The wargame will also test new aircraft weapons — a 20 mm cannon and a multi-payload launcher— and a host of electronics enabled by a plug-and-play open architecture, MOSA.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.New drones – launched by helicopters in flight and built by the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office – will reach out “hundreds of kilometers.” Marine F-35s, 82nd Airborne troops, and Special Ops will also participate in exercise EDGE21.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: The US military successfully targeted and destroyed a moving truck from a drone using the missile designed to replace the venerable Hellfire. The Joint Air To Ground Missile (JAGM) was fired May 25 at a truck traveling at 20 mph from a Grey Eagle drone at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The truck was hit and destroyed. Col. James…
By Colin ClarkClassic science fiction imagined evil master computers remote-controlling their mindless robot minions. It imagined good-guy droids that were basically humans in tin suits. But as the actual science of autonomy evolves, reality is looking a lot weirder. The user interface may be in an ordinary Android tablet, but the artificial intelligence itself may reside in…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.: Manned-Unmanned Teaming, when manned aircraft crews control drones from their cockpit, is a child of the drone revolution still in its infancy. So maybe it’s no surprise that Army Apache helicopter units with new AH-64Es equipped to control MQ-1C Grey Eagle armed drones have gotten off to a crawl rather than a run using…
By Richard WhittleThe drone revolution, it appears, came along just in time for the Army. The service’s leaders have decided they can afford neither a new armed scout helicopter nor even the old ones they already own, but there’s always MUM-T — aka Manned Unmanned Teaming, in which manned aircraft work with unmanned aerial systems (UAS), aka…
By Richard WhittleLAS VEGAS: As the Army institutionalizes robotic systems that began as ad hoc expedients for Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chief of Staff wants drones in every combat aviation brigade and every division — even at the price of spreading them thinner across the force. The Army’s first company of Grey Eagle UAVs, a variant of…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: The defense spending bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee today keeps Block 30 Global Hawk drones flying, instead of letting them be warehoused as the Air Force had planned, a congressional source confirmed to Breaking Defense. That is arguably the final flourish on Congress’s utter rejection of the Air Force’s proposed cuts in…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The first person to fire a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone in combat and destroy a target writes here about his experience. Scott Swanson has never written about this before. Read on. The Editor. Flying a Predator drone in combat is nothing like playing a video game. Take it from me, the first person to pull…
By Scott Swanson