Using RPAs and more to achieve stability in the Arabian Gulf and beyond
General Atomics’ commitments to the UAE go beyond the long-term support it’s planning for additional aircraft systems.
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Bad Idea: Armed Drones in West Africa
We’re partnering with the Center for Strategic and International Studies to bring you their fab Bad Ideas series through the Christmas holiday season. We don’t usually pay much attention to this sort of operational policy decision — where to operate and with what — but each new location for drone operations can mean a larger […]
Air Force cyber resilience in focus
Cyber resilience has become a frontline mission for the US military. Breaking Defense’s new eBook rounds up key reporting from the 2025 Alamo ACE conference with the latest developments in cyber offense and defense.
Create Executive Agent For Drones: AFA’s Mitchell Institute
Drones are designed and bought by the four services, as well as DARPA and, we suspect, an intelligence agency or two. There’s duplication of effort and requirements overlap and that means wasted money and time. Many moons ago in 1993, when drones were just becoming a thing in the US military, some visionaries created the […]
Finmeccanica Unit Claims Counter-Drone Breakthrough
One of today’s toughest defense problems is drones. But not what the Air Force likes to call Remotely Piloted Aircraft that carry missiles and bombs. The bigger threat – one that worries law enforcement and the Secret Service as much as the Pentagon – is drones like the hundreds of thousands Santa brought to kids […]
Air Force Modernization On The Table: CSAF Gen. Welsh
WASHINGTON: Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh made clear today that, while his service will make its arguments for modernization programs such as the JSTARS replacement, F-35 and Long Range Strike Bomber, the Defense Secretary and the combatant commanders will make the final decisions. The military’s latest and highest profile program, the Long Range Strike […]
How To Cut Predator, Reaper UAV Crew In Half: Lt. Gen. Otto
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 […]
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Powering the future: Securing America with domestically made microelectronics
Onshoring and investment in military-specific semiconductors anchor a cornerstone of the defense industrial base.
Air Force Begs To Differ With Mabus: F-35 Not Last Manned Fighter
ROSSLYN, VA: Surprise! The pilots who run the Air Force don’t share Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s view of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which Mabus two weeks ago said “should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.” “I would disagree […]
Air Force Tries New Mix Of Acquisition Fixes
WASHINGTON: Citing “horrifying” times to let contracts even when their isn’t any competition — 17 months — Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James says the service will try several approaches to cut costs and speed cycle times. As Breaking D readers know, the Air Force has actually driven overall acquisition costs down in the last two years, […]
Drone Defender Drops D-word Denial
WASHINGTON: We love being able to say “we told you so,” and today we can. During a 30-minute conference call with reporters Monday, the president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), Michael Toscano, used the word “drone” four times. Not too long ago, Toscano might have washed his own mouth out with […]
Pawlikowski On Air Force Offset Strategy: F-35s Flying Drone Fleets
PENTAGON: Ellen Pawlikowski helps decide what weapons the Air Force buys and manages the buying process, so when the lieutenant general says she likes autonomy and 3-D printing as the most promising capabilities for her service to develop as part of the new offset strategy, it’s worth listening. “This is Ellen Pawlikowski speaking,” she says in […]
10 Breaking Defense op-eds that defined 2025
It's been a whirlwind of a year — and the defense establishment has plenty of thoughts on how it's unfolded and what might come next.
Why I Wrote The Book About Predator
Rick Whittle wrote the book on the V-22, which he covered for several thousand years while a Washington reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Now he’s written the book on the Predator (on sale Monday), the drone (no RPAs on this site) and he’s obtained a great deal of operational information about Predator and the battle against Al […]
Retired Lt. Gen. Deptula: Drones Best Weapons We’ve Got For Accuracy, Control, Oversight; Critics Don’t Get It
Dave Deptula, the first general charged with overseeing drones and the Air Force general in command of the Air Operations Center when the first Predator fired a Hellfire missile, steps right into the debate about whether death by drone is moral, legal or qualitatively different from other weapons that strike from afar. He says drone […]