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.
WASHINGTON: An unnamed contractor in Australia was hacked by an unattributed hacker who stole what the BBC says was “sensitive” information about the F-35 and other Antipodean weapon systems. “It could be one of a number of different actors,” Christopher Pyne, the minister for defense industry, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday. “It could be […]
AUSA: Ellen Lord, the former Textron executive now heading the Pentagon’s acquisition shop, revealed today in her first public appearance since her confirmation that she is making fundamental changes in how the Office of Secretary of Defense starts and manages military weapons programs. This comes on top of internal Army reforms announced here by the […]
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
AUSA: Lockheed Martin company Sikorsky and teammate Boeing are taking a deliberate approach to building their prototype for the Army-led Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program, the SB>1 Defiant, officials told our contributor Richard Whittle when he visited their booth. Based on Sikorsky’s award-winning X2 technology demonstrator, the Defiant is a compound helicopter with coaxial rotors […]
AUSA: Faced with a grave threat from Russian advances in electronic warfare over the last five years, the US Army really will develop a useful, effective and adaptable tactical network after a decade of missteps and failures. Really. [Click here to download our free ebook on the Army’s network travails] “The urgency of now is […]
AUSA: T.R. Fehrenbach’s seminal history, “This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness” was center stage during Defense Secretary Jim Mattis‘ opening speech here this morning. The message to Congress and the American people, as well as the Army, seemed clear: war against North Korea is possible, though we’ll do everything possible short of war […]
WASHINGTON: Yesterday was what we’ll call Space Day for the Trump Administration, with perhaps the most national attention ever paid to military and intelligence space in public by the senior officials of a White House and the military. Here’s a summary of the news from the meeting of the reborn Space Council and a later […]
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
WASHINGTON: That rumble under your feet you sensed this morning was the earthquake caused by the decision of one of America’s closest allies, Saudis Arabia, to join Turkey in buying Russia’s vaunted S-400 surface to air missile system. The announcement carried extra diplomatic weight as Saudi King Salman was visiting Russia when the Saudis made […]
WASHINGTON: We knew space was congested, contested and all that. But the folks at CSIS have recast that to good effect in a report actually worth reading in detail. The Second Space Age (yes, they’ve come up with a catchy rubric!) is, they say, more diverse, disruptive, disordered, and dangerous than the first space age.” How […]
WASHINGTON: No other administration would have tried to save money on Lockheed Martin’s F-35, according to President Donald Trump. Now, on its face that may not be so surprising a claim from Trump. But he made it during an appearance at the Luis Muñiz Air National Guard Base in Puerto Rico to show support for the people […]
WASHINGTON: As President Donald Trump discovered after he cobbled together all those arms sales when he visited Saudi Arabia, selling weapons to foreigners is a complex business, fraught with congressional oversight and an intricate interagency process. As he has with so many other government issues, Trump appears eager to reduce interference from other branches of […]
The GPS network continues to prove its unmatched reliability, and it’s only getting stronger.
PENTAGON: It’s always difficult to tell when the military is covering its tuckus and when it’s just being careful. So when the outgoing head of the Air Force press desk, Col. Patrick Ryder, told reporters this afternoon that the service had not made any decision about whether to go ahead with a combat test of […]
WASHINGTON: After almost a decade of reporting on the Army’s crucial networks, I’d thought they’d started to get things right. Boy, was I wrong. At a hearing this afternoon of the House Armed Services air and land subcommittee, the Army left lawmakers shaking their heads when they announced they plan to shut down the controversial […]
WASHINGTON: Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that the White House had decided not to include aerial refueling as a capability for the next Air Force One fleet. Why? To save money. President Donald Trump has apparently made the decision, reflected by this decision and the […]
WASHINGTON: You’d think Boeing and the Air Force would have learned from Lockheed Martin’s experience with the F-35 and concurrency, which Vice Adm. James Venlet identified six years ago in our pages as a fundamental “miscalculation” in the Joint Strike Fighter program. The issue came to light Friday during a conversation about the KC-46 tanker […]