“We’ve done concepts for many years and, frankly, the Army hasn’t changed much,” admitted the three-star chief of the Army’s in-house think tank on future war. But on Friday, when the Army officially put its futurists under the same roof as its scientists, engineers, and program managers, the notoriously hidebound service aimed to break down the barrier between thinking about the future force and building it.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.A new approach to speed, scale and efficiency for the industrial base
Radars, EW, EO/IR, space imagery, and microelectronics are brought under one roof for a streamlined approach to common people and factories.
DETROIT: The Artificial Intelligence the military needs most is not some kind of killer robot, the Army’s three-star senior futurist told me today. The Army really needs AI to make sense of lots of data, fast, so commanders and quartermasters can send the right forces with the right supplies to the right place on the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
“There are ways to be innovative in the Army,” retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr said. But you have to protect the innovators from the institutional culture of the Pentagon: “You can send them someplace else, like Austin.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
This week’s experiment used a small zoo of specialized systems remote-controlled by humans, each with its own modest niche, working closely with each other and human forces.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
“If you start a process with an org chart, you’re toast,” Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy said. “Focus on what you want to achieve.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB: The Army’s wheeled vehicle programs like Stryker and JLTV are leading it on the path to open architecture, a modular approach to designing software and electronics that makes them easier to upgrade. That’s particularly critical when, facing Russian GPS jamming, the Army is looking to improve Position, Navigation & Timing (PNT) on tens…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
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.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Enterprise-wide training: the Army’s $3.5B program for multi-service combat readiness
The competition for Warfighter Training and Readiness Solutions will bring together training networks, combat training centers and live ranges across the DoD enterprise.
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…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
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…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: Can we talk? In private? If you’re a defense contractor with a good idea, the US Army wants to say yes — but laws and regulations get in the way. That’s a problem the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC) is struggling to solve with what it calls a Capabilities Information Exchange. Here’s the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
A new Army War College report, Outplayed: Regaining Strategic Initiative in the Gray Zone, argues that the United States should adopt innovative approaches against a new and more complex set of international security challenges. “Outplayed” is the culmination of a nine-month study effort that was sanctioned by the Army Chief of Staff and sponsored by…
[UPDATED 6:30 pm] HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: The ever-beleaguered Army has a reputation — not undeserved — for being bland, conformist, and bureaucratic, an organization where brilliant mavericks are forced to retire at colonel and the guys who make general don’t rock the boat. Just ask any of the long-serving and long-suffering officers convening here in Huntsville, home…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
FORT BELVOIR: The intellectual ice is beginning to break. You could see it at the Fort Belvoir Officers’ Club on Tuesday afternoon, where the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) hosted a three-day, tri-service conference on “Strategic Landpower.” The US Army is wrestling with how to stay relevant once large-scale counterinsurgency in Afghanistan comes to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.LAS VEGAS: “We’ve been spoiled,” the colonel said. Since 9/11, the military has had “giant pots of money” to throw at urgent problems without going through the full acquisition process. It’s been a bonanza for contractors with innovative technology to offer. But as the war winds down, Lt. Col. Stuart Hatfield of the Army Capabilities…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
