The Air Force can be an “angel investor” for some startups, said Will Roper, the service’s top acquisition official.
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.
Will this result in more operations like the Kessel Run Experimentation Lab in Boston, where coders join airmen to build useful software? Perhaps it will mean the service will hire civilian coders or train airmen to write code.
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: No Russians. Few Chinese. The F-35. And the man who has led the charge in America’s trade wars, Peter Navarro, at the head the American delegation, with lots of other senior American officials along eager to boost bilateral sales of US weapons and civilian aircraft. Those are the early outlines of what we’ll see at this…
By Colin Clark
SPACE SYMPOSIUM: The Air Force, eager to get inside the decision cycle of China and Russia, is pressing ahead hard and fast to substantially speed space acquisition. In what is something of a test case for the service, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson last night committed to building the next generation of missile warning satellites,…
By Colin Clark
In a somewhat surreal scenario, President Trump yesterday riffed on the idea of a “Space Force,” something he’d clearly been briefed on at some point. And the Air Force expects new engines for the B-52 fleet to cost up to $8 billion.
By Colin ClarkAFA HQ: William Roper, the man who’s helping shape that future at the well-named Strategic Capabilities Office, told a packed room here that “stealth won’t last forever;” that adapting to the new version of war he’s helping the country ready for “is going to be harder for the Air Force than the other services;” that…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: What’s the most important initiative in the Obama Pentagon that the Trump team should pick up and run with? It’s innovation, outgoing Army Secretary Eric Fanning said last night: “Some of the most important work we’ve done in the last eight years is trying to set up places in our procurement system where we…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Gray Eagle is the low-cost, low-risk answer to Army modernization
Gray Eagle STOL and Gray Eagle 25M are the best options for Army aviation as it assesses where to move from its current inflection point.
UPDATED with William Roper comments WASHINGTON: The Army’s long-range artillery rocket, ATACMS, will get upgraded to strike moving targets on land and at sea, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced today. After at least two years of pressure from Congress and vague promises from Pentagon leaders, and for the first time since the Coastal Artillery Corps was…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
DARPA HQ, ARLINGTON, Va.: Reporters must stop asking Will Roper about the Arsenal Plane, because he hasn’t picked which aircraft will be rebuilt as a high-tech truck for long-range missiles and other weapons. Speculation has centered on the Air Force B-52, but the Strategic Capabilities Office director made clear that choice is, well, up in the…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
In an intriguing paper certain to catch the eye of senior Pentagon officials, a company claims that an artificial intelligence program it designed allowed drones to repeatedly and convincingly “defeat” a human pilot in simulations in a test done with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). A highly experienced former Air Force battle manager, Gene Lee, tried repeatedly…
By Colin Clark
William Roper is “buying time” for the rest of the Pentagon, he told us in a rare interview. His Strategic Capabilities Office finds near-term but game-changing upgrades for existing weapons systems, preserving American advantage over rapidly advancing adversaries while DARPA and Defense Department labs develop a new generation of breakthroughs. Yesterday, we wrote about Roper’s…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. WASHINGTON: William Roper’s Strategic Capabilities Office is exploring some of the most innovative concepts in the US military. Imagine a militarized version of Pokémon Go, helping Army soldiers locate real-life threats instead of cartoon monsters. Imagine robot brains in a box — an “autonomy kit” — that Navy sailors can install on a patrol boat…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Trust your robots. Trust your tech industry. Trust your troops. Let go of traditional mechanisms of control — be it a human pilot in the cockpit or a formal requirements document for a program — that increasingly serve to slow you down. That was the message between the lines when Defense Secretary Ashton Carter…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
UPDATE with Hill reaction WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Ashton Carter today asked Congress to help the Pentagon’s quest for talent in specialized areas such as cyber warfare. Among many other reforms, this latest iteration of Carter’s “Force of the Future” initiative requests changes to existing law to: Let cyber and other technical experts join the military at higher…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
