Reports

“Reports” came to be as I was looking for an alternative to long Twitter threads when offering analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and it's implications.

As some might have noticed, I have gradually shifted towards looking at the war from a wider perspective, at the strategic and operational levels. There are now many, using the open-source tools available in our day and age, offering good coverage of the war at the tactical level.

There's also an abundance, tending towards overload, of information available and I hope I can help sorting through this wast amount of data.

In 2024, most answers are out in the open, you just have to connect the dots.

Schedule & why subscribe?

My writing on Substack has been a bit sporadic and I can't promise X-number of articles pr week or month moving forward either.

I do however spend quite some time on current events, so if you appreciate my work, please subscribe. This gives me motivation to continue going beyond basic reporting.

For now, newsletter and website is free for all. I am playing with some ideas for the future, mainly to be able to leverage sources that aren't free, but any changes will be well announced.

Topics

For the foreseeable future, the main topic will remain the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Mostly looking at and discussing topics at the strategic and operational levels, but I don’t rule out an occasional deep-dive.

For the future I hope to include some more directly naval related articles, with focus on the Russian Navy.

About me

After having been writing anonymously as The Lookout, I have decided to break cover.

I am Thord Are Iversen, a former Navy officer that have been struggling with chronic illness for close to a decade.

I'm not connected to any institutions or employers, all opinions and analysis is mine.

If I where to choose a title, I'd say "independent defense analyst", though I do this as a hobby.

My journey, writing anonymously through the first small signs of actual Russian War preparations in the fall of ‘21, through the invasion and then a year and a half of full scale industrial warfare has been remarkable.

Going to Substack for longer reads seemed like natural progression and so was abandoning anonymity in September 2023.

This is how I try to do my part, in a Europe marked by war.