WASHINGTON: Apple, Amazon, and Google long since outstripped the Pentagon in information technology. But as the military and intelligence community try to take advantage of commercial IT innovation, especially in cloud computing, they have run into harsh limits. Security, long-range bandwidth and the sheer volume of data have created problems for the Pentagon that current commercially…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.GA-ASI’s MQ-9B: The right UAV for persistence, power, and performance
When assessing the state of the art of unmanned aerial systems, it’s critical to be very clear about what various aircraft can and can’t do – and could never do.
WASHINGTON: We’ve got bus-sized satellites that can probably see any blemishes on Chairman Mao’s badly rebuilt face from space (didn’t know about that, did you?). We’ve got U-2s with their superb sensors watching the Chinese coast (for now). We’ve got P-8s scanning the seas for Chinese submarines and testing their radar. Our subs — hopefully — cruise…
By Colin Clark
ARLINGTON: “Big data” is big business nowadays. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin, for example, boasts their analytical tools have successfully predicted everything from Arab Spring uprisings to the onset of sepsis in hospital patients. But big data can also go wrong in big ways. If you set a powerful program loose on a large enough data…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
In this exclusive exit interview with Breaking Defense contributor James Kitfield, the outgoing chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, talks about metastasizing Islamic terrorism, his struggles to reform intelligence-gathering, and the risk of lurching from crisis to crisis in an Internet-accelerated world. – the editors. “Disruptive.” That’s how Michael Flynn’s enemies…
By James Kitfield
There’s an old trope in intelligence circles that defenders have to be right all the time, while the terrorists only need to get lucky once to execute a successful attack. The knowledge that no one is right all the time makes most counterterrorism experts cautiously pessimistic about the likelihood of another successful terrorist attack on…
By James Kitfield
COLORADO SPRINGS: The United States invented the Internet, but we may not rule it any more. “We are certainly behind right now. We are chasing our adversary, for sure,” one of the Air Force’s top cyber warriors, Col. Dean Hullings, told an audience of about 350 here at the National Space Symposium‘s one-day cyber event. Hullings,…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: When you’re a disruptive company owned by a disruptive personality you tend to do things that disrupt your industry, and SpaceX and Elon Musk must be the most publicly disruptive pairing in America right now. Now he’s filing a protest against what is potentially his biggest customer, the US Air Force, for giving the business…
By Colin Clark
Why cloud modernization is critical to multi-domain operations
JADC2 is a forcing function, driving digital transformation of network infrastructure.
WASHINGTON: Positing the future of intelligence — even for one year — poses unique challenges. First, there’s so much those of on the outside don’t know. Then there’s the simple truth that our enemies and competitors drive so much of intelligence. Since we can’t know with certainty what will happen, it’s difficult to predict what the intelligence…
By Colin Clark
The latest victim of the federal government shutdown is a crucial player in the space and intelligence world, the Aerospace Corporation, which has had to cut back the work of 60 percent of its 3,500 employees. “The Aerospace Corporation started implementing a partial work shutdown on Oct. 3, after the Air Force’s Space and Missile…
By Colin Clark
AFA Conference: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have presented a new bill designed to increase congressional oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its main client, the National Security Agency. Obviously, the bill was sparked by the flood of classified information released by the international fugitive and former intelliegnce contractor Edward Snowden. The…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: They could have a decent career singing the sequestration lament in 4/4 time. Three of the top men in American intelligence brought it home yesterday, wailing the sequestration blues. OK, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s speech sometimes lacked rhythmn. But Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, hit…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: America faces a new intelligence “gap” because an Al Qaeda affiliate has exploited information leaked by fugitive Edward Snowden so that the United States can no longer monitor the terrorists, Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said today. “And, by the way, we have already seen one Al Qaeda affiliate has…
By Colin Clark
UPDATES WITH OBAMA WHITE HOUSE COMMENTS, HASC REACT TO KERRY REMARKS WASHINGTON: One hour before House Armed Services Committee members were to receive a White House briefing on last week’s Syrian massacre of more than 1,400 civilians, the White House released an unclassified summary of intelligence about the attack concluding with “high confidence” that…
By Colin Clark
UPDATED: NGA RESPONDS WASHINGTON: It’s not a lot of money in the Pentagon’s scheme of things, but the Defense Department’s Inspector General has found that the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) wasted millions because it did not close a rented building and made improvements to a building when it was supposed to leave the facility.…
By Colin Clark
