Why cloud modernization is critical to multi-domain operations
JADC2 is a forcing function, driving digital transformation of network infrastructure.
WASHINGTON: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, top military advisor to the president, today proposed creation of a staff to help the Defense Secretary better plan and execute America’s war plans that involve huge swaths of the globe and outer space. “This is not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs saying, ‘I need a…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: If there’s one congressional topic that makes the senior leaders of the US military really nervous, it’s when lawmakers start talking about reapportioning power and authorities among those same top leaders. Both Armed Services committee chairmen, Sen. John McCain and Rep. Mac Thornberry, have voiced concerns about how well the last major reforms, known as…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: The defense bill now on President Obama’s desk would restore long-lost procurement powers to the top officers of the armed services. That’s great, the new Chief of Staff of the Army said last night, but it’s just a start. “Cut us loose, and see what happens,” Gen. Milley said last night at the Council…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: One of America’s most respected strategists is calling for a comprehensive review of the military’s roles and missions to prepare the way for revision of the basic law undergirding the modern force, Goldwater-Nichols. The combination of an excellent quartet of lawmakers leading the armed services committees; the markedly complex and global set of threats…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: With Thornberry Comment Supporting Reform WASHINGTON: Sen. John McCain plans a long-term review of the law underpinning the modern American military, the Goldwater-Nichols legislation that created the current chain of command from president to defense secretary to combatant commanders. “The Committee will be conducting a preliminary examination of the structure, roles, and missions of civilian…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: The House Armed Services Committee will be led through the shoals of sequestration, military pay, weapons costs and a volatile world by a reform-minded and dynamic legislator. I’ve covered Rep. Mac Thornberry since before the turn of the century (that hurt) and have always found compelling his willingness to delve beneath the surface of what the…
By Colin Clark
Future inevitability of quantum computers is a security problem today
‘Store Now, Decrypt Later’ attacks must be thwarted now with Zero Trust cybersecurity.
AUSA: A new generation of generals is rising in the Army. It’s a generation forced to get creative by more than a decade of ugly unconventional conflicts. It’s a generation disillusioned by the mistakes of superiors, military and civilian alike. It’s a generation willing to take on the Army’s bureaucratic culture of top-down management, which…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Like the Holy Trinity or the designated hitter rule, the concept known as AirSea Battle has been much discussed but little understood. The Defense Department released an official and unclassified summary of the concept for the first time this evening on a Navy website . (BreakingDefense got the document before it was made public). AirSea Battle would break down longstanding barriers:…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.NATIONAL HARBOR: The top officers in the Navy and Marine Corps defended their most expensive program, Lockheed Martin‘s troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, while acknowledging the way the Pentagon buys such weapons is not merely broken but “constipated.” “There’s no alternative for the United States Marine Corps to the F-35B,” Commandant Gen. James Amos said…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.The Pentagon needs to trim its overhead, many senior officials and experts argue, because it sucks scarce resources away from military weapons and personnel. To understand the root cause of this problem, one must return to the fundamental national security legislation passed in the wake of World War II. Before becoming president, Harry Truman chaired…
By Robert KozloskiWASHINGTON: In a remarkably non-partisan moment amidst the current strife over budget cuts and Chuck Hagel, Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary and George W. Bush’s Chief of Naval Operations told a Republican-helmed committee that the Navy’s real problem was not the Obama administration’s budget but decades of creeping bureaucracy that have eaten every budget’s buying power.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Our 2013 forecast series continues with a call for new strategic thinking from the first man to serve as Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, Lt. Gen. (ret.) David Deptula. Whatever happens with sequestration, Pentagon planners are now struggling to fit the services’ myriad programs under a reduced budget topline.…
By David DeptulaThe final debt plan being considered by Congress punts the issue of defense spending to a super-committee of legislators. Composed of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans from both houses, these members will be charged with hashing out the details. Not only will this new process circumvent existing congressional appropriations process, it will also…
By Cedric Leighton
Reforming the U.S. military’s acquisition system has been a hot issue since Congress replaced the Continental Army’s first Quartermaster General in 1777. Despite near-continuous efforts to reduce waste, accelerate schedules and control costs, these efforts have rarely achieved their intended results. According to a recent study by the Institute for Defense Analysis, growth in the…
By Bryan Clark and Mark Gunzinger