Latest News
AFA WINTER, ORLANDO, FLA.: The Air Force has launched a major effort to craft a new strategy and new efforts to better plan how it will spend its money, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said today. “The question for us now is, what is next? Is it strategic agility, cyber-centric operations, blended…
By Colin Clark
AUSA WINTER, HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: Fear is in the air. “The commercial base will disappear,” Boeing executive James Moran believes. It’s not just sequestration, the retired brigadier general said this morning at the Association of the US Army’s winter conference. There is real anxiety among defense contractors that as budgets tighten, the Army will starve private…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.New Army mounted system won’t play favorites when it comes to C5ISR, EW and A-PNT
The CMOSS Mounted Form Factor will facilitate tech insertion for new capabilities while co-existing with the Mounted Family of Computer Systems.
[UPDATED 6:30 pm] HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: The ever-beleaguered Army has a reputation — not undeserved — for being bland, conformist, and bureaucratic, an organization where brilliant mavericks are forced to retire at colonel and the guys who make general don’t rock the boat. Just ask any of the long-serving and long-suffering officers convening here in Huntsville, home…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: A member of Congress, Rep. Randy Forbes, is so concerned about a new Navy program and its future importance that he has written Navy Secretary Ray Mabus about the requirements of the service’s promising drone known as UCLASS. (Scroll down to read the full document). This is the second time Forbes, chairman of…
By Colin Clark
MQ-9B: A proven multi-mission, multi-domain UAS scaled to protect Europe and beyond
Flying MQ-9B in place of larger maritime patrol aircraft costs less and extends the sensing and endurance possible alongside those high-value platforms.
Multi-Domain Operations: Global C2 and Joint Operations
VIENNA: The UN atomic watchdog will still have a hard time answering crucial questions about whether Iran seeks nuclear weapons despite winning better access for inspectors, the UN’s top inspector Yukiya Amano told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview Monday at the agency’s headquarters here. Amano said the main problem going forward is that…
By Michael Adler
WASHINGTON: Breaking Defense pretty much ignored the error-ridden piece that Vanity Fair ran about the F-35. We yawned when the Washington Post spent six months investigating the program and came up with a decent summary of the program and not much more. So when 60 Minutes, still the biggest name in TV news, finally ran its…
By Colin Clark
How military GPS is revolutionizing warfare and thwarting emerging threats
BAE Systems’ NavStorm™-M now provides advanced, tailored solutions for everyone in the M-Code space.
Imagine you’re a military supply officer, weary but proud as you watch the train you’ve laboriously loaded with gear roll out of the depot towards the front. And then you realize: You packed the wrong tank. Now you need to get that vehicle off and the right vehicle on — while the train’s already leaving…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: This town needs another lobbying organization like I need another hole in my head. But when everyone else has a “grass roots” group to help make their case to Congress, not having your own is a form of unilateral disarmament — an especially bad idea in a time of escalating budget wars. “Having a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Breaking Defense daily newsletter
We will never sell or share your information without your consent. See our privacy policy.
Forward Observer: Technologies for 21st Century Security
Sponsored by
View all →
At 11 years old, the robot helicopter called the MQ-8 Fire Scout is a at least a preadolescent. But ever since the reconnaissance drone’s first flight in 2002, it’s had one big problem: It’s a little bit…little. So, at the Navy’s request, manufacturer Northrop Grumman basically did a brain transplant. It put the Fire Scout’s…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Special operations types — like those who found and killed Osama bin Laden –may stand tall and do amazing things sometimes, but they tend to be fairly plain spoken. You rarely hear them say something is “astounding,” especially a new weapon. For example, one special operator recently awarded the Silver Star said he would…
By Colin Clark
As America winds up its 13-year war in Afghanistan, where do things stand? “I leave this Saturday night [for Helmand province] to meet the governor and the provincial police chief,” Gen. James Amos said this afternoon. “My sense is, it’s about” — and here he paused — “it’s about as good as it’s going to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
After the US Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was murdered in Benghazi, the call went out to beef up America’s ability to respond rapidly to smaller attacks and crises. The Marines created a new Special Purpose force. This is the first time anyone has gotten interviews with anyone but the commander in the Marines’…
By Murielle Delaporte
It’s a delicate time for the Navy’s controversial Littoral Combat Ship, largely because of acting Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox. It was Fox who wrote the memo directing the Navy to slash its long-term LCS buy from 52 vessels to 32. So we’d love to know how strained the smiles were yesterday when Fox stepped aboard…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
With AI and computer vision, almost any platform can be autonomous
The use of computer vision and perceptive autonomy can have a profound impact on speeding the Observe, Orient, Decide and Act (OODA) loop.
Bob Butterworth knows nuclear weapons. He know cyber weapons. He knows space. He knows intelligence. And Butterworth cares enough to take public risks, to speak plainly in hopes others will do the same and thus help the country find the best answers to tough problems. While the American public has little idea it’s happening, a…
By Bob Butterworth