The Defence Horizon Journal - Podcasts

Britain’s decision to allow the United States to use RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia in military action tied to the Iran crisis raises a simple but serious question. Can a state still call itself restrained when it provides the territory, access, and infrastructure that enable escalation? This article argues that it cannot. Once British-controlled facilities become operational enablers of war, Britain no longer appears like a distant observer. It becomes part of the conflict in the region's eyes, and likely in the calculations of any state considering retaliation. The article also argues that this choice weakens Britain’s diplomatic credibility, deepens legal and political risk, and exposes British citizens to strategic and economic costs that have not been honestly explained.
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Recent conflicts underscore the practical relevance of simulation-based and gamified approaches to military training. From the use of commercial platforms for pilot familiarisation to incentive-based systems for drone operators in Ukraine, gamified logic is increasingly shaping how military personnel train, adapt, and perform under operational conditions. Based on an exploratory field trial and drawing on the long-standing educational mandate attributed to Maria Theresa, this study frames gamification not as a technological novelty but as a contemporary medium for experiential learning. For the trial, officer cadets participated in competitive tactical scenarios using a commercial PC-based simulation (WARNO). Repeated questionnaires, an intermediate diagnostic intervention, and qualitative experiential reports were used to examine learning effects, including decision-making under time pressure, understanding of combined arms operations, and the role of structured reflection.
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Ever since the war in Iran erupted early in 2026, much of the world’s attention has been fixated on the Middle East. North Korea is no exception. It will likely be closely monitoring the conflict to extract lessons on regime survival, deterrence, and how to survive a multi-front war involving the United States. While the Iran case is not directly analogous to the Korean Peninsula, it nonetheless offers a set of strategic signals that will shape internal debates within the North Korean leadership. This conflict may reinforce North Korea’s existing policy trajectory rather than prompting a fundamental strategic shift.
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Communicative interoperability is vital in multinational coalition warfare. While current Extended Reality (XR) systems excel in procedural motor training, this study proposes developing the KMA-XR-AI system to expand this scope to the communicative ‘fog of war.’ The system is intended to synergise multimodal sensing with adaptive AI to complement traditional XR capabilities. By fusing bio-physiological and acoustic signals via a Hybrid Sensing Module, the system would calculate a real-time Cognitive Load Index (CLI) to drive a Smart Scaffolding Protocol. This intervention will be designed to distinguish between linguistic deficits and stress-induced inhibition during tactical verbal interactions, and ultimately, optimise verbal proficiencies essential for mission success, offering a technological evolution for future military training.
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Mosaic Warfare is often seen as a far-future concept linked to further breakthroughs in emerging disruptive technologies. This article argues that the war in Ukraine challenges that view. Although Ukraine does not explicitly use the term, its battlefield adaptation reflects core mosaic principles, including distributed low-cost uncrewed systems, adaptive kill webs, decentralised decision-making, and rapid sensor-to-shooter integration. The article shows that Mosaic Warfare is not merely a speculative future vision, but an increasingly useful lens for understanding military success and effectiveness in contemporary warfare. At the same time, the Ukrainian case suggests a changing character of warfare in which operational advantage depends increasingly on adaptability, distributed force employment, and the rapid integration of sensors, decision-makers, and shooters, while also exposing current limits in interoperability, communications resilience, sustainment, and organisational scaling. »» TDHJ «« » patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedefencehorizon » donate: https://tdhj.org/about/#donation
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The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in late February 2026 has transformed a long-theorised energy security vulnerability into a present crisis. Maritime traffic through the Strait has collapsed by more than 90 per cent, removing approximately 17-20 million barrels of oil per day from global markets, the largest single energy disruption in modern history. This monograph examines the United Arab Emirates' cross-peninsula logistics corridor linking Sharjah Port Khalid on the Persian Gulf to the Port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman as the world's only existing partial bypass of the Hormuz chokepoint.
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Russia’s latest warning on Afghanistan matters because it lines up with the broader picture described in recent international reporting. The central issue is not whether Moscow has motives; it does. The issue is whether the underlying security assessment is credible. On that question, the evidence points in one direction. Afghanistan remains a permissive space for multiple militant actors with regional reach. That reality weakens the Taliban’s claim that Afghan soil is no longer a platform for external violence.
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India and the UAE's strategic partnership has quickly ascended from a diplomatic relationship to a strong alliance encompassing commerce, energy, military, and technology. Due to their common interests in the area and their long history together, the relationship has lately grown stronger thanks to high-level visits and important agreements, such as a significant LNG contract and a Strategic Defence Partnership. This partnership not only meets India's energy and economic demands but also makes both countries important, linked players in shaping the security and economic structure of volatile West Asia, with implications for regional groups and power balances.
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This article examines how Rudra Brigades operationalise India’s evolving Dynamic Response Strategy by integrating speed, precision, and jointness at the brigade level. It situates these formations within India’s broader theatreisation and force-restructuring agenda, as validated through recent exercises and operations. The analysis highlights how this shift compresses warning times, expands conventional response options, and alters crisis dynamics in South Asia. For Pakistan, the emergence of such high-readiness formations underscores the need to adapt deterrence, force posture, and crisis-management mechanisms to a changing regional security environment. Bottom-line-up-front: India’s Rudra Brigades reflect a shift toward faster, modular, multi-domain conventional options that compress crisis timelines and lower the practical threshold for limited military action in South Asia.
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India is standing at a pivotal moment to unlock its vast Rare Earth Element (REE) reserves and challenge the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) long-standing monopoly in this critical sector. Despite holding 5.3% of global REE reserves, India contributes only a fraction of global output due to regulatory bottlenecks, a lack of refining infrastructure, and limited private-sector participation. With the PRC weaponising trade through export restrictions and end-user licensing requirements, India's automobile and electronics industries face supply shocks. However, policy reforms, including the ₹5000 crore mining scheme and amendments to the MMDR Act, have opened avenues for private exploration. Rajasthan, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu emerge as potential REE zones, while advanced technologies like solvent extraction and plasma separation offer processing alternatives.
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