CEO for Saudi defense heavyweight SAMI talks Alsalam purchase, Turkish drones, global ambition

CEO for Saudi defense heavyweight SAMI talks Alsalam purchase, Turkish drones, global ambition
CEO for Saudi defense heavyweight SAMI talks Alsalam purchase, Turkish drones, global ambition

“Whether it’s a vehicle land vehicle, a futuristic UAV that is a concept, some C4I systems, C2 systems, smaller versions of UAVs, converting a manned boat to unmanned boat — we’ve done it, it’s us. The shift is already happening,” Saudi Arabian Military Industries CEO Walid Abukhaled told Breaking Defense.

Trump OK’s Huge Industrial Base Study: Rollout May Be Delayed

Trump OK’s Huge Industrial Base Study: Rollout May Be Delayed
Trump OK’s Huge Industrial Base Study: Rollout May Be Delayed

President Trump approved a major study of America’s national security economy last week after meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. But Hurricane Florence might have something to say about when it’s released!

Eurosatory 2018:  Innovating Today to Conquer Tomorrow

Eurosatory 2018:  Innovating Today to Conquer Tomorrow
Eurosatory 2018:  Innovating Today to Conquer Tomorrow

EUROSATORY: Like all military shows, Eurosatory – the French equivalent to the big AUSA annual meeting in the United States – takes the pulse of the land warfare market both from a technological and geopolitical point of view. Far from being exhaustive given the size of the show and the scope of such an endeavor,…

Trump Says Troops Heading to Border

Trump Says Troops Heading to Border
Trump Says Troops Heading to Border

Will Trump rip a page from the Obama playbook in sending troops to the border with Mexico?

Navy League Denounces Trump’s Coast Guard Cuts

Navy League Denounces Trump’s Coast Guard Cuts
Navy League Denounces Trump’s Coast Guard Cuts

WASHINGTON: The Navy League of the United States just issued a withering denunciation of President Trump‘s proposed $1.3 billion cut to the Coast Guard. Trump’s 2018 budget plan has already come under fire from both sides. Democrats reject it for cutting domestic spending too much. Pro-military Republicans reject it for raising defense too little. The Republican…

Civil Liberties Debate Coming On Drone, Sat Photos

Civil Liberties Debate Coming On Drone, Sat Photos
Civil Liberties Debate Coming On Drone, Sat Photos

GEOINT: Small satellites — thousands of them, spinning round the Earth, taking endless photos from low earth and sun-synchronous orbits. Drones flying round neighborhoods or sitting on your windowsill and taking photos or relaying imagery. And you thought the NSA program that scooped up your phone’s metadata was intrusive? When most Americans think of privacy and…

Carter Details Cyber, Intel Strikes Against Daesh At NORTHCOM Ceremony

Carter Details Cyber, Intel Strikes Against Daesh At NORTHCOM Ceremony
Carter Details Cyber, Intel Strikes Against Daesh At NORTHCOM Ceremony

PETERSEN AFB: As he welcomed America’s first female combatant commander, NORTHCOM‘s new leader Gen. Lori Robinson, Defense Secretary Ash Carter detailed publicly some of the cyber attacks against Daesh — what his deputy called “cyber bombs” — that US forces have launched in recent months. “We’re using these tools to deny the ability of ISIL leadership…

Aegis Ashore: Navy Needs Relief From Land

Aegis Ashore: Navy Needs Relief From Land
Aegis Ashore: Navy Needs Relief From Land

CAPITOL HILL: Take my mission — please. The armed services are notorious for overselling their capabilities and grabbing turf to justify budgets. But when it comes to ballistic missile defense, the Navy feels so overburdened that it is talking up land-based alternatives as superior to its vaunted Aegis ships. [Click here for Part I of this…

Flynn’s Last Interview: Iconoclast Departs DIA With A Warning

Flynn’s Last Interview: Iconoclast Departs DIA With A Warning
Flynn’s Last Interview: Iconoclast Departs DIA With A Warning

In this exclusive exit interview with Breaking Defense contributor James Kitfield, the outgoing chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, talks about metastasizing Islamic terrorism, his struggles to reform intelligence-gathering, and the risk of lurching from crisis to crisis in an Internet-accelerated world.  – the editors. “Disruptive.” That’s how Michael Flynn’s enemies…

US Flying Blind To Looming Terror Plots

US Flying Blind To Looming Terror Plots
US Flying Blind To Looming Terror Plots

There’s an old trope in intelligence circles that defenders have to be right all the time, while the terrorists only need to get lucky once to execute a successful attack. The knowledge that no one is right all the time makes most counterterrorism experts cautiously pessimistic about the likelihood of another successful terrorist attack on…

NGAUS Head Knocks Senior Pentagon Leaders On Army Budget Battle

NGAUS Head Knocks Senior Pentagon Leaders On Army Budget Battle
NGAUS Head Knocks Senior Pentagon Leaders On Army Budget Battle

CAPITOL HILL: When the armed services come here to make their case to Congress, the Army tends to be the elephant: huge, grey, and kind of clumsy. But this year, as the regular Army heads into what will likely be a bitter battle over fiscal 2015 funding with the Army National Guard, the service’s leadership…

Hagel, Dempsey Cut OSD Staff, Reorg Homeland & Cyber

Hagel, Dempsey Cut OSD Staff, Reorg Homeland & Cyber
Hagel, Dempsey Cut OSD Staff, Reorg Homeland & Cyber

PENTAGON: The world’s biggest office building is about to get a little less busy. Starting today, the Office of the Secretary of Defense is going to shrink by about 200 government personnel and a to-be-determined number of contractors by 2019, Sec. Chuck Hagel announced this afternoon. Reducing OSD’s staff below 2,200 is just the start of…

North Korean Nuclear Threat Drives Army Wargame; Service Shifts To Rebuild WMD Skills

ARMY WAR COLLEGE: Hours before Pyongyang conducted its latest nuclear test, military officers here at the Army War College began waging a wargame whose classified scenario is transparently concerned with North Korea. That is not happenstance. [Click here for more coverage of the Army’s “Winter Wargame”] After a decade of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and…

Northrop Shows Off Smaller, Modular Robot For Tighter Budgets

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB: Since 9/11, robots have become commonplace tools for the military, police bomb squads, and hazardous materials teams. But as budgets tighten, not even the Pentagon can afford to buy many types of robots, each for a different mission. So Northrop Grumman’s subsidiary, Remotec, is rolling out a new robot called Titus specifically…