About the Position
Tactical Report's readers are senior officials and decision-makers. What they need is not coverage of a sector so much as an understanding of how it bears on the geopolitical situation around it. An arms deal is an alliance signal before it is a military capability. A route for exporting or importing military equipment is a channel of influence, not merely a commercial arrangement.
The Editor is expected to produce well-grounded assessments on defense and armaments, to write them up as daily or weekly reports, and to publish them.
Responsibilities
Analysis
- Assessing and analysing situations
- Reading events in depth — what they mean for the parties involved
- Treating information requests as the highest priority
- Scrutinising reporter filings, archive material, and documents
- Distinguishing established information from inferred information, and from what is untrue or imprecise
Editing
- Drafting copy on the basis of open-source reporting (OSINT) and material filed by reporters (HUMINT)
- Holding the verification standard for news and information, and determining its significance
- Giving sensitive information the weight it requires, and referring it to the Editor-in-Chief before publication
Sector specialisation
The Editor should have deep knowledge of the defense and armaments sector in the Middle East and North Africa, in particular:
- Arms deals and decision chains
- Force structure and modernisation programmes
- Local military manufacturing arrangements
- The difference between contracts and memoranda of understanding
- Defense-industrial relationships and supplier politics
- Security and military institutions and the decision-makers within them
Geopolitical grounding
Required regardless of sector. The Editor should be able to:
- Map actual decision-making authority in each state of the region, particularly where it differs from the formal structure
- Follow that authority's regional and international relationships and track developments as they happen
- Read state behaviour as the product of domestic considerations, not external ones alone
- Distinguish between the behaviours of the state's decision-makers
- Analyse a given position under uncertainty and identify its implications
Requirements
Essential
- Experience: no less than three years working as an editor, researcher, or analyst on defense and armaments
- The ability to verify information before publication, and to work with reporters to confirm it
- Drafting reports in English, with samples of the applicant's own previous reports attached to the application
- Deep familiarity with a specific defense domain — land, sea, or air — at regional level or in one or more countries of the region, to be stated in the application
A plus
- Deep knowledge of other sectors such as energy, economy, finance and business
- Comfort with figures: financial data, trade and procurement numbers
- French, or another language relevant to Tactical Report's work
How to Apply
Send application to: [email protected]