Field Notes

Field Notes

Home
Notes
Essays
Notebook
Archive
About

September 2026

August 2026

The cardboard box and the algorithm
The test was supposed to validate the sensor.
 • Christoph Brauer
The torpedo was fine
In 1942, submarine commanders across the US Pacific Fleet reported the same failure in different words: torpedoes that ran too deep, detonated early, or…
 • Christoph Brauer
The future-war genre was born selling something
In May 1871, four months after German artillery forced the surrender of Paris, Blackwood's Magazine published an anonymous novella called "The Battle of…
 • Christoph Brauer
The bicycles of Storskog
Storskog is the only legal crossing on the Russian–Norwegian border, a strip of tarmac far above the Arctic Circle.
 • Christoph Brauer
The missile was the least of the factors
In the opening days of the October War of 1973, Egyptian infantry crossed the Suez Canal carrying a weapon Israeli tank doctrine had no answer to: the…
 • Christoph Brauer
America's military revolution was named in Moscow first
In the late 1970s the Pentagon began testing Assault Breaker — an experimental marriage of sensors and standoff missiles meant to find and strike…
 • Christoph Brauer
Every future-war book is also a procurement document
A winter evening in 2017, in John McCain's office in the Russell Senate Office Building.
 • Christoph Brauer
© 2026 Christoph Brauer · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start your SubstackGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture