Guests:

• Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America;
• Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va.;
• Ret. Navy Capt. Brent Sadler, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation;
• And Ret. Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Sources and additional reading:

• Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress (PDF);
• U.S. Navy budget materials;
• "Navy adds $1B to unconventional effort to boost sub production," by Lauren Williams, reporting Sept. 2024;
• Defense Department's 2024 Defense Industrial Base strategy;
• And "Restoring Our Maritime Strength: An agenda for the next president's first hundred days," by Brent Sadler and Jerry Hendrix, writing in the National Review in late October.

A decorated Marine veteran and a video game maker revisit one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. military history.

Guests:

• Elliot Ackerman, author and contributing writer at The Atlantic;
• Peter Tamte, founder and CEO of Victura;
• And Defense One science and tech editor Patrick Tucker.

Sources and additional reading:

• "Goodbye, My Brother," by Elliot Ackerman, writing for Esquire on March 23, 2017;
• The video game "Six Days in Fallujah";
• "Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks," a satirical video produced in January 2011 by The Onion;
• "Virtual reality exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a meta-analysis," published August 2019 in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology;
• "Trauma, treatment and Tetris: video gaming increases hippocampal volume in male patients with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder," published April 2020 in the Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience;
• And "Putting the Gaming Experience at the Center of the Therapy—The Video Game Therapy® Approach," published June 2023 in Healthcare.

A retired U.S. admiral shares what he learned from a recent trip to the wartorn country.

Guest:

• Mark Montgomery, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington and senior director of FDD's Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.

Defense One staff summarize the leading developments from this year's Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington.

Guest:

• Sam Skove, staff reporter;
• Patrick Tucker, science and tech editor.

Find Defense One's complete AUSA coverage here.

Audrey Decker explains some of the top developments out of this year's AFA conference outside Washington.

Guest:

• Audrey Decker, Defense One's air warfare reporter.

Extra reading:

• China's aggressive regional moves open doors for the US, PACAF chief says
• Air Force wants NGAD to cost no more than an F-35. Is that even possible?
• Lessons from Ukrainian F-16 crash will shape US training: Air Force general
• Air Force's Ospreys will return to forward-deployment within 'weeks'
• Test B-21 flying up to twice a week, Northrop reports

Patrick Tucker unpacks findings from his recent trip to Prague for the 2024 Global Security Conference.

Related reading:

• "European officials vow to boost defense production, but some worry it won't be enough," by Patrick Tucker, reporting August 30 from Prague;
• "The big loophole allowing Russia to access US chips? China," by Tucker again, reporting from Washington on September 11;
• And "EU competitiveness: Looking ahead," a report published this week by Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank.

The Army just put a new unit loaded with cutting-edge tech to the test at Fort Johnson. Sam Skove explains what he saw during a recent week long demonstration.

You can read more from Sam's coverage of this Army exercise here.

We revisit some of the bigger takeaways from this year's Farnborough International Airshow.

Guest:

• Dan Darling, vice president of market insights at Forecast International, a research and consulting firm owned by Defense One's parent company.

You can see all of our Farnborough Airshow coverage, here.

We conclude our 2024 Tech Summit coverage with an interview featuring DARPA Director Stefanie Tompkins.

Guest:

• Stefanie Tompkins, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

You can see all of our interviews from the 2024 Tech Summit at Defense One's YouTube page, here.

Our 2024 Tech Summit coverage continues with a discussion about the future of hypersonic missile research and development.

Guest:

• Frank Peterkin, Principal Director of Directed Energy at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies;
• And Jarret Lafleur, Senior Advisor to the Principal Director for Hypersonics for Strike Systems Strategy and Policy Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

You can see all of our interviews from the 2024 Tech Summit at Defense One's YouTube page, here.