence on the global economy. The comments by the German Chancellor this week that Iran is humiliating America did not go down well; President Trump subsequently announced a drawdown of the American presence in Germany – and then announced today that the cuts would go beyond the previously announced 5,000 troops. The U.S. administration is diverting resources from, and paying less attention to, more consequential theatres: eastern Europe and the Pacific.

This of course is hugely encouraging for Russia’s president. Engaged in a war that is going wrong for him on nearly every front, Putin’s sole source of hope at the moment is the kind of impulsive, anti-ally statements and behaviour that are emerging from the Trump administration. And what encourages Putin to act more aggressively in Europe will also eventually encourage greater Chinese aggression in the Pacific.

In Ukraine, fighting continues with no ceasefire within reach, even as battlefield innovation and long-range strike capabilities appear to be shifting the strategic momentum in Ukraine’s direction. In this week’s update, key areas I examine include the landmark deep-strike operation against Russian aviation assets at a distance of 1,700 kilometres, Kyiv’s military reform agenda, the ground war, diplomatic manoeuvring around Russia’s Victory Day on 9 May, and the stalled peace negotiations.

In the Pacific theatre, my analysis covers the expansion of Balikatan 2026, China’s response, and the deepening web of security partnerships that is reshaping deterrence along the First Island Chain.

A short synthesis at the end of the update examines what links these two theatres and why developments in one have implications for the other. And finally, I have included my top war and national security reads for the week.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Five.

Ukraine

The Deepest Strike Yet. The most significant deep strike of the past week was Ukraine’s long-range drone strike on the Shagol airfield in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region, deep in the southern Urals. Carried out on 25 April by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces and confirmed publicly by the General Staff on 1 May, the operation hit four Russian combat aircraft at a distance of approximately 1,700 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. Those aircraft included two Su-57Felon fifth-generation fighters and a Su-34 strike aircraft, as well as a fourth Sukhoi variant of unconfirmed type.

Ukrainska Pravda confirmed the involvement of operators from the 1st Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Centre, while Commander Robert Brovdi subsequently verified damage through satellite imagery and reported that the damaged aircraft had been moved to enclosed hangars after the strike. UNITED24 Media published the Ukrainian General Staff’s detailed statement.

The strategic implications extend beyond the immediate damage. Each Su-57 carries an estimated production cost of between $100 million and $120 million, while an Su-34 is valued at between $35 million and $50 million. With only around 40 Su-57s estimated to be in service, the loss or disabling of even a small number of these platforms matters.

The Commander of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces noted that the Su-34 is Russia’s primary strike aircraft, capable of delivering guided bombs and cruise missiles at ranges up to 1,000 kilometres, making it central to Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian civilian and military infrastructure. The Kyiv Independent reported his assessment that “hunting multi-role fighter-bombers such as the Su-34 and fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jets is critical to reducing the enemy’s strike potential.”

This attack set a new standard in Ukrainian long-range strike capability. Russia has redeployed much of its aviation fleet to bases deep inside Russian territory on the assumption that these assets were beyond Ukrainian reach. That assumption no longer holds. Ukrainian drones are now capable of strikes exceeding 2,000 kilometres, meaning there is no safe haven for Russian aircraft within the country’s European landmass. This has major implications for Russian operational planning, force protection and posture, and the allocation of its air defence resources. A fire at the Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Plant in mid-April has also raised questions about Russia’s capacity to replenish Su-57 losses at the production level.

Elsewhere in the deep strike campaigns of Ukraine and Russia, the Institute for the Study of War’s assessment for 1 May 2026 noted that Russian forces launched 409 drones toward Ukraine overnight on 1 May. Russia’s regular evening drone campaign also remained punishing. A Russian drone struck a civilian bus in Kherson on the night of 2 May, killing at least two people and injuring seven. A daytime drone strike targeted Ternopil in western Ukraine, with 36 aerial targets detected and 27 intercepted by Ukrainian air defences.

Ukrainian forces also launched their fourth strike on Russia’s Tuapse oil refinery in the Krasnodar region, sustaining their campaign against Russian fuel infrastructure. They also struck oil infrastructure across multiple Russian regions, including fires at the Gorky pumping station in Kstovo, Perm, and the Tikhoretsk-Nafta oil hub in Krasnodar Krai. Ukrainian drone operators also struck a warehouse holding 6,000 FPV drones in Rostov-on-Don, an FSB base in Donetsk.

Russia’s Victory Day and the Ceasefire Proposal. The approaching Victory Day commemoration in Russia on 9 May produced diplomatic activity during the week, most of it optics rather than real progress. On 29 April, President Putin telephoned President Trump in a 90-minute call during which Putin floated the idea of a temporary truce for the Victory Day celebrations. Trump expressed support, describing it as a small but welcome step. The Kyiv Independent reported that Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed the truce would be declared unilaterally by Moscow and did not require Kyiv’s consent, applying only to 9 May. That is right on brand for Russia in this war.

President Zelensky responded by proposing a genuine long-term ceasefire, pointedly reframing Putin’s limited offer as an opportunity for something more substantial. As Zelensky observed: “We will clarify what exactly this is about — a few hours of security for a parade in Moscow, or something more.” The Kyiv Independent’s full coverage detailed these exchanges. The Asia Times noted that Putin’s 9 May truce offer was likely shaped by his desire to protect the parade’s political theatre while also signalling flexibility to Washington.

Russia’s Victory Day parade will be scaled back again this year. Over the past four years, battlefield attrition and security concerns have seen it become a pale imitation of its former self. For the first time in nearly two decades, the parade on Red Square will take place without military vehicles. The Kremlin cited operational security concerns. The Moscow Times reported that analysts believe the possibility of Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow’s staging areas made a full display of armour and missiles an unacceptable risk. Former British Defence Attaché John Foreman noted that the threat of air raid alerts on 9 May might “incentivize some of the air defences to be moved from the front back to Moscow, opening even more gaps in Russian territory.”

To sum all this up, the obvious takeaway is that if Russia were being as successful as Russian propaganda portrays, it would not need a truce to protect a military parade 1,000 kilometres from the frontline. This is yet another sign of a weakened Russian state that is desperately casting about for a way to make real progress in its war against Ukraine.

Stalled Peace Talks. The British House of Commons Library published an updated briefing this week with the full timeline of failed mediation efforts, confirming that Washington’s attention has shifted considerably toward the Middle East following the US-Iran conflict. The Kyiv Independent reported exclusively that Trump’s envoys are not currently planning to visit Ukraine, an indication of the parlous state of the bilateral relationship. Zelensky has shifted his public posture, moving from support for Washington’s approach to open criticism. This reflects frustration with what he sees as insufficient American pressure on Moscow and an unwillingness of envoys to visit Ukraine directly.

The broader diplomatic environment for the Ukraine war remained largely frozen this week. The key sticking points remain unchanged: Russia continues to demand Ukrainian withdrawal from eastern Donbas oblasts it has not fully occupied and the formal renunciation of NATO membership aspirations; Ukraine rejects both conditions categorically. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has assessed that while Ukraine has shown considerable flexibility under intense pressure from Washington, Russia has not moderated its stated positions by any meaningful measure. As analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote: Putin “feels more confident than ever about the battlefield situation and is convinced that he can wait until Kyiv finally accepts that it cannot win.”

European governments have continued their own planning in parallel. The UK and France have committed to establishing military hubs within Ukraine and providing protected facilities for weapons and equipment in the event of any future ceasefire arrangement. NPR reported that a Paris summit earlier this year produced commitments on five key priorities for the post-ceasefire environment: ceasefire monitoring, support for Ukraine’s armed forces, multinational force deployment on land, at sea, and in the air, guarantees against renewed Russian aggression, and long-term defence cooperation. But delivering on those commitments requires U.S. backing that has not yet been secured.

Ukraine’s Military Reform: Addressing the Manpower Problem. In January this year, Kyiv Independent journalist Francis Farrell wrote of Ukraine’s manpower challenges that:

With the systemic lack of soldiers come greater tensions — between the assaulters and the defenders, between an exhausted nation and the existential threat it still faces, between the faceless commander and the dour-faced mobilized infantryman — that could define the war of 2026 for Ukraine.

This has been an issue that has defied solutions for some time. The Ukrainians are about to give it another try. President Zelensky announced on 1 May a major reform of Ukraine’s armed forces. The reform, to be implemented from June 2026, addresses three interlocking problems: manpower shortages, inadequate soldier compensation, and the absence of any clear rotation or discharge mechanism for troops mobilised at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. As Reuters reported, Zelensky stated explicitly that Ukraine must be ready to continue fighting if a peace agreement cannot be reached, framing the reform as a long-term investment in military sustainability rather than a short-term political gesture.

The financial components are substantial. Rear-position personnel will receive a minimum salary of 30,000 hryvnias per month (approximately US$683), a one-third increase from current rates. For frontline infantry, special contracts offering between 250,000 and 400,000 hryvnias per month (US$5,650 to $9,000) will be introduced, with payments linked to combat task completion. Ukrainska Pravda reported Zelensky’s instruction that “combat missions on the frontline, real combat and leadership experience, and the effectiveness of a servicemember must guarantee increased pay.” Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, appointed in January with a mandate to improve mobilisation and deal with draft evasion, described the changes as “systemic” transformation.

The most politically sensitive element is the planned phased demobilisation of long-serving troops. Most soldiers mobilised since February 2022 have had no fixed term of service and no clear pathway out of the military. Additionally, media reporting of troops serving for months without rotation has corroded public confidence in the fairness of the system.

Euromaidan Press assessed this as one of the most significant planned structural changes to Ukraine’s military since the war began, while the Odessa Journal noted that the reform formally extends the contract system and creates clear service-duration timelines. Whether the financial commitments can be sustained given Ukraine’s ongoing dependence on foreign budget support remains an open question.

The Ground War. On the battlefield, the pattern of the past several months continued: high-intensity Russian pressure on multiple axes of advance, Ukrainian defensive resilience, and incremental Russian advances measured in hundreds of metres per day. Ukrainian General Staff reporting for the period around 29 April documented 177 combat engagements in a single 24-hour period, with Russia launching 69 airstrikes, dropping 226 guided aerial bombs, and deploying nearly 10,000 kamikaze drones in that day alone. The most recent Russia Matters report notes that Russia lost ground in the past month.

EMPR Media’s daily tracking documented Russian pressure around Pokrovsk, Novopavlivka, the Lyman axis, and near the Antonivskyi crossing in Kherson Oblast, with Ukrainian defenders repelling 41 assault attempts in the Pokrovsk direction alone in a single reporting period. Near Kupiansk, Russian forces executed a mechanised attack, capturing the villages of Petropavlivka and Stepova Novoselivka, pressing what analysts assess as a renewed effort to encircle and threaten Kupiansk itself.

Ukraine War Assessment

The past week crystallised four realities that will shape the trajectory of the war in the months ahead.

First, Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign has crossed a new threshold. The successful targeting of Su-57 and Su-34 aircraft at Chelyabinsk at 1,700 kilometres demonstrates that Russia’s aviation fleet has no truly safe rear area within its European territory. This will force Russia to disperse assets further, increasing logistics costs and potentially reducing operational sortie rates at a time when airpower is central to its offensive campaign.

Second, Zelenskyy’s military reform announcement reflects an acknowledgement that Ukraine must sustain this fight independently of a diplomatic breakthrough. The reform targets real structural weaknesses in pay, rotation, and infantry morale, but successful implementation requires financial resources that Ukraine does not entirely control.

Third, the diplomatic landscape remains uncertain with no short-term peace deal in sight. Russia has not moderated its demands, Washington’s attention is committed elsewhere, and the temporary ceasefire gestures for Russia’s Victory Day are information operations, not genuine peace diplomacy.

Finally, Ukraine has stepped up its military effectiveness this year on the ground and in long-range strike operations. This is depriving Russia of momentum on the frontline, and in the past month it has lost ground. Russia is also losing the initiative in long-range strike operations, as Ukrainian drones range over larger parts of Russia and have a greater impact on oil exports.

The Pacific

Balikatan 2026. The latest iteration of Exercise Balikatan, running from 20 April to 8 May 2026, has emerged as the largest and most strategically important in the exercise’s history. With approximately 17,000 personnel from seven nations (the U.S., the Philippines, Japan, Australia, Canada, France, and New Zealand), the exercise represents a qualitative as well as quantitative shift in defence cooperation along the First Island Chain.

The Diplomat has described the unprecedented scale, noting that Canada, France, New Zealand, and Japan are all joining as active participants for the first time, reflecting the rapid expansion of Philippine security partnerships driven by shared concern about Chinese maritime assertiveness. An additional 17 nations participated as observers.

Japan’s participation is the most strategically significant change. For the first time since the Second World War, Japanese combat-capable troops have deployed to Philippine soil. Approximately 1,400 Japanese Self-Defence Force personnel participated in scenarios involving defensive operations while armed. Japanese and Philippine marine forces conducted amphibious operations along the coast in northern Luzon’s Cagayan Province. Japan’s Defence Minister Koizumi is scheduled to observe the sinking of a decommissioned vessel off Laoag City, near the South China Sea and Taiwan, in the coming week on 6 May.

Japan’s deployment of Type 88 anti-ship cruise missiles, combined with the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) and HIMARS batteries in Palawan and northern Luzon, has sent a message to China: the democratic coalition has the will and the capacity to contest key maritime chokepoints.

The rapid deployment of these anti-ship systems to northern Luzon threatens the PLAN’s ability to break out of the first island chain via the Luzon Strait in any conflict. The U.S. Typhon mid-range missile system, forward-stationed in the Philippines since 2024, and BrahMos cruise missiles acquired from India also featured in the exercises, as did advanced counter-drone and integrated air and missile defence drills at Zambales.

China’s Naval Response to Balikatan. China’s military response to Exercise Balikatan 2026 was carefully choreographed. On 20 April, aircraft carrier Liaoning transited the Taiwan Strait southward into the South China Sea, while the 133rd PLAN task group simultaneously deployed through the Yokoate Channel into the Western Pacific. The Diplomat assessed this as a “cross-theatre exercise,” with operations unfolding simultaneously in the Philippine Sea and the South China Sea.

The Eastern Theatre Command described both deployments as “routine training activity organized in accordance with the annual plan” and “not aimed at any specific country or target.” The composition of forces suggested otherwise. The 133rd task group included the Baotou, a Type 052D guided-missile destroyer frequently paired with aircraft carriers. The South China Morning Post reported that the Southern Theatre Command’s simultaneous drill, led by the Type 055 guided-missile destroyer Zunyi, was described as “a necessary action taken in response to the current regional situation”. The Liaoning’s southward transit, combined with the Philippine Sea deployment, suggests early preparations for multi-carrier blue-water exercises later in 2026.

China’s dispersed, two-axis naval response to Exercise Balikatan was revealing. Beijing appears to be practising the maritime envelopment of allied forces near Luzon while rehearsing carrier battle group operations. Over the coming years, this will give the PLAN significant far-seas power projection. The trajectory of Chinese naval power development is clear: China is building a capacity to contest not just the Taiwan Strait but the broader western Pacific.

The First Island Chain Deterrence Framework. Exercise Balikatan 2026 is best understood not as a single exercise but as one component of an emerging coalition deterrence framework in the western Pacific along the First Island Chain. The rapid deployment of anti-ship missile systems to the Batanes Islands in northern Luzon, positioned to threaten the Luzon Strait through which the PLAN would need to break out in any Taiwan contingency, represents the capability layering that defence planners in Washington, Tokyo, and Manila have been working toward. The presence of Japan’s Type 88 systems and American NMESIS launchers signals that a dense, coalition anti-access structure is being built along the First Island Chain.

Linked Theatres: Ukraine, the Pacific, and the Broader Contest

The wars and security competitions described in this report are not separate phenomena. They are elements of a wider systemic challenge: the attempt by authoritarian states to reshape the international order by force or coercion, and the response of democratic nations trying to sustain rules-based norms against that pressure. Therefore, I wanted to include a short section on how Ukraine and the Pacific are linked. Some of these links include:

• Russia’s war in Ukraine has consumed American political bandwidth, financial resources, and munitions stockpiles, reducing the attention available for Indo-Pacific deterrence at the same time that capability of expeditionary Chinese military operations is accelerating.

• The drone warfare revolution pioneered in Ukraine is being studied by the PLA, by Taiwan’s defence establishment, and by every military in the Indo-Pacific. This is shaping investment decisions, military structures, force design balances and tactical doctrines across the region.

• One of Japan’s most significant lessons from Ukraine - that the ability to produce large quantities of defence materiel is essential, not merely the ability to operate sophisticated platforms - is now explicitly embedded in Tokyo’s evolving defence industrial strategy.

• China’s covert military support for Iran, documented by U.S. intelligence, may be a means of testing American capacity and resolve across multiple theatres simultaneously.

The clearest link of all is the demonstration effect. How Russia’s war in Ukraine ends, and on what terms, will be read in Beijing as a signal of how far the international community is prepared to go to resist territorial conquest by force. As a new report from the Jamestown Foundation notes:

Beijing has been closely studying Russia’s evolving approach to the conflict, conducted under sanction, surveillance, and constant drone threat. Across the People’s Republic of China (PRC), researchers and analysts are extracting lessons on how to fight, endure, and prevail in a conflict against a U.S.-led coalition characterized by deep intelligence, technological, and financial leverage. For analysts and researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Russia’s war illuminates the contours of a Taiwan Strait contingency or a parallel crisis in the South China Sea.

An outcome for the war in Ukraine that rewards Russian aggression would probably lead to the conclusion in Beijing that coercion pays dividends. The democratic coalitions forming around, and supporting, Ukraine and Taiwan are separate endeavours. But the strategic logic that binds each together carries implications for the leadership, strategy and endurance, of the other.

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It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included an analysis of the Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, the impact of land-based long-range strike in joint operations, China’s observations of the war in Ukraine, mobilisation challenges and the U.S.-China nuclear competition.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. The plateauing of Russia’s military strategy in Ukraine

In this article from Ukrainian military analyst Mykola Bielieskov, he proposes that Russia’s military capacity against Ukraine has plateaued in 2026. This is the combination of new drone and ground tactics from the Ukrainians and a range of other issues that have seen Russian casualties increase but their advances on the ground slowed significantly compared to previous years. It is an informative piece, and can be read at this link.

2. Watching Beijing Watch Moscow

In this detailed analysis published by the Jamestown Foundation, the author examines the many dimensions of China’s observations of the war in Ukraine and Iran, and how it might learn the strategic lessons of these conflicts. As the author notes, “for analysts and researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Russia’s war illuminates the contours of a Taiwan Strait contingency or a parallel crisis in the South China Sea.” You can read the full report here.

3. The Mobilisation Challenge

This new report, published by the American Enterprise Institute, explores the many elements of mobilising a nation for war. As the author notes, recent wars have exposed a reality that peacetime defence planning often understates: Stockpiles are finite, production does not surge overnight, and success in a protracted conflict depends as much on the ability to regenerate combat power as on the ability to win early battles. This report examines mobilisation readiness in four dimensions: economic strength, workforce capacity, industrial capacity, and political will. The full report is available here.

4. Landpower and the Sea-Air Battle

The Modern War Institute has been a consistent source of excellent analysis on preparing for, and executing, land operations. In this latest piece, the author explores how land power in the form of long-range missiles can influence the fight in the air and at sea. As he notes in the article, “in the Indo-Pacific, where geography, distance, and antiaccess strategies will define the character of war, the integration of landpower into joint operations will not be a supporting effort but a central means of shaping the theater’s balance of power and achieving strategic objectives.” The full article is available at this link.

5. The U.S.-China Nuclear Race

The final recommended article this week, published by Foreign Affairs, explores the current build up and modernisation of nuclear weapons by China and the United States. The author proposes that “neither country wants nuclear war, so the two sides should make careful choices to establish limits on their arsenals and operational policies.” Whether that is possible or not remains an open question. The article can be read at this link.

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Four years into the war in Ukraine, two years into Ukraine developing cheap interceptors and we still don’t have these things. And being surprised by Shahed drone attacks, I think is unforgivable. That was the ultimate foreseeable event, given Iran exported these things to Russia. And the fact that large numbers of these things we used, we had to use five-year-old tactics and techniques rather than latest generation of $3,000 to $4,000 interceptors, was a gross failure of leadership and a real failure of learning and adaptation. Mick Ryan, School of War podcast.

I have been fortunate to be regularly invited onto the School of War podcast and have terrific discussions with the host, Aaron MacLean. Aaron is always a great conversationalist and a deeply knowledgeable interlocutor about war and a range of national security topics. He is also a good bloke.

In this podcast, we cover a range of subjects related to the ongoing Iran War. This includes:

• The political objectives for the war, and strategy for achieving them

• The performance of the United States military in the military campaign against Iran, and the American cooperation with Israel.

• The application of AI in supercharging tactical and operational level military action.

• The role and impact of decapitation operations.

• The state of the NATO alliance where it goes after this war.

• The failure to learn from the Ukraine War in the lead up to operations against Iran, particularly with regards to intercepting Iran’s Shahed drones.

• The impact of the Iran War on nations in the Pacific, including Australia.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable discussion, and was recorded during my recent visit to Taiwan. The war in Iran was certainly a topic raised by many of my interlocutors there.

While there has been much to learn from the war in Ukraine, and I have written on this topic frequently over the last few years, the Iran war also provides a wide range of insights about effective strategy, economic coercion, national resilience, air defence, absorbing new era technologies and national will. We talk about many of these in the podcast.

You can listen to our full conversation at this link.

Enjoy!

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As the war in Iran devolves into a near phony war construct, with blockades and diplomatic manoeuvring being the predominant form of action, the war in Ukraine continues.

Diplomatically, stalled negotiations among the United States, Ukraine, and Russia mean little real progress this week in a political solution to the war. The Russian leadership shows no genuine appetite for a just settlement. On the ground, Ukrainian drone developments see them effectively defending their territory and reducing Russian advances compared to previous years while also increasing Russian casualties. Both sides continue their evening aerial strike campaigns.

In the Pacific, military exercises, capability announcements, and grey-zone manoeuvres signal that the contest between China and regional nations is deepening. The shifting posture of Japan, and its growing appetite to deploy highly capable combat units and long-range strike capabilities to regional exercises from Australia to the Philippines, is a step change in the political and military status of western Pacific security.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Big Five!

The War in Ukraine

Prisoner Exchange and the Human Dimension. On 24 April, Ukraine and Russia conducted a prisoner of war exchange, swapping 193 POWs each. These exchanges have become a regular feature of the war, providing one of the few channels of contact between the two sides. The exchanges are worth noting for what they represent beyond their humanitarian significance. They demonstrate that both parties have an interest in limited bilateral engagement, even in the absence of a broader settlement. The question is whether that limited engagement can be expanded into something more substantial to achieve some form of war termination agreement.

The Ground War. In the 1,521 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, the pattern of conflict on Ukraine’s front lines has settled into a rhythm of assaults, defence, and attritional exchanges. This is punctuated by occasional local advances that test whether Ukraine or Russia can exploit tactical gains with deeper operational breakthroughs. So far in 2026, neither has.

According to Ukraine’s General Staff, 236 combat engagements were recorded on 24 April alone, with Russian forces pressing hard in the Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka directions. Ukrainian forces recorded advances in those same areas. ISW’s 24 April campaign assessment confirmed Ukrainian forces had advanced in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka region and on the Pokrovsk axis of advance.

Of significance is the lack of Russian territorial gains so far in 2026. The Russia Matters War Report Card of 22 April noted that during the four-week period from 24 March to 21 April 2026, Russian forces suffered a net loss of two square miles of Ukrainian territory. This followed the net loss of four square miles in the preceding period.

One interesting technical note emerged with the ground war during the week that I wanted to highlight here. Deception, decoy and camouflage operations have made a big comeback during the war. An interesting topic related to this is the camouflage of tactical aerials. This is covered in the latest edition of the Snake Island Institute’s monthly tech update. As the article notes:

This is part of a growing set of field-expedient masking techniques, highlighting a broader trend: survivability is increasingly tied to the concealment of critical nodes rather than the protection of platforms alone.

Russia’s Aerial Strike Campaign. Russia’s aerial campaign remained intense this week. Russia launched one of its largest aerial strikes on the night of 24-25 April, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 57. Ukraine’s air defence forces neutralised 30 missiles and 580 drones since the evening of 24 April, according to Ukrainian reporting, though ballistic missiles continued to penetrate defences with troubling reliability. In Dnipro, a combined missile-and-drone strike destroyed a residential building and injured civilians; in Kharkiv, an enemy drone struck a multi-storey residential building in the Saltivskyi district; and in Kherson, four people were killed and 17 wounded over the course of the preceding 24 hours.

Russia launched more drones in March 2026 than in any other single month of the war, yet Ukrainian forces intercepted 90 percent of them. That figure represents an improvement on the 82-88 percent interception rates in spring and early summer of 2025 pointing to improvements in Ukrainian air defence integration over the past year.

Ukrainian Deep Strikes Reach the Urals. The most significant operational development of the past week was Ukraine’s long-range drone strike against targets in the Ural Mountains region of Russia. Ukrainian drones reached the Urals for the first time, covering more than 1,800 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and bypassing Russian air defences for over ten hours. The drones struck targets in Yekaterinburg, where Russian electronic warfare diverted one drone into a residential building injuring six civilians, and in Chelyabinsk, where explosions targeted the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant. More significantly, the Ukrainian strikes targeted the Chelyabinsk Higher Military Aviation School of Navigators, a facility that trains crews involved in strikes against Ukrainian cities. Local reports confirmed at least two direct hits on the flight school.

On 22 April, the Tuapse and Novokuibyshevsk oil refineries in Russia were forced to halt operations after coordinated drone attacks. The Tuapse facility, which processes 12 million metric tons annually, had been struck twice in less than a week. Together with earlier strikes, Ukraine’s drone campaign has damaged or destroyed approximately 20 percent of Russia’s refining capacity since early 2024.

Ukraine has maintained this deep-strike posture against Russian oil infrastructure despite reported pressure from some international partners to pause strikes on energy infrastructure because of rising global energy prices. Ukraine’s calculation appears to be that degrading Russian oil revenues, even at some diplomatic cost, is preferable to permitting Moscow to continue funding the invasion.

These strikes also show how Ukraine has degraded Russian air defence capability over the past couple of years. This is resulting in fewer air defence systems available to cover the vast Russian land mass and the wide array of tactical frontline units as well as oil infrastructure, defence industry and other targets of strategic importance to their war effort against Ukraine. As the most recent edition of the Snake Island Institute’s Monthly Tech Update describes:

Despite Russia ‘s layered air defences, at times, Ukraine has led a successful and effective strike campaign. Apart from direct economic pressure from lost oil production and refining capacity, Ukraine has forced Russia to redeploy air defense systems from the front lines and lower-priority objects to protect oil infrastructure. Moreover, Ukraine’s sustained campaign has systematically targeted and destroyed Russian air defense systems, significantly degrading Russia’s capacity to protect its critical infrastructure. Notably, in the period of June 2025 - March 2026, Ukraine struck 27 Pantsir systems, while its production capacity at an estimated rate of only 30–45 units per year.

The Diplomatic Track. After the trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva earlier in the year, and after a landmark January summit in Paris at which 35 nations assembled in a Coalition of the Willing framework, the most recent reports suggest the process remains mired in the fundamental incompatibility of Russian and Ukrainian positions on territory.

The House of Commons Library briefing from 23 April provides a useful summary of where things stand. Ukraine has agreed to the core terms of a peace framework developed through U.S.-mediated talks. Russia, however, continues to insist on conditions that Ukraine finds unacceptable, most prominently a demand for the cession of all four oblasts claimed but not fully occupied by Russian forces. Russian officials have described the Istanbul talks of 2025 as aimed not at a compromise peace but at ensuring Ukraine’s defeat. Foreign Minister Lavrov has simultaneously accused the United States of backtracking on understandings reached at the Anchorage summit.

Russia’s Economic Strain and Social Pressure. Russia’s economic position, while not collapsing, is increasingly strained by the cost of the war in Ukraine and Ukrainian deep strikes. The Russian Central Bank lowered its key interest rate for the third time in 2026 and for the eighth time in the last 12 months, a pattern that represents an attempted balancing act between suppressing war-driven inflation and sustaining economic activity. ISW’s assessments note that the Russian economy continues to struggle under the strain of war spending, and polls from both Russian state-owned and independent institutions acknowledge growing societal discontent with President Putin, driven by mounting war sacrifices and an intensified Kremlin censorship campaign.

Ukrainian drone strikes have compounded these pressures on the Russian home front. The strike into the Urals this week demonstrated that no part of Russia’s territory now sits safely beyond Ukrainian reach. Cities in Russia’s western regions, including Belgorod, experienced weeks-long power outages earlier in 2026 caused by Ukrainian strikes. Russia’s leadership has not insulated its population from the physical consequences of a war it launched.

Ukraine Assessment

Earlier this week, I published my latest assessment of the trajectory of the war in Ukraine and what initial trends in 2026 tell us about the direction of the conflict. As I noted in that article, to put it plainly, Russia’s 2026 operations have not been going well. On the other hand, Ukraine is performing well on the frontline, in its deep strike operations and in its diplomatic efforts.

To confirm (or reject) this hypothesis, I broke down the Ukrainian war effort into eight separate dimensions for analysis. Those dimensions - diplomacy, information operations, alliance management, new supporters, ground operations, long-range strike, technological innovation, and defence industry - collectively encapsulate the war’s character: a multi-domain contest of will, attrition, national resilience, diplomacy and adaptation.

Overall, the picture that emerges is one of emerging Ukrainian strategic advantage. Five of the eight measures of success are substantially or fully achieved. That said, Russian manpower resilience remains a strategic risk to Ukraine’s 2026 war strategy. Russia still occupies significant Ukrainian territory, is still hitting Ukrainian cities from the air every night and is slowly advancing in parts of Donetsk. Its theory of victory - outlasting Western will - is yet to be disproven.

The Pacific

My Taiwan Visit. I have just arrived home after conducting a research visit to Taiwan. I had the opportunity to speak with a range of different interlocutors at think tanks and in the Ministry of National Defence.

Three interlocking themes were apparent from the visit: first, the trajectory of relationship with America, the larger U.S. alliance framework and the U.S.-China relationship; second, China political, strategic and military developments and their lessons from recent wars; and third, Taiwanese military transformation – its strengths and weaknesses.

I will be writing more about this visit in the coming week.

Exercise Balikatan 2026. The start of Exercise Balikatan 2026 on 20 April marked the largest iteration of this annual exercise since it began in 1991. Canada, France, New Zealand, and Japan are deploying units as full participants for the first time.

Japan has dispatched over 1,400 personnel, its largest contingent ever. The Japanese Self-Defense Force units will fire Type 88 anti-ship cruise missiles to sink a target vessel off the coast of northern Luzon. The U.S. Army’s Typhon ground-based missile system, which has been forward-deployed in the Philippines since 2024, will also feature in the exercises, alongside simulated firing of BrahMos cruise missiles recently acquired by Manila from India.

The geographic scope of this year’s exercises is worth noting. The exercise training areas face both the South China Sea and Taiwan, concentrated in Luzon and including a counter-landing live-fire exercise in Zambales province, approximately 230 kilometres from the disputed Scarborough Shoal. Philippine Armed Forces Chief General Romeo Brawner described the exercise in plain language: the exercises send a clear and unambiguous message that the Philippines and its partners are prepared to defend the rules-based international order against coercion, intimidation, and unlawful claims.

China obviously views the exercise differently. Beijing’s response was more forceful than the diplomatic complaints it has issued every year since 1991. The PLA Southern Theatre Command announced that a naval fleet led by the Type 055 guided-missile destroyer Zunyi had conducted drills in waters east of Luzon, calling the deployment “a necessary action taken in response to the current regional situation.” China also deployed a naval destroyer group to waters near Japan’s southwestern Amami Oshima island. Relations between Beijing and Tokyo, already in the doghouse following Prime Minister Takaichi’s statement last year that an attack on Taiwan could represent an existential threat to Japan, deteriorated further.

At the disputed Scarborough Shoal, China erected a floating barrier to block access to Philippine fishing boats in the days leading up to Balikatan’s start. This is consistent with China’s grey-zone playbook: incremental physical measures that are individually deniable but cumulatively alter facts on the water.

This pattern of action and Chinese counter action is now well established: every allied exercise draws a proportionate Chinese military response, ratcheting up the tension in the region.

The Liaoning Transit. Taiwan’s defence ministry reported on 21 April that China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning transited the Taiwan Strait, the first such transit by an aircraft carrier in 2026. Taiwan reports near-daily Chinese military activity around the island, which Taipei characterises as a sustained pressure campaign against its democratically elected government.

Taiwanese contingency planning. Taiwan has been responding to Chinese pressure with new contingency planning. Bloomberg and CSIS both reported in mid-April that Taiwan has activated drills to break a potential Chinese energy blockade, a scenario that the ongoing Strait of Hormuz crisis has made more salient in the minds of Taiwanese planners. Taiwan is heavily dependent on imported energy, and a blockade scenario that cuts off oil and gas supplies without an outright invasion represents a particularly challenging grey-zone contingency. The Hormuz crisis has delivered a Taiwan Strait wake-up call.

Japan’s Transforming Defence Posture. Japan’s fiscal year 2026 began on 1 April, bringing with it a record defence budget of 9.04 trillion yen ($58 billion), up 9.4 percent from 2025 and the fourth year of a five-year program designed to bring annual defence spending to 2 percent of GDP. This is not simply a budget story. Japan’s Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi described it as “the minimum needed as Japan faces the severest and most complex security environment in the postwar era.”

The 2026 budget allocates more than 970 billion yen for Japan’s standoff missile capability, including a 177-billion-yen purchase of domestically developed Type-12 surface-to-ship missiles with a range of approximately 1,000 kilometres. Japan is also co-developing a next-generation fighter jet with Britain and Italy, with 160 billion yen allocated for that program in 2026 ahead of a planned 2035 deployment.

A new Pacific Defense Planning Office has been created within the Defence Ministry to study PLA activity in the Pacific and develop appropriate force posture responses. The Japanese 15th Brigade based in Okinawa is also being upgraded to a division-sized formation to reinforce defences across the Nansei Islands. New surveillance infrastructure is being deployed to Japanese islands including Kita Daito, chosen specifically for its proximity to Taiwan.

The degree of Japan’s participation in Balikatan 2026 is also an expression of Japan’s new posture. For Prime Minister Takaichi’s government, this is a strategic rather than symbolic choice. Her statement last year that an attack on Taiwan could represent an existential threat to Japan requiring potential Japanese military involvement was the clearest Japanese articulation yet of a red line that Tokyo’s previous governments had carefully avoided drawing.

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It’s time to explore this week’s recommended readings.

In this week’s Big Five, I have included an article on the potential for conflict over the South China Sea, a description of a recent U.S. Army experiment with using AI tools in a brigade-level training exercise, an analysis of positional warfare, an analysis of a NATO-like alliance framework in the Pacific and an assessment of munitions use in the Iran War.

As always, if you only have the time available to read one of my recommendations, the first is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. No Pacific NATO

For some time, analysts have pondered the question of whether a NATO-type security architecture is necessary or even possible in the Pacific region. In this article, published by War on the Rocks, the author examines both the ‘pros’ and the ‘cons’ of such a proposition. As the article notes, “a treaty that Beijing reads as permanently foreclosing its strategic options could compress the timeline for conflict rather than extend it. Quietly and steadily building the command structures, interoperability standards, and operational habits that would make allied resistance genuinely overwhelming is the path toward the credible deterrence aspired by the Pacific Defense Pact, and the one that leads away from Pearl Harbor rather than toward it.” The full piece can be read at this link.

2. The AI Military Staff

This article from the Modern War Institute explores the integration of AI into the staff planning process of a U.S. Army brigade headquarters during an exercise at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. It elicited multiple lessons, and as the authors describe, “the broader conclusion is not that AI can replace the military decision-making process. It is that AI can make that process more executable under modern conditions by reducing friction in the parts of staff work that consume time without adding proportional conceptual value.” You can read the full article at this link.

3. The Other China Flashpoint

In this article published by Foreign Affairs, the author looks beyond Taiwan to review a different potential flash point in the western Pacific: the South China Sea. As the author writes, “if conflict does break out in the Western Pacific, it is more likely to erupt southwest of Taiwan, in the South China Sea, where numerous countries jostle over competing maritime claims and divergent visions of sovereignty, regional order, and international law.” The full article is available to read at this link.

4. On Positional Warfare

This is a fascinating article published by the Military Strategy Magazine. The author explores positional warfare and proposes that it exists as a distinct form of strategy. As he writes in the article, “warfare of position reveals that the most decisive contests in modern conflict occur not on physical terrain but within the sociocultural environment that gives meaning to power. Long before hostilities begin, adversaries shape the narratives, identities, and expectations through which communities interpret authority and coercion. Once established, these frameworks determine whether military action will achieve its political aims or undermine them.” The full article is available here.

5. Magazine Depths Post Iran

The Center for Strategic and International Studies conducts a wide array of military and national security analyses (full disclosure: I am a non-resident fellow there). In this piece, the authors, examine the use of munitions in the Iran War (so far), as well as the costs and timelines for the replacement of these stocks. It is an interesting and useful study, underpinning the need for expanded military production across western nations. You can read the full article at this link.

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The task of Ukrainian units is to ensure a level of destruction of the occupier at which Russian losses exceed the number of reinforcements they can send to their forces each month…We are talking about 50,000 Russian losses per month, this is the optimal level. President Zelenskyy, January 2026.

Over the course of the war in Ukraine since 2022, I have offered periodic assessments about the progress of Ukraine’s campaigns, as well as how Russia might be measuring its progress in its ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory. Now that the Russian spring offensive has commenced, and early Ukrainian responses have become clear, I wanted to provide an assessment of what the trajectory of this war looks like from here.

To put it plainly, Russia’s 2026 operations have not been going well, and Ukraine is performing well on the frontline, in its deep strike operations and in its diplomatic efforts. Ukraine appears to have built strategic momentum this year. To confirm or reject this hypothesis, I have broken down the Ukrainian war effort into eight separate dimensions that together might determine whether 2026 represents a genuine shift in who holds the strategic initiative in the war. Those dimensions - diplomacy, information operations, alliance management, new supporters, ground operations, long-range strike, technological innovation, and defence industry - have been chosen because they collectively encapsulate the war’s character: a multi-domain contest of will, attrition, national resilience, diplomacy and adaptation.

What follows is an assessment of the eight measures of success for Ukraine, as well as an assessment of the measures of failure. These measures of failure, or the conditions that could still allow Russia to recover strategic momentum, provide an important complementary assessment as issues that Ukraine must guard against, and have strategies for, in 2026.

Ukraine’s 2026 Strategic Campaigns: Measuring Success

Measure 1: Ukraine achieves a credible diplomatic posture that isolates Russia internationally.

Diplomacy in this war has always been as much about denying Russia a false legitimacy as it has been about achieving peace. The measure of success here is not a ceasefire — which Russia can use as a recuperative pause — but a diplomatic posture in which Ukraine retains the initiative, demonstrates good faith, and forces Russia into the role of the spoiler.

Assessment. This has largely been achieved. The Geneva peace talks in February 2026 collapsed after two hours on day two. Russia launched a missile strike on Ukrainian cities on the opening day of the talks. Zelenskyy accused Moscow of deliberately stalling negotiations “that could already have reached the final stage.” Russia has demanded that Ukrainian forces withdraw from Donetsk as a precondition for talks, and this was framed by Peskov as something that should have happened “yesterday”.

Ukraine, on the other hand, accepted President Trump’s unconditional ceasefire proposal in Riyadh in March 2025 and has presented a 20-point peace framework to the United States. The record now shows that it is Russia that has rejected ceasefire after ceasefire. That is a significant diplomatic achievement, particularly given the scepticism of elements of the Trump administration toward Ukraine earlier in the conflict. And while this has reinforced Ukraine’s supporters in Europe, it appears to have made little impact on President Trump’s negative views of Ukraine or Zelenskyy.

Measure 2: Ukraine and its supporters maintain the information initiative against Russian cognitive operations.

Russia’s information warfare has evolved considerably. Its cognitive operations are now synchronised with missile strikes, AI-generated disinformation, and coordinated Telegram ecosystems. The measure of success here is not that Russian disinformation disappears — it will not — but that its effectiveness is sufficiently degraded that Western political will and Ukrainian civilian morale remain robust.

Assessment. This has been partially achieved. Russia is sustaining its extensive use of cognitive warfare. Its GRU bot farms continue to generate false narratives about Ukrainian unit mutinies and fabricated evacuation orders. A deepfake video of Zelenskyy calling for capitulation, produced with AI by the 72nd Information-Psychological Centre in Sevastopol, demonstrated the growing sophistication of synthetic command deception.

However, there are two countervailing forces to these Russian efforts. First, the open-source intelligence ecosystem with platforms like DeepState, trackers like @ShahedTracker and journalists such as @FrancisJFarrell, maintains a level of transparency about progress in the war that makes Russian narratives of triumphant advance and inevitable victory hard to sustain. Second, ISW has assessed that Russia’s limited cross-border raids in Sumy and Kharkiv are now primarily cognitive operations designed to shape peace negotiations rather than achieve military advances. This is an indication that Russia’s strategic narrative is increasingly decoupled from its battlefield reality.

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The Great War is, first and foremost, a contest of economies. To survive a war of attrition and postwar reconstruction, we cannot remain a country with a raw materials-based economy. I spoke about this today at the Business Wisdom Summit. Our path is to export finished products with high added value, develop machine-building and the military-tech sector. Ukraine must claim a worthy place on the global arms market. And we must accelerate, because the window of opportunity won’t stay open for long. Kyrylo Budanov, 16 April 2026.

This week’s update is being written on my first day in Taiwan for a week-long research visit. I look forward to a range of different conversations with different individuals and institutions, as well as a book talk now that my first book, War Transformed, has been released in Chinese. There is one other change for this week; I have not had time to put together my Big Five reading recommendations. My apologies. This will return next week.

The war in Ukraine this week conformed to patterns established early in 2026. Russian forces continued their attempts at generating operational momentum in their spring offensive with only limited success, while Ukrainian defensive operations – particularly drone operations – are hurting the Russians in greater depth behind the frontline. Ukraine and Russia continue their deep aerial strikes, with Russia generating large numbers of Ukrainian civilians killed and wounded, and Ukraine hurting Russian air defence and oil production. Diplomacy has stalled, and that does not appear likely to change while the Iran War absorbs much of the strategic bandwidth of the Trump administration.

In the Iran War, peace talks in Islamabad between U.S. Vice President Vance and Iranian representatives collapsed on 12 April. Trump subsequently declared that he “no longer cared about negotiations” and announced a US naval blockade of Iranian ports. By 16 April, Defence Secretary Hegseth confirmed that more than 10,000 US sailors, marines, and airmen, along with over a dozen warships, were executing the maritime blockade. The U.S. Navy simultaneously began initial operations to re-open the Strait of Hormuz. More recently the New York Times reported that “American military and intelligence officials estimate that, after weeks of war, Iran still has about 40 percent of its arsenal of attack drones and upward of 60 percent of its missile launchers — more than enough to hold shipping in the Strait of Hormuz hostage in the future.” It is hard to see why Iran would give up such leverage cheaply.

The week in the Pacific has seen North Korean ballistic missile launches, further negotiations about Taiwan’s special defence budget, the Balikatan 2026 live-fire exercises and China’s response, Australia’s new defence strategy, and the continued evolution of Japan’s operational footprint in the South China Sea and Philippine Sea.

Welcome to my weekly update on war and strategic competition.

Ukraine

Ukrainian Long-Range Strike Operations: Denying Russia’s Oil Windfall. This week demonstrated again that Ukraine has transformed its long-range strike campaign into a powerful source of strategic leverage against Putin. The campaign’s geographic scope would have been hard to imagine just a couple of years ago. Its economic effects, measured in denied oil export revenue, are becoming difficult for Russia to absorb. And the timing of the current Ukrainian strike campaign momentum is important – it coincides with Moscow’s windfall from the Iran war-driven oil price surge, and the extension of U.S. sanction relief.

In the past 24 hours, Ukraine hit the Novokuybyshevsk refinery, located 1000 km from Ukraine. It is an important asset for the Russian military and provides a large proportion of the Russian army’s fuel requirements.

Another striking operation (pardon the pun) of the last week came on 10 April, when Ukrainian forces struck two drilling platforms in the northern Caspian Sea - the ice-resistant stationary platforms at the V. Graifer and Yuri Korchagin fields. Ukraine’s General Staff stated the platforms served as fuel supply nodes for the Russian occupation army, making them legitimate military targets.

The week also saw Ukrainian drones hit two oil pumping stations in Volgograd and Krasnodar Krai, an oil depot in Tver, the Cherepovets Azot ammonia plant in the Volga region, the Sterlitamak Petrochemical Plant in Bashkortostan, and the oil export terminal and refinery at Tuapse on the Black Sea. The cumulative damage to Russia’s export infrastructure, in the final days of March and first two weeks of April, appears to be significant. Open source satellite photography showed Primorsk had lost 40 percent of its storage capacity and Ust-Luga 30 percent. Neither port was handling normal oil shipments as of early April, with Finnish maritime officials reporting tanker arrivals had fallen from a weekly average of 40–50 ships to “individual vessels.”

Reuters estimated that Russia had missed out on 40 percent of its potential oil windfall because Ukraine had destroyed the capacity to export at least 2 million barrels per day. In the context of Brent crude trading at $114 a barrel, that is a significant financial problem for Putin.

Russia’s response to the Ukrainian campaign was to issue a threat to Europe. The Russian Defence Ministry published a list of addresses of European companies involved in drone joint production with Ukraine, and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev clarified that the list amounted to “a list of potential targets for the Russian armed forces.” The warning came after Germany pledged 300 million euros to Ukraine’s long-range strike capability, Norway committed 560 million euros to drone support, and the Netherlands and Belgium added further hundreds of millions.

Related to Ukraine’s robust and evolving long-range strike capability, President Zelenskyy this week marked Arms Makers’ Day on 15 April by releasing a video showcasing 56 types of Ukrainian-built weapons, including 31 types of drones. His deputy defence minister noted that Russia cannot produce enough air defence systems to protect its vast territory. This is evidence that Ukraine’s strike campaign has found a structural gap in Russia’s air defence system that more investment and more drones and long-range missiles can continue to exploit.

Zelenskyy’s Europe Tour. Zelenskyy’s diplomatic tempo during the week took him to Norway, Germany, and Italy in a sweep of alliance meetings. His messaging was consistent: air defence is Ukraine’s highest priority, the Iran war has complicated Ukraine’s position, and Russia does not deserve any easing of international pressure including oil sanctions.

In Germany on 14 April, Zelenskyy and Chancellor Friedrich Merz agreed to strengthen defence cooperation, particularly in drone warfare, with Berlin committing 300 million euros to Ukraine’s long-range strike capability and pledging 5,000 mid-range attack drones for use against Russian battlefield logistics networks and other targets. In Norway on the same day, a joint defence and security cooperation agreement was signed alongside a Norwegian commitment of 560 million euros in drone support.

In Rome on 15 April, Zelenskyy met Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and announced a “Drone Deal” format. This is a security cooperation model through which Ukraine’s expertise in drone warfare, electronic warfare, and missile defence would be integrated with partner nations’ industrial capacity. Teams from Ukraine and Italy’s Leonardo defence company were tasked with developing a technical plan. Zelenskyy told the joint press conference that Ukrainian drone expertise had become a strategic export, with the Iran war creating new demand for Ukrainian counter-drone knowledge among nations that had found themselves on the receiving end of Iranian-designed systems.

“Air defence is our absolute priority,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Rome. “Almost every day, Russia strikes our cities and communities, our energy facilities, and residential buildings with missiles and drones.” His statement also addressed the peace negotiation deadlock directly: American negotiators, he told German television, appeared to him to be “convinced of Russia’s victory in the war” and he described this as “the only problem” with the current framework.

The previous week Zelenskyy had proposed an Easter ceasefire, offering a trade: Ukraine would stop attacking Russian energy facilities if Russia stopped striking Ukrainian ones. Putin rejected the extension of the 32-hour Easter truce unless Kyiv accepted his terms, an approach that used territorial concessions as the condition. Zelenskyy’s public handling of both the offer and its rejection demonstrated a consistent strategic communication discipline: position Ukraine as the reasonable party, make Moscow’s intransigence visible, and continue building the European coalition that can sustain the war regardless of Washington’s engagement level.

Russian Aerial Attacks. The Russian air campaign against Ukrainian cities during the period under review was not aberrant. It was the continuation of a policy that has now killed more than 15,000 Ukrainian civilians since 2022, according to the United Nations — a policy of deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and residential areas that, whatever language Russian officials deploy to describe it, constitutes systematic terror.

The worst attack of the past week occurred on the night of 15–16 April. Russia launched 703 weapons - 659 drones and 44 missiles - against Ukrainian cities in its largest aerial attack in almost two weeks. Ukraine’s air defences performed well under pressure: 636 drones and 31 missiles were shot down or neutralised, a 95 percent intercept rate for drones and 70 percent for missiles. But 26 locations were struck. At least 16 people were killed and more than 100 injured across Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia. In Kyiv, four were killed including a 12-year-old boy. In Odesa, nine were killed and 23 injured when a missile struck a high-rise residential building. In Dnipro, three women were killed and around three dozen injured.

“Such attacks cannot be normalised. These are war crimes that must be stopped and their perpetrators held to account,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Sybiha said on X.

The Easter ceasefire period provided a revealing window into Russia’s attitude toward negotiated humanitarian pauses. Ukraine’s General Staff recorded 10,721 ceasefire violations over the 32-hour period, including 1,567 artillery attacks, 119 assault actions, and 9,035 short-range kamikaze drone attacks. Russia refrained from long-range missile and Shahed attacks during the truce period, but the volume of shorter-range violations made any characterisation of the truce as genuine a difficult case to argue. Russia’s Defence Ministry accused Ukraine of 1,971 violations. Analysts described the truce as ‘smoke and mirrors’, noting it reflected Kremlin narrative management more than genuine pursuit of peace.

With regards to defending against Russian aerial attacks, during the week the Ukrainian Defence Minister issued a social media post that described how private air defence companies were now being integrated into Ukraine’s national air, missile and drone defence system. There are currently 19 companies contributing, and this number is sure to rise. It is a model for air defence – a public/private partnership – which has not been attempted in western nations before. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating development and another Ukrainian innovation we should watch and learn from.

And in a final interesting development this week, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) announced the first shoot down of a Shahed drone by a Ukrainian interceptor drone launched from a mothership drone. The details are contained in the following statement posted on USF social media:

For the first time in the world, an Unmanned Systems Forces interceptor drone launched from an unmanned surface platform has shot down a Shahed UAV. Operators of the naval unmanned systems division within the 412th Nemesis Brigade are carrying out combat missions in the maritime operational zone. This unit achieved the successful interception of a Shahed-type attack drone using an interceptor UAV launched from an unmanned surface vessel. This marks a new level of integration between naval and aerial unmanned capabilities. Using surface drone carriers to deploy interceptor drones expands air defense options and creates an additional layer of protection for Ukrainian cities.

The adaptation battle continues!

War on the Ground. The ground war during the week was characterised by the familiar rhythm of attritional combat: large numbers of tactical engagements, incremental gains and losses measured in hundreds of metres, and Russia’s continued inability to translate local tactical gains into operationally significant advances.

In the Donetsk Oblast, the most significant development came from the DeepState monitoring group’s assessment on 18 April that Russian forces were solidifying positions in Kalynove as a staging point for an advance toward the logistical hub of Kostiantynivka. Russian drone crews redeployed from the Kursk Oblast operations were reported in the area. Russian forces are now able to operate drones deep enough to reach Kostiantynivka itself - a city of 67,000 pre-war residents that is an important Ukrainian logistics node. ISW assessed that Ukrainian forces made advances in the Kostiantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area on 12 and 13 April.

On the Sumy front, Ukrainian forces pulled back to prepared lines near Myropilske as Russian forces claimed ground in three villages in the border region. Russian small-group infiltrations continued in northern Sumy Oblast, though a Kremlin-affiliated milblogger cautioned on 13 April that Russian forces “are unable to control large areas of forest” due to frequent Ukrainian counterattacks, and that a near-term seizure of Krasnopillya was “premature.” Zelenskyy warned on 17 April that Russia would likely attempt offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. This signals that Ukrainian intelligence assessments are seeing Russian ground forces assembling on multiple potential axes of advance.

The broader operational picture however displays a slowdown in Russian territorial gains. DeepState reported that Russian forces captured just 133 square kilometres in March 2026 — the lowest monthly total since June 2024. But as I noted last week that figure should not generate premature optimism. Russia has captured enormous amounts of territory since 2022 and holds approximately 20 percent of Ukraine. However, the latest figures do suggest that the combination of deeper Ukrainian drone operations and increased attacks on the Russians, improved defensive preparations, and the diversion of Russian military attention to southern Ukraine is imposing costs on Russia’s spring offensive tempo.

On the Kharkiv axis of advance, ISW’s 14 April assessment noted that Ukrainian forces continued their mid-range strike campaign against Russian radar systems in Belgorod Oblast. This was part of the larger Ukrainian campaign to degrade Russian early warning and targeting capabilities along the northeastern approaches. This campaign reflects a maturation of Ukrainian operational thinking. Ukraine is actively shaping the sensor and intelligence architecture that supports Russian air defence, artillery and aviation.

Diplomatic Negotiations. The diplomatic situation remained largely paralysed during the past week. The core challenge has not changed: Russia insists Ukraine concede approximately 20 percent of its territory, and Ukraine quite rightly refuses. At the same time, the Iran War has consumed Washington’s diplomatic bandwidth. A fourth round of U.S.-brokered trilateral talks on Ukraine that was due this month was postponed.

The Easter ceasefire was the key diplomatic event of the week. Putin announced the 32-hour truce on 9 April after having rejected Zelenskyy’s identical proposal more than a week earlier. Analysts assessed the truce as ‘smoke and mirrors’ aimed at maintaining soft-power links to traditionalist constituencies via Christian Orthodox symbolism and not as a genuine peace signal. After the truce expired, Russia refused to extend it unless Zelenskyy “accepted its terms.”

Zelenskyy’s response to all of this was to accelerate European industrial integration and drone production agreements and to treat American uncertainty not as a crisis but as a planning assumption that requires mitigation.

Strategic Assessment: Ukraine

The week of 12–19 April 2026 shows how Ukraine’s overall strategy – hurt Russia economically through long range strikes, while hurting them on the ground with enhanced drone and defensive operations, and continuing to build diplomatic support in Europe – is continuing to deny Putin his desired objectives for Ukraine. In the fifth year of the war, it is Ukraine’s forces that appear to be gaining in military effectiveness, not Russia’s. This is destroying Putin’s narrative (influential with the Trump administration) that Russian victory is inevitable. Ukraine is destroying any medium to long term prospect for Russian success.

The diplomatic situation is still concerning however. The Iran war has distorted U.S. diplomatic efforts to resolve the war in Ukraine, and has created space for continued Russian aggression. Zelenskyy’s European tour has been a strategic response to this. He seeks to build the industrial and political relationships that can sustain Ukraine’s war effort. But ultimately, this is not an enduring solution. A durable end to this war requires a change in Putin’s strategic calculus, and nothing indicates that a change is imminent. We must help Ukraine continue to increase the hurt felt by Putin and Russia to change this.

Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign has reached a level of geographic ambition and economic effect that is increasingly difficult for Russia to absorb, even when oil prices are at a high. A series of strikes at 1,000-kilometre ranges are a demonstration of the new era strike system built by Ukrainian industry, western assistance and operational creativity over the last four years. This, combined with the Ukrainian ground forces continued delay of Russian advances during the spring offensive and ongoing tech and tactics innovation, might be the very initial glimmer of turning the corner in this war. Ukraine is acting and performing like it has the strategic momentum in this war, and there is a fair argument that maybe now it does.

The Pacific

North Korea’s Ballistic Missile Launches. The Japanese Prime Minister announced on 19 April that North Korea had launched ballistic missiles. In her social media post, she stated that “at around 06:00 today, what may be multiple ballistic missiles were launched from North Korea. The items that may be ballistic missiles are believed to have already fallen outside Japan’s EEZ, and at present, Japan, the United States, and South Korea are closely coordinating to analyze information.” Both Japanese and South Korean sources reported the launches. The South Koreans have also reported that at least one of the missiles may have been submarine launched.

The Iran War and Its Pacific Reverberations. One of the most important dimensions of the Iran conflict for Indo-Pacific security is the systematic observation of modern war by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The PLA is a learning organisation, and is absorbing real-time insights on U.S. military capabilities, operational patterns, and strategic and political decision-making from the most significant American combat operation in a decade.

As I observed in an interview with RFE/RL earlier this month, the U.S. military has demonstrated it remains a very powerful organisation, capable of deploying overwhelming force and conducting sustained precision operations at least from the air and from the sea. That is a lesson Xi Jinping needs to absorb before contemplating any future action across the Taiwan Strait.

PLA-affiliated media outlet China Military Bugle published five formal lessons from the conflict for domestic military audiences: the danger of infiltration by adversary intelligence (’the enemy within’); the catastrophic cost of assuming peace during negotiations (’blind faith in peace’); the decisive logic of superior firepower; the paradox facing authoritarian regimes in modern warfare; and the paramount importance of technological self-reliance. That last lesson directly supports China’s growing domestic defence-industrial capacity. China’s military budget grew 7 percent in 2026 to roughly $277 billion, and its planners are rapidly translating wartime observations into capability investment.

The ISW-AEI China and Taiwan Update for 10 April reported that China has provided material support to Iran in ways carefully calibrated, so China remains beneath the threshold of U.S. retaliation. Multiple shipments of sodium perchlorate, a solid missile propellant precursor, arrived in Iran from China, potentially enabling partial reconstitution of Iran’s missile arsenal. More significantly, China’s commercial satellite company MizarVision, in which the Chinese government holds a minority stake, published AI-assisted satellite imagery showing precise locations of US military assets in Middle East bases. This imagery appears to have been employed by Iran to improve the accuracy of its missile and drone strikes.

The Center for International Maritime Security observed that the Hormuz crisis is stress-testing China’s own maritime strategy and exposing gaps. A key vulnerability for China is chokepoint dependency. Just as Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz paralysed oil flows, so too could an adversary impose similar constraints on Chinese maritime trade. The PLA is watching the Hormuz crisis as a possible dress rehearsal for potential scenarios in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

Taiwan’s Defence Budget Crisis and Deterrence. Taiwan enters this week facing a paradox. The external threat from the PLA has never been more clear, but Taiwan’s ability to construct a modern military to deter Chinese threats is being hamstrung by political dysfunction. This is becoming a deterrence failure, and Beijing is watching with satisfaction.

The NT$1.25 trillion (approximately US$40 billion) special defence budget proposed by President Lai Ching-te in November 2025, which was blocked from committee review at least ten times by KMT and TPP legislators, remained in limbo this week. The ISW-AEI April 3 China and Taiwan Update assessed that Taiwan’s main opposition parties were preventing Taiwan from acquiring systems critical to modern warfare, and that the legislative deadlock was damaging military readiness.

On 14 April, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu convened a cross-caucus negotiation on the special defence budget, with the DPP version on the agenda. Two days later, the Taipei Times reported that caucus leaders agreed to move the budget negotiations forward, though the KMT’s substantive alternative — capped at NT$380 billion, roughly a third of the administration’s proposal — remained a stark point of division. U.S. Senator Jim Banks met with President Lai this week and delivered a clear message: “When you pass the special budget in the legislature, that is a signal to China, and to the rest of the world, that Taiwan is serious about peace through strength”.

Japan’s Strategic Transformation Continues. Japan’s defence transformation continues at a pace that would have seemed impossible five years ago. The country is on track to become the world’s third-largest defence spender, and is deploying combat troops to the Philippines for the first time since 1945.

Fiscal Year 2026, which commenced this month, is the fourth year of Japan’s five-year 43-trillion-yen Defence Buildup Program. The defence budget for FY2026 totals 9.04 trillion yen ($58 billion), a record high and the fourth consecutive year of record spending. Japan has already effectively achieved the 2 percent of GDP defence spending target — reaching approximately 11 trillion yen when the supplementary budget is included — a target that was set for 2027. The FY2026 budget allocates over 160 billion yen to jointly develop the next-generation Global Combat Air Programme fighter with Britain and Italy, 30 billion yen for hypersonic guided missiles, and 100 billion yen for the layered ‘Shield’ coastal defence system incorporating aerial, surface, and underwater vehicles.

The most significant operational development of the past week for Japan is its deployment of combat forces to the Philippines for Exercise Balikatan 2026 (more on this exercise below). Japan will deploy approximately 1,400 troops and naval assets, marking the first time Japanese combat personnel have set foot on Philippine soil since the Second World War. The exercise will see Japanese forces fire a missile in a ship-sinking exercise in northwestern Philippine waters facing the South China Sea. Analysts at the South China Morning Post characterised Japan’s participation as ‘a big deal’, reflecting how Tokyo is taking a larger role in regional security groupings that could face off with China in contingencies involving the Luzon Strait and northern Philippines.

Exercise Balikatan – Rehearsing the Pacific Coalition. One of the key features of security developments in the Indo-Pacific is the growing construction of a layered deterrence architecture. This includes a mesh of bilateral and multilateral agreements, military and humanitarian assistance exercises, and capability-sharing arrangements that complement and reinforce the U.S. alliances in the region.

Exercise Balikatan 2026, being held from 20 April to 8 May is a key element of this mesh of Pacific alliances and partnerships. Over 17,000 troops from seven nations — the Philippines, United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, France, and New Zealand — are participating in what will be the largest iteration of the annual exercise. Training activities span locations facing the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait. For Japan, the Reciprocal Access Agreement with the Philippines, which entered into force in September 2025, provides the legal framework for this deployment. For all participating nations, Exercise Balikatan 2026 is partially a demonstration that America’s preoccupation with Iran has not diminished the resolve of its Indo-Pacific partners to maintain deterrence in the Pacific.

Australia’s Self-Reliance Strategy. Australia released its 2026 National Defence Strategy and accompanying Integrated Investment Program on 16 April, committing AU$425 billion over a decade in the most ambitious defence investment plan in the country’s history. As I wrote during the week, the new strategy reflects a slight evolution from its 2024 predecessor: it broadens the definition of national defence to encompass civil preparedness, fuel security, and economic security. The strategy commits an additional AU$14 billion over the next four years and AU$53 billion across the decade, with defence spending projected to rise to 3 percent of GDP in the 2030’s – a slow rise in spending that does not keep pace with the major security changes occurring in the Indo-Pacific.

The 2026 Integrated Investment Program prioritises the following: the nuclear-powered submarine capability under AUKUS; accelerated maritime lethality; expanded long-range strike; integrated air and missile defence; autonomous and uncrewed systems across all domains; counter-UAS for critical infrastructure protection; and resilient multi-orbit satellite communications. Defence Minister Marles emphasised that Australia would focus in 2026 on building greater military self-reliance, while insisting the U.S. alliance remained ‘fundamental’.

But as I and other Australian analysts have noted, the quantity of defence spending will remain in the low 2% range for some years yet, and this is placing increasing pressures on balancing the AUKUS program with retaining a ready Australian Defence Force. The Australian government has little reason for high fives on its new strategy just yet.

Strategic Assessment of Pacific Issues.

The past week has (again) made one thing very clear: the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific is being stress-tested by concurrent crises in ways that are revealing the strengths of different nations and relationships, while also exposing some key vulnerabilities.

On the positive side of things, the U.S. alliance network has demonstrated resilience during a period of American distraction. Japan’s Balikatan deployment, Australia’s NDS announcement, the multilateral presence in Philippine waters are important strategic signals. They represent commitments by nations that have observed, and at least partially absorbed, the lessons of European collective security failure in the early 2020s. These nations appear to have a growing understanding that a failure of deterrence in the Pacific could be much more catastrophic than Europe’s current war and are determined ensure a similar failure is not replicated against China.

The Iran War has exposed the Indo-Pacific’s energy dependence on Middle Eastern supply routes. This is a vulnerability that decades of warning failed to adequately address. China’s systematic learning from Operation Epic Fury may produce a more capable, more informed PLA that will be harder to deter in the 2030s than the force that exists today. The diversion of significant U.S. military assets to the Persian Gulf, including two carrier strike groups, has created a temporary window of reduced conventional deterrence in the Pacific that China has noted.

That concludes my weekly update. I look forward to sharing another update with you next week.

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Today, Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles released the 2026 version of Australia’s National Defence Strategy (NDS). In a speech given at the National Press Club in Canberra, Marles was critical of previous governments and took a combative stance on the contributions of think tanks and defence commentators.

In launching the new strategy, Marles outlined an approach that retained the overall trajectory of the 2024 National Defence Strategy, reinforced Australia’s alliance with America, and committed to expanded growth in defence spending.

This article contains an initial assessment of the new Australian National Defence Strategy. Overall, the focus and trajectory of Australia’s defence strategy remains consistent with the 2024 version. But there are some notable issues and missed opportunities that are worthy of highlighting.

Four Shifts in the New Strategy

First, I want to cover the key changes from the 2024 strategy to the one just announced. There are four key changes worth exploring. Each on its own could be a separate article.

Change I: Strategic Framing. Described Australia’s most challenging environment since WWII; strategic circumstances were ‘deteriorating’; a ten-year warning window no longer existed. The rules-based order was under pressure but still largely intact. The 2026 National Defence Strategy states that ‘deterioration’ no longer adequately describes conditions. The international system is in ‘transition’ with the end state “difficult to predict.” Thresholds against the use of force are being eroded. Australia will face force projection risks “not seen since WWII.”

Change II: Strategic Reliance as an Objective. Self-reliance was referenced in context of building capability and reducing vulnerability to coercion but was not named as a discrete strategic objective. The U.S. Alliance remained the primary security guarantee without qualification. In the 2026 National Defence Strategy, self-reliance is now formally defined and elevated as a core strategic objective. The 2026 NDS also acknowledges the U.S. increasingly expects allies to do more and directs Defence to “work towards greater independent capacity to generate and employ military power.”

Change III: Funding. The 2024 strategy committed an additional $5.7 billion over four years (to 2027-28) and $50.3 billion over a decade (to 2033-34). Total decade funding was $765 billion in the 2024 document with the defence budget projected to reach $100.4 billion by 2033-34. The 2026 NDS adds $14 billion over four years and $53 billion over a decade. Combined with 2024 NDS, total additional investment is $30 billion over four years and $117 billion over the decade to 2035-36. The investment in capability over the decade grows to ~$425 billion. Defence spending is projected to reach approximately 3.0% of GDP by 2033-34. The key question is whether this is enough to deter or deal with threats in the environment described in Change I.

Change IV: Evolving National Defence Definition. In 2024, national defence comprised integrated statecraft, national resilience, industry resilience, supply chain resilience, innovation/S&T, a workforce/skills base, and the National Intelligence Community. Fuel security was not a highlighted domain. Economic security was implicit rather than explicit. In the new strategy, the concept of National Defence is expanded to include explicit new priority areas: economic security, national civil preparedness, and a dedicated focus on fuel resilience (backed by $4.8 billion investment and a new National Fuel Council). As such, the new 2026 National Defence Strategy shifts more towards a true ‘defence’ strategy rather than just a ‘military’ strategy that was described in the 2024 version. This is good. But these are also topics that should be in a National Security Strategy - if Australia had one!

Other Issues, Challenges and Missed Opportunities

Spending. There is an uptick in spending. This is a positive. There is a description of how Australia will get 3% of GDP on defence in the future - beyond 2030. The reality is that because we are well short of this now, trying to fund both AUKUS and the ADF at the same time with current spending is challenging (nice word for not possible), and conventional military capabilities are degrading - and not modernising fast enough.

Learning from Other People’s War. Arguably the Australian Dept of Defence has been the slowest of all western military institutions to learn the lessons from Ukraine and it received minimal mentions in the 2024 edition of the NDS. That has changed with a couple of dozen mentions in the new document and in the Minister’s speech. However, the only real (superficial) insights that the NDS provides are that Ukraine shows asymmetry in war is good, that magazine depth matters and that interaction with industry is crucial. All true. But nothing about how to truly mobilise national warfighting capacity in the event of war.

Mobilisation. Notwithstanding the positive language around readiness and resilience, as well as self-reliance, this could have all been brought together with a discussion on mobilisation planning, and how a mobilisation plan aids in deterring adversaries. This is a real missed opportunity. This would have been an opportunity to draw all these threads together, and include mobilisation as a seventh “capability effect” in the 2026 National Defence Strategy.

Artificial Intelligence (AI). The 2026 National Defence Strategy mentions AI a few times and there is a section on it buried in Chapter 9. But plans for speeding up operational tempo and improving strategic decision making in the ADF are pretty light on. My observations of U.S., Ukrainian and Israeli approaches would indicate that the 2026 National Defence Strategy contains nothing that would get the ADF close to their capabilities any time soon. And in AI, days matter. If Defence in Australia is years behind, which is possible, it will be a massive challenge for Australia’s defence department to catch up with allies.

Cognitive Warfare. One of the most important lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East has been the growth in AI-enabled cognitive warfare. Cognitive warfare was recently defined by military strategist Frank Hoffman as “the application of information and cognitive sciences to enhance or degrade the decision-making process and resulting behaviour of political and military leaders, and civilian society, in order to obtain a positional advantage in the information environment and designated political objectives.” By this definition, strategic communications, which is the 2026 National Defence Strategy’s only nod towards this domain, addresses only the margins of the challenge. This is a missed opportunity to explore and invest in a critical military and national capability.

People. As the strategy states, “People are Defence’s most important capability.” Defence has made some headway in recruiting in recent years, and strengths are heading in the right direction. What is not heading in the right direction is the increasingly bloated numbers of senior military and civilian personnel in the Department.

Recent Portfolio Budget Statements (see the pages from the publicly released Defence Budget Statements in 2015, 2020 and 2025) tell a tale of massive growth in senior officers while growth in enlisted personnel is much, much smaller.Military star ranks have increased by 33% in the last decade, and military senior officers have increased by 32% over the same time. However, enlisted personnel ranks have decreased by 1%. It is hard to square these numbers with a more effective, faster moving and more innovative military institution when there is such a large – and increasing – managerial overhead in the Australian Defence Force

People and Advanced Technology. In Chapter 5 of the 2026 National Defence Strategy, AI is grouped with autonomous systems as a category of emerging technology that demands new workforce attributes, particularly specifically flexible thinking, resilience and a willingness to innovate. This is a relatively brief mention but signals that the ADF people development must account for AI literacy and adaptability as core competencies for the future ADF. This is a positive thing. But more needs to be done in the evolution of training and education where military personnel are no longer machine users and drivers - they are full partners with some of these technologies and that demands different training, education and leader development approaches.

Air, missile and drone defence. The 2026 National Defence Strategy makes a positive contribution to the development of enhanced air, missile and drone defence for military bases, deployed forces and, hopefully, critical civil infrastructure. This was a lesson from Ukraine that was obvious over 3 years ago and neglected in the 2024 NDS. So, growth here, including a high priority placed on a medium range air and missile defence system is good. But is there enough funding to provide the coverage required? And, given that every major nation on earth is engaged in a build-up of similar systems, will Australia be close enough to the front of the line to procure these systems from America or Europe before 2030?

Defence Industry. There are positive signals for Australian defence industry including the emphasis on self-reliance and the quoting of the Ukrainian example of BRAVE1 as an interlocutor between the military and industry. Let’s see how this actually plays out, but I am hopeful we will be building (as well as designing and
adapting) more defence technologies here in Australia.

The ANZUS Alliance. The minister strenuously defended the U.S. alliance during his speech at the National Press Club. Full disclosure: I am also a strong supporter of the alliance, and it is in Australia’s interest to sustain it and contribute more to it. And while Australia has avoided much of the harsh language directed at America’s NATO allies, that does not mean we can free-ride on the alliance. The nature of our alliance is evolving and we must evolve too.

Adaptive Stance. It is no secret, at least outside of Australia, that the technology of war, and the accompanying changes in military structures, strategy, tactics and training, are moving very quickly. Ukraine and the wars in the Middle East have demonstrated a pace of learning and adaptation – on all sides. The 2026 National Defence Strategy treats pace as a first-order strategic problem. It is viewed as an existential challenge to how the Department of Defence operates, acquires, trains, reforms and governs itself. References to pace, speed, adaptation and related concepts appear over 200 times in the document. Responses in the NDS to this challenge include:

• Risk tolerance. Chapter 11 addresses this directly and in frank terms. Defence leaders are told to have “a positive disposition to risk” and told that “a higher risk tolerance remains critical to enable timely decision-making, ensure speed to acquisition and deliver Australia’s defence strategy.”

• Asymmetry. Chapter 9 argues that Australia must “seek military advantage in innovative ways” and that asymmetric options — particularly from Ukraine’s experience — “can preserve conventional military capabilities and contribute an element of operational surprise.”

• Quicker capability. The minimum viable capability model (Chapter 8) is directly responsive to the pace of change problem. And the establishment of the Defence Delivery Agency (commencing July 2027), led by a National Armaments Director reporting directly to Ministers, is partly framed as a response to the pace problem. Chapter 8 notes that “urgent reform is required to effectively deliver increasingly complex defence capabilities.”

• Supply Assurance. A key theme in the pace response is that Australia cannot rely on access to external supply chains during a conflict. The document acknowledges in Chapter 1 that global defence industry is already struggling to meet demand, and that “off-the-shelf procurement no longer offers a guarantee of speed to capability.” The response is a consistent push toward sovereign industrial capability.

The 2026 National Defence Strategy is the document that is most conscious of Australia’s defence strategy temporal challenges to date. It moves to treat speed as a first-order strategic and organisational challenge. The document’s ambition in this regard makes sense. Whether Defence’s institutional culture, acquisition processes and sovereign industrial base can be transformed at the speed – and capacity - the strategic environment demands remains an unanswered question.

Defence Culture. Finally, the defence minister today dismissed the contributions of think tanks, retired officers, and former public servants as worthless. Whatever one thinks of individual contributors, this reflects a broader cultural issue: Australian defence policy is developed within a narrow Canberra circle that has insufficient external scrutiny. No other Western capital has a similar relationship (or lack of a relationship) with its defence ecosystem as the Canberra bubble. Better leadership from the Minister is required here.

Overall Assessment

Like all government strategies, the new 2026 National Defence Strategy has some good, and some bad, elements. It exploits some opportunities while missing others.

The 2026 National Defence Strategy builds on, rather than replaces, the strategic framework established in 2024. The core architecture of National Defence, the Strategy of Denial, the integrated focused force, and the US Alliance as the foundational partnership remain intact. However, the 2026 NDS intensifies ambition in multiple domains, driven by the assessment that Australia’s security environment has not just deteriorated but has entered a fundamentally new and more dangerous era.

For defence planners and industry partners, the key implications are increases in investment across capability, the new (already announced) capability delivery architecture (the Defence Delivery Agency), an expanded sovereign industrial base policy, and a broader conception of National Defence that now includes national civil preparedness, fuel security, and economic security as explicit domains.

I will conclude with some words I wrote for the Lowy Institute about the new defence strategy today:

Ultimately, the real test of any defence strategy is whether it prepares Australia to deter conflict, and if deterrence fails, to defeat threats to the nation. The 2026 NDS provides only a partial answer to that question.

Read the new 2026 Australian National Defence Strategy and its accompanying Integrated Investment Program, at this link.

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In the coming day or so, the Australian government will release its new National Defence Strategy. Much has changed since the release of the previous iteration in April 2024. Insights from Ukraine have become more obvious, and the various wars in the Middle East have provided an array of lessons that often complement those from Ukraine.

Back in February this year, I published an article with the Lowy Institute that explored the forthcoming National Defence Strategy, and how it might incorporate lessons from contemporary wars. Crucially, I also proposed that perhaps the most important contribution that the new strategy might make is to place the Australian Defence Force in a better adaptive stance, and to implement measures that would allow faster, better quality learning and adaptation at the tactical, operational, strategic and political levels.

You can read that article below.

In the coming months, the Department of Defence will release its 2026 National Defence Strategy. The previous document, released in 2024, reaffirmed Australia’s defence strategy of deterrence by denial, and cast the foundations for an ADF whose force structure is now heavily influenced by the increasing costs of the AUKUS submarine program.

The strategic environment has changed more in the past two years than it has in the past 20. The relatively certain environment of the post-9/11 era, where threats were largely understood (even if we were still surprised at times) has given way to the globalisation of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the acceleration of Chinese military aggression and economic coercion, and a new US presidential administration focused on the Western hemisphere and more demanding of its allies. At the same time, the re-elected Albanese government has shown little inclination to increase defence spending commensurate with the growing strategic uncertainty.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown that perhaps the most transformative aspect of modern conflict has not been drones or AI, but the power of new, technology-supported learning and adaptation systems. The adaptation battle in Ukraine alone is moving at a pace that is incomprehensible to the low-risk bureaucrats and politicians in Canberra. A larger “adaptation war” has emerged with Russia, China and North Korea sharing insights in near real time. The most critical element of the forthcoming NDS will not be budget or technology – it may well the enhancement of our nation’s adaptive capacity in a rapidly changing world.

The first level of adaptation is tactical. The ADF must be able to adapt more rapidly to a budget situation where AUKUS submarines consume a larger proportion of the defence pie. At the same time, air, land, sea, space and cyber domain experts need to be able learn directly from their operating environment more rapidly and combine this with insights from allies overseas. This must result in more operational analysis capacity, evolved structures, warfighting doctrines, and training methods.

The next level of adaptation is strategic. The ADF as an institution will need to be able to rapidly adapt its force structure to take account of the large-scale penetration of uncrewed systems in the land, air and sea domains, noting that there is no one size fits all solution. Different environments and missions will demand different balances of crewed and uncrewed systems. This will also demand adaptations to force structure, and at a minimum, the formation of multiple new drone – and counter-drone units in the army, navy and air force and their reserve components.

Beyond force structure, the ADF will need to prepare to adapt its force for limited or broader national mobilisation. It is becoming increasingly clear that China’s military aspirations extend beyond Taiwan. PLA deployments have extended beyond the first island chain with aircraft carrier battlegroups, deep into the South China Sea, joint naval and bomber patrols in the North Pacific and in activities around Australia.

The size of the full-time force in Australia must be able to be augmented through mobilisation, but this will demand adaptations to training, infrastructure, force structure and leadership models. The new national mobilisation entity in Taiwan, the All Out Defence Mobilisation Agency, may offer Australia insights into this process.

The third level of adaptation is political. The Australian government must adapt its capacity to communicate to the Australian people the accelerating pace, and wider array, of physical, cognitive and societal threats this nation faces. Releasing the NDS quietly on the night before Anzac Day, as occurred in 2024, will not cut it in 2026. A broader and open conversation with the nation is required.

At the same time, the Australian political system must adapt rapidly to an environment where our principal security partner might no longer be described as a security guarantor. America henceforth will be a more transactional and demanding partner. While Australia may have escaped the worst of the Trump administration’s “freeloading” accusations directed at Europe and Canada, this may not always be the case. Government would be required to adapt the Australian federal budget for a heavier defence burden.

The final type of adaptation required in the NDS is to the adaptation of the current peacetime mindset in defence. The slow, zero-risk management model that has been transferred into the ADF from the public service – which lacks elements such as the need for rapid decision-making under duress and the concept of unlimited liability – is not survivable in a future war. This should be addressed through evolved promotion systems with incentives that select, as Andrew Gordon describes in The Rules of the Game, more rat catchers and fewer regulators.

Adaptation in war, and the ability to rapidly adapt a military institution and its society from peace to war, builds upon the adaptation culture, processes and leadership established in peacetime. The forthcoming NDS could make a significant contribution to Australia’s defence in this regard. It could provide the government, Department of Defence and citizens of Australia a firm foundation for learning how to learn better, and more rapidly adapt, should the worst occur.

Once the new 2026 National Defence Strategy is released, I will be writing about it at Futura Doctrina. This article was originally published by the Lowy Interpreter at this link.

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