The journal of defence technology and strategic futures
Essays are the Review's primary intellectual vehicle. They are long-form arguments — typically five to eight thousand words — written for a reader who wants to think seriously about a subject, not merely be briefed on it. Each essay takes a thesis seriously enough to develop it in full: with historical context, structural analysis, original framework, and, where the evidence supports it, predictions the author is willing to commit to in print. The essays in this volume range from ecosystem theory and capital architecture to autonomous-warfare law and strategic forecasting methodology. Some are directly policy-proximate, written with executive summaries designed for ministerial circulation. Others are more methodological, staking analytical ground that the Review will build on across subsequent volumes. All of them are written to be argued with — readers who disagree with the thesis are the intended audience as much as readers who agree. Essays are not peer-reviewed, but they are edited rigorously and, where they make empirical claims outside the author's primary expertise, reviewed by a named specialist credited at the foot of the piece. The distinction between what is argued and what is asserted, and between what is the author's original analysis and what is established in the literature, is maintained throughout.
Narrative Intelligence and the Architecture of Plausible Futures Orbis Futura Review — Essay #11 Epistemic status: Speculative. What follows is…
AI capability assessment measures what AI can do, not what it changes about how we know. The inverse intelligence framework…
Article 42.6 of the Treaty on European Union offers a better fit for non-attributable and autonomous-warfare scenarios than NATO’s Article…
Commercial-off-the-shelf simulation tools are increasingly used in defence applications they were not designed for. A peer-reviewed methodology for evaluating COTS…
Assistance and sanctions both produce unintended innovation effects. From the Dawes Plan to Iran’s Hormuz doctrine, the pattern is general….
Three structurally different markets — US, European, CRINK — are producing three different defence-tech ecosystems. Any analysis treating “defence innovation”…
The Geography of Research as a Leading Indicator of Geopolitical Power EPISTEMIC LABEL: PROBABLE I. The Argument: Geography Outperforms…
“Basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress.” — Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier, 1945[^bush1945] Overarching epistemic status:…
On why this field needs a publication that draws the line between capability and theater — and shows its work….