The Defence Horizon Journal - Podcasts

Military documentation plays a central role in training and operational practice, yet its quality is rarely evaluated from the perspective of actual use. Documents tend to prioritise completeness and regulatory compliance over clarity. This results in materials that are information dense, cognitively demanding, and prone to misinterpretation, particularly under time pressure. This article proposes a conceptual framework that integr...

Force designers face demanding methodological challenges when considering how best to adapt concepts, successfully adopt new technologies, and overhaul existing structures and processes amid a fundamentally changing geostrategic environment. The Defence Metaverse, an ultra-realistic virtual twin of the battlefield, and powerful new red AI tactics offer sovereign European solutions to tackle these challenges by stress-testing the as...

Traditional military training methods often reach their limits in complex deployment scenarios, particularly with respect to cost, the ability to realistically recreate high-risk situations, and the objective evaluation of performance. To optimise training effectiveness, integrating innovative technologies such as mixed reality (MR) is increasingly important. MR combines the real and virtual worlds, enabling new training approaches...

Military ethics education is an important aspect of military training. As military personnel may face difficult ethical dilemmas, the competence to handle them correctly is crucial. Currently, there is a desired transition within the Dutch military from a rule-based ethics education (functional) to a more virtue-based approach (aspirational), placing greater emphasis on character building rather than rules and order. At the same ti...

Seabed warfare is transforming maritime strategy by shifting competition from platforms and manoeuvre toward infrastructure, connectivity, and persistent monitoring, influence and selective control over the benthic domain. Growing dependence on critical undersea infrastructure, combined with advances in autonomous systems and distributed sensing, is turning the seabed into an active and contested battlespace. This article argues th...

Maritime chokepoints are commonly portrayed as critical vulnerabilities capable of triggering systemic disruption across the global economy. The concentration of trade and energy flows through corridors such as the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, the Strait of Malacca, and the Panama Canal has reinforced concerns regarding the fragility of contemporary globalisation. This article argues that contemporary maritime c...

An increasing number of contemporary conflicts appear to resist decisive resolution under specific structural conditions. This argument does not suggest that all wars follow the same trajectory. Rather, it identifies specific structural configurations under which decisive outcomes become less likely. For the purposes of this article, “strategic closure” refers to the production of a durable political outcome through mil...

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into strategic command reconstitutes rather than augments command judgement, placing systematic pressure on what Clausewitz identified as the essential intelligence of command: coup d’œil, the cultivated capacity for rapid holistic synthesis that distinguishes the formed commander from the competent administrator. This article argues that command intuition develops through pract...

Modern conflicts are increasingly fought in the cyber and information domains, where effects unfold primarily in the cognitive rather than the physical sphere. Addressing such non-kinetic threats requires multidisciplinary expertise and close cooperation between public defence institutions and private-sector innovators. This paper outlines key factors for efficient cooperation and proposes a criteria-based framework that systematic...

Despite two centuries of technological progress, Clausewitz’s concept of friction remains a vital analytical lens for warfighting in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This article interprets friction in the context of cognition, focusing on algorithms and human-machine miscommunication to address the gap between educational practice and officers’ preparation for operational reality.

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The Shahed-136, an Iranian-manufactured loitering munition built largely from foam and plywood, has emerged as a very effective weapons system. The Shahed-136 drone has demonstrated that low-cost, mass-produced aerial munitions can systematically overwhelm sophisticated and expensive air defence architectures. Iran's direct deployment of Shaheds against Israel in 2025, followed by Russia's relentless campaign averaging 140 drone st...

Since the 2023 Vilnius Summit, NATO has recognised industrial capacity as a core element of deterrence. The Alliance has endorsed the Defence Production Action Plan, adopted the Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge, and aligned with parallel US and EU initiatives, the National Defence Industrial Strategy and the Act in Support of Ammunition Production to accelerate output, standardisation, and supply-chain resilience. Yet policy vo...

The 2026 Hormuz Crisis is often misinterpreted as a fraying of Western influence; however, a closer look reveals a calculated recalibration of U.S. power. This article examines Washington’s pivot toward "Strategic Autonomy", a move that shifts the burden of regional stability onto competitors while insulating Western markets.

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The People’s Republic of China’s contemporary power strategy extends beyond military modernisation. It integrates overt strategic signalling, digitally amplified emotional storytelling, and Confucian moral framing into a unified hybrid model of influence. Through spectacles such as the 2025 Victory Day Parade, curated soldier narratives, and globally celebrated athletic achievements, Beijing projects deterr...

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 d...

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 educatio...

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 sign...

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 sig...

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 integrat...