The Trump Administration’s Space Force proposal is “a canary in a very toxic space environment that is warning us about the challenges — military competition, a sense of vulnerability, increasing capabilities for counterspace operations — that we are just not dealing with very well,” says Jessica West of Canada’s Project Ploughshares
By Theresa HitchensCrew safety for units under armor: Accurate sensors are the key
Ground platform situational awareness is critical as vehicle crew survivability depends upon it.
The Pentagon insists it doesn’t want them. But could a global ban really rein in Russia or China?
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
When China published its description of SJ-17, the folks at AGI who track satellites for a living raised their eyebrows. The Chinese said it was an experimental satellite. But “the way they phrased it piqued our interest,” says Bob Hall, standing a dozen feet from AGI’s infamous ice cream stand here.
By Colin Clark
Imagine battles unfolding faster than the human mind can handle, with artificial intelligences choosing their tactics and targets largely on their own. The former four-star commander in Afghanistan, John Allen, and an artificial intelligence entrepreneur, Amir Husain, have teamed up to develop a concept for what they call “hyperwar,” rolled out in the July issue…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
SAN DIEGO: Adm. Mike Rogers, who heads both NSA and Cyber Command, is looking past CYBERCOM’s elevation to an independent Unified Command towards a much wider reorganization of military cyber. Some reorganization is implicit in a Feb. 17 memo in which Defense Secretary Jim Mattis charges Deputy Secretary Bob Work to “develop an initial plan……
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
How does war change when your weapons can think? Do you trust a computer to decide when and whom to kill? Questions once asked only in science fiction are now becoming matters for policymakers. All four armed services are experimenting with artificial intelligence in every domain: land, sea, air, outer space, cyberspace, and the all-pervasive…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Who are Trump’s generals? Earlier this week, James Kitfield showed us the common crucible that shaped as a group and then profiled James Mattis, the prospective Secretary of Defense. Today, Kitfield tackles Trump’s most controversial general, intelligence officer turned political firebrand Michael Flynn. “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will not be defeated in…
By James Kitfield
The connected warrior will have a common operating picture even when contested
Mobile, distributed command and control requires a common operating picture even in contested environments.
Recently, Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson drove home the point that using the term Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD), was too vague as to be useful to define the effort of US and allied forces to deal with peer competitors. “The term ‘denial,’ as in anti-access/area denial is too often taken as a fait accompli,”…
By Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake WILLIAMSBURG, Va.: The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, Frank Kendall, warned today that the US might hobble itself in future warfare by insisting on human control of thinking weapons if our adversaries just let their robots pull the trigger. Kendall even worries that Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work is being too optimistic when Work says humans and machines working together will beat…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CORRECTED strikes per day figure WASHINGTON: The air war against the Islamic State is not “anemic,” a Central Command spokesman told Breaking Defense, rebutting a critique of the campaign we published last week. To say the rate of airstrikes in Syria and Iraq is less than against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, Serbia and Kosovo in…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Dave Deptula, dean of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Power Studies, was 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. Dave knows drones, their capabilities and the laws and policies governing their use. He provides a…
By David Deptula and Joseph Raskas
The Navy’s research arm is justifiably proud of its recent experiment with “swarming” drone boats, whose results (with video) were officially released today. But the very thing that’s most impressive about the swarmboats — their ability to act autonomously with minimal human guidance — raises crucial questions about when we can trust a robot to pull…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us…. — Robert Burns, “To A Louse” WASHINGTON: A tag-team of Chinese reporters pressed the normally soft-spoken Chief of Naval Operations into making some fairly blunt statements on US-China relations this morning. It was an…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
This is the first of our monthly op-eds by Rep. Joe Wilson, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities. Dear readers, if you’ve got unique and useful topics you think Rep. Wilson should address, please let us or his office know. Read on. The Editor. Despite the Taliban clearly still…
By Rep. Joe Wilson