PENTAGON: The Navy’s new offices for unmanned systems — that’s drones or robots to you and me — are a long-overdue reform, two top experts tell us. But, as emphasized by both our outside sources and the new Navy officials themselves, it’s equally important to understand the initiative’s limits. This is not an overhaul of the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Autonomy changes everything about combat engineering
Sending robotic vehicles into the breach saves lives by removing humans from one of the most dangerous places on the battlefield.
WASHINGTON: Two years ago, Capt. John Zimmerman and his award-winning Navy team were testing a software upgrade for submarines when they ran into a surprising problem. When they changed the code controlling the Tomahawk missile launchers, the torpedo tubes stopped working. Fortunately, this all happened in a laboratory ashore before the upgrade got anywhere near the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PENTAGON CITY: “The Pentagon’s an impatient mistress,” George Duchak told reporters yesterday, “so we have to have some early successes.” He’s not kidding about the “early.” Duchak is director of the Defense Innovation Unit – Experimental (DIUx), the Pentagon outreach office in Silicon Valley that’s all of two months old. “We grew 50 percent last…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
PENTAGON CITY: The dirty secret of so-called “unmanned” systems is they require a whole lot of men — and women — to operate them. They’re just back at base, running things remotely, rather than hands-on in the aircraft. With the Air Force drone community overworked and undermanned, the service’s intelligence chief has suggested a Solomonic…
By Richard Whittle
