Defense One Radio

Guest: Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a postdoctoral fellow in Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Source material:  “Global military spending surges amid war, rising tensions and insecurity,” published April 2024 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute;  “Back in Stock? The State of Russia's Defense Industry after Two Years of the War,” by Maria Snegovaya, Max Bergmann, Tina Dolbaia, Nick Fenton, and Samuel Bendett, published April 2024 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies;  “Keeping Up with the Pacing Threat: Unveiling the True Size of Beijing’s Military Spending,” by Mackenzie Eaglen, published April 2024 by the American Enterprise Institute;  “Indo-Pacific Missile Arsenals: Avoiding Spirals and Mitigating Escalation Risks,” by Ankit Panda, published October 2023 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace;  “Missile Proliferation and Control in the Asia-Pacific Region,” from Jeffrey Lewis and Kolja Brockmann, published April 2024 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies; And “Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace,” from Chris Blattman, published April 2022 by Penguin Random House.

Defense One's Audrey Decker interviews Gen. David Allvin and Air Mobility Command's Gen. Mike Minihan (at the 32:42 mark). You can also catch all of our 2024 State of Defense interviews on Defense One's YouTube page, here.

Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Rear Adm. James Aiken discuss Navy's role in international coalitions, challenges in shipbuilding plans, AI integration in military operations, cultural implications of AI, innovative technologies like unmanned surface vessels, and enhancing operator capabilities with AI.

Army Chief of Staff and Commander of U.S. Army Pacific discuss robotics integration, advancements in network infrastructure, technological innovation, and the Army's presence in the Indo-Pacific region. They delve into modern warfare tactics, joint logistics, and adapting to new threats.

Gen. Christopher Mahoney and Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl discuss Marine Corps' modernization challenges, budget constraints, logistic reinvention, lethality enhancement strategies, infantry battalion restructuring, naval integration, Osprey aircraft confidence, force design, and tech advancements amidst industrial base health concerns.

Defense One's Audrey Decker speaks to Chief of the Space Force Gen. Chance Saltzman; and Defense One's Lauren Williams interviews Air Force Col. Michelle Idle, deputy commander of Space Systems Command. You can also watch either of these interviews on Defense One's events page, here.

The author and Marine veteran discusses the future of technology, the promise of AI, the perils of toxic politics, and other themes packed into his latest work of speculative fiction.  Guest: Elliot Ackerman, co-author of "2054: A Novel," which was published on March 12. Find our previous discussions with Ackerman here: Ep. 107: The legacy of America’s Afghan war; And Ep. 79: “2034: A Novel of the Next World War”.

Audrey Decker unpacks the top news from this year's Air & Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium. Here's a roll-up of her reporting from the AFA symposium: Air Force announces major shakeup to prep for war with China; Air Force will narrow its pool of robot wingman vendors within ‘next few months’; 'Unexpected’ engineering slows price negotiations on USAF radar plane USAF plans stealthy tankers for ‘extreme threat areas’; Lockheed vows steady F-35 production amid demand shifts And First Ukrainian F-16 pilots will complete training as soon as May.

How does the Kremlin force an entirely new reality on an occupied city? And how do Europeans feel about the invasion and U.S. hesitation to rearm Ukraine?   Guests: Karolina Hird, analyst and Russia Deputy Team Lead at the Institute for the Study of War; Karin von Hippel is Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute. You can find Hird's recent report, "The Kremlin's Occupation Playbook: Coerced Russification and Ethnic Cleansing in Occupied Ukraine," here.

Guests: Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow for counterterrorism and homeland security at the Council on Foreign Relations; Jacob Ware, research fellow also at the Council on Foreign Relations. Their book “God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-right Terrorism in America" was published in January.