Colin Clark, the founding editor of Breaking Defense, is now our Indo-Pacific Bureau Chief, based in Sydney, Australia. In addition to his foundational efforts at Breaking Defense, Colin also started DoDBuzz.com, the world’s first all-online defense news website. He’s covered Congress, intelligence and regulatory affairs for Space News; founded and edited the Washington Aerospace Briefing, a newsletter for the space industry; covered national security issues for Congressional Quarterly; and was editor of Defense News. Colin is an avid fisherman, grill genius and wine drinker, all of which are only part of the reason he relishes the opportunity to live in Australia.
We don’t do this very often, mostly because it’s just so declasse to note the difficulty one’s competitors may have in matching one’s content, but today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on the grim and crucial conflict between the two contracts America has with its troops leaves us almost too satisfied to speak. The op-ed, by […]
WASHINGTON: The recently retired senior admiral of the Navy, Adm. Gary Roughead, says the Obama administration must do much more across the government to ensure the Pacific pivot works and is well directed, joining his voice to four prominent House lawmakers. I asked Roughead after today’s hearing on the Pacific “rebalance” if he knew about […]
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.
UPDATED: With Great Rep. Turner Quote On Snowden WASHINGTON: “The damage assessment is still underway,” about the effects of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s monitoring of web and email traffic, a typically cool and careful commander of US Strategic Command told me this morning. But it’s definitely bad. “It’s going to take […]
WASHINGTON: After years of grudging refusal to do much more than discuss the possibility of talks on a space code of conduct, China has begun discussions on a multilateral code as part of a larger UN effort, as well as committed to specific goals known in the trade as “transparency and confidence-building measures” (TCBMs). “It is […]
Tomorrow is the forty-fourth anniversary of the day a human first walked on another celestial body, our Moon. So it’s only fitting and proper that we do this — offer our readers a spectacular shot of a heavy rocket, the Atlas V, carrying an enormous military communications satellite into orbit. The Navy satellite built by Lockheed […]
CAPITOL HILL: The next Pentagon budget will almost certainly include increased spending for the Navy, Marines, and Air Force to boost their presence and operations in the Asia-Pacific region. That’s because the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon’s strategic review found we […]
As threats rapidly evolve, digital engineering, manufacturing capacity and robust supply chains are critical to meeting challenges.
CAPITOL HILL: The House Armed Services Committee has scheduled its first hearing on what is arguably the Pentagon’s most important shift since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the strategic shift of US forces and focus to the Pacific. So far the witness list for the Wednesday morning hearing doesn’t boast a list of […]
By Steve Russell Here at BreakingDefense, we get a lot of op-ed submissions arguing for more spending on new weapons. Today, we present an argument on why new technology can sometimes be a trap. The author, Steve Russell, is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, and — though he’s too modest to mention this — a […]
WASHINGTON: The US presence in the remote northern Australian port of Darwin will soar from its current 250 troops to 1,000 next year and ultimately to 2,200, granting a full Marine Expeditionary Unit an effective base of operations. Although the general agreement had been made in 2011, the renewed commitment is likely to elicit a […]
[Updated Thursday with details on third, aborted landing attempt] Two out of three ain’t bad, if you’re trying something no one’s ever done before. Landing on the narrow, pitching deck of a Navy aircraft carrier is one of the hardest things a human being can do. Today, for the first time in history, a robot […]
Do more with less: streamline workflows, reduce duplication, invest upfront to save long-term.
The Swedes who build the Gripen fighter are known for being practical, producing advanced fighters that are relatively cheap (at least compared to almost everyone else). At the Paris Air Show the Gripen folks, SaaB Group. very deliberately floated an interesting idea. Since the Gripen uses fly-by-wire technology and advanced avionics which virtually eliminate the need […]
WASHINGTON: The United States military will meet next week with People’s Liberation Army officials to begin the challenging process of hammering out cyber rules of the road, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, said today. So far, Dempsey told an audience of several hundred at the Brookings Institution, Chinese officials […]
WASHINGTON: The second comprehensive report to Congress on the Pentagon’s aviation fleet paints a pretty robust picture of the fleet in most respects all the way out to 2043. But there’s a rub: like the Obama Administration’s budget request, the report doesn’t take sequestration into effect. (You can read the report below.) DoD Aircraft Report […]
PARIS: Every American defense company here wants to sell more weapons to foreign buyers in the Middle East and in Asia as they seek to compensate for flat or declining sales in the United States. Every European defense company wants to sell more weapons to foreign buyers in the Middle East and in Asia as […]