The Strategic
Current
Research-driven insights on global security, resilience, and the systems shaping our future. The Strategic Current delivers clear, actionable analysis on national security, infrastructure risk, emergency preparedness, and the forces redefining stability in a rapidly changing world.
Latest analysis
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The Ghost Army: How Artists Helped Deceive Nazi Germany
How the U.S. Army’s Ghost Army used inflatable tanks, fabricated radio traffic, and sonic deception to mislead German forces—and what its wartime record actually…
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From RQ-1 to MQ-1: How Retrofitting the Predator Changed Modern Warfare
How the Predator evolved from RQ-1 reconnaissance to the armed MQ-1—and what that transformation reveals about modernization, military operations, and the limits of retrofit…
More analysis
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Operation Eagle Claw: Decision, Abort, and Accountability
Operation Eagle Claw was aborted before the fatal Desert One collision. Six original U.S. records distinguish the mission’s planning, execution and aftermath.
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Project Azorian: The CIA’s Attempt to Raise a Soviet Submarine
Project Azorian used a mining-ship cover to raise part of the Soviet submarine K-129. The engineering achievement is clear; the intelligence outcome remains contested.
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Able Archer 83: What the Nuclear Scare Evidence Actually Shows
What declassified records reveal—and leave unresolved—about NATO’s Able Archer 83 exercise and Soviet fears of nuclear war.
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Paper Balloons, Secret Censorship, and the First Intercontinental Drone Campaign
Cover image: Japanese Fu-Go balloon recovered and reinflated at Moffett Field in 1945. U.S. Army photograph A 37180C (U.S. public domain). Archival source and rights. On…
Latest briefings
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The Current Brief 007
Inflatable tanks, false radio traffic, and battlefield illusions. How a small U.S. Army unit helped mislead German forces.
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The Current Brief 006
The Hellfire changed the Predator’s mission. The bigger transformation involved the military system behind it.
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The Current Brief 005
Project Azorian: what the CIA intended to recover, what was actually lifted, and what the declassified evidence can establish.