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Modern War Institute
by Modern War Institute at West Point
The Modern War Institute Podcast, produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974, is the flagship podcast of the Modern War Institute at West Point. It features discussions with guests including senior military leaders, scholars, and others on the most important issues related to modern military conflict.
Episodes
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The MWI Book Club
An Army that reads is an Army better prepared to fight and win its nation’s wars. When the stakes on the battlefield are life and death, victory or defeat, the force that brings more knowledge, more wisdom, and better understanding to the fight has a distinct advantage. And reading is a key means...
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Operation Vivaldi
For years now, the war in Ukraine has been fought on a largely static battlefield—characterized by attrition, with little opportunity for maneuver, and with only incremental changes to the front lines. But recently, seemingly out of nowhere, Ukrainian forces began recapturing territory held by...
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How Commanders Win Wars
How did George Washington overcome virtually every material disadvantage to defeat the British during the Revolutionary War? How did Ulysses S. Grant turn the tides of the Civil War in the Union’s favor in the crucial year of 1864? How did Dwight Eisenhower manage the overwhelming personal burden...
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NATO's Ankara Summit
NATO just wrapped up its 2026 summit in Ankara, Turkey. Over two days of meetings and other events, the leaders of the alliance's thirty-two member states discussed a range of issues and challenges facing the alliance. But what did we actually learn from the summit? In a period that has been…
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Logistics, Landpower, and Large-Scale Combat
For years of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, US Army forces, along with their joint and coalition counterparts, benefits from a logistics enterprise that ensured every supply need was met. That enterprise—extending from installations at home, through sea and air lines, and all the…
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The Future of the All-Volunteer Force
In 1973, the US military took an enormously consequential step when it adopted an all-volunteer force model. That decision has produced the most professional, capable joint force in history. But it hasn’t come without costs—from the large budgets required to maintain it to a shrinking recruitment...
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Putin’s Intelligence Services
Shortly after taking power in Moscow, Vladimir Putin began consolidating his authority over the Russian intelligence services that had long been deeply embedded in Russian and Soviet politics and a pervasive influence in society. The degree to which he succeeded was striking, ultimately...
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The Weapons Defining the Iran Conflict
For more than a week, the United States and Israel have struck a wide range of targets in Iran with air and missile strikes. Iran’s response has included missile and drone attacks against targets in neighboring states in the Middle East—both US military and diplomatic facilities and public sites...
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The Iran Conflict's Strategic Dimension
What were the strategic calculations that drove the United States and Israel to launch a military operation aimed at a wide range of targets in Iran? And are the fundamental objectives of the two partners fully aligned? Inside Iran, as the regime's resilience and the military's capability are…
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What to Make of the New National Defense Strategy
The United States has a new National Defense Strategy. Released about every four years, the document offers a window into the way senior defense officials view the global threat environment and identify US defense objectives. But how will the new strategy be interpreted by allies and partners?…
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Analyzing Operation Absolute Resolve
Examined exclusively as a military operation, the US raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was a stunning success. In the course of just a few hours, the force package launched, accomplished its objective, and returned to base. But before that could happen, planning and…
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Training, Education, and the Modern Battlefield
Both training and education have always been key elements of the US Army’s readiness. But as new battlefield challenges arise and new technologies emerge, the character of warfare is changing—and it’s changing faster than ever. Keeping up with those changes—and keeping ahead of adversaries we…
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Europe's Airspace Violations and the Counterdrone Challenge
Late on the night of September 9, twenty-one medium-sized, fixed-wing drones entered Poland’s airspace. Several were shot down, while others crashed, some deep inside Polish territory. Later that month, a series of drone sightings were reported around airports and military installations in…
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The Military Technological Arms Race in Ukraine
Almost since the very beginning the war in Ukraine triggered by Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the conflict took on characteristics of a technological arms race, with each side seeking to innovate to gain a battlefield advantage. As the war has continued, that contest for advantage has taken...
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China's Strategic Competition with the United States
The United States is engaged in a strategic competition with China. On issues ranging from Taiwan's security to the question of which country will most shape the geopolitical order in the years and decades to come, Washington seeks to secure its objectives, promote its interests, and deter…
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The Army and Tomorrow's Technologies
The US Army is in a period of transformation. And much of that transformation centers on technology—from artificial intelligence and robotics to drones and directed-energy weapons. But leaning forward technologically brings both advantages and new challenges. To explore the way the Army is...
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The US Military's Critical Minerals Challenge
The US government established the National Defense Stockpile in 1939 to ensure that in the event of a major conflict, there would be enough raw materials on hand to continue production of vital equipment. Since the end of the Cold War, it has steadily shrunk, now just a tiny fraction of its peak...
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Bunker Busters and B-2s
When the United States conducted Operation Midnight Hammer, a series of strikes against Iranian nuclear targets, it did so with two key pieces of exquisite hardware: the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator and the B-2 Spirit strategic bomber. But how does the GBU-57 actually work? And what’s it…
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The US Defense Industrial Base, from Steel to Software
The defense industrial base is a critical component of US military readiness. But how should we conceptualize it in the information age, when it isn't just physical materiel like weapons, vehicles, and ammunition that are vital, but also data and software? How have globalization and the…
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A Survey of Europe's Defense and Security Landscape
When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it galvanized both NATO and the European Union, doing more to unify much of Europe than any event in recent history. But how has political and strategic unity translated to improvements of collective European defense and deterrence? Amid...
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The Future Battlefield, from Europe to the Indo-Pacific
For more than three years, journalists, researchers, and military professionals have sought to describe the key dynamics of the war in Ukraine and determine what they tell us about the future of warfare. One of the sharpest observers has been retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan. He...
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The Collapse of the Continuum of Conflict
National security professionals often conceptualize a continuum of conflict as a framework to understand the wide variety of ways in which conflict can manifest itself. It extends from relative peace on one end, terrorism and low-intensity conflict, up through large-scale combat, all the way to...
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DeepSeek and the US-China AI Race
When the Chinese company DeepSeek recently released an artificial intelligence model called R1, its surprisingly advanced capability and the efficiency with which DeepSeek claimed to have trained the model sparked a wave of discussion about how rapidly Chinese AI development was progressing. But...
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Why Security Force Assistance Only Sometimes Works
After twenty years of America’s post-9/11 wars and the US military’s struggle to build capable and effective security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is an important discussion taking place about what role security force assistance should play for the United States in the very different...
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How the Assad Regime Fell
For well over a decade, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad managed to hold onto power during a complicated civil war involving a number of anti-regime rebel groups. And then, rebels launched a lightning offensive that saw a series of Syrian cities—including, ultimately, the capital Damascus—fall.…
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Inside the Battle of Azovstal
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, one of its first targets was the city of Mariupol. Despite being outnumbered by—and less well equipped than—their adversaries, Ukrainian defenders held out for three months. As the Russian siege of the city intensified, Ukrainian forces defended a...
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Amateurs Talk, Professionals Write
Writing is often treated as a peripheral activity in the military, but it is a defining characteristic of any profession—including the profession of arms. Professional military writing is the way we share information, new ideas, and creative solutions to collective problems. It’s the way we drive...
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Casualty Care in Tomorrow's Wars
During the United States’ post-9/11 counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, many US service members survived wounds that would have been fatal in any previous conflict. This was largely because of the care they received—beginning at the point where they were wounded and continuing...
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The Maven Smart System and the Future of Military AI
Both military practitioners and scholars believe that artificial intelligence will influence the character of war in the future. But it’s difficult to know how it will do so exactly, particularly as we look further and further into the future. Much of what we learn about that future will come…
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October 1993
Thirty years ago this week—on October 3, 1993—US special operations forces launched a mission in Mogadishu. It was part of Operation Gothic Serpent, which was aimed at capturing Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The mission was intended to be of a short duration. But things changed when…
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Pagers, Walkie-Talkies, and a Shadow War
When news emerged from Lebanon recently that several thousand pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah had exploded, observers quickly began piecing together an assessment of what happened. It looked to be an Israeli intelligence operation—and a wildly successful one, both operationally and...
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The Modern Commander
Would Patton be an effective battlefield commander today? Do the characteristics of successful commanders generally remain constant over time? Or do they evolve alongside—and in response to—the changing character of warfare? And if they do change, what traits will commanders need on the...
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Israeli-Iranian Rivalry and the Middle Eastern Security Landscape
For weeks, after an Israeli strike that killed a senior Hezbollah commander and the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran, tensions between Israel and Iran have spiked. So far, Iran has yet to follow through on its threats to retaliate against Israel. But these heightened tensions, like the period...
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F-16s Over Ukraine
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian government began asking its international supporters to provide it with combat aircraft. By 2023, a number of NATO members had agreed to provide training on the US-made F-16 to Ukrainian pilots, and last summer it was announced…
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Why Military Cohesion Matters
The term "cohesion" features prominently in discussions of military effectiveness, especially at the small-unit level. We all know intuitively what it means, but understanding how to develop and nurture it in practice is a challenge. That's even more true as technological advances continue to…
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Competition and Conflict in Cyberspace
How does cyberspace differ from the other warfighting domains—land, sea, air, and space? What challenges do those differences pose? Does cyber require unique approaches to talent manage to ensure the US military can recruit, promote, and retain the talent it needs? What resources are needed to...
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Clausewitz and the War in Ukraine
The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz is held in high regard among US military scholars. But it can be challenging at times to apply his ideas—with necessary nuance—to real-world security challenges. In this episode, Dr. Donald Stoker, a professor at the National Defense University’s...
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Defending Against Drones
No unit in the US Army has more experience defending against drone attacks than 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division. During a recent deployment to the Middle East, spread out across eight bases in Iraq and Syria, the brigade was targeted more than one hundred times by drones known as...
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Introducing "Ctrl Alt Army"
In this special episode of the MWI Podcast, we're taking the opportunity to introduce listeners to a brand new podcast series called Ctrl Alt Army: Stories from Cyberspace. Hosted by Dr. Michael Sulmeyer, principal cyber advisor to the secretary of the Army, this podcast series features informal...
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Russia's Pursuit of Military AI
Russia is actively pursuing military applications of AI technology. But how much progress has been made in that pursuit? How have sanctions put in place in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine influenced the course of Russian AI research and development? Most fundamentally, how do Russian...
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Landpower in the Pacific
Many people look at a map of the Indo-Pacific region and assume that—characterized as it is by long distances and vast stretches of ocean—it is principally the air and maritime domains where military capability is most important. But as you'll hear in this episode, landpower services play a vital...
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How Iran's Missile and Drone Attack Was Defeated
When Iran recently launched more than three hundred drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles in a large-scale attack against Israel, almost every single one was stopped from reaching its target. A combination of ground-based air defenses, ship-launched weapons, and aircraft from multiple...
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NATO at 75
Seventy-five years ago, on April 4, 1949, representatives of twelve governments came together to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. Much has changed in the intervening period—the Cold War came and went, NATO invoked the Article 5 collective defense clause after the 9/11 attacks, an era of renewed...
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Resistance and the National Defense of Small States
In this episode, John Amble speaks to Sandor Fabian about a very specific approach to national defense: resistance. The war in Ukraine has made clear that comparatively small states can be vulnerable to the threat of aggression from larger neighbors. Resistance, Sandor argues, is the most viable...
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Nuclear Weapons—Past, Present, and Future
For eight decades, the world has navigated the risk of nuclear war. But what will be required to so in the future? And because that risk is not static, how do we measure, conceptualize, and respond to changes—like when Russia rattles its nuclear saber? What challenges do so-called tactical…
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From Hezbollah to the Houthis—Understanding Iran's Proxy Network
The Houthi movement in Yemen has launched dozens of attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea in recent months. Over the same period, militant groups have attacked US forces in the Middle East as many as 160 times—including the deadly drone attack against a base on Jordan’s border with…
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Sanctions and Security
While Ukraine's international supporters have provided equipment to enable the country's defense against Russia's aggression for nearly two years, global actors have also responded on a completely separate front—putting in place a massive sanctions regime targeting Russia. What effect have they…
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Amphibious Operations—from History to the Future Battlefield
Most people know something about the most famous amphibious operations in military history—the D-Day landings and Gallipoli, for example. But what about an amphibious night attack on the shores of Tuscany in 1555? Or a Turkish amphibious assault in response to a coup in Cyprus in 1974? This…
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Understanding Hamas: From Tactics to Strategy
This special episode of the MWI Podcast features the first installment of a three-part miniseries produced by the Irregular Warfare Initiative. The series focuses on irregular warfare in Israel and is hosted by Adam Darnley-Stuart. In the first episode, he speaks to renowned counterterrorism...
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Shusha, the Battle that Won a War
Observers watched the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War closely, searching for indicators of the character of warfare on tomorrow's battlefields. The lessons extracted have covered advanced technology and unmanned platforms, proxy dynamics, the ongoing relevance of armor, and more. But some of the most...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Modern War Institute Podcast, produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974, is the flagship podcast of the Modern War Institute at West Point. It features discussions with guests including senior military leaders, scholars, and others on the most important issues related to modern military conflict.
HOSTED BY
Modern War Institute at West Point
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How many episodes does Modern War Institute have?
Modern War Institute currently has 236 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Modern War Institute about?
The Modern War Institute Podcast, produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974, is the flagship podcast of the Modern War Institute at West Point. It features discussions with guests including senior military leaders, scholars, and others on the most important issues related...
How often does Modern War Institute release new episodes?
Modern War Institute publishes regularly with 236 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to Modern War Institute on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Modern War Institute?
Modern War Institute is created and hosted by Modern War Institute at West Point.
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