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.
The Air Force will choose a winner in its troubled Light Air Support competition without actually flying the two contending planes, the Embraer Super Tucano and the Hawker-Beechcraft AT-6, and it will even disregard what it has data from the limited “flight demonstration” it conducted last year. That’s a disturbing departure from best practice in…
31 military & vets’ groups of Military Coalition (http://bit.ly/JKN4Ci) write Congress saying "stop sequestration" – http://1.usa.gov/JKMsfV SydneyFreedberg
CSBA talks #lasers @WSJ: http://on.wsj.com/KwEokm. For hoi poloi who can’t get WSJ, we talked to CSBA on this 2 weeks ago: http://bit.ly/JKmni0 SydneyFreedberg
PRATT & WHITNEY ENGINE PLANT, MIDDLETOWN, CONN.: [updated 9:05 am Wednesday with comment from Pratt & Whitney President David Hess] This factory builds jet engines for high-performance fighters — an engine a week for the F-35 alone — but the armed forces might want to take a look at an innovation on Pratt & Whitney’s…
WASHINGTON: State governors are complaining to Congress about Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s offer to give the Air National Guard two dozen C-130 aircraft and add back almost 1,200 jobs, saying it isn’t enough. The president’s budget originally proposed cutting 5,100 Air Guard jobs; last week, Panetta offered to restore 1,179 (by the governors’ count) and…
CAPITOL HILL: After you count up all the cuts and additions in the House Armed Services Committee’s mark-up of the Pentagon budget, the bill appears to authorize $554 billion for national defense (budget function 050). At a time when the Pentagon faces the prospect of mandatory spending cuts of another $53 billion if sequestration happens…
CAPITOL HILL: The odds keep getting better that the Navy will get two Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines in 2014 instead of one, with senators of both parties chiming in this morning to support yesterday’s pro-sub action by the House, and the Navy’s top acquisition official pointedly did not say no. Congress never liked the plan…
WASHINGTON: In an otherwise pro-forma meeting to approve legislative language for the 2013 national defense authorization, the Seapower panel of the House Armed Services Committee paused to add just one amendment to the otherwise unmodified bill: a provision by California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter demanding that the Navy ‘fess up to Congress on problems with…
WASHINGTON: The House Armed Services Committee will authorize — though not require — the Navy to buy 10 Virginia-class attack submarines and 10 Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyers over five years, instead of the nine of each type requested in the President’s budget. While the Navy was open to buying 10 DDGs, the HASC language constitutes…
WASHINGTON: The US Army is traditionally the most low-tech of the four armed services, but the quest for lighter, stronger armor for troops and vehicles alike puts them on the cutting edge of materials science, from advanced ceramics to carbon nanotubes. That’s the reason the Army made an award worth up to $90 million over…
Reported cybersecurity incidents at federal agencies have risen 680 percent in six years, the Government Accountability Organization testified today — and note that key word “reported,” which means that’s just the ones we know about. Nor is the current threat merely the malicious “script kiddies” of yesterday: It’s increasingly hardened criminals and even nation-states, including…
WASHINGTON: With the Taliban reeling, it is the Afghan government’s own corruption that is the biggest threat to US goals and the biggest reason to keep US advisors in place through 2014 and beyond. That’s the verdict of Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan, who just finished a year commanding the international force called Regional Command…
WASHINGTON: Lasers are déclassé even in science-fiction nowadays – the guys in Avatar and Mass Effect shoot bullets – and the big Air Force and Army laser programs of the last decade were ignominiously cancelled. So I was surprised at last week’s Navy League Sea-Air-Space conference to hear “directed energy” technology mentioned by no less…
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI presented integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI presented integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
DoD uses FAR Part 12 acquisitions to save hundreds of millions of dollars in “of a type” systems like civil landing systems with applicability to military aircraft.
DoD uses FAR Part 12 acquisitions to save hundreds of millions of dollars in “of a type” systems like civil landing systems with applicability to military aircraft.
