Just yards from the Rusian pavilion, an American soldier shows a spectator how to aim a Javelin at IDEX 2023. (Ashley Roque/Breaking Defense)
WASHINGTON — As the new year beckons, over the past couple weeks Breaking Defense turned its analytical eye on the tectonic shifts in geopolitics and the defense industry across every domain that took place in 2023.
As a trade publication with a dedicated, loyal readership that includes policymakers, practitioners and game-changers in the defense world around the globe, we’re lucky we don’t live and die by clicks and views, but by the quality and insightfulness of each report all through the year.
That doesn’t mean, however, that we’re above enjoying the occasions in which our stories leap out of the defense stream to make a splash with a more general audience.
Therefore, it’s my pleasure to present Breaking Defense’s top 10 most read stories of 2023. If you’re reading this — in which case you may have already read a few of the articles below — thank you for your time and attention. We’ll see you in 2024 with the most important defense news and analysis from our team on the ground.
UK reveals capture of Russian equipment, instructs industry to develop counter-measures
The comments may have been a big vague, but a senior United Kingdom Ministry of Defence official was among the first to reveal that Western militaries had captured Russian equipment during the conflict in Ukraine and were actively working to figure out ways to counter them.
As Breaking Defense’s Tim Martin reported from the International Armoured Vehicles conference in London in January 2023, the official said that being able to “undermine the credibility” of the Russian systems will lead to the creation of market opportunities for “alternative solutions,” a clear hint that industry has been instructed to interrogate the Russian equipment and design superior countermeasures. The UK, the official said, is also ensuring Ukrainians benefit from the newfound knowledge.
UK minister: Iran made ‘big mistake’ in giving drones to Russia for Ukraine war
Also in January 2023, just a few days before the IAV conference, another senior UK official questioned the wisdom of Iran allegedly providing scores of unmanned systems to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine for much the same reason.
Writing for Breaking Defense, Riad Kahwaji quoted UK Minister of State for Armed Forces James Heappey during a visit to the Middle East as saying that “Russia’s extensive use of Iranian drones” has enabled the Ukrainians and their Western allies “to detect the weaknesses within the Iranian technology and provide effective solutions to counter them.”
Russians playing with Javelins: US Army, Russia display weapons yards apart in the desert
Breaking Defense had a team on the ground in Abu Dhabi for this year’s International Defence Exposition and Conference (IDEX) 2023 and so was on hand to walk by and raise an eyebrow at the placement of a Russian arms pavilion literally yards away from a US Army tent.
That would be odd enough, but the US Army tent was specifically showing off a Javelin anti-tank weapon and the Patriot missile system — two platforms used extensively by Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s ongoing invasion. That didn’t stop a few Russians from wandering over and checking out the Javelin, according to a couple American soldiers manning the booth who spoke with Breaking Defense’s Ashley Roque. Such is the odd nature of international defense shows.
Building defense systems can be an exact science, so exact that if something is off by just a hair, it’s a massive problem. That’s what the United Kingdom learned after it discovered a seemingly tiny — measured by the millimeter — issue with a new aircraft carrier, as Tim Martin reported.
Uncharted waters: Navy navigating first-ever dismantling of nuclear-powered carrier
In this report, Breaking Defense’s Justin Katz took a deep dive into a novel but long-term problem facing the US Navy: how to dismantle a formerly nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. While the Navy has dismantled nuclear-powered subs before, aircraft carriers present a host of new problems, and the service is only now gingerly approaching the best way to solve them, including a new reliance on industry.
And their first decisions carry weight: Other carriers are in line for dismantling, so whatever the Navy does now could set the template for decades to come.
Naval Intelligence admiral: ‘Naive’ American public has ‘China blindness’ problem
The words may sound harsh, but they clearly resonated with readers. In February, a week after a Chinese balloon floated leisurely across the US, Justin Katz reported that the head of Naval Intelligence, Rear Adm. Mike Studeman, was very worried about how Americans viewed Beijing.
“It’s disturbing how ill-informed and naive the average American is on China. I chalk this up, if I could summarize, into a China blindness. We face a knowledge crisis and a China blindness problem,” he said at the West 2023 conference in San Diego.
Navy begins long haul to inactivate second nuclear-powered carrier Nimitz
Back on the topic of nuclear-powered carrier dismantling — a surprise hit with readers, apparently — this April report from Justin Katz followed the Navy’s first steps in determining how to deactivate the Nimitz, the second ship scheduled to be broken down after the Enterprise. The Nimitz will actually keep operating until 2026, the Navy said then, but the service had to start planning in 2023 for the massive undertaking.
Weapons tracing shows Russia firing new cruise missiles at Ukraine just weeks after production
As the war in Ukraine continued through 2023, all eyes turned to the production capacity not just of the West to keep Kyiv in the fight, but to Russia’s domestic arms war machine. In this May report, Tim Martin followed new analysis that showed Russia was using cruise missiles in combat just weeks after they had been produced, a potential sign that existing stockpiles may be low.
Russia’s Air Force ‘eating into’ aircraft lifespans, with no easy solution
Along the same theme, it appears Russia’s ability to keep some of its aircraft in the air is running up against its own problems. In this story, frequent Breaking Defense contributor Reuben Johnson reported that Moscow’s air force was suffering from availability problems, brought on by a combination of over-use and poor maintenance.
“When it comes to the Russian VKS all you can say sometimes is ‘thank God for shoddy maintenance,’” a NATO-nation military aviation analyst said.
Stop being ‘foolish’: To improve recruitment, Marine Corps takes aim at outdated rules
All of the military services are struggling with recruitment, so its little surprise the Marine Corps is trying to update its requirements to draw in young applicants and retain the servicemembers they have. Still, it was a bit jarring to hear then-Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, who’s now in charge of the service, admit that some of the personnel strategies the Marines had been using were “foolish,” as Justin Katz reported.
