A practical colloquium on Gulf defence strategy.
Convened: Day 26 of Operation Epic Fury, 25 March 2026
Commission: Practical recommendations for Gulf state defence establishments facing an ongoing, mutating drone threat in a contested maritime and littoral environment
Format: Five working sessions with a final recommendations summary
Thomas Schelling — Nobel laureate in economics; author of The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Arms and Influence (1966). Deterrence, compellence, and the bargaining structure of the drone threat.
MODERATOR: Before we can prescribe defence architecture, we need to agree on a precise diagnosis of the threat. Borets, as the practitioner who has built the most effective drone programme currently operating, I will ask you to begin.
BORETS: I will describe what I would do if I were attacking Gulf maritime and littoral infrastructure, because what I would do is the threat model Gulf planners need to design against.
The threat is not a single drone. It has never been a single drone. The threat is a system designed to saturate, attrit, and adapt. Let me be specific. In the Black Sea context, we learned very quickly that the decisive factor is not the capability of any individual platform but the exchange rate across a sequence of engagements. The attacker who accepts a seventy percent loss rate on platforms that cost forty thousand dollars each is financially viable against a defender deploying missiles that cost two to three million dollars per intercept. The attacker cannot be deterred by a defender who is running out of expensive interceptors faster than the attacker is running out of cheap drones.
The Gulf states are facing a variant of this problem across multiple threat vectors simultaneously. Aerial: Shahed-136 derivatives, loitering munitions, ballistic missile combinations designed to saturate point defence. Maritime surface: USV threats that are at an earlier stage of development than the Magura programme but will iterate at the pace of operational deployment. Sub-surface: autonomous underwater vehicles targeting port infrastructure and pipeline infrastructure. And electronic: the jamming, spoofing, and GPS denial environment in which all of the above operate.
The critical feature of this system is that it is designed to evolve. Every intercept by Gulf air defences is data for Iranian engineers. Every countermeasure deployed tells the attacker which vulnerability to fix in the next iteration. The Gulf states are not defending against a static threat. They are in an iterative competition with an adversary that has twenty years of operational experience with drone development, including twenty years of watching American drone doctrine from the receiving end.
SCHARRE: Borets’s diagnosis is correct and I want to add one dimension he has understated: the threat in the Gulf is multi-domain and multi-actor in a way that the Black Sea is not. Ukraine faces one primary adversary with a known fleet doctrine and known capabilities. Gulf states face Iran’s state programme, Iranian-backed proxy forces across Yemen, Iraq, and Syria with varying levels of capability and targeting discipline, and the potential for opportunistic non-state actors to acquire commercial drone platforms and weaponize them at minimal cost.
The multi-actor dimension creates a specific problem for defence architecture that I have not seen addressed adequately in any Gulf defence procurement document I am aware of. A layered air defence system optimized against the Shahed-136 profile — slow, propeller-driven, low altitude, distinctive radar and acoustic signature — may not perform against a higher-tier Shahed-238 jet-propelled variant, against a coordinated swarm of commercial quadcopters weaponized by a Houthi cell, and against a ballistic missile on simultaneous engagement. These require different sensor networks, different intercept mechanisms, and different engagement envelopes. The Gulf states have been buying platforms. They need to be building integrated, multi-layer, multi-signature detection and engagement architecture.
The second dimension Borets touched on but deserves more emphasis is the electronic warfare environment. The Gulf is one of the most electromagnetically contested spaces on earth right now. GPS denial has been documented extensively by civil aviation. Communications disruption is routine. Any defence architecture that assumes reliable communication and navigation in the engagement zone is an architecture that will fail at the moment it is most needed.
CORBETT: I want to begin with a question that the technical gentlemen have not yet asked, because without its answer, no defence architecture can be rationally designed. What is the political objective that this defence must serve?
The answer to that question is not obvious. Gulf states have at least four distinct and partially incompatible objectives: the protection of critical energy infrastructure — pipelines, loading terminals, refineries; the maintenance of the Strait of Hormuz as a transit corridor for their own exports; the deterrence of further escalation from Iranian-affiliated forces; and the preservation of domestic security and public confidence. These objectives are not served by the same defence architecture. An architecture optimized to protect an oil terminal is different from an architecture that demonstrates coercive deterrence. An architecture designed to keep the Strait open for tanker traffic has different geographic and capability requirements from an architecture designed to defend a royal palace.
Maritime strategy is the subordinate part of policy. Before we can advise on what to build, the Gulf states must tell us which of these objectives is primary. In my experience, that conversation is the one that never happens, because procurement decisions are made by technical committees that are not empowered to make strategic choices and strategic decisions are made by political figures who do not understand technical constraints. The result is a defence architecture that is optimized for no particular objective and inadequate for all of them.
SCHELLING: Corbett is right that the political question is prior. I want to go one level further and ask the deterrence question, because it is the one that I believe Gulf planners are most confused about.
Deterrence, as I have spent my career explaining, requires that the adversary calculate that the cost of an action outweighs its benefit, and choose not to take the action. This requires three things: a credible threat of punishment or denial, an adversary capable of making rational calculations, and an addressable adversary — one to whom your threat can be communicated and from whom you can demand specific behavior change.
The drone threat in the Gulf fails the third condition in its most dangerous forms. Iranian state drone programmes are addressable — there is a government in Tehran, there are decision-makers, there is a bargaining structure even if it is deeply adversarial. But Houthi cells operating Qasef-1 drones from a Yemeni warehouse, Iraqi militia units conducting opportunistic infrastructure harassment, commercial drone swarms assembled by actors whose chain of command is deliberately obscured — these are not addressable in the classical deterrence sense. You cannot signal resolve to an adversary you cannot identify. You cannot compel behavior change from an actor who has no single point of authority to change it.
This matters enormously for the role of conventional weapons in the new paradigm. A Gulf state that invests heavily in a conventional capability designed to signal deterrence to the Iranian state is building the right instrument for one threat and the wrong instrument for the distributed non-state threat that is numerically dominant in the daily threat picture. These are not the same defence problem and they should not be addressed by the same capability mix.
MODERATOR: With the threat diagnosis in place, let us turn to the architecture question. Scharre, you have written extensively on this. What does a competent counter-drone defence for a Gulf state actually require?
SCHARRE: There are five layers, and Gulf states currently have adequate capability in approximately two of them.
The first layer is persistent, multi-signature surveillance — radar, acoustic, electro-optical, and radio-frequency detection integrated into a common operating picture. The Gulf states have invested in radar systems that are largely optimised for traditional aerial threats. They are underinvested in acoustic detection for low-altitude slow-movers, in RF detection that can identify drone control signals before a platform reaches attack range, and in electro-optical systems for the maritime surface threat. The Houthi drone-boat attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea revealed surveillance gaps that should have been closed two years ago.
The second layer is electronic warfare — jamming and spoofing at the engagement perimeter before kinetic intercept is required. This is the most cost-effective layer of counter-drone defence because a drone that cannot navigate, cannot receive targeting updates, and cannot detonate on command is neutralized without firing a missile. Gulf states have underinvested here, partly because EW capability is sensitive to share with American partners and partly because the procurement processes that drive Gulf defence spending favour kinetic platforms over systems that have no visible hardware to display at a defence exhibition.
The third layer is directed energy — laser systems that can defeat small and medium drones at low per-shot cost. The US Navy has deployed these on Gulf vessels. Gulf state navies have been slow to acquire them. A laser system that defeats a drone at a cost of roughly one dollar per shot against a drone that costs forty thousand dollars changes the exchange economy fundamentally. The limitation is range and the requirement for clear atmospheric conditions, which are not reliably available in the Gulf’s dust and humidity environment. But the economics make this layer non-negotiable.
The fourth layer is kinetic intercept — short-range surface-to-air missiles, gun systems, and hard-kill close-in weapon systems. This is where Gulf states have invested most heavily. The investment is necessary but insufficient without the first three layers, because a defender who relies primarily on kinetic intercept against a saturating swarm will exhaust his magazine before the attacker exhausts his drones.
The fifth layer is the one that almost no one builds adequately: resilience and redundancy in the defended infrastructure itself. If an oil terminal can be made operationally redundant — if its critical functions can be distributed, hardened, or relocated — then a successful drone strike on one element does not achieve the strategic objective. The Abqaiq and Khurais attacks in 2019 succeeded not because Saudi Arabia’s air defences failed but because Saudi Aramco’s critical infrastructure was concentrated in a way that made a single successful strike strategically decisive. Dispersal and hardening of critical infrastructure is unglamorous, expensive, and requires decades of consistent investment. It is also the most resilient form of defence.
BORETS: I want to add what the attacker sees when he looks at the defender, because this is the most useful frame for a defender who wants to understand his vulnerabilities.
When I plan an operation, I am looking for the seam between layers. I am looking for the altitude window that radar covers inadequately. I am looking for the heading that approaches a defended installation from the direction of civilian shipping lanes or civilian aviation, where the defender cannot engage without risk of misidentification. I am looking for the time window — the shift change, the system maintenance window, the moment when a commander’s attention is elsewhere. I am looking for the electromagnetic signature of the defence system, because once I know what frequencies the radar operates on and what the intercept system’s acquisition signature looks like, I can build countermeasures.
The most dangerous thing a Gulf state can do is deploy a visible, characterizable defence system and then deploy it in a predictable pattern. Characterization is the first step of the attacker’s preparation. Once your radar’s PRF is known, once your intercept geometry is mapped, once your engagement envelope is understood, the attacker can design around it. The first generation of defence always faces a second generation of attack that was designed to defeat it specifically.
The practical implication is that Gulf states need to treat defence system operational security as a primary discipline. Do not demonstrate capabilities publicly. Do not allow sensor parameters to be catalogued from commercial aircraft data. Do not allow engagement geometries to be inferred from the positioning of visible hardware. Rotate system configurations, frequencies, and deployment positions. Make the attacker’s reconnaissance problem as hard as the intercept problem.
CORBETT: I want to bring a principle from naval history that applies directly to what Scharre and Borets have described. The concept of the fleet in being holds that a force which does not have command of the sea can still deny the adversary command of the sea by its existence — by remaining an active threat that the adversary must account for. The fleet in being does not have to fight to be strategically useful. It has to be present, capable, and unpredictable.
Gulf state defence establishments should think about their counter-drone architecture in these terms. A drone defence system that is never used — because the adversary has chosen not to attack, because the adversary’s reconnaissance cannot characterize it, because the adversary cannot be confident his attack will succeed — has achieved its strategic purpose without firing a shot. The objective is not maximum interception. The objective is minimum attack, achieved through a combination of credible defence capability and active uncertainty in the adversary’s planning.
This reframes the procurement question. Gulf states should not ask: “what is the maximum intercept rate we can achieve?” They should ask: “what defence posture makes the adversary most uncertain about the probability of mission success?” These produce different architectures. The first produces optimised kill chains. The second produces layered uncertainty — multiple detection modalities, multiple engagement mechanisms, unpredictable configuration, and resilient infrastructure so that even a successful strike achieves less than the attacker calculates.
MODERATOR: Let us address the direct question about conventional forces. In a world where forty-thousand-dollar drones are contesting billion-dollar platforms, what is the continuing strategic function of conventional naval and air power in the Gulf?
SCHELLING: This is the question I find most interesting, because it is fundamentally a deterrence and signaling question rather than a military capability question.
Conventional military forces in the Gulf today serve three functions that drone swarms cannot replace and cannot threaten equivalently.
The first is the threat of punitive cost imposition at a level the adversary cannot absorb. A drone strike on an oil terminal is an attrition tool — it damages, disrupts, raises insurance costs, signals continued capability. It does not threaten the survival of the regime. A conventional strike package — carrier aviation, land-attack cruise missiles, the full weight of American or Gulf conventional military power — threatens something categorically different. The adversary who calculates that drone harassment has a manageable cost must also calculate that escalation beyond a certain threshold invites a response that is not manageable. The conventional force is the upper bound of the escalation ladder, and its existence constrains how high the adversary is willing to climb.
This is what I call the diplomacy of violence: the threat of the conventional force does work even when the force is not used. But the threat is only credible if the conventional capability is demonstrably maintained. Gulf states that allowed conventional military capability to atrophy on the grounds that drone swarms made it obsolete would be destroying the upper bound of their deterrence ladder. The adversary who believes there is no conventional response capability available is an adversary whose calculus on escalation has changed fundamentally.
The second function of conventional forces is the protection of the lines of communication — the escort mission that Corbett discussed in the convoy context and that remains the foundational maritime security task. Drone swarms can threaten vessels. They cannot, yet, reliably intercept and protect vessels from other threats. The Gulf states need conventional naval escort capability to keep the Strait functional, to protect flagged shipping, and to provide the surface platform from which electronic warfare and directed energy counter-drone systems can be deployed.
The third function is the demonstration of resolve and capability to third parties. Gulf states that maintain credible conventional forces signal to their neighbours, their treaty partners, and their adversaries that they are serious military actors. That signal has diplomatic and deterrence value that is entirely independent of whether the force is ever used.
CORBETT: Schelling has described the political purpose of conventional force correctly. I want to add the maritime strategic dimension, because the Strait of Hormuz is the most important chokepoint in the global energy economy and the question of who commands it — or, more precisely, who can deny command of it to others — is the central strategic question in the current conflict.
Command of a narrow water is not the same as command of the open sea. In a narrow water, the fleet-in-being logic is more powerful than anywhere else, because the defending force does not need to achieve supremacy across a large area. It needs to make the passage of any hostile force uncertain enough that the risk premium becomes prohibitive. The Iranians have been doing precisely this for years. Their anti-ship missile batteries along the Strait’s northern shore, their fast patrol boat tactics, and now their drone capability constitute exactly a fleet-in-being posture for the denial mission. They do not need to defeat the US Navy in open battle. They need to make tanker captains, insurance underwriters, and shipping company directors calculate that the passage risk is too high.
Gulf state conventional naval forces serve the counter to this. They provide the escort, the mine clearance, the surface surveillance, and the presence that reduces the risk premium and keeps the Strait commercially viable. They are the physical embodiment of the guarantee that the Strait will remain open. No drone swarm performs this function. A drone swarm can attack. It cannot escort, clear, or guarantee.
The practical recommendation I would make is that Gulf state naval construction priorities should be oriented toward exactly this mission: not large surface combatants optimised for fleet engagement, but smaller, faster, more numerous vessels carrying the EW, directed energy, and sensor packages Scharre described, capable of escort and mine countermeasures, and redundant enough that losing one or two does not compromise the mission.
BORETS: I want to add the offensive dimension, because defence alone is not sufficient and Gulf states should understand this. The most effective defence against an iterating drone threat is not to defeat each iteration as it appears. It is to impose costs on the development infrastructure that produces the iterations.
In the Ukrainian context, we are able to iterate because we have the people, the industrial base, and the supply chain to iterate. The adversary who could strike those elements — the engineers, the facilities, the supply chains — would slow the iteration cycle. Gulf states that are purely defensive against Iranian drone development are always responding to the previous generation of threat. A conventional strike capability that threatens Iranian drone development infrastructure — manufacturing facilities, test ranges, component supply — creates a cost that the attacker must factor into his development calculus.
This is not an argument for escalation. It is an argument for a deterrence posture that targets the adversary’s capability development, not just its deployed platforms. A Shahed-136 shot down over the Gulf is a solved problem. The factory that produced it, and the engineers who will design the Shahed-238, are the real strategic target. Conventional strike capability is the instrument that threatens those targets credibly.
MODERATOR: The threat will not stand still. What principles should govern Gulf state adaptation as the drone threat continues to evolve?
BORETS: The first principle is institutional: create a cell whose explicit function is to model the next generation of threat, not the current one. In Group 13, every deployment produces a post-mission analysis whose primary question is not “did we succeed?” but “what was the specific failure mode, and what does the next iteration need to fix?” Gulf defence establishments need the equivalent — an analytical cell with the authority to tell procurement committees that the system they just bought is already being designed around.
The second principle is operational security in the defence, as I described earlier. The attacker’s reconnaissance is the first phase of his operation. If the reconnaissance is denied or degraded, the attack is degraded before it is launched.
The third principle is what I would call offensive patience. Not all threats need to be immediately engaged. Some threats are better exploited — tracked, characterized, allowed to reveal more of the attacker’s system — before intercept. A drone that is tracked for twenty minutes before engagement provides intelligence about its launch point, its communication architecture, and its guidance system that a drone engaged at maximum range does not provide. Gulf states need doctrine for the deliberate exploitation of slow-moving threats before engagement.
SCHARRE: I want to make a structural argument about the adaptation cycle that Gulf planners should internalize as a governing principle: defence technology investments made today will face a threat environment in three to five years that is qualitatively different from the environment that justified them.
The Shahed-238 — jet-propelled, faster, smaller radar cross-section — is a direct response to Gulf air defences. The next generation will be more autonomous, more resilient to jamming, and more capable of swarm coordination. The directed energy and EW systems I described are necessary now. They will require upgrades in three years to remain effective against the evolved threat.
The implication is that Gulf states should invest in upgrade architecture — in systems designed to have their software, sensor packages, and engagement envelopes updated regularly — rather than in platforms whose capabilities are fixed at manufacture. This is a different procurement philosophy from the one that currently governs Gulf defence spending, which tends toward large, expensive, fixed-capability platforms with fifteen-year replacement cycles. The drone threat evolves on a two-year cycle. Defence procurement must find a way to match that pace, or the defender will always be optimised for the previous threat.
SCHELLING: I want to add the deterrence-by-denial dimension to what Scharre and Borets have said, because I think Gulf planners misunderstand the relationship between their defence investments and their deterrence posture.
There are two models of deterrence. Deterrence by punishment: I will hurt you enough that the attack is not worth making. Deterrence by denial: I will make the attack fail, so there is no benefit from making it. Against a drone threat that is partly motivated by attrition logic — by the desire to impose costs rather than to achieve specific military objectives — deterrence by denial is more powerful than deterrence by punishment. If the Gulf states can demonstrate, through successive engagements, that drone attacks reliably fail to achieve their objectives, they are altering the adversary’s cost-benefit calculation directly. The adversary who believes his drones will be intercepted before reaching their targets has no benefit side to the equation.
This sounds obvious but has a specific implication for investment priorities. Gulf states should prioritize defence investments that maximize the probability of mission failure for the attacker — not just the intercept rate, but the architectural resilience of the infrastructure being defended, so that even attacks that penetrate the active defence fail to achieve strategic effect. The combination of active defence and passive resilience creates a deterrence-by-denial posture that is more durable than either alone.
The adversary who cannot achieve strategic effect through drone attacks, and who faces conventional punishment capability as the upper bound of the escalation ladder, has been placed in a strategic position where the drone campaign offers diminishing returns. At that point, the bargaining structure shifts — there is an opening for de-escalation that does not exist when the drone campaign is succeeding. Building the defence is also building the conditions for diplomacy.
CORBETT: I will make a final point about the conventional forces question that connects Schelling’s deterrence analysis to the maritime strategic reality.
The Strait of Hormuz is not just a military problem. It is a global political-economic problem that involves the interests of China, Japan, South Korea, India, and every other major energy importer. Gulf states that present their Strait defence as a bilateral Gulf-Iran problem are underutilising the full range of their strategic assets. The defence of the Strait of Hormuz is a legitimate collective interest that Gulf states can use to mobilise support — diplomatic, economic, and military — from actors who do not share their political alignment but do share their interest in reliable energy transit.
Naval cooperation — combined exercises, intelligence sharing, coordinated escort arrangements — with Asian nations that are dependent on Gulf oil is an underexploited strategic instrument. The presence of Indian, Japanese, and South Korean naval vessels in Gulf waters changes the political calculus for Iran in ways that American or British presence alone does not. These are not parties Iran can characterize as imperialist adversaries. Their presence signals that the defence of the Strait is a genuinely international concern, not a proxy for American hegemony.
This is maritime strategy properly understood: the fleet — or in this case, the multilateral counter-drone and escort architecture — as the instrument of a broader political objective. Gulf states should be actively building the coalition that gives their defence posture this broader legitimacy.
MODERATOR: I will ask each participant to give their single most important recommendation to Gulf state defence planners. What must be done first?
BORETS: Establish the operational Red Team. Before you buy anything else, before you issue any new procurement requirements, create a cell of people whose job is to attack your current defences. Not on paper — physically, against your actual deployed systems, with the platforms and tactics your adversary actually uses. The gaps that cell identifies are your real priority list. Everything else is procurement shaped by last year’s threat or by what a defence company wants to sell you.
The Red Team should be staffed by people who think like attackers, who understand the iteration logic, and who are given enough authority that when they find a gap they can force it into the acquisition pipeline. In my programme, the enemy was the best test engineer we had. You need to internalize your enemy’s logic rather than wait for him to demonstrate it against your actual infrastructure.
SCHARRE: Integrate the layers. Gulf states have invested in components — individual radar systems, individual missile batteries, individual EW platforms — without integrating them into a coherent common operating picture. The result is that different systems operate in overlapping but uncommunicating engagement envelopes, that there are coordination failures between components that create seams the attacker can exploit, and that the human operators managing the system have inadequate situational awareness of what the system as a whole is doing.
The investment priority is not more hardware. It is the command, control, and communications architecture that ties existing hardware into an integrated system. This is the Battle Management System problem — the software and network layer that allows radar, EW, directed energy, and kinetic systems to operate as one coherent defence rather than as a collection of independent capabilities. Gulf states are significantly behind on this. It is not glamorous. It does not generate the procurement announcements that large platform purchases do. It is the most important investment available.
SCHELLING: Define the escalation ladder explicitly, communicate it clearly, and maintain the credibility of every rung.
Gulf states currently operate with an implicit escalation posture that has never been fully articulated — not to their adversaries, not to their public, and arguably not to themselves. The adversary who does not know what will provoke a conventional response cannot make rational calculations about how far to push the drone campaign. The adversary who knows exactly where the threshold is can calibrate his operations to remain below it.
I recommend that Gulf states, in consultation with their American partners, develop and communicate — through the appropriate diplomatic and intelligence channels — a clear statement of what constitutes a threshold-crossing escalation that will produce a conventional response. This is not a public ultimatum. It is the kind of signaling that the diplomacy of violence requires. Without it, deterrence is based on uncertainty rather than on clear communication, and uncertainty-based deterrence invites miscalculation.
The conventional force capability is the credible threat that makes this communication meaningful. Without the capability, the communication is a bluff. Without the communication, the capability does not deter. Both are necessary.
CORBETT: Ask the policy question first, always.
I have been in this session for several hours and I have heard extensive and expert discussion of systems, architectures, doctrines, and deterrence postures. All of it is valuable. None of it is useful until the Gulf states have answered the prior question: what, precisely, are we defending, for what political purpose, and what does success look like?
A Gulf state that is defending its oil infrastructure to guarantee revenue for a specific political regime has a different priority architecture from a Gulf state that is defending the Strait to maintain its role as a trusted transit guarantor for Asian energy markets. A Gulf state that is seeking to deter Iranian escalation has different requirements from a Gulf state that is seeking to coerce Iran toward a negotiated framework on drone operations.
These are not the same problem. They are not served by the same defence architecture. They are not even, necessarily, served by the same alliance relationships. The political clarification is not a preliminary to the strategic work — it is the strategic work. Everything else is technique. Technique without strategy is activity without purpose. In my experience, the nations that lose wars do so not because their technique fails but because their purpose was never clearly defined.
Define the purpose. Then we can tell you, with precision, what to build.
Immediate priorities (0–12 months)
Establish an operational Red Team with authority to attack current deployed systems and force identified gaps into the procurement pipeline. Commission a Battle Management System integration study to identify the command, control, and communications gaps between existing platforms. Initiate a review of critical infrastructure dispersal and hardening for the top ten strategic assets.
Medium-term investment priorities (1–5 years)
Prioritise directed energy systems (laser-based) for vessel and installation defence. Invest in RF detection and electronic warfare systems at the engagement perimeter. Acquire and integrate acoustic detection for low-altitude slow-movers. Design all new systems with upgrade architecture — software-defined sensors, modular intercept mechanisms, and regularly scheduled capability reviews against the evolving threat profile.
Conventional force posture
Maintain and modernise conventional strike capability as the upper bound of the deterrence ladder. Reorient naval construction toward smaller, faster, more numerous escort and patrol vessels carrying integrated counter-drone capability. Invest in mine countermeasures. Pursue multilateral naval cooperation with Asian partner nations as a legitimising and deterrence-enhancing element of Strait defence.
Strategic posture
Develop and communicate, through appropriate diplomatic channels, a clear threshold definition for conventional response. Build deterrence-by-denial through the combination of active defence and infrastructure resilience. Define political objectives precisely before making further investment decisions.
Universitas Scholarium · Institute for Remote Warfare and Autonomous Systems
Convened Day 26, Operation Epic Fury · 25 March 2026
“The Red Team is the most honest defence analyst you have.” — Borets
“Integration is more important than acquisition.” — Scharre
“The power to hurt is bargaining power only if the threat is credible and the address is known.” — Schelling
“Naval strategy is the subordinate part of maritime strategy, which is itself subordinate to policy. Ask what the political objective is. Then ask what to build.” — Corbett
Word count: ~5,100 words
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