Regional Issues - Category SSI Worldwide

Regional Issues

China Landpower Studies Center | June 24, 2026

GL-6–Equipped ZTZ-96A Main Battle Tanks Highlight the PLAA’s Emphasis on...

Joaquin Camarena and Anthony Costanzo

China Landpower Studies Center | June 24, 2026

China Maritime Report #55: Loading the Well Deck: The PLA Navy's Maturin...

Since 2023, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has established an annualized rhythm of loading PLA Army (PLAA) combat, engineering, and support units onto PLA Navy (PLAN) amphibious ships for international exercises. This integration signals a

China Landpower Studies Center | June 22, 2026

Systems Over Steel: How China is Redefining Amphibious Armor Survivability

The contemporary discourse on drone-driven warfare rarely suggests the end of maneuver, but it highlights an increasingly perilous gap between tactical movement and force survivability in a hypertransparent environment. Against this backdrop, the

China Landpower Studies Center | June 5, 2026

The Z-21’s External Fuel Tanks Expand the PLAA’s Planning Options for He...

Joaquin Camarena

China Landpower Studies Center | June 2, 2026

Between Beijing and the Budget: The Domestic Realities of Taiwan’s Defen...

Taiwan's legislature spent six months blocking a major defense budget, then passed a scaled-down version days before the Trump-Xi summit. Jessica C. Liao and Kyle Marcrum argue why the story the US media tells is flawed.

Category: SSI Worldwide

Academic Year 2026–27 Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment
June 22, 2026 — The United States faces a complex and ever-changing global environment. The Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment is designed to guide the collective defense community to research and write about critical national security challenges to prepare the Army for a wide range of potential conflicts and threats... MORE

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Taking a Toll: How Allowing Iran to Charge for Transit in the Strait of Hormuz Could Undermine US Strategy in the Pacific and Beyond
May 11, 2026 — In April, Iran began charging ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz a “toll” for safe passage. By itself, this represents a dangerous new dynamic in the Middle East that may have begun with the Houthis in Yemen as early as 2024, wherein parties extort international commerce by imposing fees in exchange for safe transit as part of their war effort. Although some countries have agreed to pay Iran’s fees, many countries such as the United Kingdom as well as organizations, including one representing the majority of tanker firms, have condemned it... MORE

Just Security: Taking a Toll slide By Daphné Richemond-Barak and Jacob Stoil

Can AI Pass the US Army War College?
April 29, 2026 — The US Army War College oral comprehensive examination serves as the institution’s capstone, measuring its senior officers’ strategic thinking. In early 2026, three faculty panels applied that standard to four leading commercial artificial intelligence (AI) systems: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok. Prompted without core curriculum materials, all four models passed. Unlike static benchmarks, the examination’s impromptu dialogue format revealed meaningful performance differences that were invisible in general-purpose evaluations, with one model performing at a statistically significant advantage. These findings challenge how the Department of War assesses commercial AI for strategic applications and point toward domain-specific, dialogue-based benchmarking as a more rigorous standard... MORE

Parameters Now: Can AI Pass the US Army War College? by Kevin M. Boyce, John A. Nagl, and Kristan J. Wheaton

Fighting for Intelligence in Large-Scale Combat Operations: The Role of the Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Battalion–Next
March 3, 2026 — This article contends the US Army’s proposed intelligence and electronic warfare battalion–next concept constitutes an organizational solution essential for achieving intelligence dominance in large-scale combat operations. Transcending legacy formations that are predicated on specific intelligence disciplines, this innovative design furnishes a functionally oriented, modular, and layered architecture that affords the requisite analytic capabilities, agility, and endurance for the contemporary battlefield. The analysis incorporates lessons extracted from the Russia-Ukraine War, US Army experimental endeavors, assessments of peer threats, and doctrinal evolutions, thereby providing readers of US Army War College Press publications with vital insights into how the Army is adapting to the future of warfare... MORE

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Is there still a Path for an International Security Force in Gaza
February 26, 2026 — The US twenty-point peace plan that marked the end of Gaza War created an opportunity to break the... MORE

MITVIM article - Is there still a Path for an International Security Force in Gaza

If China Attacks Taiwan: Beijing Risks Social Instability in a Conflict
February 4, 2026 — A conversation between Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Dr. Jake Rinaldi, and Bonnie Glaser on the risk of domestic social instability for Beijing if China attacked Taiwan. A podcast from The German Marshall Fund of the United States... MORE

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If China Attacks Taiwan: Beijing Risks Social Instability in a Conflict

Can the 15th Five-Year Plan Fix the People’s Liberation Army’s Procurement Bottlenecks?
January 14, 2026 — China’s newly released 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) proposal, unveiled after the Fourth Party Plenum in October 2025, not only marks Beijing’s quest to achieve the People’s Liberation Army’s goal of building a so-called world-class military by 2049. As the last major planning cycle before the 2035 benchmark for “basically achieving full modernization,” the plan also reaffirms General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core priorities: operational efficiency, technological self-reliance, and the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute command... MORE

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A Human-Centric Framework: Employment Principles for Lethal Autonomous Weapons
January 12, 2026 — As lethal autonomous weapon systems become a battlefield reality, the Department of War must establish unambiguous employment criteria to allow war fighters to use these controversial systems ethically and responsibly. The updated policy should shift the conversation from the weapon system to humans by defining pre-deployment judgment and emphasizing accountability... MORE

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A Long, Hard Year: Russia-Ukraine War Lessons Learned 2023
January 12, 2026 — As the Russia-Ukraine War passed the two-year mark, the conflict ground to an entrenched, apparent stalemate. Nevertheless, the conflict, with a blend of conventional warfare and innovative technology, offers new lessons to the US Joint Force about the changing character of war. From fires to airpower to intelligence, this review of 17 different aspects of the conflict offers insights to prepare leaders for tomorrow’s war... MORE

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The 2024 Carlisle Conference on the PLA: Protracted War Against the PRC
January 12, 2026 — The US Army War College’s 2024 Carlisle Conference on the People’s Liberation Army was held on October 16 and 17 at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. The conference brought together experts to discuss the People’s Republic of China’s understanding of and capability to carry out a protracted war in the Indo-Pacific, with this volume comprising papers authored by panelists... MORE

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