Joshua Tallis
Naval and maritime strategy | Advisor to CNOs 33 & 34 | Fmr Advisor to Sixth Fleet Commander | Author of War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Insecurity
- "Latvia finds no link between ship and Baltic cable breach, probe goes on." This is a helpful reminder of two defining features of the critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) challenge.
- (1) Short of war, CUI is a law enforcement issue more than a military matter. Navies often have the range and endurance to operate persistently far from shore, and so naval assets are a necessary and visible feature of CUI security.
- Yet sabotage must be investigated by law enforcement, bringing all the demands of a legal proceeding: burden of proof, chain of evidence, due process. Creating effective defense and deterrence for CUI starts with understanding the issue as a predominantly constabulary mission when short of war.
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View full threadThere's more to say on this—I wrote a few years ago that NATO's Mine Countermeasure Groups might be well suited for adaptation to CUI defense—but we must start from these two observations: (1) this is a constabulary issue, and (2) cost-effective surveillance is a main material obstacle.
- Reposted by Joshua TallisWhat does it mean when an attack is designed to be intercepted?
- April 13, 2024. Iran launches hundreds of drones and missiles against Israel. Almost none hits. No one is killed. No critical infrastructure is destroyed. It was not a failure. As I argue, this is performative aggression, a game of bumper cars in a world long defined by games of chicken.
- In chicken, both players understand they are at risk, and the winner is the player with the superior risk appetite. There is high potential gain—prestige, intra-war deterrence, escalation dominance, control of the conflict tempo—but high downside (like runaway escalation).
- In bumper cars, neither player expects any significant damage, and thus at least one may be inclined to test limits. Bumper cars has lower potential gain—symbolic wins, face-saving off-ramps—but lower downside (like less risk of provocation, assuming defenses hold).
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View full threadThe task ahead is therefore not only to prevent damage from drone and missile attacks, but to deny adversaries the ability to weaponize restraint itself in the aftermath of performative aggression.
- My latest in War on the Rocks
- In 2019 I published a book on maritime insecurity, and in particular the challenge of aligning constabulary ways with military means. I argued at the time that, as maritime security threats rose in sophistication, it would be increasingly appealing to apply military resources to counter them.
- Military tactics, however, may not be the ideal mechanisms for challenges that are often closer to crime than war. Leveraging the Navy’s capabilities, without overly militarizing maritime security, is a complicated problem that requires a strategic and partner-oriented approach to the challenge.
- As a US administration once again looks towards hemispheric security issues, many of the challenges I anticipated are coming to the fore. As I argued in 2019, there is a path to success here, but it is narrow and at times counterintuitive.
- This @warontherocks.bsky.social article offers a valuable, skeptical assessment of how transformative first-person view (FPV) drones have been on the Ukrainian battlefield—and is a great illustration of why it matters to collect data on the ground.
- BLUF: “If a member of a NATO military were hypothetically to ask me whether NATO countries should acquire first-person view drone capabilities, based on my experience and given the current state of the technology, I would probably say no.”
- The author notes (with regard to UAS) that “[higher end] loitering munitions provide greater precision in day and night, more ease of use, and higher resistance to electronic interference than first-person view drones… The investment in quality seems to justify the greater expense.”
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View full threadThis highlights the importance of transitioning mature UxS out of experimental task forces and into the hands of commanders who need to gain operational familiarity with these systems in order to understand how to best employ them. That is, not coincidentally, a key charge in the 2024 NAVPLAN.
- As the kinetic nature of the Israeli strikes on Iran capture attention, there are also other impacts across the maritime space, particularly looking at energy and commercial SLOCs, worth tracking.
- Israel has temporarily shut down exploitation of its Leviathan gas field, the major deposit in Israel’s EEZ west of Haifa. The complex supplies gas to Egypt, which may see the cost of LNG rise as Cairo looks to seaborne alternatives. Energy prices are not something you want to see spiking in Egypt.
- The Strait of Hormuz straddles >1/3 global crude shipments. Existing pipelines in the region (in KSA, UAE, Iraq) have limited spare capacity to move much more by land (maybe 4 million barrels a day). A disruption to Hormuz traffic could impact around 11 mbpd, most of which goes to Asia.
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View full threadAnd while industry is not, so far, pricing in a Hormuz closure, they do seem to expect continued postponement of Red Sea traffic. The former is good for tankers, the latter for containers, though the long term impact on freight rates may not be as large as the Red Sea crisis has been.
- It was a pleasure to rejoin the Sailor Pulse podcast to talk about the good, bad, and indifferent in Navy’s “fight from the MOC” journey. This was an interesting and fun discussion that reflects the underlying aspirations and frustrations in how fleet commanders envision the role of MOCs in war.
- Maritime Operations Centers were created with clear ambitions. But how often do those goals match reality? Listen here: warontherocks.com/ep...
- Who could have seen that coming…
- I’ve rarely seen a command execute thoughtful in-stride campaign analysis. This should be a five alarm concern for CCDRs, the inability to monitor and self-assess operational level progress turns a four star into chief tactician instead of the strategic leader they’ve been selected to be.
- Rhymes with my own analysis from prior to Operation Rough Rider as well. warontherocks.com/2025/04/how-...
- This new Times piece on the last month of American bombing of Yemen has some insane details. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/u...
- Reposted by Joshua TallisCIMSEC IS RECRUITING! CIMSEC is now welcoming applications for a volunteer Deputy Editor-in-Chief. This person will be responsible for helping lead CIMSEC’s editorial operation. Please reach out to Content@cimsec.org to apply and for further details. www.linkedin.com/posts/dmitry...
- It was a pleasure to join @thecipherbrief.bsky.social to talk about the importance of the Arctic to the U.S.. In addition to the usual talking points on national security, I tried to also emphasize economics, trade, and climate here, without which we cannot understand global interest in the region.
- This piece on the EU contribution to Red Sea defense is a nice pairing to the War on the Rocks piece I wrote on Operation Prosperity Guardian earlier this month. The author takes the EU perspective well and notes (with fairness) that many analyses (including mine, I'd add) are quite US-focused.
- NATO Naval Power Week - A Post-Mortem of the Red Sea Crisis: NATO versus the European Union Anna Matilde Bassoli discusses how a coherent NATO strategy for the Red Sea will require the US and Europe to align postures, without the EU as the third wheel. cimsec.org/a-post-morte...
- The argument is valid that the EU desire for strategic autonomy had a necessary impact on the nature of the US-led effort. This is not a first. Expeditionary naval activities have historically been a politically favorable means for the EU to (attempt to) flex a military muscle.
- We saw this in the late 2000s with Operation Atalanta to counter Somali piracy. Then, coordination via the SHADE protocol alleviated the divide between US, EU, and NATO missions. Today, the nature and level of mission coordination between Prosperity Guardian and Aspides is not yet clear.
- My only reclama is that we keep the scale of the two efforts in mind. The US under OPG downed ~400 projectiles prior to the latest round of shooting. Nearest I can tell, EU Naval Forces claim around two dozen, which U.S. and UK forces did on some individual days in the thick of the fighting.
- From me in Defense News: The recent maritime EO mandated 90-day assessment of how allies and trade policy relate to domestic shipbuilding. I have some ideas, and they start with weighing our strengths (innovation, software, tech) against our allies (huge preexisting maritime capital expenditures).
- Trying real hard to reach that one guy in N97!
- Reposted by Joshua TallisWant to write for War on the Rocks?
- You can find my full article on the subject here: warontherocks.com/2025/04/how-...
- Why has shipping in the Red Sea failed to return to pre-conflict levels? The answer has little to do with bombs and drones, but rather insurance, demand, and geopolitics. warontherocks.com/episode/the-...
- Reposted by Joshua TallisWhy has shipping in the Red Sea failed to return to pre-conflict levels? The answer has little to do with bombs and drones, but rather insurance, demand, and geopolitics. warontherocks.com/episode/the-...
- Reposted by Joshua TallisSome professional news! www.cna.org/our-media/pr...
- Thank you to Kerry Anderson and War on the Rocks for having me on The Insider podcast to discuss my recent article on the Red Sea. You can read that article here: warontherocks.com/2025/04/how-...
- Why has shipping in the Red Sea failed to return to pre-conflict levels? The answer has little to do with bombs and drones, but rather insurance, demand, andgeopolitics. warontherocks.com/episode/the-...
- I’ve always admired @csis.org’s innovation in visual storytelling. This article on Chinese shipbuilding is worth a read on the merits, but the thoughtful depiction makes it really stand out. Think tankers take note of interesting ideas on the intersection of analysis and research communication.
- Reposted by Joshua Tallis#Houthis Great piece by @doctallis.bsky.social @warontherocks.bsky.social warontherocks.com/2025/04/how-...
- Reposted by Joshua TallisThe Red Sea crisis exposed a hard truth: strategy needs more than firepower.
- Reposted by Joshua TallisTactical victories don’t always equal strategic success — just look at the Red Sea crisis. warontherocks.com/2025/04/how-the-bid…
