“The Russians are really good at this, better than us,” said the UK’s Maj. Gen. Felix Gedney, who just wrapped up a year as deputy commander of Operation Inherent Resolve. “We saw a very clever, assiduous information campaign aimed at discrediting the campaign of the coalition. And I would argue in many of our nation’s capitals, we didn’t realize we were being played.”
By Paul McLearyA new approach to speed, scale and efficiency for the industrial base
Radars, EW, EO/IR, space imagery, and microelectronics are brought under one roof for a streamlined approach to common people and factories.
U.S. troops in Syria aren’t going anywhere until Iran leaves the country, a senior Trump administration said Monday as Russia deploys an advanced air defense system that puts U.S. and Israeli pilots at greater risk.
By Paul McLeary
By most metrics the war in Afghanistan is going badly.
By James Kitfield
Project Maven has made huge strides in its first year, but the key is remaining open to updates from whoever has the best idea for new algorithms, and new code, a military leader says.
By Paul McLeary
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
BAE Systems’ LR-PGK: The Superior Anti-Jam Solution
Going the distance to defeat emerging jam threats.
- 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
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
This is one of two pieces by our contributor James Kitfield, who’s won more Gerald Ford Defense Reporting awards than anyone else (3), on the challenges and mistakes America has made in grappling with the complex threat of global terrorism. As James puts it in his summary sentence: U.S. counterterrorism forces continue to learn and adapt…
By James Kitfield
We’re partnering with the Center for Strategic and International Studies to bring you their fab Bad Ideas series through the Christmas holiday season. We don’t usually pay much attention to this sort of operational policy decision — where to operate and with what — but each new location for drone operations can mean a larger…
By Alice Hunt Friend
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
Last month, Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned that if Congress doesn’t “remove the defense caps,” he said, “then we’re questioning whether or not America has the ability to survive.” This claim that insufficient increases in Pentagon spending threatens American security is flatly wrong. The real and present danger to our national security is the…
By Daniel L. Davis
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
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