Phillips P. OBrien
@PhillipsPOBrien
Professor of Strategic Studies, @univofstandrews; Author of War and Power (Summer 2025)
1.7K Following 217.4K Followers
Once again, Trump looks at US service men and women and losers and suckers….and treats them as such
Q: The family members of US service members are concerned about the conditions on the USS Lincoln
TRUMP: No they're not
Q: Has the deployment gone on too long?
TRUMP: No no no. Not nearly long enough.
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This is just insane.
Dear allies, ignore this
Sensible idea. Though leaves out the reality that the US government’s policy is actually to help the Russians bombard Ukraine for now.
Here’s an idea: give Ukraine the license to make patriots and some patriots. After they’re making them they can send new ones back to us if we still need.
Inexcusable to be short on interceptors and not allow greater manufacturing
It’s a sin
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Here’s an idea: give Ukraine the license to make patriots and some patriots. After they’re making them they can send new ones back to us if we still need.
Inexcusable to be short on interceptors and not allow greater manufacturing
It’s a sin
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Russia is shifting to jet-powered Shaheds, so we must act fast. For the past year, our team has worked with developers on interceptor drones. I recently visited a facility whose drone can reach speeds of more than 600 km/h. It is already undergoing combat testing, and we await the first confirmed intercepts. Investing in R&D, testing and scaling up production is vital. Protecting our skies remains a priority.
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So the USA is against “Forever”
Wars, but totally ok with “Indefinite”
ones.
Got it—thanks for that.
⚡️Trump imposes steep tariffs on drone imports.
Trump's latest round of tariffs comes a few weeks after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he and Trump had reached an agreement on the sale of Ukrainian drones to the U.S.
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From the @FT: "A $25bn Treasury auction of 30-year bonds on Thursday drew yields as high as 5.22 per cent, according to the US Treasury department. It marked the highest yield since the 5.52 per cent paid in August 2001, after which 30-year auctions were suspended for almost five years"
#economy# #markets# #bonds# #debt#
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The Kiel Institut has released their updated data on Ukraine aid.
And numbers never lie.
SCOOP: Trump has directed the Navy to tear out a complex system for launching fighter jets from its aircraft carriers and instead go back to using steam catapults, a move Navy officials have fought for years and will likely cost billions in extra dollars.
U.S. officials say Trump signed a national security memorandum today directing the change, which would involve removing the electromagnetic catapult system used by the ships in the Gerald R. Ford class of carriers
@MarcusReports
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Good Lord, it’s like a drunken splurge goes to war
NEW - U.S. military loses at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, equal to $1.3B, during war with Iran, or roughly 25 percent of its entire fleet — WaPo
Midweek Update is out (mostly free). Trump is so stuck in his war that something unexpected might happen--might he just keep going through the election? The other big (and distressing) story is the state of the US military. Fighting for an incompetent administration has costs.
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Yevgeniy Khmara: Russia will burn.
Ukraine’s goal is to switch off Russia’s war machine
Acting Defence Minister Yevgeniy Khmara has outlined the logic behind Ukraine’s expanding deep-strike campaign: systematically target the infrastructure that allows Russia to sustain its war.
Military logistics. The fleet. Fuel and energy infrastructure. Industrial facilities supporting the war effort.
The recent operation in Novorossiysk offers a glimpse of what this approach looks like.
Ukraine synchronized missiles, jet-powered drones and naval drones in a combined strike — forcing Russian defences to deal with different threats arriving as part of the same operation.
“Russia proved unable to counter the synchronized employment of Ukrainian strike systems,” Khmara said.
For Ukraine, the important development is not one successful strike. It is the growing ability of different components of the Defence Forces — together with Ukrainian manufacturers — to operate as a single strike ecosystem.
And Yevgeniy Khmara says this is now a priority:
“Expanding deep strikes against Russia is one of our key priorities.”
Following a meeting chaired by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine has already defined the next steps.
More Ukrainian weapons, greater precision, and increasingly complex operations designed to become harder for Russia to counter.
Yevgeniy Khmara’s formulation was even simpler:
“Ukrainian operations will become increasingly difficult to counter. Ukrainian weapons will become more numerous. Strikes more precise. Russia will burn.”
The strategic objective: degrade the systems sustaining Russia’s invasion and increase the pressure needed to force Russia toward a just peace.
Source: Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, August 13, 2026
#Ukraine# #DeepStrike# #DefTech# #DroneWarfare# #Defense# #RussiaUkraineWar#
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It’s notable that the Trump administration is not asking Putin to stop these attacks.
Oh silly me, they only force Ukraine to back down, never Russia.
No it was not, your original commentary was about how a certain nationalism shaped outlook, nothing more, nothing less. I know we live in a time where being honest is considered a fool’s game by the President and his sycophants. But I refuse to let you get away with it.
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You’re correct—I didn’t realize you were American, and I’m happy to acknowledge that.
That said, nationality of birth doesn’t necessarily determine one’s perspective. People naturally absorb aspects of the places and institutions they spend significant time in. Given that you’ve been a professor in the UK for some time, I don’t think that observation is unreasonable. As an American who has lived in Europe for nearly a decade, I can personally appreciate how much your surroundings can shape your outlook.
Regardless, my criticism is ultimately about the substance of your commentary, not your passport. Frankly, many of your posts on Twitter are surprising coming from an expert in war studies. You frequently seem to conflate criticism of America’s geopolitical and military strategy—which is certainly fair game—with assessments of its underlying military capability. Those are related questions, but they are not the same thing.
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I am an American, if you had bothered to do the slightest bit of research, you would have found that out.
Until the Iran war, I hadn’t fully appreciated the extent of the resentment some British defense analysts seem to implicitly harbor toward America’s post-WWII rise as the dominant global military power.
Some of that is understandable given the Trump administration’s rhetoric toward Europe. But what’s striking is the almost perverse sense of satisfaction some British defense commentators appear to take in the perception of American military decline—something I haven’t seen to nearly the same degree among defense analysts elsewhere in Europe.
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Midweek Update is out (mostly free). Trump is so stuck in his war that something unexpected might happen--might he just keep going through the election? The other big (and distressing) story is the state of the US military. Fighting for an incompetent administration has costs.
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This should shock no one. What we have learned about the state of the US military lately is not comforting
Exclusive: U.S. Army troops faced off against Ukrainian drone operators at a military exercise in Germany earlier this year. It didn’t go well for the Americans.
Between 2016 and today, the US has spent almost $9 trillion on defense. It then ran dangerously low in many advanced munitions fighting a country with no air force and navy--after about two months of combat operations.
This is an extraordinary scandal.
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If you cannot accept that what Trump has done over the last year and a half is starve Ukraine of air defense, and put off any new aid for as long as possible, so Putin can terrorize Ukraine from the air for as long as possible--you cannot accept reality.
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