Armed Robots: US Lags Rhetoric, Russia

Armed Robots: US Lags Rhetoric, Russia
Armed Robots: US Lags Rhetoric, Russia

AUSA: American military leaders talk how artificial intelligence will change the face of war, but the unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) actually in development are much more modest and less lethal. They’re mostly small, mostly unarmed, and fall short not only of Pentagon visions of future warfare, but of the tank-like machines the Russians are experimenting with today.…

A Wider War: Army Revises Multi-Domain Battle With Air Force Help

A Wider War: Army Revises Multi-Domain Battle With Air Force Help
A Wider War: Army Revises Multi-Domain Battle With Air Force Help

AUSA: How do you coordinate foot soldiers moving four miles per hour with fighter jets moving 1,500 mph?  To address the differences in speed and range, the Army’s Training & Doctrine Command is already revising its new “battlefield framework” – which was first circulated just in July – to open up the Army’s traditional geographic zones…

Milley Announces Biggest Buying Shift In 40 Years: Army Will Get Weapons The SOCOM Way

Milley Announces Biggest Buying Shift In 40 Years: Army Will Get Weapons The SOCOM Way
Milley Announces Biggest Buying Shift In 40 Years: Army Will Get Weapons The SOCOM Way

AUSA: The Army will start buying weapons the way Special Operations does, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley told reporters here, bringing different specialists together in one streamlined team. The often-insular Army is also studying the other services, Milley said, particularly the rapid development of the nuclear Navy under legendary Adm. Hyman Rickover. A three-star…

No Safe Place In Next War: The Army’s Expanded Battlefield

No Safe Place In Next War: The Army’s Expanded Battlefield
No Safe Place In Next War: The Army’s Expanded Battlefield

What if the next war starts, not with a gunshot, but with a tweet? As tensions rise, US troops discover their families’ names, faces, and home addresses have been posted on social media as they prepare to deploy, along with exhortations to kill the fascists/imperialists/infidels (pick one). Trolls call them late at night with death…

Invisible Artillery: Army Wants Electronic Warfare At All Levels

Invisible Artillery: Army Wants Electronic Warfare At All Levels
Invisible Artillery: Army Wants Electronic Warfare At All Levels

PENTAGON: Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, has ordered a review of service’s longstanding shortfalls in electronic warfare, officers told me in an exclusive interview. The ultimate goal: give commanders from platoon to corps the ability to shut down enemy radio and radar as readily as they now call in airstrikes and artillery. It’s a critical…

From Concept To Combat: Making Multi-Domain Battle Real

From Concept To Combat: Making Multi-Domain Battle Real
From Concept To Combat: Making Multi-Domain Battle Real

WASHINGTON: The concept called Multi-Domain Battle – a single seamless offensive across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace – may seem futuristic, but the Army wants to start implementing at least parts of it right now. In wargames, doctrine, and interservice dialogue, “it’s actually becoming reality,” said Gen. David Perkins. As one of the fathers…

Army Chief’s Thinktank Studies Major War

Army Chief’s Thinktank Studies Major War
Army Chief’s Thinktank Studies Major War

ARMY WAR COLLEGE: If you want to know what the Army Chief of Staff is thinking, don’t just ask around the Pentagon. Drive a couple hours north through rural Pennsylvania — passing the Gettysburg battlefield on the way — to the Army War College here in quiet Carlisle. An institution whose influence has waxed and…

New Army Unit To Test Tactics: Meet The Multi-Domain Task Force

New Army Unit To Test Tactics: Meet The Multi-Domain Task Force
New Army Unit To Test Tactics: Meet The Multi-Domain Task Force

WASHINGTON: The Army is creating an experimental combat unit to develop new tactics for lethally fast-paced future battlefields. The Multi-Domain Task Force will be “a relatively small organization…1,500 or so troops,” the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told the Future of Warfare conference here this morning. While small, it will have capabilities not found in…

Army Races To Rebuild Short-Range Air Defense: New Lasers, Vehicles, Units

Army Races To Rebuild Short-Range Air Defense: New Lasers, Vehicles, Units
Army Races To Rebuild Short-Range Air Defense: New Lasers, Vehicles, Units

ARLINGTON: As Russia and other adversaries stock up on drones, rockets, and missiles, the US Army is building up defenses to shoot them down. But that Short-Range Air Defense force has been devastated by a decade of cuts. The service’s plan to revive SHORAD involves deploying to Europe about 50 more of its current Avenger…

Achilles Heel Of Army Air & Missile Defense: The Network

Achilles Heel Of Army Air & Missile Defense: The Network
Achilles Heel Of Army Air & Missile Defense: The Network

ARLINGTON: The Russians aren’t just deploying new treaty-breaking, nuclear-capable cruise missiles. They’re also fielding sophisticated cyber and electronic warfare systems that can hack or jam our defenses against such missiles. In fact, no military mission is more dependent on high-speed data networks than air and missile defense — but no military system is more vulnerable than those…

A ‘Highly Lethal’ War Of ‘Fleeting’ Advantages: Multi-Domain Battle

A ‘Highly Lethal’ War Of ‘Fleeting’ Advantages: Multi-Domain Battle
A ‘Highly Lethal’ War Of ‘Fleeting’ Advantages: Multi-Domain Battle

ARLINGTON: The US Army isn’t counting on airpower in the next war. Without that cover, there won’t be supply drops, recon drones or medevac helicopters picking up your casualties — and you will have casualties. “Land-based forces now are going to have to penetrate denied areas to facilitate air and naval forces. This is the exact…

Army’s Multi-Domain Battle To Be Tested In PACOM, EUCOM Wargames

Army’s Multi-Domain Battle To Be Tested In PACOM, EUCOM Wargames
Army’s Multi-Domain Battle To Be Tested In PACOM, EUCOM Wargames

ARLINGTON: Harry Harris has to be the Army’s favorite admiral. The chief of Pacific Command has called for Army-owned anti-ship missiles. He has enthused over the Army’s new warfare concept, and now he is planning a major inter-service exercise to work out what that Multi-Domain Battle concept means in practice. “We are starting to put…

The Long Road To Army’s Next-Gen Combat Vehicle

The Long Road To Army’s Next-Gen Combat Vehicle
The Long Road To Army’s Next-Gen Combat Vehicle

  ARLINGTON: Two years after the demoralizing cancellation of the Ground Combat Vehicle, the Army is rallying round a new vision for its future armored force. That vision has come into sharper focus just in the last few months, armor leaders said Tuesday. Facing a rising Russia with an aging American arsenal, the Army will…

Army Gets Serious About Next Tank: Next Generation Combat Vehicle

Army Gets Serious About Next Tank: Next Generation Combat Vehicle
Army Gets Serious About Next Tank: Next Generation Combat Vehicle

ARLINGTON: The US Army wants its Next Generation Combat Vehicle to serve as pack master to a swarm of crawling and flying robots. It wants lighter weapons with heavier firepower, able to aim almost straight up to shoot drones out of the sky and hit rooftop snipers. It wants miniaturized missile defenses to shoot down incoming anti-tank…