We are always interested in receiving articles on military and defense-industry-related topics. We aim to publish pieces that are informative, opinionated, and designed to provoke thoughtful debate. If you have an idea with a defense angle and aren't sure whether we would be interested, don't hesitate to ask.

An AFJ article must be original work. It should be a "good read" that is easily accessible to an expert audience across all services, agencies and defense-related industries. Most readers of Armed Forces Journal are field-grade and flag officers.

We do not publish white papers or technical documents, marketing material, organization charts or flow diagrams. Nor do we publish footnotes. And we keep the use of acronyms and jargon to a minimum.

We edit for house-style and make cuts to fit. All AFJ editor decisions are final.

HOW TO PROPOSE AN ARTICLE: We prefer that before sending us an article you first send an abstract describing your purpose and themes. We receive a large number of submissions and apologize that we cannot respond personally to each one. While a positive response to a query is not a guarantee that your article will be accepted for publication, it will at least let you know whether the work will be considered.

The articles themselves should be between 2,000 and 3,000 words in length, unless otherwise stipulated in our response to your abstract.

Send queries, abstracts and articles to .

ISSUE DATES AND DEADLINES: New editions of Armed Forces Journal are published on the first of each month. Articles for each magazine are planned several months in advance. We expect completed manuscripts to be submitted six to eight weeks before a given publication date to be considered for that issue.

FIRST-TIME AUTHORS: The first time we accept an article for publication from a given author, we will email him or her a work-for-hire agreement to be signed and returned. The agreement allows AFJ to use the article (as well as future articles accepted for publication) in print, online and however else we may deem appropriate. We must have the signed agreement in hand before we can publish the article.

We will also need a short author bio and a high-resolution head-and-shoulders image of the author, emailed direct to the editor as a stand-alone JPEG file.