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.
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has started to caveat its grand strategic mantra of a “pivot to Asia” – i.e. shifting from the land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to preparing for “AirSea Battle” against China. In the Defense Budget Priorities released yesterday and, most critically, in Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s press conference explaining them, the emphasis…
The U.S. Army has always struggled with what the elder George Bush once called “the vision thing.” Now that struggle is boiling over. At the latest of a series of conferences on the future of the Army, junior officers openly debated with top generals over how to sell the service to the Congress, the country,…
Just before the New Year, the U.S. Air Force finally selected a new Light Air Support plane for ground attack in counterinsurgency, picking the Brazilian Super Tucano over the American AT-6– whose manufacturer, Wichita, Kan.-based Hawker Beechcraft, is filing suit over the decision [update: leading the Air Force to issue a stop-work order on the…
The Department of Defense is on the defensive nowadays, with everybody braced for cuts. The Army already has marching orders to reduce its manpower from the current 565,000 active-duty personnel to 520,000, and no one expects it to stop there. But some Army leaders are looking past the lean years and planning how to build…
With the regular Army shedding personnel to fit in ever-tighter budgets, the U.S. Army Reserve is positioning itself as a low-cost way to keep skilled, experienced veterans associated with the military. The plan, in a nutshell: If you can’t keep ’em in the regular Army, keep ’em in the Reserves. Today, only 9 percent of…
With budgets falling and China rising, the U.S. Army wants in on the one theater where President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have promised to keep investing: the Pacific. The world’s largest ocean is not an obvious fit for America’s land forces. So far, it is the Air Force and the Navy that have…
National Defense University: We’re going to do downsizing right: That’s the essence of the pledge made today by the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Policy, Michèle Flournoy. It won’t be an easy one to keep. Flournoy talked to reporters here after she spoke to an NDU conference on “grand strategy. While the military’s top civilian strategist…
Washington: The Army faces one of the great post-war declines in budget and people, a time of great uncertainty. How should it cope? The Army can’t just go into a defensive crouch and try protecting what it has, argued a high-powered group of retired generals: The service’s top leaders must articulate a positive vision of…
The Army has launched a major effort to strengthen its seven thousand infantry squads — an effort that will require overcoming cultural and bureaucratic resistance to succeed. Light-infantry traditionalists will have to get over their longstanding suspicion of digital technology both on the battlefield and in training, which will increasingly rely on simulations. Tech geeks…
Washington: The balance between the Army’s resources and its commitments is “precarious” even as the number of soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan declines, because the total size of the Army is going down at the same time. If the demand for troops continues to drop as planned, Army leaders say they should be able…
The military’s retirement system is a mess. But the current proposals to fix it have a hidden agenda. No, I’m not talking about cutting benefits to save money. That’s the stated agenda, which is sure to get attention in this cash-strapped era. But cutting a benefit paid out over decades, throughout a beneficiary’s lifetime, won’t…
Americans are understandably weary of our nation’s longest war. But even when the last troops come home from Afghanistan – which they won’t for at least three years – their battles won’t be over, and they’ll still need our support. Just as there are almost three million World War II veterans still alive today, we…
America’s soldiers have learned a lot over the last 10 years, most of it the hard way, but that irreplaceable expertise could walk out the door in the coming drawdown if the Army doesn’t figure out how to manage its people better. Despite everything else that’s changed since September 2001, the ugly reality of 2011…
The Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle program may be running aground before it can even sign a development contract. And that’s a tragedy. A decade of casualties from improvised roadside bombs – simple weapons easily replicated by any future enemy – has shown that what the U.S. military needs most is the very thing the Ground…
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
