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Episode 4: A Fort Between Two Waters: Symbolism, Strength, and Strategy in a Hybrid War
No full textGuests Katrina Ponti and Jonathan Romaneski join host Brendan Neagle to unpack the historical significance and strategic effects of operations at Fort Ticonderoga during the American War of Independence. The discussion complements the course materials for American War of Independence case study in the Strategy and War Course at the U.S. Naval War College. The guests explore how the fort’s capture by irregular colonial forces in 1775 revealed the outsized psychological impact of seemingly small operations and the advantages of decentralized execution for insurgents. The discussion then turns to British strategic adjustments and the difficulty of distinguishing between a military objective’s perceived symbolic importance and its true strategic value. Finally, the conversation draws broader lessons on irregular and hybrid warfare, connecting Ticonderoga’s story to modern dilemmas such as gray zone conflicts and the enduring need for adaptability in military planning.
The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.
Guests: Katrina Ponti, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow in the Strategy and Policy Department. She earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester in 2022. Before joining the Strategy and Policy Department, she was an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Ponti has published on topics related to the diplomatic and maritime history of the early United States. In addition to her interests in history and policy, she is a trained historical archaeologist. She is an award-winning poet for her fifth grade work about Fort Ticonderoga: Rainy Day at the Mountain Lake
Rainy day at the mountain lake
What should we do today?
Should we go to a fort
From that long ago day?
Where cannons were brought from one state to the next
Over mountains that nearly touch the sky
LTC Jonathan Romaneski, U.S. Army, is a military professor in the US Naval War College’s Strategy and Policy Department. He is a U.S. Army Aviation officer whose previous command and staff positions include extensive time in Europe, the U.S. Military Academy, Fort Carson, Colorado, and Fort Cavazos, Texas. His most recent assignment was his battalion command tour in Fort Wainwright, Alaska. He has a BA in history from James Madison University and a PhD in military history from the Ohio State University.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/strategy-matters/1003/thumbnail.jp
Neither Confirm Nor Deny—The U.S. Navy’s Declaratory Policy on Nuclear Weapons (Summer/Autumn 2025 Review)
No full textThe U.S. Navy has long had a policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons aboard its warships and facilities, which in recent times has been accompanied by the proviso that current policy does not call for the deployment of nuclear weapons at sea. It now appears increasingly likely, however, that this latter policy is changing. Integration of the sea- or submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N) back into conventional forces is planned to deter opponents’ use of tactical or theater nuclear weapons in a regional conflict. Given this (impending) conventional-nuclear integration, should the U.S. Navy change its declaratory statements about nuclear weapons
Newport Manual on the Law of Naval Warfare, Second Edition
Get PDFThe Newport Manual on the Law of Naval Warfare, Second Edition, is a continuing effort to restate the law of naval warfare as a purely lex lata exercise. Like the first edition of 2023, it is designed to provide a practical guide for commanders and seafarers, lawyers and officials, and educators and students. In doing so, the Manual includes developments in warfighting technologies in recent decades, which have significantly influenced the nature of war at sea. This second edition has been edited by four of the original authors following an extensive review and revision process
Episode 17: The Janus Protocol: Drones – The New Face of Warfare
No full textGuests Nolan Peterson and Kateryna Bondar join host Dave Brown to discuss the rapid expansion of drone warfare across numerous conflict zones. Janus, the Roman God of new beginnings, symbolizes the change from one condition to another and from past to future. The two faces of Janus also represent transitions because he could see into the past with one face, and toward the future with the other. This is a perfect metaphor of this momentous shift in technical weaponry unfolding right in front of us. The future of the modern battlefield is here, and it’s most clearly seen in the rapid growth in drone warfare capabilities and the increasing lethality of the current threat environment it is creating.
Articles: Ukraine drones hunt down Russian soldiers as incursion into Belgorod continues – YouTube/The Sun – 10 Apr 2025 (video) Battle For Pokrovsk. Ukraine\u27s Drone Pilots Are Trying To Stop Russia | Ukraine Front Line Update, RFE/RL – 7 April 2025 (video) Ukraine\u27s DIY drone makers are helping fighters on the front lines, E. Beardsley, NPR, 12 Apr 2025 Ukraine Is Making FPV Drones Without Chinese Parts And At Lower Cost, D. Hambling, Forbes, 8 Apr 2025 (paywall) US Army tests FPV drones in Germany under ‘Project Shiv’, G. Allison, UKDJ, 6 Apr 2025 Ukraine has capacity to produce 5 million FPV drones per year, advisor says, M. Fornusek, Kyiv Independent, 8 Apr 2025 Marine Corps stands up ‘attack drone team’ to take lessons from Ukraine and teach them to grunts, J. Schogol, Task & Purpose, 4 Apr 2025 The century-long reign of the machine gun is over, a Russian strategist argues, M. Peck, Business Insider, 16 Mar 2025 (paywall) Ukraine’s Future Vision and Current Capabilities for Waging AI-Enabled Autonomous Warfare, K. Bondar, CSIS, 6 Mar 2025 Heven Drones unveils new hydrogen-powered, long range UAV at IDEX, S. Frantzman, Breaking Defense, 13 Feb 2025 Survival of the quickest: Military leaders aim to unleash, control AI, R. Ruitenberg, Defense News, 13 Feb 2025 The Proliferation of Drones in Naval Warfare with Tuneer Mukherjee, W. Mills, CIMSEC, 7 Jan 2025 (Sea Control Podcast)
Guests:
Nolan Peterson is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He is an independent defense consultant, award-winning journalist, war correspondent, and author who has lived in Ukraine since 2014. As an international correspondent, Peterson has covered conflicts around the world. Apart from his work in Ukraine, he has been embedded with US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and with the Kurdish Peshmerga during the battle for Mosul in Iraq. He deployed on the USS George H.W. Bush off the coast of Syria to report on the coalition air war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Peterson is a former US Air Force special operations pilot and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Graduate of the US Air Force Academy, and Middlebury College after two years of study at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. After leaving the US Air Force in 2011, Peterson completed a MA in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he was a McCormick Foundation fellow.
Kateryna Bondar is a fellow with the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Before joining CSIS, she was an adviser to the government of Ukraine, where she was responsible for implementation of reforms in defense, the financial sector, and innovation ecosystem development. From 2019–2020, she was a fellow of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at Stanford University. Prior to that, she was a senior project manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she managed technical assistance projects implemented in Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. From 2014–2018, Kateryna was a project manager in the National Reforms Council under the president of Ukraine and the Reform Support Team at Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance. Prior to working in the public sector, she held a position of financial control manager at Microsoft. She holds a MA in IR from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/the-trident/1016/thumbnail.jp
China Maritime Report No. 47: The People of China\u27s Navy and Other Maritime Forces: Extended Summary of Conference Findings
Get PDFMain Findings Xi Jinping has played a direct and active role in China’s naval buildup. He is China’s first great navalist statesman, the world’s greatest navalist leader today, and among the world’s greatest navalist statesmen in modern history. Notwithstanding major advances in ships, submarines, aircraft, and other hardware, Chinese military leaders believe that the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) continues to lag behind in human factors. Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the PLAN has dismissed (or is rumored to have dismissed) eleven flag officers. Beyond combating outright dysfunction, these removals are intended to prevent potential disloyalty and factionalism, centralize power, and further modernization and warfighting goals. These high-profile dismissals have had no apparent impact on PLAN operational capabilities, which continue to improve at a remarkable rate. From the Taiwan Strait to the “distant oceans” (远洋), the service is present daily and visible internationally, particularly its surface fleet, indicating reliability, trust, and growing responsibilities and capabilities. Since 2008, the PLAN’s surface fleet has almost doubled. Despite being projected to exceed 400 ships by the end of 2025, China’s Navy continues to successfully crew, operate, and train with them. China’s Navy draws on a massive, sufficiently-capable talent pool and education system. Provincial-level compulsory conscription quotas avoid individual compellence thanks to high levels of volunteerism. Given the demands of increasingly frequent and intense training and missions—often with the austere privations of submarines or remote installations—mental health support is increasingly prioritized. Nevertheless, it remains a weakness for China’s Navy, which views U.S. care as the gold standard yet has treated counseling as a “political” issue. China’s Naval Command College in Nanjing—the Naval War College’s closest equivalent—educates its students differently from its counterpart in Newport by focusing on naval operations and warfighting for top-priority scenarios. The PLAN enjoys unique human capital advantages: educational partnerships as early as elementary school; personal data compiled centrally, available and utilizable without privacy restriction; eldercare benefits; and warfighting-focused naval education. PLAN sources perceive weaknesses in lack of talent for new-domain operations and advanced S&T given rising demand in these burgeoning areas; recruitment and training pipeline supply-demand imbalance and talent-skills mismatches; officers’ overly narrow early-career experience and subsequent aging out of cutting-edge relevance; and youths’ declining commitment to the Communist system. Despite being an improvement on its Soviet progenitor, China’s Political Commissar system could represent a critical weakness, causing real-time decision-making bottlenecks or distraction, particularly in crisis or conflict.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/1047/thumbnail.jp
Episode 14: Perspectives on the Indian Ocean Region
No full textAdmiral Verma offers an overview of the growing importance of the Indian Ocean basin—stretching from South Africa across the Middle East and South Asia to Southeast Asia—for global security. In particular, how will developments in this region of the world become more important for U.S. national security?
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Guest:Admiral (Ret) Nirmal Verma served as Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy from 2009-2012 and concurrently held charge as the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee from June 2011. His afloat appointments include commands of a frigate, a destroyer and aircraft carrier INS Viraat. His assignments as Flag Officer include an operational theater command, and policy formulation on budget management, acquisitions and human resources. Post retirement he served as India\u27s High Commissioner (Ambassador) to Canada. The Admiral is currently a U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Distinguished International Fellow at the U.S. Naval War College.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/the-debrief/1013/thumbnail.jp
Sunk in Battle, But the War is Not Over: Who Owns the Moskva?
Get PDFThe study of underwater cultural heritage, and that of sunken warships, has typically focused on the legal protections that surround a site in the years, or often centuries, after the sinking. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has given cause to study the topic in a more modern context. Several Russian Naval vessels have been sunk by Ukraine, the most famous being the Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, in April 2022. Following the sinking, Ukraine stated the Moskva was now a heritage site, with a Ukrainian Defence Minister joking that the wreck was simply “one more diving spot.”
This article will examine the legal status of the Moskva as she lies on the seabed. While it is right that the site should in due course be a protected heritage site, the current legal regime in place between Russia and Ukraine is the law of armed conflict. This gives rise to a different set of legal rights and obligations. Although the Ukrainian declaration has clear benefits in terms of Kyiv’s ongoing war narrative, the article suggests that it was not strictly necessary and perhaps premature. Instead, as a belligerent, Ukraine may exploit the wreck as part of its own ongoing war effort
Options for Sustainable High Seas Fisheries Management in the Southwest Atlantic
Get PDFThe Southwest Atlantic lacks a regional fishery management organization, leaving one of the world’s largest squid fisheries at risk of overfishing during high seas migrations. This article reviews measures available to coastal States as they seek to protect regional ecosystems and their economic interests. The ideal policy response is to conclude a regional fisheries management organization covering squid and other key regional stocks. This body should follow best practices and include the relevant coastal and fishing States. Other options that provide some value for managing regional fishing and its environmental consequences include reviving and expanding catch information sharing, ratifying and implementing key international treaties, and protecting national continental shelf areas