The Army’s prioritized so ruthlessly that the top 11 percent of programs will get 50 percent of the funding. The other 89 percent can’t take any more cuts without it killing them.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Future inevitability of quantum computers is a security problem today
‘Store Now, Decrypt Later’ attacks must be thwarted now with Zero Trust cybersecurity.
COVID-19 and quality control problems at BAE’s York, Penn. plant had slowed the replacement of the Vietnam-vintage M113 armored vehicle.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The US Army is field-testing a robot brain so versatile it can drive both tanks and trucks — even British Army lorries with the steering wheel on the wrong side.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. Industry’s prototype Robotic Combat Vehicles are proving more capable than the Army expected, Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman told me: “It is really exciting.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
In Iraq, M113 variants were deemed too vulnerable to roadside bombs and confined to base. But in a fast-moving mechanized war in Eastern Europe, the armored brigades would need support vehicles that stand a chance against Russian firepower.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Israel’s new Eitan armored personnel carrier is in final field testing with the celebrated Nahal infantry brigade, with series production to begin in 2021. Once the Israelis have enough Eitans to replace the last of their decades-old M113s, they plan to offer the new APC for export — and already foreign armies have sent observers…
By Arie Egozi
AMPV is a well-armored, all-terrain workhorse that will replace geriatric M113s in a host of roles from battlefield transport to armored ambulance to mobile command post.
By Colin Clark
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.
The Google Car and Tesla Autopilot have blazed a trail for the future Army. Both robotics technology and Army thinking have come a long way since 2009, when Defense Secretary Bob Gates cancelled the massive Future Combat Systems program. Where FCS tried to invent new technology on a schedule for 19 different manned and unmanned…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. The actual Robotic Combat Vehicle that gets mass-produced and fielded by 2028 will be an all-new design, not a converted M113. But why wait for someone to design and build the perfect hardware, when you can start testing the software and the tactics on something cheaply available today?
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.
The armored workhorse of the US Army, the M113 tracked carrier, first entered service in 1960. This morning, less than two years after signing a contract to replace the M113 in its roles as armored ambulance, mobile command post, and more, the Army and BAE Systems rolled out the first production-representative Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV).…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA: The lethally under-armored M113 “battle taxi” will celebrate its seventieth birthday before the Army replaces it with a new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle. Under current plans — which assume spending levels well above those allowed by the Budget Control Act (aka sequester) — AMPV production at contractor BAE Systems will max out at 180…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: The top question on defense lawmakers’ minds right now is: “Can we trust you with the people’s money?” And no large military organization has a worse record in that respect than the US Army, with its unhappy track record of canceled programs and wasted billions dating to before 9/11. It’s such a sensitive and high-stakes question that, when I started to ask Army…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
On Monday, the top spokesman for General Dynamics Land Systems, Peter Keating, told me GDLS could not compete for the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (APMV) program unless the Army changed how it ran the competition. Today, as even Keating expected, the Army officially denied the GDLS protest. Breaking Defense obtained a copy of the decision just…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
