Claims

The Negev traces its roots to the 1980s when the IDF's primary light machine gun was the Galil ARM, a modified variant of the Galil assault rifle that fired in heavy sustained automatic but was limited to low-capacity magazines instead of belts and had a notorious reputation for overheating.

The RT-20 was used during the Croatian Homeland War, and a handful remain in the inventory of the Croatian army as well as some with various police SWAT units.

The RT-20 was not developed specifically to target the infrared sighting systems on Serbian M84 tanks, despite what many online articles claim; it was developed as a general anti-materiel rifle, though it was happy to be used against tank observation devices when needed.

The Croatians needed anti-materiel rifles in a variety of forms during the Homeland War, and manufactured several .50 calibre single shot or magazine-fed anti-materiel rifles before deciding to adapt the 20mm M55 barrels.

The Venezuela operation was a commando operation (different in kind from the current larger military operation), similar to the failed U.S. operation ordered by President Carter in 1979 in Iran, which could have failed catastrophically but succeeded, emboldening the current approach.

Despite hundreds of fictional works predicting future warfare (particularly before WWI), history shows poor predictive accuracy; however, some predictions proved accurate (Bernardi predicted tanks, H.G. Wells predicted chemical/biological weapons and mass mobilization), demonstrating that informed attempts to forecast warfare remain worthwhile, especially during periods of peace when the next adversary may be unclear.

Soviet military theorists understood by the 1970s-1980s, before the US Military realized it, that American application of computing, sensing, and communications technologies to military systems was transforming US military capabilities.

The current conflict is unusual both in its length and in its level of technological advancement, and represents the first digital war.

The Dagger system originated in 2018 when the IDF was developing systems to protect citizens from attacks using kites and explosive balloons.

The intelligence operation supporting the bin Laden raid (Operation Neptune Spear, May 1-2, 2011) was the most compartmented and secretive mission in CIA history, with extremely tight security about the planning, but the moment the raid occurred everything went public the next day

Pat Wener's father George Wener, a career Special Forces officer who served 35 years including Vietnam and Central America operations during the 1980s-90s shadow wars, recently passed away and was highly respected in the Special Operations community

The 1991 Gulf War caused the Air Force to initially upgrade Pat's navigator slot to a pilot slot due to overestimated Iraqi capability, but when the war ended in approximately one week, the military downsized and he lost the pilot slot again, forcing him to commission in intelligence instead

While Pat was offered a conditional employment with CIA and preparing for case officer training, he was simultaneously selected by a three-star general to be his aide-de-camp, and the Air Force had a stop loss in effect due to the Kosovo War that initially prevented him from leaving

The USS Lexington (CV-2) raid on Wake Island in January 1942 required an oiler escort, the USS Neosho, which was sunk by Japanese submarine I-72, leading US Navy leadership to recognize that Oilers required defensive escort because they are high-value logistics vessels vulnerable to attack.

The USS Neosho (one of 12 fast oilers converted from commercial ships) was attacked by Japanese carrier strike forces (Shokaku and Zuikaku under Admiral Hara) during the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, was bombed and sank after 4 days, leaving Lexington and Yorktown without fuel replenishment support.

Admiral Nimitz orchestrated an elaborate logistics plan during the Coral Sea operations to maintain continuous fuel flow to Yorktown, Lexington, Enterprise, and Hornet strike groups for approximately one month, after which supplies would be exhausted without additional replenishment.

Japanese sinking of Nez (January 1942) and Neosho (May 1942) was not intentional targeting strategy but rather accidental by-products of Japanese operations; however, it demonstrated US logistical vulnerability and prompted the Navy to become more logistically resilient with greater depth of vessels and supplies.

By World War II's later stages, carrier strike groups operated with sufficient depth of fuel vessels such that they could sustain losses and continue operations, due to deliberate post-1942 logistics restructuring following Nez and Neosho losses.

War has become an urban phenomenon where the concept of 'battlefield' is now anachronistic because combat is concentrated in cities where civilians live, as exemplified by the Battle of Britain (1940) and contemporary conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

During World War Two, approximately two-thirds of Japanese fleet carrier losses were caused by air attack (with many then scuttled by Japanese forces), while the remaining Japanese carriers and 3 of 4 Royal Navy carriers were lost to submarine attack, establishing air attack and submarine attack as the two primary carrier-killing methods.

At the start of World War Two, many nations' navies had more battleships than carriers, but by 1945 the US had 28 fleet carriers, 71 light and escort carriers, supported by only 23 battleships, demonstrating a fundamental shift in naval power projection dominated by aircraft.

China acquired an old Soviet Kuznetsov-class carrier hull as an apparent floating casino in 1998 for 20 million dollars, underwent complex international negotiations to transit the Dardanelles, lost its tow in a storm costing a sailor's life, circumnavigated Africa rather than using Suez Canal, and rebuilt it into the Liaoning to gain carrier operating experience, demonstrating both how nations acquire carrier capability and the complications of the process.

The Soviet Navy during the Cold War developed heavy, long-range anti-ship missiles and naval aviation with stand-off anti-ship missiles for engaging American carrier groups while remaining less vulnerable to defending carrier fighters, calculating that mass missile salvoes provided the best odds against supercarriers despite accepting that not all missiles would reach targets.

HMS Glorious was sunk by German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in 1940 due to suboptimal decision-making by its captain—the ship had no combat air patrol, no aircraft on deck ready to launch, and made no significant effort to evade, representing an edge case that proves the rule that carriers with functional air wings and proper tactical awareness can defend themselves.

In the post-Cold War period, the development of new anti-carrier weapons slowed as the Soviet Union broke up and most countries were focused on economic concerns rather than developing new generations of anti-carrier weapons systems.

During the Falklands War, the Argentinian failure to sink British carriers HMS Invincible or Hermes would have been catastrophic for Britain because those two ships were responsible for all air defense for the entire task force, making carrier capability critical to the campaign even though they weren't the primary combat objective.

Petraeus was a two-star division commander during the fight to Baghdad and requested details about post-conflict governance planning but was told essentially that commanders should focus on the military victory and others would handle the aftermath, revealing the inadequacy of post-conflict planning.