CAPITOL HILL: Prompt Global Strike is a program to build a weapon that can destroy targets anywhere on earth within an hour of getting targeting data and permission to launch. Sandia Lab and the Army may have found the answer: the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon. So far, some aspects of PGS have attracted controversy. When the Pentagon wanted…
By Colin ClarkFuture inevitability of quantum computers is a security problem today
‘Store Now, Decrypt Later’ attacks must be thwarted now with Zero Trust cybersecurity.
WASHINGTON: Positing the future of intelligence — even for one year — poses unique challenges. First, there’s so much those of on the outside don’t know. Then there’s the simple truth that our enemies and competitors drive so much of intelligence. Since we can’t know with certainty what will happen, it’s difficult to predict what the intelligence…
By Colin Clark
The makers and operators of America’s spy satellites have lofted at least 13 assets on their way to orbit with the early morning launch today of NROL-39, atop the always impressive Atlas V rocket. http://youtu.be/yEF7Si2UkMs The main payload may be a highly advanced space radar, according to several educated guesses (which is about the…
By Colin Clark
The latest victim of the federal government shutdown is a crucial player in the space and intelligence world, the Aerospace Corporation, which has had to cut back the work of 60 percent of its 3,500 employees. “The Aerospace Corporation started implementing a partial work shutdown on Oct. 3, after the Air Force’s Space and Missile…
By Colin Clark
Dear Reader, with Congress close to irrelevant (and out of town anyway), the Defense Department bracing for the coming end of the world (slight exaggeration) and so many of DC’s denizens out of town and recharging for the September onslaught, this August probably will be particularly quiet. So we are experimenting with that terribly au…
By Colin Clark
Tomorrow is the forty-fourth anniversary of the day a human first walked on another celestial body, our Moon. So it’s only fitting and proper that we do this — offer our readers a spectacular shot of a heavy rocket, the Atlas V, carrying an enormous military communications satellite into orbit. The Navy satellite built by Lockheed…
By Colin Clark
GA-ASI’s MQ-9B: The right UAV for persistence, power, and performance
When assessing the state of the art of unmanned aerial systems, it’s critical to be very clear about what various aircraft can and can’t do – and could never do.
As the Department of Defense continues to wrestle with the high costs and often slow pace of military technology and acquisition programs, it would do well to take a closer look at that other bastion of high-tech government programs: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA’s low-cost missions from yesteryear just might hold the secret…
By Dan WardWASHINGTON: Even the grim, dark and powerful Soviet Union came to share fairly detailed information about the size and potency of its military to ensure nobody made a wrong step by over- or underestimating its military prowess. The current rising power, China, so far, has largely refused to share much information about either how its…
By Colin ClarkUPDATED: Air Force General Praises CHIRP, Hosted Payloads COLORADO SPRINGS, NATIONAL SPACE SYMPOSIUM: After almost a decade of discussion, hope and frustration, the time appears to finally be ripe for what the space industry calls hosted payloads, the Remora fish of satellites. The Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, which has long been wary…
By Colin ClarkThe public experienced a moment of angst in 1997 when it looked like Asteroid XF11 might threaten the Earth in 2028. It didn’t. But that doesn’t mean the threat doesn’t exist or that we should do nothing about it. Asteroids and comets that come close to Earth are collectively known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs).…
By Joan Johnson-FreeseCOLORADO SPRINGS, NATIONAL SPACE SYMPOSIUM: Spend $5 million to help track possible threats like North Korean missile launches by leaving an Alaskan radar site on at full power. Turn off East Coast radar receivers that provide data about satellites and space debris. Gen. William Shelton, head of Air Force Space Command, has cut Space Fence…
By Colin ClarkCOLORADO SPRINGS, NATIONAL SPACE SYMPOSIUM: The Boeing Company, better known for building big satellites in clean rooms and charging big prices for them, has spotted what it thinks may be a sweet spot in the satellite market and plans to build prototypes of three small satellites to show the market what it can do. The…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: For those who aren’t part of the insular space community, you need to know that the National Space Symposium is the most important conference on space issues in the world. Everyone goes: the intelligence community; the Air Force; Army; Navy; industry; allies; even senior Chinese officials show up fairly regularly these days. Some 9,000…
By Colin Clark
As sequestration forces the Pentagon to consider truly transformative cuts to the U.S. military, the knives are coming out even more readily than usual in a town known for fierce infighting. Today’s budget environment has created an open season on traditional concepts of roles and missions. Service leaders have become far more vocal in warning…
By Michael Auslin