When he stepped before the cameras last night to deliver his first prime time address to the nation, Donald Trump became the third president to reluctantly take ownership of the war in Afghanistan. After campaigning on ending costly entanglements for a war-weary country, the president admitted he was hemmed in by some hard realities. “A…
By James KitfieldFuture inevitability of quantum computers is a security problem today
‘Store Now, Decrypt Later’ attacks must be thwarted now with Zero Trust cybersecurity.
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
Lost in this month’s headlines is the fact that the democratically elected leaders of three countries close to the United States and important for its security strategies — France, Mali, and Turkey — have declared (or in France’s case, extended) formal states of emergency. All three states cited good reasons for doing so: France and…
By Michael Shurkin
Former National Security Council cyber security director Richard Clarke says the military hasn’t done enough to secure today’s networked weapons systems against hacking and is likely to find out what they’ve missed the hard way once a conflict with a sophisticated adversary begins. “The nightmare scenario that I hear a lot of flag officers worrying about is,…
By Richard Whittle
WASHINGTON: Two US special operators assisted with this morning’s hostage rescue operation in Bamako, Mali, a US Africa Command spokesman confirmed. The operators were in Mali already as advisors and so could swiftly respond to support the local forces, Col. Mark Cheadle told me. The Americans advised their Malian counterparts, who conducted the rescue, and physically helped…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: The cowards who killed at least 129 unarmed innocents in Paris this evening have provoked the French nation, perhaps beyond endurance. America’s Defense Secretary Ash Carter called the killings “an assault on our common human dignity.” French President Francois Hollande, who appeared grave and saddened as he first spoke of the attacks, later went to…
By Colin Clark
Why cloud modernization is critical to multi-domain operations
JADC2 is a forcing function, driving digital transformation of network infrastructure.
Colorado Republican Doug Lamborn is a fervent advocate for US aid to Israel’s missile defense programs, especially the celebrated Iron Dome. In this op-ed, the House Armed Services Committee member argues that such technologies are just one part of a larger strategy for the survival of Israel: living with perennial threats by regularly cutting them back — often…
By Rep. Doug Lamborn
[UPDATED 9:55 am with Facebook message allegedly from Harroun] WASHINGTON: Eric Harroun, an American Army veteran who reportedly joined al Nusra, an al Qaeda affiliate, may have been killed in Syria. [BREAKING: We’ve just received a Facebook message from Harroun — or at least someone claiming to be him and with access to his account…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: French forces have made great strides driving al-Qaeda-linked insurgents out of Mali’s major cities, said the Pentagon’s top counterterrorism official, Michael Sheehan. But any long-term solution requires local forces in the lead — not Westerners. And those recent successes in Yemen and Somalia provide a model for Mali — and for Afghanistan after 2014.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.As 2013 hurtles towards us, Breaking Defense has asked the experts on our Board of Contributors to forecast the key defense issues of the coming year (click here for the full 2013 forecast series). We kick off the series with this essay from Rachel Kleinfeld, founding president of the aggressively progressive Truman National Security Project.…
By Rachel KleinfeldDespite international perceptions that the Turkey’s Islamic-oriented government has turned its back on its American ally, Ankara’s ambassador to the United States insists that “the relationship has never been so close.” “That doesn’t mean that we don’t have any disagreements,” Ambassador Namik Tan told reporters this morning. “Turkey is, of course, an independent state.” But…
By Otto Kreisher
President-elect Trump has promised to destroy Daesh. If Trump wants to avoid being the third Administration in succession to sink into the morass of the Middle East, it is essential to first ask what declaring victory would look like. Part of the West’s challenge is rooted in that Daesh is a brand inside a religion and…
By Ed Timperlake and Robbin Laird