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![Gen. Mike Hostage On The F-35; No Growlers Needed When War Starts](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/06/F-35A-pair-225x150.jpg)
For years, the news about the most expensive conventional weapons system in US history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has been driven by its soaring costs, technical problems and schedule screw-ups. The government and Congress and the public rarely speak about what the F-35 will do, how effectively it could destroy an enemy’s air defenses, shoot down…
By Colin Clark![‘A God’s Eye View Of The Battlefield:’ Gen. Hostage On The F-35](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/02/f-35-20120503ogr159001-225x150.jpg)
For years, the news about the most expensive conventional weapons system in US history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has been driven by its enormous cost, design, and schedule screw-ups. The Pentagon and Congress and the public have rarely spoken about what the F-35 would do, how effectively it could destroy an enemy’s air defenses,…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: The People’s Liberation Army has practiced jamming GPS signals, according to a Pentagon report today. The Chinese are testing those and other electronic warfare weapons and they have “proven effective.” China plans to launch 100 satellites through 2015, including “imaging, remote sensing, navigation, communication, and scientific satellites, as well as manned spacecraft,” says a…
By Colin Clark![Breaking The Prison Of Our Own High-Tech Success](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/05/CLT-FST-leader-battle-tracking-friendly-maneuver-elements-on-ground-post-insert-via-tablet1-e1402000910618-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: High-ranking officials and blue-ribbon commissions have spent decades trying to reform how the Defense Department develops new technologies, buys them, sustains them, and controls their export abroad. Almost everyone has failed. Why? Ben Fitzgerald says they’re thinking too small. “Hey guys, this is actually a strategic issue. It’s not just an acquisition issue or…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Multi-Domain Operations: Global C2 and Joint Operations
![Future Vertical Lift: One Program Or Many?](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/06/Bell-V-280-Valor-Future-Vertical-Lift-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: What is Future Vertical Lift? There is no one answer, but rather a range of possibilities. At one extreme is a single mega-program, building four variants for the four services to replace a host of existing helicopters, a vision in some ways even more ambitious than the long-troubled tri-service Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). At the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.![Intelsat Readies For ‘Epic’ Foray Into Military SatCom](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/06/Intelsat-Epic-Satellite-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: For more than a decade, the US military has fumbled and groped and stumbled and, gradually, figured out ways to buy a mix of commercial satellite communications and dedicated military satellites so it could communicate and watch video from Predator, Global Hawk, and Reaper drones in theaters where military bandwidth was precious. For much…
By Colin Clark![USDI Vickers’ Top Threats: Terrorists, Syria, Russian ‘Revanchism’](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2011/11/unified-commandworld-mapjpeg-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: If you want to understand why President Obama spoke so much about terrorism in his widely panned West Point speech, the head of Pentagon intelligence explained it pretty well today. Terrorism is and remains the top threat to the United States, Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Mike Vickers said this morning at the Center for…
By Colin Clark![Speed Kills: The Case For Hypersonic Weapons](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/05/boeingx51-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: “I believe, today, we could build a Mach 5 cruise missile [with] off-the-shelf materials,” said Charles Brink of the Air Force Research Laboratory. “We could go 500 nautical miles in 10 minutes.” Brink should know: He ran AFRL’s record-breaking X-51 program. Now AFRL and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are co-funding a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.![New NSA, CyberCom Chief Tells Workforce: Forget Snowden, Do The Mission](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/01/Adm.-Mike-Rogers-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: “One of the things I try to tell the work force out there is this is not what is going to define us,” said Adm. Mike Rogers, new head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. After two months in the job — and halfway through this morning’s Q&A at a Bloomberg Government…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Forward Observer: Technologies for 21st Century Security
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![Tish Long Leaving NGA; DNI’s Robert Cardillo Will Be New Director](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2012/07/obama-uses-tablet-for-intelligence-briefing-225x150.jpg)
UPDATED: With DNI Clapper’s Comments WASHINGTON: Robert Cardillo, the man who has organized President Obama’s daily intelligence briefing and brought the first tablet to the White House for a president to see intelligence product firsthand, will be named the new director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Cardillo, the current Deputy Director of National Intelligence for…
By Colin Clark![The Limits Of Lasers: Missile Defense At Speed Of Light](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2012/04/navy-experimental-laser-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: Ronald Reagan’s dream of lasers that can shoot down incoming missiles is about to become reality — to an extent. The Navy will deploy a low-power prototype to the Persian Gulf this summer and it sees real potential to zap drones, small boats, and anti-ship cruise missiles. But experts assembled at this week’s Atlantic…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.![F-35B Will Fly, Hover, Not Land Vertically At RIAT, Farnborough](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/03/f-35blanding2-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: Will the F-35B land vertically at the Royal International Air Tattoo or the Farnborough Air Show? No. Will it hover? Yes. One of my colleagues had raised the issue that the F-35B will not perform a vertical landing this July, inferring this might be because it would damage the plane or the runway. F-35 program…
By Colin Clark![Trust, Not Tech, Big Problem Building Missile Defenses Vs. Iran, North Korea](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2012/11/142914569-225x150.jpg)
WASHINGTON: Missile defense is notoriously technically challenging, but sometimes the biggest problem isn’t tech, but trust. Even the most advanced systems can’t stop Iranian or North Korean missiles if America’s allies can’t cooperate to integrate those systems into a regional defense, because ballistic missiles can move too fast and far for a single country to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.![BAE Bids, General Dynamics Drops Out Of Army’s Biggest Vehicle Program, AMPV](https://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/05/BAE-AMPV-ambulance-turretless-Bradley-CJ_01495-225x150.jpg)
General Dynamics said today it will not bid for the Army’s largest combat vehicle program, the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle. Nor will GD take the government to court to try to change the terms of the competition, despite having denounced them as intolerably tilted towards competitor BAE Systems and protested, unsuccessfully, to the Army. With bids…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.