John W. Brunius’s Fänrik Ståls sägner (1926) is one of the most ambitious historical films of the Nordic silent era. The film is about the last major Swedish war and the birth of Finnish nationhood – about defeat, memory, and identity.

In Severodvinsk on Russia’s Arctic coast, the Navy has just unveiled its latest nuclear submarine – the Khabarovsk, a vessel designed to carry the dreaded Poseidon nuclear torpedo drone. Dubbed a potential Doomsday Weapon, Poseidon is an autonomous, nuclear-propelled torpedo said to be capable of wiping out entire coastal cities with a massive thermonuclear blast.

For over four decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been under siege—not just through sanctions and speeches, but via a relentless, largely undeclared campaign of sabotage, cyberwarfare, assassinations, and airstrikes. Orchestrated primarily by Israel and the United States, this “secret war” has targeted Iran’s nuclear ambitions, military infrastructure, and top scientists with precision and patience.

Read the article:

https://nordicdefencereview.com/the-secret-war-on-iran-decades-of-sabotage-sanctions-and-strikes/

A Blueprint for European Backbone? Charles de Gaulle’s War Memoirs are not easy reading. They are grandiose, deliberate, and unmistakably self-serving. Yet in the brittle geopolitical moment we now find ourselves in—2025, with the United States shifting inward and unpredictable—Europe’s leaders could do far worse than sit down and actually read – or listen to – them.

Read the article:

https://nordicdefencereview.com/bunker-books-charles-de-gaulles-war-memoirs-1955/

Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer and August Cole is a speculative military thriller that envisions a near-future conflict where a technologically advanced China, allied with Russia, launches a surprise attack on the United States, leading to the occupation of Hawaii and a global war spanning land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace.

Authors Singer and Cole, both experts in defence and technology, craft a narrative grounded in real-world trends and emerging technologies, offering a cautionary tale about the vulnerabilities of modern military systems and the potential consequences of geopolitical tensions.

Read the article:

https://nordicdefencereview.com/bunker-books-ghost-fleet-a-novel-of-the-next-world-war-2015/

The Finnish government has announced a draft proposal to increase the maximum age for military reservists from 60 to 65 years. This initiative aims to expand Finland's wartime reserve forces by approximately 125,000 personnel, potentially bringing the total number of reservists to one million by 2031.

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https://nordicdefencereview.com/facing-russian-threat-finland-plans-to-keep-reservists-until-65/

A Masterpiece of Class, War, and Futility. There’s a reason Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion still rattles nerves nearly 90 years on. It’s not just a classic.

It’s a ruthless dissection of European warfare, class arrogance, and the idiocy of nationalism—delivered with the grace of high cinema and the punch of a bayonet to the ribs. War never looked so polite. Or so damning.

Read the article:

https://nordicdefencereview.com/frontline-flicks-la-grande-illusion-1937/

In footage from the war in Ukraine, eagle-eyed observers keep spotting something strange: thick, stripped logs lashed to the rear of Russian tanks. No, they’re not firewood, and they’re not some crude form of extra armour either.

They’re a Cold War-era survival tool – a so-called unditching beam and they’re still in use because, even in 2025, Russian tanks are getting stuck in the mud.

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https://nordicdefencereview.com/still-stuck-in-the-mud-why-russian-tanks-carry-logs-in-the-21st-century/

What really drove the Kremlin during the Cold War—wild-eyed dreams of global communism, or cold-blooded fear for its own survival? The answer matters because the same instincts may still shape Moscow’s next moves. According to Melvyn P. Leffler, the binary view of ideology versus security is overly simplistic. Understanding the Kremlin’s motivations is crucial to countering and deterring Russia’s contemporary expansionist ambitions.

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https://nordicdefencereview.com/the-kremlins-gambit-understanding-soviet-motivations-in-the-cold-war/

In modern warfare, the ability to gather critical intelligence while remaining hidden is crucial. New portable surveillance technologies are disruptive. Replacing static devices, they are deployable on the ground, in the air and on the water surface. This significantly enhances discreet, versatile, and rapid intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Read the article:

https://nordicdefencereview.com/rethinking-the-battlefield-the-quiet-might-of-passive-surveillance/