Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. has written for Breaking Defense since 2011 and served as deputy editor for the site's first decade, covering technology, strategy, and policy with a particular focus on the US Army. He’s now a contributing editor focused on cyber, robotics, AI, and other critical technologies and policies that will shape the future of warfare. Sydney began covering defense at National Journal magazine in 1997 and holds degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and Georgetown.
“I love the cloud, but I don’t have access to the cloud all the time while I’m afloat,” said Rear Admiral Stephen Donald of 10th Fleet. “So I need industry to figure out how to give me a virtual cloud.”
DoD’s new Biomanufacturing Strategy and an accompanying RFI from industry both aim to help companies using biological processes to make potentially revolutionary materials — and to keep them from moving offshore like semiconductors.
For now, says Office of Strategic Capital director Jason Rathje, his three-month-old office will work through existing programs outside the Defense Department, in hopes of boosting investment in critical tech, especially hardware.
NATO is ill-suited to pull off a US-style megaproject for Multi-Domain Operations – but ad hoc, off-the-shelf networking in Ukraine shows another way to speed intel data to combat units.
A ponderous budget process, overspending on old tech, and chronically late appropriations hamstring the Pentagon’s ability to tap into private-sector innovation, according to the foundation’s new scorecard.
Last week, 33 nations called for a global treaty restricting “lethal autonomous weapons.” But US officials warn that such a ban would be both premature and overly narrow, preferring broader but non-binding “best practices” guiding any military employment of AI.
With experienced pilots and ground crew leaving the service in droves, the Army is struggling to balance equipment modernization and unit training for large-scale, drone-driven war.
Assistant Secretary Doug Bush defended the controversial Middle-Tier Acquisition process and said he wanted to use the streamlined Software Pathway more, arguing speed is life on constantly evolving battlefields.
Cyber attacks on Ukraine surged in early 2022, but Russian hackers haven’t sustained that intensity, says a new report from Google’s Mandiant researchers.
F-35s are flying fewer hours and achieving lower readiness rates than earlier fighters did at comparable points in their service lives. In fact, the F-35A and F-35B variants are doing worse than they did in prior years.
The revised DoD Directive 3000.09 refines an obscure review process, adding broad AI ethics principles but still not actually forbidding development or deployment of would-be killer robots.
Global Information Dominance Experiments V through VIII seek to jolt ponderous Pentagon processes into the age of AI, big data, and the cloud, hoping to inform a future meta-network called Joint All Domain Command and Control.
In picking the precise type of M1 tank to send, the US must choose between giving Ukraine the best tech possible and risking the capture of secrets by Russia.
