Theresa Hitchens is the Senior reporter, Space at Breaking Defense. The former Defense News editor was a senior research associate at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). Before that, she spent six years in Geneva, Switzerland as director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).
A sci-fi geek, voracious reader, enthusiastic cook, dabbler in poetry, Theresa is also the proud mom of a wonderful young man by the name of Nicholas.
WASHINGTON: The Air Force plans to expand its “predictive maintenance” using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to another 12 weapon systems, says Lt. Gen. Warren Berry, deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection. “I continue to believe that predictive maintenance is a real game changer for us as an Air Force,” […]
"NGA expects unclassified space-based geospatial data to become ubiquitous and widely available," says NGA's David Gauthier.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
"It's ridiculous, to be quite candid. It is encroachment on roles and missions," says Mitchell Institute's Dave Deptula about Army plans for super long-range weapons that rival the capabilities of Air Force combat aircraft.
The provision seeks to prevent the Nuclear Weapons Council "from further encroaching on the development of the NNSA budget," Kingston Reif, director of arms control and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told Breaking D.
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon should not judge weapon systems on “overly simplistic metrics” but adopt a more holistic evaluation that weighs a weapon’s cost and capabilities against the total costs of achieving the mission, a new paper from the Mitchell Institute argues. “All we ever hear is, that the F-22 and the F-35 are expensive. But […]
"This language from the SASC serves notice that they intend to keep a close eye on the NRO’s commercial remote sensing program," observed Keith Masback, a former senior defense and intelligence official.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
"The compromise still achieves Chairman Inhofe’s goal of giving the Department of Defense more direct involvement in the development of the NNSA budget, but the final approval power still rests with the Secretary of Energy," SASC spokesperson Marta Hernandez says.
SIA is hopeful that the COVID-19 pandemic will have only limited effects on the satellite industry, since it has been "generally deemed essential by governments."
“Agile operations require agile technology. Agile technology requires agile acquisition. Agile acquisition requires agile contracting,” says Air Force Chief Architect Preston Dunlap.
"I've been a huge proponent for colorless money," says AFMC head Gen. Arnold Bunch.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
By deploying smallsats in LEO, operators and users can continually test, demonstrate, and create new procedures for offensive and defensive counter space while inserting new and emerging technology into mission architectures," Hypergiant CEO Ben Lamm says.
Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, head of Air Forces Europe, said allies must be included in JADC2 development: "You can't just bring them in in execution and go: 'Hey we built the plan, so, sorry, just do what we told you."
"I think this shows that the committee is taking the jamming and spoofing threats to GPS seriously, and it is prompting DoD to focus its efforts on countering these threats," Todd Harrison, director of the Defense Aerospace Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says.
The HASC chair's markup chides the GPS III program for "unjustified cost growth" in both Lockheed Martin's GEO-based space segment and Raytheon's OCX.