“To get a quantum increase in the quality of close combat forces, we can do it in the next two years, (and) the cost compared to the rest of the DoD budget is very small,” said retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, who chairs the advisory board for Secretary Mattis’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.How to unlock innovation and savings for DoD: “commercial,” not COTS
Overmatch is fleeting and while traditional acquisitions can’t always keep up with new threats, a different and approved practice can.
AUSA: American military leaders talk how artificial intelligence will change the face of war, but the unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) actually in development are much more modest and less lethal. They’re mostly small, mostly unarmed, and fall short not only of Pentagon visions of future warfare, but of the tank-like machines the Russians are experimenting with today.…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
AUSA: Qinetiq’s aptly named Titan is a big robot, but don’t be afraid of it — yet. The company built it to compete for the Army’s Squad Maneuver Equipment Transport (S-MET) contract, so its main function is to haul backpacks, ammunition, water, and other heavy, bulky supplies for human infantry. That said, Qinetiq’s also looking at an…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
AUSA: Polaris is a small, tough company that makes small, tough trucks, favored by the Marines, Special Forces, and allied nations. They’re basically military-grade dune buggies, easy to transport by plane or helicopter and easy to customize to the mission. In this video, Polaris shows us one of their larger DAGOR vehicles configured to carry a full eight-man squad…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL PRESS CLUB: The tank is far from obsolete and the US will need a new armored vehicle to replace its 1980-vintage M1 Abrams, the Army Chief of Staff said here this afternoon. But what kind of tank, on what kind of timeline? Gen. Mark Milley made clear he was looking for a “breakthrough,” not…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
A grim vision of future battlefields has the Army urgently exploring every option to streamline its logistics, everything from cargo drones to “compact fusion reactors.” Moving iron mountains of supplies has been a signature strength of the US military since the Civil War. But against an adversary with precision weapons, those sprawling supply dumps, the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
QUANTICO: A hovercraft that shoots salvoes of rockets. A speedboat that turns into a submarine. A mobile 3D printing factory. A big wooden box with wings (yes, really). And, of course, more drones than you can shake a stick at (because they swarm). These are just a few of the roughly 100 technologies the Marine…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Modernizing 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.
QUANTICO: Marines at Camp Pendleton will get to field-test more than 50 different new technologies next month ranging from palmtop mini-drones to self-driving amtracs, from wireless networks to precision-guided mortar shells. Plus there will be plenty of classified systems the Marines can’t talk about, including cyber and electronic warfare gear. Technologies that do well may graduate to…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: The robotic war machines of the future are strangely cute. Here at the Association of the US Army winter conference, BAE Systems is showing off a 12-ton robot mini-tank that looks like a baby M1 Abrams. There’s serious lesson here which the Army’s Next Generation Combat Vehicle effort is taking to heart. Automation,…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. Tiny drones, no bigger than your palm, were the big stars of an Army experiment in Hawaii, participants told Breaking Defense. Larger ground robots, however, struggled in the jungle. Staff Sergeant James Roe told me he was “blown away” by the PD-100 Black Hornet, a commercially available mini-drone used in PACMAN-I (Pacific Manned-Unmanned Initiative, part of…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Two years ago, Capt. John Zimmerman and his award-winning Navy team were testing a software upgrade for submarines when they ran into a surprising problem. When they changed the code controlling the Tomahawk missile launchers, the torpedo tubes stopped working. Fortunately, this all happened in a laboratory ashore before the upgrade got anywhere near the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
NATIONAL HARBOR: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus may want to move drones to the top of his priorities, but what kind of unmanned systems do the Navy and Marine Corps want to buy? Don’t think Predator or even the Navy’s new 131-foot-wingspan Triton. Imagine a swarm of buzzing, scuttling or swimming robots that are smaller but smarter. While a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
The future of military robotics may not look much like a robot. It may just be a truck that drives itself. That’s the simple, pragmatic approach pursued by Oshkosh — a company better known for trucks than Terminators — with its TerraMax Unmanned Ground Vehicle. But after eight years of experiments for three different military…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Here’s the latest exciting — and unnerving — unmanned system to catch our eye: a 1.5-ton robot that shoots the ever-living crap out of things. Oh, and the manufacturer, Northrop Grumman, most famous for building the B-2 stealth bomber, decided to call it MADSS, as in angry or insane. Perhaps they could’ve been a little…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
