This fall’s experiment will study how the Army’s own weapons can share target data, Gen. Murray said, but in 2021 he wants to add the Air Force’s ABMS network.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“It was developed for a very specific threat and it does incredible things…we intend to operate it differently — in support of an Army on the move. It’s not just going to be static.”
By Paul McLearyAt issue is not just this particular program, but the much wider question of how a Pentagon testing apparatus designed for big industrial age programs can keep up with the much faster and more fluid upgrade cycles of information technology.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.The Army must take risks to modernize, the Futures Command chief said, and the modernization effort will survive the inevitable failures along the way.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.The new approach will focus on an urgent but largely unmet threat: Russian and Chinese cruise missiles.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.For Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, when the organization he’s led for 31 months changed its name, its mission, and the four-star headquarters it works for, it finally found the answer to a question it – and the entire Army – have been struggling with for at least 16 years.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) must have enough artificial intelligence to fly unmanned at least part of the time, a secure network to control drones, and combination of speed and range that’s impossible for traditional helicopters.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.One Army weapon would be a hypersonic missile, tearing through missile defenses at Mach 5-plus to kill critical hardened targets such as command bunkers. The other would use a gun barrel to launch cheaper, slower missiles at larger numbers of softer targets like radars and missile launchers.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“CFTs (Cross Functional Teams) and Army Futures Command will always have a place on my schedule and the chief’s schedule,” Esper said. Over time, he said, “it becomes a routine… the expectation not just for AFC and the CFTs, but for future service secretaries and future chiefs of staff.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“There are ways to be innovative in the Army,” retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr said. But you have to protect the innovators from the institutional culture of the Pentagon: “You can send them someplace else, like Austin.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“We were never above probably a total of eight people,” the aviation Cross Functional Team chief, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, told me. “We’re not this big colossal thing, we’re a lean, mean organization.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.