The Marines want Vertical Launch System missile tubes on their new amphibious ships — but the Navy isn’t planning to leave room for them.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Display screens are the eyes for maneuver forces needing to command and control
The Army is upfitting vehicles with big 24 or 32-inch displays that present multiple sources of data for a full operational picture.
“The Army is looking at this too but probably on a different timeline — the Marine Corps wants to get after this pretty quickly.”
By Paul McLeary
As President Trump pushes Beijing on trade and cyber espionage, the United States and China are on a collision course. The U.S. urgently needs a new strategy to avoid the traditional fate of rising and status quo powers: catastrophic war.
By James Kitfield
Smart missiles to strike hard targets hundreds of miles away. Wireless links to pull data from stealth fighters and foot soldiers alike. Command posts agile enough to coordinate it all — not only in open war, but in the ambiguous “grey zone” of hacking, proxy warfare, and Twitter trolls. That’s just a few of the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
There are times and places in the history of war in which improvements in firepower force anyone in range to take cover instead of advancing, as machineguns and howitzers did a century ago on the infamous Western Front. The fundamental difference today is the width of the killing zone would be measured, not in hundreds or thousands of yards, but in hundreds or thousands of miles.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
DETROIT: The Artificial Intelligence the military needs most is not some kind of killer robot, the Army’s three-star senior futurist told me today. The Army really needs AI to make sense of lots of data, fast, so commanders and quartermasters can send the right forces with the right supplies to the right place on the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
But while the skies are quiet today, US Pacific Air Forces are preparing for possible conflict: fielding new weapons like the F-35 stealth fighter and the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), adding more space-operations planners to theater staffs, and reemphasizing that old-fashioned initiative so junior commanders can act when an enemy cuts off their communications with higher headquarters.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
What weapons and engines will let loyal wingmen drones hit their potential?
In the fourth video in our CCA series, Breaking Defense looks in the details for the future fleet. For the full CCA video series click here.
From militarized atolls in the South China Sea to a growing Chinese navy looking increasingly aggressive, the head of the Indo-Pacom command lays out his needs and concerns.
By Paul McLeary
We explore the possibilities, from cutting-edge hypersonics and 1,000-mile cannon to repackaged Tomahawk cruise missiles and updated Pershing ballstic missiles.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Just as AirLand Battle was aimed straight at the former Soviet Union, with its massed mechanized armies, Multi-Domain Operations is aimed straight at Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with its long-range missiles, electronic/cyber warfare expertise, and Little Green Men.
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: The first-ever real-world strike by an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a big symbolic moment, as the Pentagon is well aware. It’s also a milestone towards making the F-35 a close-support aircraft to bomb targets threatening US ground troops, replacing the beloved A-10 Warthog. That’s why the military not only had a press release…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
“We’re looking at airframes of the future that will have common cockpits, advanced propulsion systems, (and) signature management,” Miller said. The goal “really is understanding (how) to modify or build an airplane that allows us to operate through that threat environment.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
“Look, the Obama administration indicated that Russia was in violation of the INF Treaty four years ago,” said a staffer from the House Armed Services Committee. “If the treaty’s being violated, we have to take steps to ensure that stability some other way.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Loaded with jet fuel, the drones will vastly extend the ranges of carrier-based aircraft operating in the expanses of the western Pacific. That lets the Navy strike deeper into China’s layered defenses while keeping the big decks out of range of most of China’s anti-ship missiles.
By Paul McLeary
