To take out Russian and Chinese targets from a thousand miles away, the US Army wants two very different weapons: a hypersonic missile and a giant cannon.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.For all the talk of major changes, the Pentagon is pouring money into some pretty traditional priorities.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“The SOF guys are less risk averse than conventional ground forces, so they’re more apt to push the limit,” said Bob Work, father of the AI-driven Third Offset Strategy. “Their commanders also have embraced AI and autonomous ops…. so I think all the conditions are set for SOF to lead the way in the more direct combat applications of AI and autonomy.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“We need to have any sensor connect to any shooter at very rapid machine-to-machine speed,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said, “if we’re going to multi-domain operations.” But aye, there’s the rub: Are we?
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: The Navy needs to increase both the number and complexity of its wargames, the service’s top admiral said Wednesday, citing rapid advances being made by competitors in cyber and information warfare tactics that will muddy and confuse future battlefields. While Adm. John Richardson didn’t provide any details to flesh out his thinking during an…
By Paul McLearyThree major lines of effort will converge circa 2024, when a new breed of troops will man new kinds of combat units equipped with new technologies: talent & training, concepts & units, and money & modernization.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.When it comes to Raytheon’s Standard Missile-6, there really is no comparison. It was most recently described by the Missile Defense Agency as the “Swiss-Army knife of missiles,” boasting three missions within one effector. That means a great deal to Navy commanders who have limited space onboard their ships and can wield anti-air warfare, ballistic…
By Raytheon“All the services understand the need to move to Multi-Domain Operations,” Lt. Gen. Wesley said. “Second, we all agree that MDC2 [Multi-Domain Command & Control] is the most important joint problem that we have to solve. After that, the specifics of how you conduct MDO – that’s where the variance is that we’ve got to converge on.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“We’ve done concepts for many years and, frankly, the Army hasn’t changed much,” admitted the three-star chief of the Army’s in-house think tank on future war. But on Friday, when the Army officially put its futurists under the same roof as its scientists, engineers, and program managers, the notoriously hidebound service aimed to break down the barrier between thinking about the future force and building it.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Smart missiles to strike hard targets hundreds of miles away. Wireless links to pull data from stealth fighters and foot soldiers alike. Command posts agile enough to coordinate it all — not only in open war, but in the ambiguous “grey zone” of hacking, proxy warfare, and Twitter trolls. That’s just a few of the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.There are times and places in the history of war in which improvements in firepower force anyone in range to take cover instead of advancing, as machineguns and howitzers did a century ago on the infamous Western Front. The fundamental difference today is the width of the killing zone would be measured, not in hundreds or thousands of yards, but in hundreds or thousands of miles.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.Don’t think about the Terminator or Iron Man: Think about Sigourney Weaver’s power loader lifting crates in Aliens.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.