Air Commodore (ret.) Frans Osinga is Professor of War Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and one of Europe's leading strategic theorists. His research addresses the changing character of war, military adaptation and innovation, deterrence, the strategic implications of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, and Europe's strategic predicament after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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Air Commodore (ret.) Frans Osinga is Professor of War Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs and one of Europe's leading strategic theorists. His research addresses the changing character of war, military adaptation and innovation, deterrence, the strategic implications of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies, and Europe's strategic predicament after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

His foundational study, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Routledge, 2007), remains a standard reference on Boyd’s thought. Subsequent volumes—including A Transformation Gap? American Innovations and European Military Change (with Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, Stanford University Press, 2010), Military Adaptation in Afghanistan (with Farrell and James Russell, Stanford University Press, 2013), and Targeting: The Challenges of Modern Warfare (Springer, 2016)—have set the terms of contemporary debate on military transformation, adaptation, and the law and ethics of targeting. Frans co-edited (with Tom Sweijs) a comprehensive volume titled Deterrence in the 21^st Century: Insights from Theory and Practice (open access) which is considered a standard textbook on that highly relevant topic. He is a long-running editor of the NL ARMS Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies, the central scholarly venue for Dutch military studies.

Originally trained as an F-16 pilot at the Royal Military Academy (KMA), Osinga served operationally on the NF-5 and F-16 between 1986 and 1994. He completed his PhD at Leiden University while a research fellow at the Clingendael Institute, served at NATO Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia, and from 2010 to 2023 was Professor of Military Sciences and Head of the War Studies Department at the Netherlands Defence Academy. He was appointed Special Professor of War Studies at Leiden in 2019 and Full Professor in 2023.

He is a member of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) and of the Strategic Advisory Board of TNO Defence. On his retirement from active military service in 2023 he was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau with Swords. Frans is also a member of the Committee on Peace and Security of the Advisory Council on International Affairs

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