Decker Eveleth and Jeffrey Lewis’s team at CNS have found 119 silos for ICBMs out in the deserts of China. That’s the largest expansion of PRC silos in history, by far, but it isn’t totally clear what is going on, and whether each of these Bouncy Castles of Death represents a new missile or if …

Jeffrey’s team is at it again.  This time, they (and Jonathan McDowell!) caught an unannounced (and failed) Iranian space launch attempt and have now caught what appears to be a second unannounced (and failed) Iranian space launch attempt.  The failed launch detection was covered by Zachary Cohen and Oren Liebermann at CNN, who were kind …

Is the Nuclear Posture Review something worth doing, or a massive waste of time and political capital? Jeffrey and Aaron vote “waste.” The NPR takes up a ton of time, leaves policy on autopilot during its duration, and burns a ton of bandwidth that could be used for actual reflection and policy change.  But what …

The hype is real. Maybe its a branding thing, maybe people forget ballistic missiles are a thing, maybe nobody thinks “glider force” sounds cool. But whatever the reason, people keep calling hypersonic glide vehicles fast compared to existing missile systems. Jeffrey and Aaron discuss hypersonic weapons, what people keep getting wrong about them, and why …