About The War Dispatch
The War Dispatch is an independent publication tracking the world's most consequential active conflicts, the Iran / Middle East war, the Russia–Ukraine war, the Sudan civil war, the Myanmar civil war, the Israel–Gaza war, and the 2026 Lebanon war.
What we publish
Each conflict has its own dashboard with five components: a live timeline of significant events, named-analyst scenario forecasts with explicit probabilities, an escalation-ladder model that tracks how the conflict could move between intensity tiers, an economic-impact ledger that quantifies the war's cost to the regions and to global markets, and a curated reading list of the analyses we consider essential for understanding the conflict.
Across the site we also publish long-form feature articles on undercovered angles, questions that mainstream outlets are either ignoring entirely or treating only in passing. The shadow fleet of roughly 600 tankers carrying Russian oil under sanctions evasion. The 30,000 Maronite Christian villagers caught between Hezbollah and the IDF along the southern Lebanese border. The Kachin rare-earth corridor that supplied 60 percent of the global heavy-rare-earth market and changed hands in 2024. The Mariupol Drama Theatre. The cumulative record of Ukrainian children registered in Russian schools. These are the synthesis-driven pieces that anchor the site's editorial identity.
Editorial team
Our coverage is organized into regional desks, supported by a rotating group of intermittent contributors. We credit articles to the desk rather than to a single name: several members still work in the fields they cover, defense, energy, and security, and desk attribution lets them write candidly without tying their analysis to an employer.
The Middle East Desk
A three-person team covering Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza, with backgrounds spanning energy and sanctions economics, political science, and open-source intelligence (OSINT). Its work is weighted toward war finance, oil flows, and the politics of the Islamic Republic and its regional network.
The Eastern Europe Desk
A two-person team covering the war in Ukraine, with backgrounds in defense procurement, engineering, and open-source intelligence (OSINT). Its reporting follows the matériel, supply chains, and documentary trails, drone components, shadow-fleet tankers, deportation registries, that shape how the war is fought and funded.
The Africa & Asia Desk
A two-to-three-person team covering Sudan, Myanmar, and other under-reported conflicts, with backgrounds in economics, engineering, and political science. Its work follows the gold, rare-earth minerals, and illicit revenue streams that finance the region's wars.
Contributors
Beyond the permanent desks, The War Dispatch draws on a rotating group of non-permanent, intermittent contributors, regional specialists who write occasionally on conflicts and questions outside the core desks' coverage. Their work is held to the same sourcing and editorial standards as the permanent team.
How we report
Every fact-bearing claim on this site is sourced. We name the source, name the analyst, name the institution, and quote them faithfully. We do not invent quotes or specifics. When a claim cannot be sourced to a specific named publication, expert, or primary document, it does not appear in the reporting sections.
Forecasting is treated as a distinct genre and is confined to clearly labeled Forecasting sections within each conflict. Reporting is what already happened. Forecasting is what plausibly might happen, with probabilities, and is always grounded in named analysts' stated views, not in our own speculation. The two are never mixed. A scenario that has occurred is moved out of Forecasting into the timeline within 24 hours; we keep a public ledger of which forecasts have resolved and how.
Editorial voice
We write in the register of a serious daily newspaper or a long-form policy quarterly: sober, specific, declarative. We avoid the rhetorical tells of automated content, the rule-of-three dek, the false hedge, the unsupported cliché flair. We trim. We name the people who matter. We tell you when something is contested and from whom.
AI disclosure
Articles on The War Dispatch are human-driven. They are conceived, directed, and edited by our editorial team, with AI used only as a support tool for research and drafting under the editorial principles described above, then reviewed by the team before publication. AI is never a replacement for editorial judgment. Sourcing, factual accuracy, and the separation between reporting and forecasting are checked by a human before anything ships.
What we are not
The War Dispatch is not partisan and not aligned with any government, military, party, or commercial sponsor. We do not accept submissions for unsolicited essays or paid placement. We do not republish wire-service material. We do not write columns. We do not break news; faster outlets do that better. Our value is synthesis: reading the analysts you don't have time to read, tracking the forecasts you can't track yourself, and presenting the result in a single place that is honest about what it knows and does not know.
Corrections
If you spot a mistake, a misattributed quote, a missing source, a number that doesn't reconcile against the underlying data, please write to our contact form. We correct quickly and openly. The credibility of this kind of analysis lives or dies on willingness to be corrected.