

NATIONAL HARBOR: This time, General Atomics’ secret weapon isn’t the drone. It’s the mechanical arm that catches it in mid-flight — and then hauls it into the back of a C-130 cargo plane, also in mid-flight. General Atomics, which builds the iconic Predator, has rolled out its offering for DARPA’s Gremlins program, blandly called the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: The Pentagon’s biggest advocate of artificial intelligence just spoke to the Air Force Association for over an hour — and he didn’t mention drones. When Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work talks about autonomy, he’s much less interested in killer robots than in command and control. The Air Force led the way on…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: The increasingly “adversarial” relationships with Russia and China are forcing the Pentagon to classify its previously public National Military Strategy, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says. Classification will allow bolder and more specific discussions of how to manage those relationships and our responses to them, Gen. Joe Dunford told the annual…
By Colin Clark
AFA: The Air Force wants artificial intelligence to track and react to cyber and electronic threats, to update countermeasures against enemy hackers, radars, and missiles faster than human minds can manage. But first you have to fix the basics. Today, the Department Of Defense Information Network (DODIN) is really not a single network, but a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: Russia could hinder US reinforcements headed to Europe in the event of a major war, warned the recently retired Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove. It’s well known Russian radars, missiles, and strike planes — “Anti-Access/Area Denial” systems — threaten ships and aircraft across wide swathes of the Black Sea, Eastern Europe, and…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.