This Means War
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This Means War
Conversations about contemporary warfare and what it means for the future of fighting. Each episode will look at how wars are being fought around the world today, whether (and why) this is important, and what it all might mean for militaries and national security in the coming decades.
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Battlefield AI
The disorderly arrival of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the battlefield foretells of what is to come. The similarities to the hype around cyber warf...
The State and The Soldier
That the military is subordinate to political (civil) authority seems like a no brainer. Headlines are made when challenges to this norm occur (see Tr...
Training is credibility
In military circles, training can mean all things to different groups. Some think it is for making friends and building partnerships. Other parts of t...
Debriefing the latest UK Strategic Defence Review
The was much to like about the 2025 UK SDR: an uncomfortable but honest diagnosis of the state of Britain’s military; a characterisation of the world...
The Russian Meat Grinder
Given the way Russian military cheifs send their troops into combat without regard for rates of attrition and casualties, it seems to bamboozle many W...
Air combat power vs IAMD
After more than 3 years of war in Ukraine, the Russian military is not a spent force: indeed, the combination of more flying hours for more aircrew, 3...
SDR Threat series: How to deter Russia?
The West has not deterred Russia from destabilising Europe, the Caucasus, North and Sub Saharan Africa, or the Middle East. Moscow has undertaken war-...
SDR Threat series: National Security without US guarantees
President Trump might have shocked some European leaders but the writing has been on the wall for decades: European states will have to take responsib...
SDR Threat Series - Trust and Honesty
If the relationship between a government, the military, and industry is to really change from a transactional one towards a sincere partnership it mus...
SDR Threat Series – The Politics of a Defence Review
The politics of a review of a national security strategy are huge. What is the appetite for change? What is the appetite to deliver? What is the polit...
SDR Threat series – Buying Silver Bullets
The continual changes to British defence acquisition and procurement processes, frameworks, doctrines, strategies and plans have wreaked havoc with th...
SDR Threat series - Missile Defence (you can't defend everything)
Successive reports from the UK parliament since 2022 have highlight the inadequacies of air and missile defences in the UK against a growing threat en...
The Threat Landscape with Peter Frankopan
National security risk registers capture a large number of potential threats to societies. So should any review of national security or national defen...
SDR Threat Series: Misunderstanding Adversaries and Inconvenient Threats
National security is an all-encompassing, cross-society endeavour: Any national security strategy must be that too, or it will miss critical elements...
SDR Threat Series: Weapons, Systems, and the promise of AI
Professor Tony King (author of “Command”, “Urban Warfare”, and “The Combat Soldier”) talks through his understanding of how threats will develop over...
SDR Threats Series: Styles and Themes of Contemporary Warfare
As the nearly new UK government formulate a Strategic Defence Review (probably for publication after new US President takes office), this mini-series...
NATO finale: Friends and Enemies (Question Time)
This mini series about NATO has taken some people out of their comfort zone: nonetheless, there has been a lot of positive feedback about the honesty...
The real heroes of NATO
NATO is rarely covered by mainstream news outlets between annual summits yet the work goes on constantly. In this episode, Peter talks to Professor Ju...
NATO's Successes and Unsuccesses
NATO is often trumpeted as the most successful military Alliance in human history: a grand claim indeed. The reality is less definitive. NATO did not...
NATO isn’t perfect (but it isn’t going badly either)
Professors Peter Roberts and Julian Lindley French try and put the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty in perspective: how much of the histo...
A Cautionary Tale from 1973
Intelligence failures, strategic surprise, heavy attrition, mass casualties, reversals, internal rivalries, personality conflicts, communications brea...
Norms and Forms of Warfare
It seems useful to frame some of the discussion about warfare around norms and forms rather than the character and nature terminology: this allows for...
AUKUS – a reality check
Peter is joined by John Hemmings from the US and Malcolm Davies from Australia to talk about AUKUS. Since the security agreement was signed in Septemb...
Future War, Technology and Strategy
In October 2023, an expert group of national security experts from around the world came together at Wilton Park in Sussex for a discussion and exchan...
Balancing and regional players
Some states face complex calculations in balancing their reactions to wars happening around them. Many (perhaps most?) governments of the day are appr...
Fortification
We live in a guarded society. Humanity seems to have adopted fortification on the battlefield and in our homes and cities at an unusual scale. Forming...
DPRK in an era of Great Power realignment
Most people will not have missed the visit North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to Russia last month. What went without comment was the significance of...
On Taiwan – strategic ambiguity, operational clarity?
Beijing seems to have an insatiable appetite for increasing the scale and pace of military operations around Taiwan: from embargo operations to large...
Investing in a War Zone
How do companies, businesses, and industry make investment decisions in a war zone? There is no shortage of international funding committed to the reb...
Ending wars - a primer
Bringing conflict to a conclusion usually comes about because of annihilation of one party or the exhaustion of both. It sounds very 'dead Prussian',...
What if the deep battle doesn’t matter?
The modern interpretation of manoeuvre theory for warfare holds the deep battle as a central avenue to success. Indeed, Western militaries have become...
Manoeuvre theory is in a coma
The opportunities to use manoeuvrist theory on contemporary battlefields are scarce, if they exist at all. Professor Tony King talks to Peter about t...
Is manœuvre a myth?
There is a disturbing undercurrent in Western PME – demonising anything not termed ‘manoeuvre’ or ‘manoeuvrist’ as stupid, dated and irrelevant. Ukrai...
NATO structural issues unresolved at Vilnius
Going into the NATO summit at Vilnius, NATO had a three tier membership structure and lacked the political leadership and will to make hard decisions....
Japan Security Dilemmas
Surrounded by three potential adversaries, hampered by a history that prevents deep alliances with neighbours, and a below-optimal command integration...
A Middle East Without America
For decades, politics, security and economics in the Middle East has been inextricably linked to the USA. Today, however, Washington increasingly view...
China’s Machiavellian Mindset
After 20 Shangri La dialogues, it is not difficult to say that the world has changed – certainly in the Indo Pacific. In 2002, scholars and global lea...
Fiscal Reality and Strategic Autonomy
The price of military equipment and people means that many militaries are having to make decisions about trade-offs between force elements. Taking a ‘...
A Russian Lake no more?
The Black Sea has been called a Russian lake before. Perhaps it was again after 2008: Russia used the Black Sea for its invasion of Georgia, as a key...
The new European military heavyweight
Poland is an outlier in Europe: a state that has been willing to resource the national security statements of political leaders made in 2022, and cogn...