PENTAGON: For the first time, the Air Force has run a wargame trying to decide how best to build the structure for Multi-Domain Command & Control. A central objective is figuring out how to manage data flows coming from all over the world from every domain: air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. What could the…
By Colin ClarkModernizing military simulation with open systems architecture
Best-of-breed common models and architecture enable virtual training and testing with the same data in a cyber-resilient posture.
Army soldiers are testing goggles with an image-recognition system that can automatically spot threats like tanks and warn the rest of the squad — or transmit the target data to a distant missile battery so they can take it out.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
DETROIT: The Artificial Intelligence the military needs most is not some kind of killer robot, the Army’s three-star senior futurist told me today. The Army really needs AI to make sense of lots of data, fast, so commanders and quartermasters can send the right forces with the right supplies to the right place on the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Army planners are thrashing out how many electronic warfare specialists the service needs, not just to rebuild radio-jamming and spoofing capability in combat units, but to create a training cadre that can sustain the EW corps for the long-term. Whether this plan for robust growth — certainly hundreds of soldiers, possibly over a thousand…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
“Long-range precision fires… would provide us the capability (to) either, for example, support the Air Force by suppressing enemy air defenses at hundreds upon hundreds of miles or support the Navy by engaging enemy surface ships at great distances as well,” said Army Secretary Mark Esper. But those examples are two distinctly different missions, each most relevant to a different theater of war.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The defense budget may be caught between doves on the left and budget hawks on the right, but so far Army Secretary Mark Esper isn’t ceding any ground.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
INF proponents emphasize the risk of nuclear weapons. But, despite its name, the treaty bans a wide range of conventional weapons as well — and it’s non-nuclear, precision-guided missiles that have changed how war is actually waged.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Military innovation and savings: Go commercial
DoD uses FAR Part 12 acquisitions to save hundreds of millions of dollars in “of a type” systems like civil landing systems with applicability to military aircraft.
Just as AirLand Battle was aimed straight at the former Soviet Union, with its massed mechanized armies, Multi-Domain Operations is aimed straight at Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with its long-range missiles, electronic/cyber warfare expertise, and Little Green Men.
By Colin Clark
Fast doesn’t meant out of control. Brig. Gen. Grynkewich took pains to emphasize that civilian oversight remains intact and the Pentagon’s role will be rigorously defined under the new National Security Presidential Memorandum NSPM-13.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
These special squadrons would probably be the first units to get the revolutionary Future Armed Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) the service wants flying by the mid-2020s to replace conventional helicopters.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Manned air and ground forces would work together and protect each other along the front line, while relatively expendable drones and missiles go deep into enemy airspace.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The “separate but equal” sixth service (don’t forget the Coast Guard) will be created in stages, because, as Pence finally admitted publicly, it “requires Congressional action.” And, as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, admitted today, if Congress passed the relevant laws in a year that would “unprecedented.”
By Colin Clark
A new command and control system Lockheed is selling to an unnamed international customer includes automated “enemy intent analysis.” So, the Diamond Shield system takes the enormous amount of data gathered by the system, uses Artificial Intelligence to analyze it and tells commanders what it thinks the enemy will do.
By Colin Clark
The concepts the Warfighting Lab comes up with aren’t holy writ, but rather a baseline for young Marines to build on, “a point from which to deviate,” said Maj. J.B. Persons, a special projects officer at MCWL. “Give Marines new tools or toys, and they’ll surprise you every time.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
