Russia struck this little girl’s house with a drone the day after I took this photo. Her father and brother were killed. She only survived as she had gone to the kitchen to get water.

I spent 16 years in the British Army, leaving the Parachute Regiment as a Major. I served three tours in Afghanistan, one attached to US Army Special Forces, as well as tours in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East. I later taught military theory and leadership at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Academically, I have an LLB in Law & Politics, an MA with Distinction in War Studies & Military History and an MSc with Distinction in Psychology. I also hold postgraduate qualifications in Leadership & Strategic Management and Higher Education, and I am now completing a PhD in War Studies examining what Ukraine and the post-7 October wars can tell us about the future of warfare. Since leaving the Army, I have spent a great deal of time going to the wars I write about. I visited Gaza twice in 2024, went inside captured Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon, visited the Ukrainian front lines, and in 2025 became the first neutral researcher invited to observe the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution sites. My research has produced substantial reports on casualty statistics, human shields, information warfare, humanitarian operations and the tactical lessons emerging from Gaza. You can find them at @HJS_Org I make no apology for advertising to you that this is an unusually strong background for analysing contemporary conflict. There are not many conflict analysts who combine command experience in war, formal study of war, law and psychology, experience teaching future Army officers, think-tank research and repeated fieldwork inside the conflicts they analyse. Those different disciplines also catch different mistakes. Military experience makes it harder to mistake a map arrow for a feasible operation. War Studies forces tactical events back into their political and strategic context. Psychology matters when propaganda, perception and behavioural manipulation have become part of the battlefield. Law matters when almost every contemporary campaign is simultaneously fought through international institutions, courts and competing claims about legitimacy. Fieldwork is the final check because people who actually fight wars have a habit of complicating theories developed by chairborne researchers from several thousand miles away. That is what I try to bring to my Substack. I am less interested in telling readers who “won” yesterday than in working out what happened, why it happened, what the participants were trying to achieve, whether they possessed the means to achieve it, and what the consequences are likely to be. Tactical success, military effectiveness and strategic success are not synonyms. Much bad analysis begins by treating them as though they are. I will get things wrong. Anyone analysing wars in real time will. The promise I can reasonably make is that I will go to the evidence, go to the people involved where I can, change my assessment when the evidence changes, and tell you what I think rather than what my supposed political tribe would prefer me to think. There is an enormous quantity of geopolitical commentary available for free. I think the combination behind mine is genuinely unusual. If that is the sort of conflict analysis you want to read, please check out: mrandrewfox.substack.com