Commissioning Editor Tom Milner takes us through the titles publishing in the Raid series in 2026.

 

Operation Praying Mantis 1988: The US Navy takes on Iran's fleet

Si Sheppard, Adam Tooby

21/05/2026

Dramatically illustrated, this is an expert account of America’s biggest surface battle since World War II, when the US Navy took on Iran’s navy and air force in open combat.

Operation Praying Mantis was the culmination of the 1980s Tanker Wars in the Persian Gulf between the US and Iran. This one-day naval battle was a rare full-scale clash between modern warships, and the only occasion since World War II in which the US Navy sank a major surface combatant.

In this book, Professor Si Sheppard draws upon his academic research to provide a thorough briefing on the background to the battle. For more than a year, Operation Earnest Will had protected Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iranian missile and mine attacks in the largest naval convoy operation since World War II, while helicopters of the 160th SOAR and SEAL fast boats fought a cat-and-mouse campaign against Iran’s minelayers in Operation Prime Chance. However, when the USS Samuel B. Roberts was nearly sunk by an Iranian mine, the US Navy planned an open offensive against Iran’s military installations.

With dramatic new artwork, maps, and photos, this book offers a blow-by-blow account of how Praying Mantis unfolded, how Iran responded with its surface fleet and Boghammar speedboats, and how in the ensuing battle the US Navy prevailed, sinking one frigate, crippling another, and decimating Iran’s naval forces in the Persian Gulf.

 

Kyiv 2022: The battle for Ukraine's capital

Mark Galeotti, Edouard A. Groult and Robert McSweeney

18/06/2026

Key to Russia’s 2022 invasion was an audacious strike on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. This expert, illustrated account explains how it was planned and carried out, and how it was defeated.

Vladimir Putin had convinced himself he could seize Kyiv, install a puppet government, and close his fist on Ukraine in a matter of weeks, with minimal fighting.

In this book, Dr Mark Galeotti explains how Russia conceived and planned this lightning conquest, and how the attempt was defeated. The Russian commanders themselves did not expect to go to war and were forced to invade under-prepared, but nonetheless they made a concerted attempt to seize Hostomel Airport and from that bridgehead take the capital, with mercenaries detailed to hunt down the government. But Ukrainian military and civilian resistance thwarted the attack and within a month, the Russians were already on the retreat, leaving behind the smoking remains of the 40-mile invasion column outside Kyiv.

Written by a top expert on the Russian military, drawing extensively on Russian and Ukrainian sources including interviews with soldiers involved in the operation, and fully illustrated with photographs, original artwork and maps, this is the most detailed and compelling study of this operation available in English. It is the story of a strike whose defeat signalled both the shattering of Putin’s expectations of an easy victory, and the start of the reorientation of the war towards the south-east.