The US military is rolling out AI-enabled projects like the Air Force’s Airborne Battle Management System or the Army’s Project Convergence. But the novelty of these demonstrations and the effort required to pull them off suggest that—unlike Silicon Valley—DoD is struggling to incorporate AI into its combat systems, aircraft, ships, and other equipment. DoD promulgated an […]
Acquisition chief Will Roper wants to replicate the rapid-fire development of new fighter jets in the 1950s. He should focus on new drones instead.
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum is the key to waging electronic warfare, and EW is key to waging modern war. An enemy who can jam communications or GPS, mislead you (spoofing is the term of art) and stop your weapons from functioning (cyber attacks using radio waves). The US largely abandoned EW after the Cold War ended. […]
Unless DoD puts the C2 back into JADC2, the multi-billion dollar effort meant to transform how America fights may well create the kind of brittle, centralized hierarchy the U.S. military is supposed to avoid. The U.S. military is pursuing a new concept for managing operations called Joint All-Domain Command and Control. JADC2 seeks interoperability between […]
To protect the content of 5G transmissions, the Pentagon should accelerate development of mobile applications using end-to-end encryption. Today’s military radios or encrypted email only encrypt a message in transit. The message exists in an unencrypted form in the receiving server.
The Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments has some new ideas for how even relatively poor allies can help keep the peace in the Pacific.
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.
There are real signs of a renaissance in electronic warfare. Now comes the hard part: translating new strategies and concepts into doctrine, requirements, and systems in the field.
The Navy’s new Strategic Readiness Review lays out a bold program to fix the fleet after a summer of deadly collisions. Commissioned and championed by Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, the SSR (as it’s already initialized) will shape the debate in the Pentagon and in Congress for 2018. So we asked submariner-turned-thinktanker Bryan Clark to review […]
This week, the Navy finally announced a delivery date for the long-delayed and $2.4 billion over-budget aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford (CVN-78). “In hindsight,” said Adm. Thomas Moore, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, the Navy should have tested the Ford’s ambitious new systems more extensively on shore before installing them aboard ship. But building a […]
Reforming the U.S. military’s acquisition system has been a hot issue since Congress replaced the Continental Army’s first Quartermaster General in 1777. Despite near-continuous efforts to reduce waste, accelerate schedules and control costs, these efforts have rarely achieved their intended results. According to a recent study by the Institute for Defense Analysis, growth in the […]
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
Yesterday, the new Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, released his strategic vision for the Navy, “A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority.” One of the experts we asked for insight was Bryan Clark, a retired Navy commander and former top aide to the previous CNO, Adm. Jonathan Greenert. (Clark, Greenert, and Richardson are all […]
2016 will be challenging for the Navy. At sea the fleet will continue to face demands that exceed its supply of forces, while at home the fiscal 2017 budget is likely to make difficult choices that prioritize high quality over adequate quantity. Most significantly for sailors, the supply-demand mismatch will get worse next year. While […]
Last week, the US Navy made waves by announcing two bold ideas for the surface fleet: a new concept of warfighting called “distributed lethality” — “If it floats, it fights” — and a new name for the controversial Littoral Combat Ship — now called a “frigate.” We asked Bryan Clark, a former special assistant to […]