The contemporary space race is primarily about securing strategic, military, technological, and economic advantages over rivals, more than scientific discovery or symbolic status. Although space has often been portrayed as a domain of international cooperation – embodied most visibly by the International Space Station – competition has always remained central to humanity’s expansion into orbit.
Today’s world is rife with flashpoints for future conflicts, and America’s baptism by fire into drone warfare, such as we’ve seen in Ukraine, may be close at hand. Tactics and technologies born in the Russo-Ukrainian war have already appeared in Myanmar, Colombia, and Mexico, as well as in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq.
Militaries around the world have always mapped the world in terrain features, borders, and lines of advance. Yet in recent crises, the most consequential pressure has often been applied elsewhere – shipping slows without a port being seized; energy prices spike without a pipeline being destroyed; and supply chains fracture without a factory being struck.
For decades, U.S. policymakers have returned to a familiar operational formula in the Middle East: American airpower, intelligence, and advisory support paired with local ground forces willing to do the hardest fighting. Kurdish partners fit that formula in Iraq and Syria, where their battlefield effectiveness gave Washington a relatively economical way to generate pressure without introducing large conventional formations.
Migration is the most destabilizing force in the world today, vastly exceeding the impact of nuclear weapons, war, poverty, oppressive governments, natural disasters and all the other causes of instability that news outlets focus on. In fact, the main destabilizing impact of the other factors is the migration they cause.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has endured almost 3,000 Iranian missile and drone strikes since February 28, 2026. This volume of kinetic activity exceeds that of any other nation in the theater, including Israel.
The combined U.S. Operation Epic Fury and Israeli Operation Roaring Lion (OEF/ORL) is the largest conventional air and naval operation in a generation, but it is also an irregular warfare (IW) showcase. The current (mid-April 2026) ceasefire provides an opportunity to take stock of what has happened so far in the IW space.
Join us at this year's IW Symposium
Irregular Warfare in the Homeland: Adapting for a Secure Future
August 4-6, 2026
The Irregular Warfare Center (IWC) is hosting a 2.5-day symposium on the Defense of the Homeland. This symposium embodies the NDS's call for a clear-eyed realism that leverages all elements of national power.
