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.
"From the evidence we have available, it sure looks like Russia is a bigger counterspace threat than China, which is contrary to a lot of the public discussion that focuses almost entirely on China," said SWF's Brian Weeden.
"We have hardpoints on the C-17; We have hardpoints on the KC-46. It's not a hard stretch to think that we could put one or two missiles on there for self defense," says AMC head Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost.
It's been a whirlwind of a year — and the defense establishment has plenty of thoughts on how it's unfolded and what might come next.
"We need to move away from these single point demos to true scalability," Jean-Charles Ledé, AFRL's advisor on autonomy tech, says.
"This is a new effort, as the expanded mission now goes beyond a strict MQ-9 replacement," an AFLCMC spokesperson said. "This endeavor serves to explore concepts that address capability gaps of legacy platforms against increasingly sophisticated threats in denied, contested, and highly contested environments."
"If there is an aircraft capable of launching an air-launched anti satellite weapon operating in the air domain, we need to know about it," SPACECOM deputy Lt. Gen. John Shaw says.
Each service has unique problems to solve and billions invested in legacy systems. "I just can't throw away everything we own -- nor can the Air Force -- and start over," Gen. Mike Murray, head of Army Futures Command, says. "How does the Air Force architecture integrate with the Army architecture, with the Navy architecture?"
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
It's sort of like we're exclusively dating. We agreed to not see other people right now but we haven't committed to anything else yet," explained one Lockheed Martin official.
GAO notes that efforts to defend against Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles are much less mature than offensive efforts, with much less funding. Only 12 of 70 projects tracked by GAO related to defenses; DoD requested $207 million in 2021 for hypersonic defense, up from $157 million in 2020.
"The biggest potential challenge is that these modernization elements don't reach the warfighter as quickly as they'd hoped," one expert said.
Rather than wait for a much-delayed Air Force system, the Army's plan is to deploy Generation 1 of its new receiver this year, starting with the 2nd Calvary Regiment, the 1st Armored Division, and the 1st Infantry Division.
Cyber resilience has become a frontline mission for the US military. Breaking Defense’s new eBook rounds up key reporting from the 2025 Alamo ACE conference with the latest developments in cyber offense and defense.
The sixth ABMS onramp "was going to be in partnership with Australia, and allies and partners, in the Pacific Rim," Air Force Chief Architect Preston Dunlap said, but "just due to the budget constraints, we had to pull the plug on that."
"Adversary use of disinformation, misinformation and propaganda poses one of today's greatest challenges to the United States, not just to the Department of Defense," said Pentagon official Chris Maier.
"The technical goal of MixComm’s work with DARPA under this effort is to try and simultaneously push the bandwidth, efficiency, and linearity of millimeter wave (mmWave) power amplifiers," said DARPA's Tim Hancock. "This has direct applicability to 5G."
The emerging Indo-Pacific Warfighting Concept has been drafted, but still has "a ways to go as far as working through the Department of Defense," says INDOPACOM's head of requirements, George Ka'iliwai.