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The SMAW – A Tools of the Trade Joint

Michael Cessna April 17, 2026

The Bunker Buster

For the last few weeks, we have walked through the M72 LAW, the RPG-7, and the Carl Gustaf – three weapons that between them define the spectrum of man-portable anti-armor and assault systems that have shaped infantry combat since the 1960s. Each represented a coherent, and unique, design philosophy: the M72 disposable and simple; the RPG-7 cheap and reloadable; the Gustaf precise and multi-role. Today we look at the outlier – the weapon that does not fit neatly into any of those categories, was adopted by exactly one branch of the U.S. military, and spent its entire service life being replaced by systems that never quite replaced it: the Mk 153 Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon, universally known as the SMAW.

Marines with 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, fire Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapons during Exercise Koolendong at Bradshaw Training Area, Aug 23, 2014. USMC photo by Sgt. James Gulliver. Public Domain.

The SMAW is a Marine Corps weapon, through and through. It was fielded in 1984 as a Marine Corps-unique system; the Army borrowed 150 launchers and 5,000 rockets for Desert Storm, then gave them back (as the FGM-148 Javelin was coming online in the mid-90’s, along with the increasing intent to adopt the Carl Gustaf to replace both the M67 Recoilless Rifle, and the positively awful M47 Dragon), and for four decades it has been the Corps’ primary tool for the mission the name describes: assaulting fortified positions. Not primarily killing tanks – though it can, to a point – but destroying bunkers, breaching walls, collapsing buildings, and suppressing crew-served weapons dug into hardened positions. That is a different set of mission requirements than any of the weapons we have previously covered in this series, and it produced a different weapon.

Where It Came From

The SMAW’s lineage runs through Israel, which is fitting – the Israelis have spent decades solving exactly the kind of close-quarters urban assault problems the SMAW was designed for. In the late 1970s, Israel Military Industries developed the B-300, an 83mm reloadable rocket launcher optimized for infantry assault operations. The Marine Corps, looking for a replacement capability after the collapse of the FGR-17 Viper program – the same procurement disaster that sent the Army to the AT4 – found the B-300 and adapted it for American service.

*Marines test SMAW at Camp Lejuene, 1982. USMC/Infantry Magazine. Public Domain.*

The American version added one distinctive and genuinely unusual feature: a spotting rifle. Mounted on the right side of the launch tube, this 9mm device fires ballistically matched tracer rounds at the target before the main rocket is launched. The idea was sound – use cheap tracer rounds to confirm the firing solution before committing an expensive rocket to the shot. In practice, it added weight, complexity, and required the operator to expose himself repeatedly to enemy observation while working through the spotting process. It was a British design concept grafted onto an Israeli launcher for American Marines, which gives you some sense of the SMAW’s somewhat eclectic ancestry.

The result weighed 16 pounds unloaded, fired 83mm rockets loaded from the rear, and entered service with the Marines in 1984 – the same year the Army was fielding the AT4 and the same period the M72 was being theoretically retired. In practice, all three ended up in service simultaneously, which tells you something about the difficulty of replacing any weapon system that actually works.

Combat Record

The SMAW’s combat record is built primarily around the Iraq War the began in 2003, and specifically around the Battle of Fallujah. In the street-by-street fighting of both the first and second offensives in 2004, the weapon found its calling. The SMAW-NE – “Novel Explosive,” which is the military’s characteristically understated designation for a thermobaric warhead – proved devastatingly effective against the fortified rooms, tunnels, and hardened positions that Iraqi insurgents had constructed throughout the city. A thermobaric warhead works by dispersing a fuel cloud and then igniting it, producing an overpressure wave capable of collapsing lightly constructed buildings and lethal to personnel in enclosed spaces. It is not a subtle tool.

A US Marine Corps (USMC) troop with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, fires an MK-153 SMAW round at an insurgent stronghold during Operation Al Fajr, Fallujah, Iraq. Marine Corps photo by LCPL J.A. Chaverri, USMC, November, 2004. Public Domain.

When the SMAW-NE lacked the penetrating power to breach certain reinforced walls directly, Marines developed a two-shot technique: first fire a High-Explosive Dual-Mode round to punch a hole through the wall, then send the thermobaric round through the opening into the room behind it. Tactically effective, if somewhat baroque. The broader point is that the weapon was being adapted in real time to meet a combat environment no one had fully anticipated – which is, as we have noted throughout this series, what separates useful weapons from expensive museum pieces.

In Afghanistan and Iraq more broadly, the SMAW gave Marine infantry squads a direct-fire breaching and suppression capability that neither the M72 nor the AT4 provided. The Army, which had returned its borrowed SMAWs after Desert Storm, later developed its own derivative – the SMAW-D, designated the M141 Bunker Defeat Munition – a disposable single-shot version using the same warhead. Even the Army eventually admitted the mission was real.

The Spotting Rifle Problem & Mod 2

The original SMAW’s spotting rifle was its perpetual liability. It was over 30 years old by the 2000s, experiencing increasing failure rates, and the process of firing multiple tracer rounds to range a target was slow and exposed the operator. In 2013, Marines at Quantico tested a modified SMAW with thermal and laser range-finding technology that replaced the spotting rifle. The results validated the concept, and in 2015 the Marine Corps contracted for the SMAW Mod 2 – a complete overhaul that replaced the spotting rifle with a Modular Ballistic Sight, incorporating a laser rangefinder, ballistic computer, and thermal capability. Weight dropped from 16 pounds to 13 pounds. Fielding to the Fleet Marine Force began in November 2017.

The Mod 2 was, by all accounts, a significant improvement. It was also, almost immediately, announced as the weapon’s final iteration before replacement.

The Gustaf Takes Over

The Marine Corps has been transitioning to the Carl Gustaf M4 as its primary infantry shoulder-fired system – and in doing so, has eliminated the 0351 occupational specialty, the Infantry Assault Marines who were trained specifically in SMAW employment. The Gustaf’s broader ammunition family, lighter weight in its M4 configuration, and compatibility with laser-guided rounds made the case for consolidation straightforward. Why maintain two separate systems, two separate MOS pipelines, and two separate logistics chains when one weapon covers the mission set of both?

The answer, for forty years, was institutional inertia, procurement complexity, and the SMAW’s genuine effectiveness in the one role it was specifically designed for. Those are not trivial reasons. But the Gustaf’s evolution has finally rendered them insufficient.

The SMAW is not gone yet – it remains in inventory and, as of 2023, Ukrainian forces of the 68th Jager Brigade were documented using it in operations against Russian forces. Old weapons, as we have noted repeatedly [https://freedomist.com/are-you-sure-you-want-to-throw-that-away/] in this series, have a way of finding new wars to fight. But its role as the Marine Corps’ primary assault weapon is drawing to a close, replaced by the Swede that finally convinced everyone it could do the job better.

This forms a fitting end to this series on man-portable anti-tank weapons. From the M72 to the RPG-7 to the Gustaf to the SMAW – four weapons, four design philosophies, and one consistent lesson: the weapon that solves a real problem, solved well, outlasts every prediction of its obsolescence.

Next time, we’ll look into a weapon that didn’t work so well – the M47 Dragon.

*The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To*

The Goose Is Loose – A Tools of the Trade Joint

Michael Cessna April 10, 2026

Previously, we have looked at the M72 LAW and the RPG-7 – two weapons born from the same fundamental problem, that solved the issue by two very different design philosophies: One is disposable, one is reloadable. One is American, one is Soviet. Both are still on the world’s battlefields today. This week, we look at the weapon that split the difference between them, outlasted both as a frontline system in the world’s most capable militaries, and is currently destroying Russian tanks in Ukraine: the Carl Gustaf 84mm recoilless rifle.

U.S. troops call it “the Goose,” or just “the Gustaf.” The British call it “Charlie G.” The Swedes, who invented it, call it the Granatgevär m/48 – “Grenade Rifle, Model 1948.” Whatever you call it, the weapon has been in continuous production and frontline service since 1948, is now operated by more than 40 countries, and in 2022 a Ukrainian crew used one to destroy a T-90M – Russia’s most advanced operational main battle tank. Not bad for a design that was old when the Korean War started.

What A Recoilless Rifle Even Is

Before going further, it is worth taking a moment to explain what a “recoilless rifle” is – because the term confuses people who are used to thinking about weapons in terms of either conventional rifles, artillery or rocket launchers.

When a conventional firearm – or cannon – fires, the propellant gases accelerate the projectile forward, and by Newton’s third law, an equal and opposite force pushes back against the shooter. That is “recoil“. In a pistol or rifle, the weapon’s mass and the shooter’s body absorb it. In a large-caliber weapon, like an artillery piece, uncontrolled recoil would be catastrophically injurious to the shooter and structurally ruinous to even a stout tube.

*Cumulative shell (H.E.A.T) diagram. 2005 image by Robert Blazek. Public Domain.*

The recoilless design solves this by venting a precisely calculated portion of the propellant gases out of the rear of the weapon through a cone-shaped Venturi nozzle at the moment of firing. The rearward thrust of those escaping gases almost exactly cancels out the forward thrust driving the projectile. The net result on the shooter is dramatically reduced recoil – not zero, but manageable even from the shoulder. The tradeoff is that the rearward ejecting blast of gases is substantial, creating a “danger zone” behind the weapon and generating a dramatic visible signature. But for a weapon that can deliver an 84mm shaped-charge round accurately at 500 meters, that is a tradeoff most militaries have been willing to make for over seven decades.

A coalition force member fires a Carl Gustav recoilless rifle system during weapons practice on a range in Helmand province, Afghanistan; Feb, 2013. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Benjamin Tuck. Public Domain.

The Gustaf fires its rounds at 290 meters per second – nearly three times the muzzle velocity of a World War II bazooka. The result is superior accuracy at range, and a rifled barrel that spins its projectiles for further stability. This is not a “point and pray” weapon – with proper training, it is a precision tool.

The Weapon & Its History

The Carl Gustaf’s origins trace to the Swedish Army’s experience in watching World War II unfold from the sidelines and drawing many correct conclusions. Sweden’s first attempt at a shoulder-fired recoilless weapon – the 20mm Pansarvärnsgevär m/42 – was already obsolete when it entered production in 1942, capable of penetrating only about 40mm of armor at a time when German and Soviet tanks were fielding considerably more. Designers Hugo Abramson and Harald Jentzen at the state-run Carl Gustafs Stads Gevärsfaktori scrapped the small-bore approach entirely, scaled their design up to 84mm in diameter, and paired the recoilless principle with a shaped-charge warhead. The resulting weapon entered Swedish service in 1948.

It first saw combat with Swedish UN peacekeepers during the Congo Crisis of the early 1960s, where it proved rugged and versatile under operational conditions. Export orders soon followed. The M2 variant, introduced in 1964, spread the weapon across NATO and allied militaries. U.S. Army Special Forces, the Rangers, and the British SAS adopted the M3 variant in the 1990’s for bunker-busting and anti-vehicle work. By 2014, the U.S. Army was ordering the Gustaf for conventional infantry units deploying to Afghanistan, specifically because enemy forces could reach American troops with RPG-7s at ranges where U.S. squads had no equivalent direct-fire response.

*Swedish rocket launcher in action at a roadblock in Katanga, during_Operation_Unokat, December, 1961. Unknown author. Public Domain*

The current production model, the M4 “MAAWS” (Multi-Role Anti-Armor Anti-Personnel Weapon System), weighs under seven kilograms – about 15 pounds – and measures less than one meter in length. It accepts a digital fire control device that communicates ballistic data directly to programmable ammunition. It can fire laser-guided rounds developed jointly by Saab and Raytheon, accurate to 2,500 meters. It can also fire the same basic HEAT rounds it was firing in 1948. That backward compatibility with legacy ammunition means nations can modernize their launchers without replacing their ammunition stockpiles – a procurement detail that matters enormously for smaller militaries.

The Ammunition Story

The Gustaf’s real competitive advantage over both the M72 and the RPG-7 is its ammunition flexibility, and this is where the “multi-tool” description earns its keep. The current round family includes:

Anti-armor HEAT rounds, including a tandem-warhead variant capable of defeating reactive armor
A High-Explosive Dual-Purpose round effective against bunkers and light armor
Anti-personnel rounds including a flechette “shotgun” load described by one veteran Ranger as “a giant shotgun where it shoots inch-long little needles at a huge spread”.
Smoke and illumination rounds for screening and marking.
A confined-spaces HEAT variant safe to fire from inside buildings.
And finally, a laser-guided multipurpose munition effective at 2,500 meters.

*A Depiction of Ammunition Variants for the MAAWS. Undated US Army graphic. Public Domain.*

No other man-portable shoulder-fired system offers this range of capability from a single re-loadable launcher. This is why, despite weighing more than the M72 and costing considerably more per launcher than an RPG-7, the Gustaf has not only survived but expanded its user base across seven decades of continuous warfare.

Poland ordered the Carl Gustaf M4 system in a deal worth over $1.2 billion in March 2024. Japan ordered 300 units in 2023. Australia, the Baltic states, and NATO as a whole have placed ongoing orders. The weapon’s procurement momentum is accelerating, not declining.

The Bottom Line

The M72, the RPG-7, and the Carl Gustaf represent three answers to the same question: how do you give infantry the ability to destroy armor, breach fortifications, and suppress defended positions without becoming dependent on vehicle-delivered fire support that may not be available? The American answer was disposable simplicity. The Soviet answer was cheap reloadability. The Swedish answer was precision versatility – and it cost more and weighed more, but it has proven more capable in more operational contexts than either alternative.

*U.S. Marine fires an M3A1 Multi-role Anti-Armor Anti-Personnel Weapon System during unknown distance engagement training, Aug. 14, 2023. USMC photo by Cpl. Aidan Hekker. Public Domain.*

In a budget environment that increasingly rewards lowest unit cost procurement, the Gustaf’s continued and expanding success is a useful reminder that the cheapest weapon per unit is not always the most economical weapon per mission accomplished.

The Goose is still flying. And judging by the order books, it will be for some time to come.

The RPG-7: The Titan of the Man-Portable Anti-Tank World – Tools of the Trade

Michael Cessna April 3, 2026

Last week, we looked at the M72 LAW – a 1963 American design that refused to die, and recently earned a genuine second act through Norwegian engineering ingenuity. This week, we look at the weapon on the other side of that Cold War equation: the RPG-7. Where the M72 is the more elegant solution – lighter, more sophisticated, but ultimately more expensive to produce – the RPG-7 is the Soviet answer to the same problem, while coming from a fundamentally different philosophy about what this sort of weapon system is supposed to be.

The weapon’s full designation is Ruchnoy Protivotankovy Granatomyot-7 – “Hand-held Anti-tank Grenade Launcher, Model 7” – though the English backronym “Rocket-Propelled Grenade” has stuck hard enough that most people have forgotten it was ever anything else. Development began in 1958, to replace its predecessor, the RPG-2 the weapon was formally adopted by the Soviet Army in 1961, and it has not stopped being produced or used since. Over nine million units have been manufactured. It has seen combat in more than 80 countries. It is, without serious competition, the most widely distributed anti-armor weapon in the history of warfare.

Design Philosophy

The RPG-7’s design lineage is still the same as the M72 – the US bazooka, and the German Panzerfaust, both attempting to solve the fundamental problem of giving infantry a fighting chance against armor at range – but the Soviet solution diverged sharply at the design level. Where the M72 is disposable and self-contained, like the Panzerfaust, the RPG-7 is reusable like the bazooka. The launcher tube – a 40mm steel tube, wood-wrapped for heat protection, weighing about 15 pounds – is a permanent asset. The rocket-propelled grenades are loaded separately at the muzzle, with the oversized warhead protruding forward of the tube in the weapon’s distinctive silhouette.

*A Romanian soldier aiming a AG-7 (licensed RPG-7 copy) during a military exercise of the romanian 191st Infantry Battalion. Photo by Dragoş Anghelache. CCA/3.0*

This reusability carries real tactical implications. A squad equipped with RPG-7s can carry multiple warhead types for the same launcher – anti-armor, anti-structure, thermobaric, fragmentation – and select the appropriate round for the target. The M72 gives you one round per tube. The RPG-7 gives you one launcher and as many rounds as your ammunition bearers can carry (typically three spare rounds per carrier). For conventional Soviet infantry doctrine, which envisioned massive combined-arms engagements against NATO armor in Central Europe, this made sense. One RPG-7 per motorized rifle squad (https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1998/infantry-rpg.htm) was the standard Soviet assignment – a number that irregular forces consistently exceeded in practice, if at all possible.

*Some RPG-7 Ammunition types. Image by LivePi3.14, 2005. CCA/4.0 International*

The weapon does, however, present real limitations that deserve honest acknowledgment. A 1976 U.S. Army evaluation found that in an 11 km/h crosswind, a gunner firing at a stationary, tank-sized target could not expect a first-round hit more than 50% of the time at 180 meters. The backblast, while less dangerous than many Western counterparts in confined spaces – Soviet doctrine allowed firing from inside rooms with only two meters of standoff – is still substantial and signature-generating. And the weapon’s effective anti-armor range tops out around 300 meters against a moving target, limiting its utility as armor protection has advanced.

But its strengths are formidable, and they are the strengths that matter most in the environments where most of the world’s actual fighting gets done.

A Polish and US soldier load an RPG-7 during combined live-fire training at Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area in Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland, Oct. 29, 2016. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Lauren Harrah. Public Domain.

Combat Record

The RPG-7’s first confirmed combat use was during the Six-Day War in 1967, and it has barely paused since. In Vietnam, it became the primary tool of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces against American armor and, critically, helicopters – a use case the weapon was never designed for, but adapted to with lethal effectiveness. In Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, the Mujahideen employed it as their weapon of choice against Soviet armor, APCs, trucks, and helicopters, averaging one RPG for every ten to twelve fighters in the field…or, roughly one RPG-7 per squad.

The Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 produced the RPG-7’s most famous moment in American military consciousness: Somali militiamen used the weapon to shoot down two U.S. Army MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, triggering the events immortalized in the 1999 book and 2001 movie “Black Hawk Down“. The irony runs deep – the CIA had taught Afghan Mujahideen how to use the RPG-7 against Soviet helicopters during the 1980s, and the technique came back to haunt the US military.

In Chechnya, the weapon demonstrated what disciplined urban employment looked like. Chechen hunter-killer teams of three to four fighters – an RPG gunner, a machine gunner, and a sniper – simultaneously engaged single Russian armored vehicles from multiple elevations, including ground level, second and third stories, and basements, while the sniper and machine gunner suppressed supporting infantry. Russian armored columns in Grozny during the first Chechen war may have lost 100 tanks and 250 armored fighting vehicles. This is the tactical template that every urban army has had to study since.

In Ukraine today, the weapon is in simultaneous use by both sides – Ukrainians firing Soviet-designed RPG-7s against Soviet-designed tanks, while Russian forces do the same. Texas-based AirTronic USA has supplied a modernized American variant, the PSRL-1, to Ukrainian forces – a US-built RPG-7 derivative, fighting Russian armor. The symmetry is almost poetic.

*PSRL-1 (modified American copy of the Soviet/Russian RPG-7) in use during training by soldiers of the National Guard of Ukraine. Photo by ngu.gov.ua. CCA/4.0 Int’l.*

The Broader Point

The RPG-7 costs somewhere under $500 per launcher. Warheads run roughly $100 to $500 per round depending on type. A single M1 Abrams main battle tank costs approximately $10 million. The math here is not complicated, and it is precisely that math that drives procurement decisions in most of the world’s militaries – not the ones planning to fight peer adversaries across the Fulda Gap, but the ones planning to fight the wars that actually happen: insurgencies, urban battles, and asymmetric confrontations where the side with the RPG-7 does not need to win every engagement, only enough of them, among other modes of warfare.

The M72 and the RPG-7 are mirror images of the same Cold War problem, solved by two different industrial philosophies. One is elegant, lightweight, and disposable. The other is crude, heavy, reloadable, and has outlasted every attempt to declare it obsolete. Both are still operating on the world’s battlefields today.

Next time: the Carl-Gustaf — the recoilless rifle that splits the difference.

The Old Dog Learns A New Trick – Tools of the Trade

Michael Cessna March 27, 2026

There is a recurring pattern in defense procurement that the Pentagon’s acquisition bureaucracy never quite manages to learn: the weapon system everyone writes off as obsolete has a habit of refusing to die, because the problem it solves refuses to go away. The M60 tank is one example. The M72 Light Anti-armor Weapon – the LAW – is another, a contemporary of the M60 and in some ways a more interesting one, because its “second act” required not just political will but genuine engineering ingenuity.

The M72 entered US Army and Marine Corps service in 1963, replacing the aging M20 Super Bazooka as the individual infantryman’s answer to armored threats. The concept was elegantly simple: a 66mm rocket, pre-loaded in a telescoping aluminum-and-fiberglass tube, weighing under five pounds, that one man could carry, deploy, fire, and discard. No maintenance, no crew requirement, no logistics tail beyond the round itself. The design lineage ran straight back through the American bazooka and the German Panzerfaust of World War Two – the perennial infantry problem of “how do you kill a tank without becoming a tank yourself” – solved with the tools of 1963.

Disposable Light Anti-Tank Weapon (LAW M72). Also shown is a cross-section of the launch tube with its accompanying payload, a 66mm rocket with a shaped charge warhead. Photo dated 1985-1990 from **Audiovisuele Dienst Koninklijke Landmacht** (AVDKL). CCA/4.0 Int’l

It saw its first extensive combat in Vietnam, where it earned a mixed reputation. The weapon was effective against light armor, bunkers, and fortified positions, but early production runs suffered from warhead detonation failures in flight, requiring a full recall and safety redesign. A large part of the early reports of failures of the M72 were shaped by the disaster of the Lang Vei Special Forces camp, which was overrun by Communist forces using PT-76 light tanks, vehicles which the M72 should have handled with ease.

*A Polish PT-76 amphibious light tank coming out of the water during an amphibious exercise. 1971 photo from “Czołg pływający PT-76. TBiU 12 WMON, Warszawa 1971.” Public Domain.*

A number of quality control and design issues surfaced immediately, which contributed to the base being overrun. The US defense establishment responded quickly. The corrected versions returned to service and remained there – through the wars of Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and Iraq – long after the system had nominally been “replaced” by the Swedish-designed AT4 in the mid-1980s.

In contrast, the Soviet bloc had the RPG-7, a near-direct copy of the WW2 Panzerfaust. While effective, it had all of the problems of the WW2 bazooka…but that’s for another article.

The lighter weight and lower cost of the LAW made it ideal for the kind of urban and mountain combat that dominated the post-Cold War operational environment. A soldier could carry two LAWs where one AT4 fit. That arithmetic matters.

The Huge Problem That Looked Unsolvable

By the time the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began generating serious after-action data, a specific and deadly – but not unknown – problem had crystallized around shoulder-fired rocket systems: the backblast.

Traditional rocket launchers – the M72 included – generate a massive cone of super-heated gas behind the shooter at the moment of firing. In open terrain, this is a manageable hazard. In urban combat, it is frequently a killing problem. A Marine firing from inside a room, a doorway, or from behind a wall faced an ugly choice: expose himself fully to take the shot from a position where the backblast had clearance, or fire from cover and risk serious injury or death from the blast redirecting off interior surfaces.

Packing crates being used to demonstrate the danger of the M72’s back blast. Ft. Lewis, WA. 1969 photo by L. Johnson, Photo Facility Branch, Audio-Visuals Department, US Army, Ft Lewis, WA. Public Domain.

According to Defense News [https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/eurosatory/2018/06/11/nammos-new-m72-launcher-causes-no-damage-when-fired-from-inside-a-room/], several Marines died as a direct result of having to expose themselves to take shots that could not safely be taken from covered positions. The requirement was real, documented in blood, and the Marine Corps knew it.

*A US Army soldier fires an AT4, Ft Lewis, WA, 2007. Note the dramatic backblast from the AT-4. US Army photo. Public Domain.*

The Solution: Liquid Physics & Norwegian Engineering

The answer came from Nammo, the Norwegian-American defense manufacturer that had been producing M72 variants under license since 1966. Their engineers developed a patented system using an inert organic high-density liquid chamber at the rear of the launcher. When the rocket fires forward, the liquid is expelled rearward, absorbing and dispersing the energy that would otherwise produce the lethal backblast. The result is a fire signature at the muzzle roughly equivalent to a 9mm pistol at night – and a backblast so reduced that, in a demonstration firing inside a 12-by-15-foot shed in the Arizona desert, the only evidence of the shot was a spray of liquid on the rear wall and floor.

*Cut-away diagram of an M72 LAW rocket, from US Army Technical Manual TM 9-1300-200 General Ammunition. US Army image. Public Domain.*

The system, designated M72 Fire From Enclosure (FFE), qualified for US service and entered a five-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract with a maximum value of $498 million. The Marine Corps Systems Command announced in May 2024 that current M72 variants would be succeeded by two FFE configurations: the M72A8, optimized for anti-armor work against light vehicles, concrete walls, and APCs; and the M72A10, a multi-purpose anti-structure munition with a dual-mode fuze capable of defeating brick, adobe, earthen fortifications, and light vehicles. Initial deliveries of 1,930 M72A10s and 800 M72A8s were scheduled for calendar year 2024, with production at Nammo’s Mesa, Arizona facility ramping to maximum capacity by mid-2025.

The tactical implications are significant. A squad that previously had to maneuver into exposed firing positions to employ rocket systems can now maintain concealment throughout the engagement. The reduced visual and acoustic signature – equivalent to the flash of a 9mm handgun – means the shooter’s position is not immediately compromised by the shot. And at 13 pounds, the M72 FFE is light enough that a squad can carry three to six systems rather than the single, heavier launcher a squad might previously field.

The Broader Lesson

The M72 FFE fits squarely into the pattern visible across modern procurement: the weapons that survive are not always the most sophisticated, but the ones whose core function remains essential, and whose designers remain willing to solve new problems rather than declare the mission accomplished. Urban warfare is not a temporary phase of the operational environment. From Fallujah to Mosul to Mariupol, the defining tactical challenge of the past two decades has been combat in built-up areas, where engagement distances collapse, cover is everywhere, and the cost of exposure is measured in seconds.

A weapon system that began its life in 1963 solving the problem of Soviet tank columns crossing the Fulda Gap has been re-engineered to solve the problem of a soldier taking a shot from inside a building in a city the Pentagon did not anticipate fighting in. That is not obsolescence. That is adaptability – and in a budget environment where new platforms cost billions and take decades, adaptability is increasingly the only procurement strategy that works.

Next time, we’ll look at the RPG-7.

The Real Military How-To, Part 1

Michael Cessna March 21, 2026

In the past, we have frequently discussed the “democratization” of military-everything, from equipment acquisition through “higher-level” things, like “DIY” navies and air forces, but we have never really covered the actual methodology of “training” on an effectively zero-budget.

This is a sphere that I have been studiously avoiding treading into, mostly because I felt a moral responsibility to avoid adding fuel to the global fire in a “granular” way. However, that view has evolved over time: There is plenty of military talent out there at various levels – from “Tier One” military forces, to a couple of people in a Toyota Hilux with Grampa’s shotguns. In effect, no – I am not doing anything “out of bounds”.

For full disclosure, when I joined the United States Marine Corps in 1984, the very first job I had “in the Fleet”, was as a Publications Clerk”…I’m not sure if that job even exists anymore, in any way that I would recognize. As a result, my natural inclination as a bibliophile raged in full force. And, after the domination of the PDF format, I have assembled a…let’s say “overly large” collection of military manuals.

As a result, over time, I started thinking about what a personal “emergency military library” would look like: What books and manuals would I put in there? How small could I make it? And so on…

In thinking on this for several years, I came to the conclusion that such a library would be useful not only for someone actually carrying a rifle or leading troops, but to the average civilian – not someone thinking about the end of the world, but who watches the news, sees LOTS of stories about current conflicts, but has no foundation to “fact check” the media…and that is a far more dangerous situation, than publishing a list of very basic works to try and teach you the absolute basics.

The current conflict in Iran brought this into sharp focus: I cannot list the number of news reports and “expert analysis” that I have seen on the revolution in Iran that started on December 28th, that get nearly every single point wrong, at some level. It’s so bad, it’s actively dangerous to viewers, who are left with a highly skewed view of how things actually work out on “the sharp end“. It is dangerous, because otherwise well-meaning people get hysterically angry over things that anyone who has been in a Tier One military longer than a year knows – or at least, should know…and, as the US military understood almost ten years ago, the military is preparing – quietly – for extended combat operations in urban, and highly public, environments.

Students in the Basic Computer Systems Operator Course at the Army’s Computer Science School at Fort Gordon, GA. In the left foreground is a visiting student from the armed forces of Djibouti. 1988 photo from the U.S. National Archives. Public Domain.

As a start to try and remedy this situation, I have curated two lists: a short (14 videos) playlist of videos at YouTube, and a list of basic books and manuals, outlined below. There are much larger lists in each category, but the purpose here, is to at least get you, the Reader, started. Even if you have been in the military for any length of time, I think you’ll find these useful.

The thing with learning “things military” is that it takes time – this is not The Matrix, and no one is going to download a karate program into your head for you to instantly “know karate“. The YouTube link above is 14 videos…for the Short List. The full playlist is over 80 videos long. Likewise, the fourteen books below are only the “initial reading list” – and even the longer list (well over 60 individual titles) is painfully short…But, these two lists will give you the basics of how militaries work.

A pair of notes on the titles below: Many of these are older titles, some dating from the 1950’s. This was deliberate. I have found that after about 1998, many – if not most – modern military manuals are written in modern “corpo-speak”, and are nearly useless in conveying information meaningfully…That, or I’m a dinosaur. Likely the latter…OTOH – “old” does not mean “wrong” or “useless”. Take note.

*Staff meeting of the the 112th Cavalry (Texas National Guard), during the Battle pf Arawe, Papua New Guinea, 1944. US Army photo. Public Domain.*

Second, the titles below are available either as online PDF’s (marked with an ” * “) or as paper copy editions (marked with a ” + “); some are available in both formats.

Below each entry, I will provide my own review of the title, and why you need it.

+* OPNAV P 34-03 – Landing Party Manual, 1960 USN — Chapters 2-3, 5 and 12-13

This might seem like a strange manual to start with, but if I were writing this article in 1980, this manual would have eliminated about five of the other manuals here. Starting in 1920, the United States Navy began generating “Landing Party Manuals” for naval officers to study while at sea, in case they were tasked to command such parties ashore – Lieutenant Jones might be a heck of a good Engineer, but do they know how to mount a formal Interior Guard? The chapter selections are deliberate; the chosen chapters cover basics like Close Order Drill, Ceremonies, Interior Guard, physical training with rifles, and basic marksmanship – these functions change very little over time. The other chapters are interesting from a strictly historical perspective, but – this manual dates from 1960, and things like infantry tactics and first aid have radically changed since then.

+Small Unit Leadership: A Commonsense Approach; Dandridge M. Malone

A lot gets written about “leadership”, but the actual “how” has rarely been focused on in the understandable detail applied here by Malone. Note that this dates from 1983, so if you insist on being offended by your own shadow, you might want to skip this one.

*FM 16-100 – Character Guidance Manual (1961)

Sometimes, military forces are forced to settle on bringing in recruits from the literal “wrong side of the tracks”. Military forces hold dominant powers that many civilians simply do not recognize until far too late. The US Army recognized this in the 1950’s, and wrote this manual as a guide to help officers try to keep their troops from falling into criminal behaviors, in order to prevent court-martialing half of their unit for bad behaviors that unnecessarily got out of hand. Note that this manual is no longer used. Food for thought.

+Combat Leader’s Field Guide, 14th Ed.; Jeff Kirkham

Because the Landing Party Manual is so badly out of date on tactics in 2026, Kirkham’s work at least partly remedies that. While thin on the use of drones – which is constantly evolving and changing, as both Ukraine and Iran, among other conflicts, show – Kirkham sticks to the rock-bottom basics of small-unit infantry combat, the most fundamental combat task on the modern battlefield.

+*Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT); Direct link to USMC PDF link; Amazon link

The US Marine Corps developed a winning method for fighting in urban environments (when allowed to actually employ their tactics as developed). Those tactics are laid out here. When combat in built-up areas looks confusing, chaotic, and dirty, this manual can help clarify what’s going on, far more than the commentary from CNN talking-heads.

+*MCTP 3-01E Formerly MCWP 3-15.3 Sniping; Archive PDF; Amazon link

“Snipers”, in the literal sense, get a poor rap, especially from certain “subject matter experts”, who should know better, and from “influencers” more interested in making political and/or moral zingers. Snipers are actually one of the most powerful and decisive units in infantry combat. Understanding how they function, and their impact on the battlefield is critical for grasping the shape of modern combat.

+Combat Service Support Guide, 4th Ed.; John E. Edwards

Troops need a LOT of “stuff” in action. In the military, that is now termed “Combat Service Support“. It’s dull, unglamorous, hard and back-breaking work…but if someone gets it wrong, the troops do not move, do not eat and do not shoot weapons – they are, quite literally, reduced to rocks and harsh language. While there are entire bookcases devoted to the subject, this volume offers the best single-volume summary out there.

+Guide to Military Operations Other Than War; Keith Bonn and Anthony Baker

This term – “Military Operations Other Than War“, or “MOOTWA” – started out as a highly-mocked term, taken as an example of the military’s descent into morbidity. Over time, however, this sphere of operations – using military forces for non-warfighting operations like humanitarian aid and disaster relief, among others – has demonstrated how important it really is. This overview is something that cannot be ignored, if you want to understand the full scope of what well-run militaries are capable of.

*A basic framework for constructing an SOI document

Not a book or formal manual, but a website dedicated to an absolutely vital concept: how to get units to talk to each other, and talk internally, in a secure way, so that the “bad guys” don’t understand what you are doing…You need more than CB radios, and this page offers you a place to start. This is linked here, in order to show how complex even small unit communications can be.

*Map Reading and Land Navigation, FM 3-25.26 (2005)

You, the Reader, would likely be amazed at how few people know how to navigate with a map, let alone in the dark and rain, with a compass. If you read nothing else here, read this, because you can get stuck in the middle of nowhere easily and unexpectedly….Also — Browse the FAS “MAN” site, and support FAS, if you can. Their information is aging in places, but the entire “MAN” site is well worth your time.

*Field Fortifications – FM 5-15 (1968)

What combat footage from Ukraine, and you can be forgiven for thinking that you are watching colorized footage from the trenches of France in the First World War. This 1968 US Army manual explains the basics of building hasty fortifications in the dirt. If it looks dumb, but keeps you alive – it’s not dumb. Side Note: Check out BITS.de — it’s a vast archive, that I frequently use…Just watch out for their frames – highly annoying, but their only real problem.

*Military Gov’t Manual – FM 27-5 (1947)

When armies overrun – “conquer”, if you prefer – enemy territory, they then need to administer it, until some sort of civilian authority can be established. I selected this specific edition, because it was written in the immediate aftermath of World War 2, when territories all over the world had to be administered by military officers with little knowledge or training…and the farther we got from WW2, the less effective the new manuals got – “newer” is not necessarily “better”.

+*US Army First Aid Manual FM 4-25.11; 2002 online edition; 2018 print edition (my recommendation – how much is your life worth, again?)

Exactly what it says. People get hurt, sometimes seriously, and transport to a real medical facility might not arrive for a dangerously long time. A lot of times…it will come down to you.

*+Nuclear War Survival Skills; Cresson Kearney – HTML & PDF: Amazon (2022 ed.)

This might seem like an odd inclusion, but Kearney’s skill-sets apply almost 1:1 to military forces as they do to civilians. There are absolutely military-specific manuals for this sort of thing, but most of those are too military-specific for most civilians to digest. This is maintained and constantly updated, so I recommend checking the OISM site, first, before buying the hardcopy.

The fourteen titles above will not make you a general, or even a corporal. What they =will= do is give you enough foundation to watch the news coverage of any conflict — Iran, Ukraine, or whatever comes next — and understand, in basic terms, what is actually happening on the ground, rather than relying on what a studio commentator with no field experience – or a former officer who hasn’t carried a rifle in more years than you have been alive – tells you is happening. In a media environment more interested in advertising dollars than accurate reporting, where military illiteracy is the norm rather than the exception, that foundation is worth more than it might appear.

In Part 2, I will lay out the short YouTube playlist.

ZOMBIE TRAINS

Michael Cessna March 13, 2026

Military planning is weird. While most people view the field as planning to simply “blow stuff up and kill people“, that only makes up a vanishingly small sliver of the field. “Military planning“, as such, encompasses planning that considers what amounts to every other field that you can imagine…just with a particular focus. This is because military officers are – or were – not at all the cartoon characters they are frequently portrayed as in popular media.

As a result, composing a military plan – especially at the higher levels – usually takes into account things most civilian planners never have to think about at any scale. Case in point…

In that vein, here’s a Cold War planning problem that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: what do you do with your railroad network after the bombs fall?

While this sounds like the setup for a bad science fiction novel, planners in the Soviet Union took it with deadly seriousness – and their answer was one of the more quietly ingenious contingency programs of the entire Cold War era. They called it the “Strategic Steam Reserve“, and by the 1970’s it amounted to thousands of carefully maintained steam locomotives, pre-positioned across the length and breadth of the USSR, ready to rise from their cold storage like iron zombies to keep the country moving when everything modern had stopped working.

The Problem

To understand why this was so vital, requiring a massive diversion of money and resources, you have to understand how utterly dependent the Soviet Union was – and, in the form of modern Russia, is – on its rail network. The Trans-Siberian Railway was not merely a transportation asset…it was the central nervous system of a continent-spanning state. Break that spine, and Moscow’s control over its eastern territories, all the way to the Pacific, collapses. This was true in the 1960’s and it remains largely true of modern Russia today.

Through the 1950’s and into the 1960’s, as part of the nation’s recovery from the destruction of the Second World War, Soviet railways completed a rapid transition from steam to diesel and electric railroad systems. It was the right call operationally – diesel locomotives are faster, more fuel-efficient, and required far less infrastructure support than steam. But the transition created a new vulnerability that Soviet planners were not prepared to ignore. A nuclear exchange, or even a large-scale conventional assault on infrastructure, posed two catastrophic risks to a modernized diesel and electric network.

*View of the refinery explosion in Catano, Puerto Rico, 2009. CCA/3.0*

First, a disrupted fuel supply chain could ground diesel locomotives almost immediately. Second – and much more troubling to Soviet military planners – the later discovery that the electromagnetic pulses generated by nuclear detonations could destroy the solid-state electronics increasingly embedded in modern motive power. An electrified network with no electricity, and diesel locomotives with fried control systems, is a very expensive collection of unusable metal.

A steam locomotive, by contrast, is magnificently indifferent to electromagnetic pulses. It has no sensitive electronics to fry. It runs on fire, water, and mechanical ingenuity – technologies that were already ancient when the first Bolshevik fired up a nationalized engine in 1917. Coal works. Wood works. Siberia, as one observer noted, is covered in wood. And while contaminated surface water would be undrinkable after a nuclear exchange, it is perfectly adequate for generating steam.

The Reserve Itself

The Strategic Steam Reserve consisted of withdrawn steam locomotives maintained in working order for potential use in a national emergency. The program was structured with genuine military rigor. Locomotives were dispersed to special depots across the country – deliberately sited in rural and mountainous areas away from likely nuclear target sets. Some engines were kept indoors in controlled environments to reduce rust and degradation. Many more were simply parked wherever space existed: in yards, on sidings, in tunnels, beside forgotten branch lines.

Critically, these were not museum pieces; they were maintained as “operational assets“. Mechanics periodically fired up the engines and ran them under load. Dedicated cadres of engineers were trained in steam operations long after those skills had vanished from the mainstream railway workforce – and those specialists were deliberately kept dispersed so that a single strike couldn’t eliminate the entire knowledge base at once. The reserve was structured along military readiness standards, with some locomotives capable of being operational within 12 to 24 hours, others requiring several days of preparation, and a long-term cold storage tier beyond that.

The locomotive types kept in reserve reflected Soviet engineering pragmatism: the workhorse SO series, valued for reliability and ease of field maintenance; the powerful FD series freight locomotives; the postwar L series; and the more sophisticated P36 passenger engines. The reserve also absorbed significant numbers of captured German Kriegslokomotive Class 52 engines – over 6,000 of which had been built during the war against Germany – many of which ended up rusting in Soviet reserve lines, waiting for a call that never came.

*Steam locomotive FD20-1679 at train parade during Expo 1520 railway exhibition in 2017 on railway test circuit in Shcherbinka, Moscow, Russia. 2017 photo. Public Domain.*

Secrecy & Aftermath

The existence of the program was classified throughout the Cold War. Western intelligence had only fragmentary knowledge of the depot locations, which were kept off civilian maps. Even within the USSR, knowledge was compartmentalized, and workers assigned to the reserves were sworn to secrecy under conditions comparable to military installations. It was not until the post-Soviet years that researchers and railway enthusiasts began uncovering the remains of reserve depots, often finding locomotives still intact – heavily rusted, vandalized, sitting in forgotten sheds or overgrown sidings. Those are the source of the striking photographs of abandoned Soviet steam engines with red stars that circulate online.

The collapse of the USSR in 1991 effectively ended the program. Economic chaos, loss of strategic direction, and the privatization of the railway system meant that most reserve locomotives were either scrapped or sold off. By the time researchers began documenting what remained near cities like Roslavl, only a handful of engines survived in any condition – and the Russian government was considering scrapping those, too.

The idea was not uniquely Soviet. Sweden and Finland maintained their own strategic steam reserves during the Cold War, structured against the possibility of a Soviet invasion rather than nuclear exchange. Britain is rumored to have done the same – but despite decades of enthusiast mythology and at least one BBC Radio investigation, no evidence of an official British reserve has ever surfaced.

The Verdict

It is easy, in retrospect, to smile at the image of stolid Soviet planners earnestly cataloging steam locomotives as strategic assets while American engineers were designing MIRV warheads and advanced satellites. But their logic was sound. The Soviets were solving a real problem – how do you maintain national cohesion and logistical function in a post-nuclear environment where modern infrastructure has failed? – and they solved it with the tools available. For a nation held together by rail, the answer was to keep the old iron breathing, just in case.

The zombie trains never rolled in earnest. They quietly rotted away in their sidings while the Cold War ended around them. But the thinking behind them deserves more credit than it typically gets.

When Availability Beats Capability

Michael Cessna February 13, 2026

From the days of the very first aircraft carriers, like the USS Langely (CV-1), until the 2009 retirement of the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), virtually all of the aircraft carriers in the United States Navy ran on some flavor of marine diesel fuel. Beginning in 1961, however, with the advent of the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the Navy began transitioning all of its new aircraft carriers to nuclear power. The benefits appeared to be clear, as the nuclear powered aircraft carrier could cruise without refueling its nuclear power plant for up to 25 years.

But, just how clear was that advantage, over the conventionally engined carriers of the past? And – much more important – what were the downsides of completely shifting to nuclear power? These question came into needle-sharp focus on January 1st, 2026.

The United States Navy began 2026 with a problem that should alarm anyone paying attention to the global security of the United States: of the current fleet of eleven aircraft carriers, exactly two were deployable – the USS Gerald Ford (CVN-78), which was the center-point of the operation against Venzuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), which was patrolling the South China Sea.

By early February, facing simultaneous crises from the sudden Iranian revolution, to the increasing instability in Communist China, the Navy emergency-scrambled two more carriers (the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) and the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77)) to operational status — completing their Composite Training Unit Exercises COMPTUEX while already underway to their deployment zones.

Of the remaining carriers, only the USS Eisenhower (CVN-69) is undergoing “workups”, beginning the three or four month process to return to deployment. Every other nuclear carrier is either undergoing decommissioning (USS Nimitz (CVN-68)), or undergoing repair/overhaul/refueling. It is unclear exactly when a carrier other than the Eisenhower will be available for operations.

This isn’t a sign of extraordinary capability – it’s a symptom of a fleet in crisis.

The ten nuclear-powered Nimitz-class and the one Ford-class carriers represent remarkable engineering achievements. They can steam virtually forever without refueling. The USS Stennis, however, has been undergoing its mid-life nuclear refueling and overhaul since 2021 — a process now entering its fifth year. The USS Truman remains sidelined following collision damage, unable to deploy before its own – now-delayed, because there is only one refueling dock for nuclear carriers – refueling cycle. When you need carriers now, theoretical capabilities matter less than actual availability.

This brings up the uncomfortable question: what are we actually buying with nuclear propulsion for aircraft carriers?

The standard answer is “unlimited range” — carriers that never need to refuel their main engines. But carrier strike groups don’t operate in isolation. Their aircraft require JP-5 jet fuel continuously. Their escorts need bunker fuel. Even the carriers run backup diesel generators and require regular underway replenishment for aviation ordnance, food, and supplies. The nuclear reactor means the ship’s hull doesn’t need to refuel, but the mission absolutely does. The need for UNREP operations remain constant regardless of propulsion type.

Underway Replenishment (UNREP) operations in the Arabian Sea support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Pictured foreground-to-background are the USN Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76); the USN Military Sealift Command (MSC), Supply Class Fast Combat Support Ship USNS RAINIER (T-AOE 7) and the USN Arleigh Burke Class (Flight II) Guided Missile Destroyer (Aegis), USS McCAMPBELL (DDG 85). Undated US Navy phot by PH3 Aaron Burden, USN. Public Domain.

What nuclear propulsion does require is specialized infrastructure. Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) cycles take two to three years, normally, and demand nuclear-qualified facilities and workforce. The Navy has only one, single facility that can refuel nuclear aircraft carriers – which is why the USS Truman is currently riding at anchor, waiting for the Stennis to clear the dock, as the carrier fleet cannot use the same refueling docks as nuclear-powered submarines, due to size and configuration.

Budget cuts have also compounded the maintenance delays — the Obama administration’s sequestration-era budget reductions followed by COVID-related disruptions have created a cascading refueling backlog across the fleet. When institutional maintenance capacity is disrupted, nuclear carriers don’t degrade gracefully; they become tied to pier-side for years.

An aerial view of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (CVN 69), right, being assisted into port at Pier No. 12 by large harbor tugs. The aircraft carrier USS AMERICA (CV 66) is tied up at the right. 1985 US Navy photo. Public Domain.

Diesel-powered carriers offered a different trade-off. Yes, they need refueling — something which is already done constantly for the rest of the carrier’s accompanying strike group. But they also eliminate multi-year RCOH cycles. Conventional powerplants can be serviced at standard shipyards around the world without nuclear certification requirements. Battle damage to diesel systems can be more easily repaired or replaced; damage to nuclear propulsion systems requires specialized facilities and extended timelines, if they are actually repairable at all – unlike World War Two, where rapid repair of severe combat damage was routinely accomplished in a few months, at most…But, as no nuclear powered carrier had yet to be seriously damaged in combat, we really have no idea if repair of a combat-damaged nuclear carrier is even possible. Construction timelines also shrink dramatically when you remove the nuclear certification requirements from the process.

The question isn’t whether nuclear carriers are impressive pieces of engineering. They are. The question is whether that impressive engineering serves strategic needs. Consider the Essex-class carriers of World War II and beyond — diesel-powered, mass-produced, and maintained in sufficient numbers to ensure availability. Twenty-four hulls provided persistent presence through Korea and Vietnam. Our current eleven-carrier nuclear fleet just demonstrated it can field four during a global crisis.

The Reagan administration’s 600-ship Navy called for fifteen carrier battle groups — emphasizing numerical presence across global theaters. President Trump has recently advocated for returning battleships to service, arguing their firepower and durability offer capabilities modern vessels lack.

Both proposals address real problems but miss the core issue: availability. Fifteen carrier groups – or eleven – mean nothing if chronic maintenance backlogs sideline half the fleet simultaneously. The proposed battleships — essentially huge missile platforms with armor — require crews of 1,500+ versus modern a destroyer’s c.300, while offering marginal advantages over “distributed lethality” concepts using existing hulls.

The actual requirement isn’t more carriers or bigger guns — it’s operational carriers and maintainable systems. Fifteen diesel-powered carriers with conventional maintenance cycles would provide far more deployable presence than fifteen nuclear carriers cycling through extended overhauls. Similarly, additional Arleigh Burke-class destroyers deliver sustained missile capacity without the proposed battleships’ manpower and maintenance burdens.

Strategic presence requires operational availability — not just impressive-looking platforms.

Ships of the U.S. Navy Pacific fleet anchored at Ulithi Atoll, Caroline Islands, February 1945.. The aircraft carrier USS Saratoga (CV-3) is in the right middle distance. There are at least eight Essex-class carriers present. 1945 US Navy photo. Public Domain.

Form should follow function. If the function is “project American power globally during crisis,” then presence matters more than theoretical endurance. A diesel carrier that’s actually there outweighs a nuclear carrier in year five of refueling. This isn’t about going backward technologically — it’s about being operational strategically.

The Navy faces a choice: continue investing in exquisite platforms that spend years unavailable for specialized maintenance, or diversify toward simpler systems that prioritize fleet availability. The Iranian crisis and Western Pacific tensions aren’t waiting for the Stennis to complete its overhaul. Neither will the next emergency. We need carriers that can steam now, not carriers that can theoretically steam forever.

Strategic availability isn’t a compromise…And in February 2026, it’s the actual requirement.

Knees To The Breeze…?

Michael Cessna February 6, 2026

Mankind has always been fascinated by the idea of flight. The more rational thinkers realized that they had to find a way to land safely. In Europe, Leonardo Da Vinci designed a parachute – that worked – but didn’t really have a viable way to make it a “tactical system” (to borrow the modern term).

Later, in France, a balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers was first flown successfully in 1783; luckily, the ‘aeronauts’ did not have to bail out in an emergency. In 1797, that was changed by André-Jacques Garnerin. Not exactly a “tactical” jump, but it worked.

The sight of thousands of paratroopers descending from the sky remains one of warfare’s most dramatic images. From the mass drops over Crete in 1941, and Normandy in 1944 to the 173rd Airborne’s combat jump into northern Iraq in 2003, airborne operations have captured military imagination for over eighty years. But, as anti-aircraft capabilities proliferate and modern warfare evolves, a hard question emerges: can massed parachute assaults above the battalion level still accomplish their mission in contemporary conflict, or have they become elaborate exercises in nostalgia?

A 22-aircraft “freedom launch” took place Sept. 11, 2013, at Travis Air Force Base, Calif. Seven C-17 Globemaster IIIs, 11 KC-10 Extenders and four C-5B Galaxies from the 60th Air Mobility Wing lined up in what is historically referred to as an “elephant walk,” then launched consecutively over 36 minutes to take part in Air Mobility Command missions. (U.S. Air Force photo/Ken Wright)

The last major U.S. combat jump occurred over two decades ago when the 173rd Airborne Brigade dropped onto Bashur Airfield in northern Iraq — a deliberately uncontested drop zone that faced minimal air defense threat. Since then, American paratroopers have deployed worldwide, but only as elite infantry landed by aircraft that are delivered by aircraft landing at the field, rather than jumping from aircraft in flight. This isn’t coincidence or lack of opportunity; it reflects cold calculation about what modern air defenses can do to slow-moving transport aircraft packed with paratroopers.

The tactical problem is straightforward. A C-17 or C-130 transport aircraft flying at jump altitudes — typically 800-1,250 feet — presents an ideal target for modern air defense systems. Unlike fast-moving fighters that can employ countermeasures and evasive maneuvers, transports must fly straight and level at predictable – and slow – speeds during the actual drop. Man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) like the Russian SA-24 Igla-S or American Stinger can engage targets up to 11,000 feet, well above jump altitude. More sophisticated systems like the Pantsir-S1 or Tor-M2 can simultaneously track and engage multiple aircraft, turning a mass drop into a massacre before the first paratrooper touches ground.

Historical precedent supports this concern. The 1956 Anglo-French drop on Port Said during the Suez Crisis faced minimal organized resistance and still suffered significant casualties during the drop phase. The Russian airborne assault on Hostomel Airport outside Kyiv in February 2022 — conducted by helicopter rather than parachute — was devastated by Ukrainian air defenses despite Russian air superiority claims. Transport helicopters are marginally more maneuverable than fixed-wing transports, and they still suffered catastrophic losses.

The infrastructure requirements compound the problem. A brigade-level parachute assault — roughly 3,000-4,000 personnel with equipment — requires somewhere between 40-60 transport aircraft flying in close formation. This aerial armada must be assembled, staged, and flown through potentially contested airspace to reach the drop zone. Suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) operations must precede the drop, requiring air superiority that itself demands significant resources. By the time you’ve secured the airspace sufficiently for a mass drop, you’ve likely already achieved the operational objectives that justified the drop in the first place.

The equipment limitations compound tactical vulnerabilities. Paratroopers drop with what they can carry — typically small arms, some types of crew-served weapons, and man-portable anti-tank systems. Heavy-drop platforms can deliver light vehicles like HMMWVs and 105mm howitzers, but these require separate aircraft, precise drop coordination, and recovery time before becoming operational. The U.S. M551 Sheridan light tank was specifically designed for airborne operations but proved too fragile for conventional combat and was retired in 1996. Its replacement, the Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle, won’t be air-droppable. Russia’s BMD series represents the most capable air-droppable armored vehicles globally, but even these sacrifice protection for air-transportability. This means airborne forces hit the ground significantly outgunned compared to even light mechanized forces, entirely dependent on air support and rapid linkup with heavier reinforcements. Without that linkup – or even a delayed linkup – an isolated airborne force becomes a besieged force, nearly guaranteed to be destroyed…as the British discovered at Arnhem in 1944.

Modern alternatives offer similar rapid deployment without the vulnerability. Air assault operations using helicopters provide tactical mobility with greater flexibility in landing zones and timing, the ill-planned and poorly-executed Hostomel assault notwithstanding. Air-landing operations — where aircraft actually land and offload troops — allow heavier equipment and supply delivery while reducing the time troops spend exposed during descent. Special operations forces conducting small-unit infiltrations can seize airfields for follow-on air-landing forces, the approach used successfully in Grenada and Panama.

*U.S. Army Rangers parachute into Grenada during Operation Urgent Fury. 1983 US Army photo. Public Domain.*

Yet the massed airborne capability persists. The United States maintains the 82nd Airborne Division as a ready brigade combat team capable of deploying anywhere globally within 18 hours. Russia’s Airborne Forces (VDV) number roughly 45,000 personnel organized into divisions specifically for airborne operations. France maintains the 11th Parachute Brigade, while China has expanded its own airborne corps and continues developing heavy-drop capabilities for armored vehicles.

The retention suggests these forces serve purposes beyond massed combat jumps. Airborne units provide rapid-reaction forces for contingency operations, often deploying by air-landing rather than parachute. Their light infantry organization and expeditionary culture make them ideal for quick-response scenarios. The threat of airborne operations forces adversaries to defend potential drop zones across wide areas, tying down forces and resources. And in permissive or semi-permissive environments — humanitarian operations, disaster response, non-combatant evacuation — airborne forces provide capabilities no other units match.

The answer, then, appears to be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Against peer adversaries with modern integrated air defenses, massed parachute drops above battalion level represent unacceptable risks for uncertain gains. The operational requirements to make such drops feasible — comprehensive SEAD, air superiority, electronic warfare support — require resources that could achieve the desired objectives through less vulnerable means.

But against less sophisticated opponents, in denied areas where air-landing isn’t feasible, or in time-critical scenarios where hours matter, airborne operations retain relevance. The capability also serves as strategic deterrent and rapid-response option that justify maintaining the specialized training, equipment, and doctrine even if actual combat jumps remain rare.

The parachute remains in the arsenal, but it’s increasingly a tool for specific, narrow circumstances rather than a general-purpose solution. Sometimes, the most important capability is the one you maintain but rarely use — because its mere existence shapes adversary planning and preserves options when conventional approaches fail.

The M60 Tank’s Surprising Second Act

Michael Cessna January 30, 2026

The war in Ukraine, once again, has revived the tired old saw about the armored combat tank being “obsolete” in warfare, because – drones…and, like every other time someone said something this silly, it has been proven categorically false. Not least, in the fact that older tanks – not simply older designs, but physical vehicles that are older than their crews…and sometimes, older than the entire crew, combined.

Both Russian and Ukrainian tank crews are driving the full panoply of ex-Soviet designs long considered not simply obsolescent, but absolutely obsolete. From T-54/55‘s, T-62‘s, T-72‘s and T-80‘s, these old warhorses still grind around the modern battlefields of Ukraine in large numbers, a function of the truly massive numbers of the vehicles produced during the Cold War.

But these vehicles also still fight in battles all over the world, as most of them were exported in large numbers to anyone aligning with Soviet ideology – honest or not – or, later, any state with very modest cash reserves.

In this, the 1990-1991 Gulf War – “Operation Desert Storm” – created some fundamental misunderstandings about old armor, “brain bugs” that have metastasized over the decades, creating truly insane levels of incompetence (but we’ll talk about “Force Design 2030” in a later article). Among those were the general idea that Soviet vehicles were grossly inferior to western designs, when the reality was abysmally poor training, logistics and leadership on the Iraqi side.

The M60A3 main battle tank was considered “old” during Desert Storm; only the US Marine Corps fielded them in that conflict, when the Marine Corps still had tank units (“Force Design 2030” Delenda Est). Even with hasty add-on “reactive armor“, the -60’s were viewed as being dangerously under-armored, going hand-in-hand with its 105mm main gun, which had been replaced in its successor, the 120mm cannon of the M1 Abrams.

**Magach 6**, an Israeli-upgraded M60A1 Patton with Blazer ERA in Yad la-Shiryon Museum, Israel. 2005 photo by Bukvoed. CCA/3.0

And yet – the United States still maintains M60A3’s in “deep storage”, in places like the Sierra and Anniston Army Depots, despite parking older-model M1’s in the same storage lots.

But – why?

When the United States retired its last M60 Patton tanks from front-line service in the 1990’s, conventional wisdom suggested this Cold War workhorse would fade into history alongside other relics of the Soviet-American standoff. Instead, something curious happened: nations around the world began investing serious money into modernizing their M60 fleets rather than replacing them with newer designs. From the deserts of the Middle East to the mountains of Taiwan, the M60 has been experiencing a quiet renaissance that tells us something important about practical defense economics.

The M60 entered American service in 1960 as a counter to Soviet tank development, eventually seeing production of over 15,000 units, in various models. It fought in multiple Middle Eastern conflicts, performed credibly in Desert Storm, and became one of the most widely exported tanks in history. By most measures, it should be obsolete — after all, its basic design is now 65 years old. The M1 Abrams replaced it in U.S. service decades ago, and even the Abrams is facing questions about its age in modern warfare.

Yet in 2023, Taiwan awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions to upgrade 460 M60A3 tanks with new fire control systems, improved armor packages, and 120mm main guns. Turkey has upgraded hundreds of M60s with indigenous modifications, creating the M60T “Sabra” variant, which have seen extensive combat in Syria. Egypt operates over 1,700 M60’s with ongoing modernization programs. Israel, which originally developed many of the upgrade packages now used worldwide, continues operating upgraded M60s alongside newer Merkava tanks. Even smaller nations like Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco maintain modernized M60 fleets.

**Magach 7**, an Israeli-upgraded M60A1 Patton with the “Sabra” package, in Yad la-Shiryon Museum, Israel. 2005 photo by Bukvoed. CCA/3.0

The economics tell the story. A new main battle tank costs anywhere from $6-9 million per unit — and that’s for Russian or Chinese models. Western tanks like the M1A2 Abrams, Leopard 2A7, or British Challenger 3 run $8-15 million each. Comprehensive M60 modernization packages, by contrast, typically cost $2-4 million per tank. For a nation maintaining a battalion of 58 tanks, that’s the difference between a $120 million upgrade program and a $400-600 million replacement program, not including the necessary retraining and new logistics chains. When you’re not facing adversaries equipped with the latest Russian or Chinese armor, that cost differential becomes compelling.

But the financial argument only explains part of the M60’s longevity. The platform offers practical advantages that newer designs sometimes sacrifice. At roughly 52 tons combat weight, the M60 can cross bridges and operate on terrain that won’t support the 70-ton M1 Abrams. Its fuel consumption, while substantial, doesn’t approach the gas-turbine Abrams’ notorious thirst. The mechanical simplicity of its diesel engine means maintenance doesn’t require the specialized expertise that more sophisticated platforms demand — a critical factor for smaller militaries with limited technical infrastructure.

Modern upgrade packages address the M60’s original shortcomings remarkably effectively. New fire control systems with thermal imaging, laser rangefinders, and digital ballistic computers bring targeting capabilities close to contemporary standards – in an environment where “close” still counts. Explosive reactive armor tiles, cage armor, and composite armor packages significantly improve survivability against modern anti-tank weapons. Some variants mount 120mm smoothbore guns — the same main armament found on current M1A2 Abrams tanks. Engine upgrades improve power-to-weight ratios. The result is a platform that, while not matching the latest MBT’s in every parameter, provides legitimate armored combat capability at a fraction of the cost.

The strategic calculus matters too. Many nations employing M60s face threats from irregular forces, not peer militaries with modern tank armies. In counterinsurgency, urban warfare, or defensive operations, an upgraded M60 provides mobile protected firepower that is perfectly adequate to the mission. Turkey’s experience in Syria against Kurdish forces demonstrated that properly supported and employed, modernized M60s remain effective in contemporary combat environments — though they also verified the main battle tank’s well-known vulnerabilities when employed without adequate infantry support or air cover.

There’s a broader lesson here about defense procurement. The endless pursuit of cutting-edge capability often produces systems too expensive to acquire in meaningful numbers, too complex to maintain, and too precious to risk in actual combat. The M60’s ongoing renaissance suggests an alternative approach: proven platforms, continuously modernized, maintained in sufficient numbers to matter operationally. It’s not glamorous, and it doesn’t win promotions for procurement officers, but it might represent more actual combat power per defense dollar than many more modern and “sexier”, alternatives.

As so-called “hybrid warfare“, drone technology, and precision fires force reconsiderations of armored combat tactics, questions about the main battle tank’s future persist. But for nations prioritizing practical capability over theoretical performance, the upgraded M60 offers a pragmatic answer: sometimes the best tank for your situation isn’t the newest one — it’s the one you can afford to field in useful numbers, while still paying your soldiers, that will continue to get the job done.

Iran: The Superpower the U.S. Built — and Couldn’t Control

Michael Cessna January 16, 2026

Background

Iran is an almost unimaginably ancient culture. Only Egypt comes even close in age.

Iran – also known as “Persia“, from the Greeks – played pivotal roles in both Greek and Jewish history. Iran was, for good or ill, the external unifier of the fractious Greek city-staes. It was also the saviour of the Jews, when Cyrus the Great not only freed the Jews from their Babylonian Captivity, but helped them to build the Second Temple (Isaiah 44:28, Isaiah 45:1, Ezra 1, and 2 Chronicles 36). Sasanid Persia was the state that went to war with the Eastern Roman Empire after the assassination of the Roman Emperor Maurice, inadvertantly making room for the rise of Muhammad and Islam.

But, Iran was never happy under Islam, not simply because the form of Islam in Iran – Shia – was at odds with mainstream Sunni Islam, but because it was adamantly opposed to being dominated by the Ottoman Empire. This back-and-forth situation continued into the 20th Century, until Reza Pahlavi overthrew the ruling Qajar dynasty, and was made Shah (“King“, approximately) in 1921.

Reza Pahlavi, as Reza I, was removed from power in 1941 by an invasion by Britain and the Soviet Union, because they wanted to use Iran as a supply route to the Soviet state, and were afraid that Reza I would remain neutral, if not actually ally with Nazi Germany. The two Allied powers sent Reza I into exile, and placed his young son, Muhammad Reza II, onto the throne.

*Reza Shah, emperor of Iran, c.1931 in uniform. Public Domain.*

This situation continued for the next thirty years, as the new Shah worked carefully to first secure his throne, then begin the slow and painful process of bringing Iran into the modern age…a process which was well on its way to success by 1978, building up Iran’s oil, manufacturing and electronics sectors, and becoming the most solid ally of the United States in the region, far more so than Israel…when it all went off the rails.

Power Play

When the Iranian Revolution erupted in 1978, Washington’s response puzzled many observers. The Carter Administration seemed strangely passive as Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s grip on power began to crumble. While historians typically attribute this to Carter’s “naive and kindly nature”, human rights concerns over the Shah’s perceived increasingly brutal crackdowns on internal dissent and diplomatic fumbling, a closer look at the Shah’s military ambitions reveals a much more complex story — one where America’s most reliable Middle Eastern ally had become something Washington never quite intended: a genuine regional superpower with its own agenda…and an existential threat to the Soviet Union.

By the late 1970s, the Shah had transformed Iran into a regional military colossus. The ruler openly declared he wanted the Iranian armed forces to become “probably the best non-atomic” military in the world, and he was well on his way to achieving that goal. Iran became the only foreign customer ever for the F-14 Tomcat, America’s most sophisticated fighter jet at the time, ordering 80 of the aircraft along with 714 AIM-54 Phoenix missiles in what was then the largest single foreign military sale in U.S. history.

But the F-14’s were just the beginning. The Shah sought to transform the Imperial Iranian Navy into not only the predominant force in the Persian Gulf but a naval force capable of patrolling the Indian Ocean. His vision extended far beyond defending Iran’s borders. He wanted power projection capabilities that would establish Iranian dominance from the Mediterranean to South Asia.

This was not mere vanity. The Shah had positioned himself as the guardian of Western interests in the region, and initially, Washington welcomed this role. Following Britain’s 1971 withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, the Nixon administration embraced Iran as the primary pillar of regional security, offering the Shah what amounted to a blank check for military purchases. Any non-nuclear weapons system Iran wanted, America would sell them.

Underlying this buildup, however, was a very simple psychological perspective: the Shah was bitter over his father’s fate, and how he came to power as a puppet-king. His relentless rearmament program was his hedge against that happening again.

Yet the very success of this policy created an uncomfortable paradox. Iran’s conventional buildup was turning it into the primary military power between Israel and India, and the Shah’s ambitions increasingly diverged from American strategic interests. Pakistan was a developing country while Iran had the world’s fifth-largest military, a strong industrial base, and was the clear regional superpower.

The Shah’s regional behavior began to quietly raise eyebrows in some sectors of Washington, D.C. He openly supported Pakistan in both the 1965 and 1971 wars against India, providing free fuel and military equipment. In June 1974, when asked if Iran would develop nuclear weapons like India had just tested, the Shah declared: “Without any doubt, and sooner than one would think” — before walking back the comment to placate international concerns.

Perhaps most significantly, Iran’s geographic position adjacent to Soviet Azerbaijan, combined with its growing strike capabilities, meant the Shah commanded theoretical leverage over Soviet oil infrastructure at Baku. This was a double-edged sword: useful for deterring Soviet aggression, but also giving Iran independent strategic options that could complicate U.S.-Soviet relations during an era of détente.

*Azerbaijani-Iranian border, 1995. Map from Central Intelligence Agency. Public Domain.*

But for the Soviets, their battle-planners saw the threat immediately: a capable Imperial Iranian Air Force could threaten the Soviet’s oil jugular: the port city of Baku, on the Caspian Sea – which in the 1970’s supplied some 30% of the Soviet Union’s oil reserve. A successful Iranian strike on Baku, especially if it came during a war in Europe with NATO, would result in complete defeat and capitulation to the West. As long as the Shah had a “toy army”, he was no threat to the Communist state.

The question was: Just how capable was the Shah’s military in the mid-1970’s?

In 1973, the Soviet’s got their answer.

The Dhofar Intervention: Iran’s Dress Rehearsal

Perhaps the clearest demonstration of Iran’s emerging regional power — and the strategic dilemma it posed — came not in the Persian Gulf itself, but on the Arabian Peninsula. Between 1973 and 1976, the Shah deployed over 4,000 Iranian troops to Oman to help Sultan Qaboos crush a Marxist insurgency in the Dhofar region. The operation, conceived entirely by the Shah himself, included an Iranian infantry brigade, sixteen jet fighters, naval support, and critical helicopter transport capabilities that proved decisive in the counterinsurgency campaign.

It was not simply the hardware, however. It was that Imperial Iranian forces showed in Dhofar that they actually knew how to employ the weapons and tools they Shah had supplied them with. In the military sphere, that scope of training and capability is far more important that the mere tools themselves.

*A pair of IIAF F-14’s, refueling in-flight from a USAF KC-135. Date c.1977. Imperial Iranian Air Force photo. Public Domain.*

The Shah justified this intervention by claiming he needed to defend the Strait of Hormuz from the threat of communist control. But the operation demonstrated something more profound: Iran now possessed the capability and will to project military power across the region independently. Iranian forces operated far from their borders, coordinated multi-domain operations, and effectively determined the outcome of a neighboring country’s civil conflict — all without requiring American permission or direct U.S. involvement.

For Washington, Dhofar was simultaneously reassuring and alarming. The Shah had proven himself a capable regional policeman willing to contain Soviet-backed insurgencies. Yet, he had also demonstrated that Iran’s military reach now extended well beyond merely defensive operations. The same expeditionary capabilities deployed against Marxist rebels in Oman could theoretically be used to pursue Iranian interests elsewhere — including objectives that might not align with American strategic goals.

For the Soviet Union the fact that Dhofar was “limited”, in a technical sense, was irrelevant. The Imperial Armed Forces had proven that they were good enough, that Soviet battle calculus had to recognize that the Shah had built the equivalent of a NATO field army on its southern frontier, an army that was capable of striking a fatal blow at the Soviet Union in a full-scale war.

Endgame

By 1978, American officials increasingly realized that they were facing a critical dilemma they had helped create. The Shah’s military modernization had proceeded so rapidly that Iranian aircrew simply couldn’t be trained fast enough to operate all the aircraft, with hardware literally piling up on docks. A Senate committee estimated Iran could not go to war without U.S. support on a day-to-day basis, yet the Shah was increasingly asserting his independence…yet the Iranian’s were not deficient in their training and readiness, and had proven themselves to be a capable and dangerous armed force with a regional reach.

Thus, when a Soviet-aided “revolution” threatened the Pahlavi regime, Carter’s response was notably restrained. The administration pressured the Shah to implement political reforms rather than crack down decisively on protesters. By November 1978, U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan alerted Washington that the Shah was “doomed”, yet the administration actively discouraged the Iranian military from launching a coup to save the monarchy.

The conventional narrative on the US failure to support the Shah usually blames this on Carter’s human rights idealism and/or poor and naive intelligence. But there’s another possibility worth considering: that after a decade of arming the Shah to the teeth, many in Washington now saw that an independent, militarily powerful Iran — one capable of threatening fundamental Soviet interests without American permission or dominating regional neighbors — might not serve U.S. interests as reliably as previously assumed.

*Official portrait of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, 1973. Public Domain.*

The Shah had done exactly what Nixon and Kissinger had asked: he’d built a militarily capable regional superpower. The question Carter faced was whether that superpower would remain aligned with American objectives — or become a force unto itself. When the moment came to save the Shah’s regime, Washington hesitated. Whether that hesitation stemmed from human rights concerns, fear of failure, or quiet recognition that the United States had created a monster it would not be able to fully control, remains one of the revolution’s enduring questions.

Whatever the case, the Carter administration’s actions regarding the Shah’s declining health in his exile indicate that far darker maneuvers may have been in play.

In the end, the failure of Western support to the Shah resulted in five decades of horror, around the world. Whether that is about to come to an end or not, remains to be seen.

The Bunker Buster

Where It Came From

Combat Record

The Spotting Rifle Problem & Mod 2

The Gustaf Takes Over

What A Recoilless Rifle Even Is

The Weapon & Its History

The Ammunition Story

The Bottom Line

Design Philosophy

Combat Record

The Broader Point

The Huge Problem That Looked Unsolvable

The Solution: Liquid Physics & Norwegian Engineering

The Broader Lesson

The Problem

The Reserve Itself

Secrecy & Aftermath

The Verdict

Strategic availability isn’t a compromise…And in February 2026, it’s the actual requirement.

Background

Power Play

The Dhofar Intervention: Iran’s Dress Rehearsal

Endgame

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