Oshkosh has just started delivering Joint Light Tactical Vehicles to replace the military’s iconic and under-armored Humvee, but it’s already got its sights — literally — on the next big thing. The Army is looking for a Light Reconnaissance Vehicle to scout ahead of its infantry units, and after exploring a purpose-built vehicle, it decided […]
WASHINGTON: Cut the red wire? Cut the blue wire? That classic action movie dilemma isn’t even on the table for bomb squads using current robots, which can drag the bomb away from people or blast it with a shotgun. That’s what Harris has developed its T7 Explosive Ordnance Disposal robot, which has fingers — sort of. The […]
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
WASHINGTON: It looks like a tank, drives on tracks like a tank, fires 120 mm shells at several times the speed of sound like a tank — but don’t call it a tank. The General Dynamics “Griffin” is a kind of concept car on steroids, a demonstration of existing technologies that could be quickly fit […]
AUSA: I’m not a pilot, but today I played a copilot in a flight simulator Bell Helicopter brought to the Association of the United States Army annual convention to show what its next tiltrotor, the V-280 Valor, will be able to do. As my pilot in the simulator, former Army aviator and test pilot Steve Kihara, […]
Small is beautiful, even at the largest defense show of the year. Polaris Defense makes off-road vehicles — light and rugged enough to drop from airplanes — in service with US Special Operations Command and various allied nations. The “Big Army” is considering the Polaris DAGOR, among other competitors, to carry airborne troops and other […]
WASHINGTON: Congress hasn’t passed a budget for 2017, but we’re already hearing rumblings of the 2018 budget war coming from inside the Pentagon. The Army needs to radically overhaul its equipment, training, and even its culture for chaotic future conflicts against high-end adversaries like Russia and China, the largest service’s top leaders said today. But […]
Do more with less: streamline workflows, reduce duplication, invest upfront to save long-term.
With the Association of the US Army’s annual conference starting Monday, there is no better time for an analysis of the top modernization program for Army aviation. And we’ve got one of the top experts on helicopters providing the commentary, Mike Hirschberg of the American Helicopter Society International. Should the Army plow ahead with an engine upgrade […]
ARLINGTON: Two recent contracts make clear the military radar industry is shifting to a new gold standard, a once-obscure material called Gallium Nitride. GaN, a high-efficiency semiconductor, makes radar transmitters much more powerful without using more electricity. Industry consultant Loren Thompson once told us it was “the biggest thing since silicon.” Just in time for […]
After a generation spent fighting guerrillas, the Marines have just rolled out a new concept for high-tech combat against a nation-state — a concept they’re developing in unusually close concert with the Army and Navy. “There’s a lot of Navy in it,” said Marine Corps Commandant Robert Neller, introducing the new Marine Corps Operating Concept […]
Days before the biggest defense conference of the year, one of the Army’s top thinkers is unveiling the service’s new push to expand its role beyond its traditional domain — land — to air, sea, space, and cyberspace. Even as the US defense budget shrinks, the Army is prioritizing new investments in downing drones, hacking networks, jamming […]
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.