Born as what most thought was a joke in March 2018, President Trump’s Space Force had by June become a White House directive to the Pentagon. Since then the Trump Administration has been considering possible variants in the Force’s subordination, authorities, size, and budget, while Acting SecDef Shanahan has already created a working group to […]
The "separate but equal" sixth service (don't forget the Coast Guard) will be created in stages, because, as Pence finally admitted publicly, it "requires Congressional action." And, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, admitted today, if Congress passed the relevant laws in a year that would "unprecedented."
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.
If we’re lucky, the fourth Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) will encourage a reawakening of strategic analysis and renewed efforts to assess the role of nuclear weapons in US national security. If we’re not, and this is more likely, we’ll find ourselves awash in time-worn arguments about assured destruction, limited war, arms limitation, modernization, and morality. […]
SPACE SYMPOSIUM: Offensive war in space is one of the truly hot button defense policy issues. Advocates say it is inevitable. Opponents say it violates the ideal of a cosmos marked for exploration and peaceful coexistence. Some say war in space would violate the Outer Space Treaty, which bars nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass […]
One of the major shifts in American intelligence after the terror attacks of 911 was the creation of the Director of National Intelligence and a whole new agency to serve him in his task of ensuring America’s 17 intelligence agencies (including the DNI) played well together, effectively shared information and didn’t waste too much in […]
GEOINT: For the first time, all the nation’s spy satellites and the military’s satellites will be tracked from a single location, allowing the two communities to develop tactics, techniques and procedures together, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work said here today. “But the thing we need most is a space operations center, and we are intent […]
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
COLORADO SPRINGS: The United States has tripled its spending on offensive space control and “active defense” weaponry since 2013 in the last two years. It plans to spend “a majority” of $150-plus million pool of funding on them over the next five years, part of a broad and fast-moving shift in US space priorities. The relevant budget line rose from $9.5 […]
The DC debate on the Navy’s new nuclear missile submarines has been about how we can possibly pay for them. In this op-ed, however, frequent Breaking Defense contributor Bob Butterworth takes a step back to look at a much bigger picture. The Navy’s recent admission that it can’t afford the Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) is […]
When talking about nuclear policies and programs, defense leaders often emphasize that “the Cold War is over.” But given a chance to explain what is strategically different and how policies and programs need to be changed, they duck and cover. Take, for example, a recent congressional hearing on the B61 nuclear bomb. The Defense and […]