So, I asked, could a sufficiently high-powered neutron beam not just detect a nuclear warhead from a distance, but actually disable it? Dent, who worked on the Safeguard missile defense system as a young Army officer and later on Reagan’s Star Wars initiative for SAIC, pondered a moment. Then he said: “Could it fry the electronics ? Yes, it could.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Capability exists to simulate the future of kill chains at theater scale
A tool to explore what-if scenarios and tradeoffs at the theater-level faster than traditional analysis.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: After two decades of largely ignoring the danger, the Army is seriously training for a scary scenario: What if GPS, our satellite communications and our wireless networks go down? It’s hardly a hypothetical threat. Russian electronic warfare units locate Ukrainian troops by their transmissions and jam their radios so they can’t call for help, setting them…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
ARLINGTON: New threats from Russia and China mean the Army must take on new missions — but it’s got almost no new money so the Army is looking at ways to modify existing systems to do some radically new things. So imagine howitzers firing precision-guided cannon shells to shoot cruise missiles out of the sky or to sink…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: Minds are changing inside the Pentagon when it comes to the best ways to stop missile attacks, the Army’s top missile defender said this morning. It’s not just that the Joint Staff is conducting a major study of the subject, due out next month, said Lt Gen. David Mann. It’s that a “holistic” array…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: The new Intelligence Community-military space operations center the military is creating may replace the long-established JSPOC, two top commanders said, but a lot has to happen first. The nascent JICSPOC — Joint, Interagency, & Coalition Space Operations Center — will start as an experiment before potentially becoming a backup to JSPOC and then…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: The Army is entering a new Cooperative Research & Development Agreement (CRADA) for a laser weapon with defense titan Lockheed Martin, the head of Space & Missile Defense Command said today. The service’s ultimate goal is lasers light, compact, and capable enough to protect advancing troops. The Lockheed agreement, not yet formally announced, will lead…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. The Army’s missile defense force is getting a new brain. That’s the real meaning of a successful test yesterday of something called the Integrated Air & Missile Defense Battle Command System, or IBCS for (mercifully) short. IBCS doesn’t blow stuff up. A Patriot missile destroyed the target in last week’s test at White Sands Missile Range. IBCS doesn’t detect the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Display screens are the eyes for maneuver forces needing to command and control
The Army is upfitting vehicles with big 24 or 32-inch displays that present multiple sources of data for a full operational picture.
ARLINGTON: Hitting a bullet with a bullet is an astounding feat. But now that US missile defenses can do it routinely, we’re realizing it’s not enough. As technology spreads around the world, more countries are getting larger numbers of more capable missiles. A cash-strapped America can’t afford to shoot down each incoming threat with a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
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 Clark
