NATIONAL HARBOR: Matthew Broderick in his basement, playing Wargames over a landline, is still the pop culture archetype of a hacker. But as wireless networks became the norm, new-age cyber warfare and traditional electronic warfare are starting to merge. Hackers can move out of the basement to the sky. In a series of experiments, the… Keep reading →

TYSON’S CORNER: All branches of the military really want laser weapons. But they don’t all want them for the same missions. What struck me after a recent conference here was how differently the US Air Force is approaching lasers. The USAF is pursing a two-pronged approach: They want to mount lasers on both the large… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Do dogfights matter in the age of tactical stealth? If an F-16 can outmaneuver an F-35 in a dogfight, does it matter? Does it matter if the earliest generation F-35 can’t outmaneuver an advanced model of the F-16 in an early test? So many questions. We’ll try to answer them because the folks at… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Star Wars fans, calm down. The US Air Force wants to fire a 100-plus-kilowatt laser from a small plane. And not just any airplane, Air Force Research Laboratory officials. The last laser on an airplane — the megawatt Airborne Laser, which filled a converted 747 and cancelled in 2011 — the 2022 demonstration will be… Keep reading →

ROSSLYN, VA: Surprise! The pilots who run the Air Force don’t share Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’s view of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which Mabus two weeks ago said “should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly.” “I would disagree… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: America’s next war plane may look much more like a stealthy long-range bomber than a sleek, fast and maneuverable fighter. That’s the conclusion of a wide-ranging study by the respected Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments. Breaking Defense obtained a copy of the report from a source not affiliated with CSBA. Here’s the study’s main finding:… Keep reading →

ORLANDO: More than half-way into his tenure as Air Force Chief of staff, Gen. Mark Welsh has shifted focus from the service’s airmen to its weapons, declaring today that “we must modernize the Air Force. This isn’t optional. We must do it. And It will be painful because we will have to make hard choices.” Welsh’s speech… Keep reading →

ORLANDO: The Air Force, under heavy pressure from Congress to keep the A-10 Warthog in the air, will hold a mini-summit with the Army, Navy and Marines to figure out the best ways to do Close Air Support, the politically sensitive mission of aircraft protecting troops on the ground. Gen. Hawk Carlisle, head of Air Combat… Keep reading →

Adversaries’ mobile land-based missiles – surface-to-surface, surface-to-air, and anti-ship missiles mounted on transporter erector launchers (TELs) – continue to be an unsolved problem for American military planners and strategists. The success these weapons enjoy by hiding and moving to where they are needed means that virtually all new land-based missile systems, whether short-range anti-aircraft weapons or intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Ellen Pawlikowski helps decide what weapons the Air Force buys and manages the buying process, so when the lieutenant general says she likes autonomy and 3-D printing as the most promising capabilities for her service to develop as part of the new offset strategy, it’s worth listening. “This is Ellen Pawlikowski speaking,” she says in… Keep reading →