Marcel Plichta

Precise Mass in Action: Assessing Ukraine’s One-Way Attack Drone Campaign The study of drones in interstate war is rapidly evolving. Much of the existing scholarship focuses on the impact of a few types of drones, despite growth in new types. Such scholarship also makes ...

Absolutely! although the origins of this campaign go all the way back to 2022: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

YouTube video by Nick J. Brumfield Houthi-Israel War Heats Up, ROYG Navigates Crisis - Nick's Yemen Roundup, 18 Aug-30 September 2025

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

After a longer-than-expected hiatus due to other obligations, Nick's Yemen Roundup is back with a rundown of the most important events in and around Yemen for the past month.

Check it out!

if it's not being poured to me on demand out of one of these I don't want it

Putin Should Be Worried About Ukraine’s New Kamikaze Drone These new, cheaply made drones only need to get lucky once.

June 2022, was I right? www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-put...

oh good, I can nestle it in my bookmarks between astrology and homeopathic medicine

and solely practiced by people who cannot concieve of a pizza place getting busy at noon and 6pm

bot or not, my followers all have exquisite taste

God I can't stand the pizza index, you might as well use a magic 8 ball as an indicator

slightly late to the party on this but I've been watching the sopranos and it's pretty good

I'm sure these aren't the only two examples, but in the case of "Almost Cut My Hair" by CSNY and "Going to Georgia" by the Mountain Goats the songwriters both said it was one of their more immature songs but nonetheless are pretty popular with their respective fanbases.

Don't lecture me about insurgencies if you haven't read the foundational literature

Fueling Instability: Hydrocarbons, Protests, and the Limits of Yemen’s Internationally Recognized Government In late July 2025, large-scale protests against electricity outages, economic deterioration, and general mismanagement by Yemen’s Internationally Recognized Government (IRG) erupted in Mukalla, Yemen’...

In a world obsessed with Israeli airstrikes, in this piece I argue that you're never going to contain the Houthis without a stronger IRG

And that's going to require addressing deep obstacles to the flow and distribution of Yemen's hydrocarbon wealth

plus the 'toughen up' crowd actively stigmatize the ways people process these things, like therapy or even just talking about in a sensitive way

I have found its the complete opposite having met a people who worked in intel/law enforcement roles where they constantly saw violent media. They aren't tougher, they're substantially more brittle. You owe it to yourself and the people around you to limit how many awful things you see.

I like Alien Earth but I'm still confused by the headlines comparing it to Andor a few weeks ago. It's only like Andor in that it's pretty good. It's more like Blade Runner vs Akira vs Alien vs Predator

A one-way attack drone revolution? Affordable mass precision in modern conflict When considering drones’ impact on modern conflict, strategic studies scholars typically focus on the most sophisticated systems in states’ arsenals: costly and hard-to-acquire military drones, whi...

Correct, NATO has been slow to recognize the threat posed by OWA drones: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I wouldn't mind if a lot of that side content wasn't needed to have a fighting chance against story-related enemies. But as it stands I've had to stop at an important story moment a few times to go grind. I realize that's the genre but it does feel a bit frustrating sometimes.

Based on LinkedIn, the people that do executive protection and threat monitoring think they're going to win big, which isn't exactly comforting.

A one-way attack drone revolution? Affordable mass precision in modern conflict When considering drones’ impact on modern conflict, strategic studies scholars typically focus on the most sophisticated systems in states’ arsenals: costly and hard-to-acquire military drones, whi...

My research on OWA drones like those used by Russia has shown that they are an underappreciated threat: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Yeah pretty close to dinnertime on the East Coast 🙄🙄

don't fall for the pizza index

OWA drones are everyone's problem:

admittedly, this is not the way I expected Yemen to show up in the news today

an astronaut is looking at the earth with the words " always has been " above him ALT: an astronaut is looking at the earth with the words " always has been " above him

It's more convoluted but the show has always been bad tbh

Wednesday doesn't work as an Addams Family show, and Addams Family characters aren't a good fit for a Riverdale-type show, but the lack of viable alternatives for either right now means both audiences will try to suffer through it

Precise Mass in Action: Assessing Ukraine’s One-Way Attack Drone Campaign The study of drones in interstate war is rapidly evolving. Much of the existing scholarship focuses on the impact of a few types of drones, despite growth in new types. Such scholarship also makes ...

A major priority of my work on OWA drones is to counter the notion that these systems are strategically inconsequential and unworthy of discrete treatment in security studies. From Ukraine to Sudan we can clearly see that these systems are consequential.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Curious how a Houthi drone could have possibly gotten through Israel's sophisticated air defense to strike Ramon airport? Our research into OWA drones explains how inexpensive systems with long range strain air defense over time: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

It's important to note that launching a "record" number of OWA drones is not just a reflection of increased production, but a deliberate strategy by Russia to grab international headlines. I wrote on this topic a while back explaining the Kremlin's thinking: theconversation.com/russia-has-b...