The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group (CSG) and the French Charles de Gaulle CSG are cooperating at levels of integration rarely achieved in the past. Indeed, “it is at the request of US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie to the French Army deputy commander for Air-Land operations (SCOAT for ‘’sous chef des opérations aéroterrestres de l’armée de Terre’’) that the French Air Naval Group (GAN for ‘’groupe aéronaval’’) assume command of US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT)’s Task Force (CFT) 50 from March 31st till April 24th’’, explains a French military officer.
By Murielle DelaporteEnterprise-wide training: the Army’s $3.5B program for multi-service combat readiness
The competition for Warfighter Training and Readiness Solutions will bring together training networks, combat training centers and live ranges across the DoD enterprise.
Gen. Joe Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff, spoke last week with a small group of traveling reporters after attending a conference of NATO Military Chiefs in Warsaw, including Breaking Defense contributor James Kitfield. Dunford described Russia’s strategy for pulling NATO apart and reiterated that Moscow poses the single greatest global threat to the UnIted…
By James Kitfield
By most metrics the war in Afghanistan is going badly.
By James Kitfield
For a while, Turkey and Israel were the unexpected couple, the increasingly Muslim state buying the Jewish state’s weapons and Israel offering Turkey a potentially strategic gas and oil pipeline. Today, Israel is reaching out to NATO and Turkish-Israeli relations are increasingly tense.
By Arie Egozi
It’s not that often that a major in the US military — albeit now a reservist — points the finger at the Defense Secretary and says, sir, you’re wrong, and does it in writing and in public. Here you have it. Army Maj. Danny Sjursen, expressing his own unofficial opinions, says Iran is Jim Mattis’…
By Maj. Danny Sjursen
- Air Warfare, Allies, budget, Congress, Global, Land Warfare, Naval Warfare, Networks / Cyber, Space, Threats
A Tough National Defense Strategy
The National Defense Strategy, released this morning, may be the single most important document penned by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It encapsulates the Trump Administration’s defense policies in one place for the first time and provides guidance for the 2019 defense budget, to be released in a few weeks. That budget will mark the administration’s…
By Mark Cancian
A major overhaul is coming in software for missile warning
Space Systems Command’s FORGE program is the first, major missile-warning software modernization effort in 20 years.
UPDATED: Adds Mattis Comment On Allies WASHINGTON: While partisans on both sides will try to recast President Trump’s new legally-mandated National Security Strategy in their own terms, we’re going to try and analyze it in terms of what it actually means. One of the wisest and most rational defense strategists in this country, Anthony Cordesman,…
By Colin Clark
As ISIS goes down to military defeat, the United States requires a longer-range plan and an enduring force presence to deny Iran total victory in Syria. Otherwise, the United States risks losing influence as a new Middle Eastern order is being forged. The last ISIS-occupied towns in Syria and Iraq fell recently, but not to…
By Michael Makovsky, Eric Edelman and Charles Wald
ARLINGTON: Need to shoot down Daesh drones or Russian gunships? Boeing is offering the Army an array of ways to do it, from laser-armed 8×8 Strykers to missile-launching MATV trucks and tracked Bradleys. This September, the Army plans a “shoot off” of competing anti-aircraft systems as it tries to rebuild battlefield air defenses it largely…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The future of the Middle East is currently being determined, in a process that is almost entirely hidden from view. In recent weeks, the gaze of the world has been fixed on the fight against Daesh (aka ISIL), as the end of its occupation in Mosul, Iraq, and the breaching of its defenses in Raqqa,…
By Yaakov Amidror
On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, pulling on the same black uniform and jacket that Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces wore throughout the battle for Mosul, declared the final liberation of the city from Daesh’s (aka ISIL) control. “I announce from here the end and the failure and the collapse of the terrorist state…
By Daniel DePetris
THE NEWSEUM: Artificial intelligence is coming soon to a battlefield near you — with plenty of help from the private sector. Within six months the US military will start using commercial AI algorithms to sort through its masses of intelligence data on the Islamic State. “We will put an algorithm into a combat zone before…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
ARLINGTON: Against terrorists in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, US forces are firing smart weapons like Hellfire missiles as fast as industry can build them — or faster. Against a well-armed adversary like Russia or China, we might run out. That’s why the military is making a major multi-year investment in precision weapons, one that the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
No one knows precisely what happened inside the White House that resulted in President Trump’s sudden about-face on Syria. One day he was planning to extricate American ground troops from Syria; then he wasn’t. Regardless, whoever is urging the president to leave a small contingent of 2,000 lightly armed soldiers and Marines in a remote corner of Syria is doing the president and the nation a grave disservice.
By Doug Macgregor