TARDEC, soon to be part of the new Army Futures Command, is exploring a wide range of Israeli robots. But IAI is already looking into the next generation: “flocks” or swarms of robotic systems that communicate with each other and collaborate to accomplish their mission.

“We also had a non-pilot with all of 45 minutes of training take the aircraft up and operate for almost an hour,” said Sikorsky’s autonomy director, Igor Cherepinsky.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of one hundred battles — Sun Tzu ROCKVILLE, MD: In a bland office building 30 minutes from the Pentagon, a wall-mounted screen shows, in real time, every suspicious email and LinkedIn request sent to employees of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest… Keep reading →

BAE System’s CV90 Mark IV is the latest upgrade of a 25-year-old vehicle widely used in Europe; the Rheinmetall-Raytheon Lynx is an all-new design, although individual components have a good track record; but the General Dynamics Griffin III is in the middle, combining a new gun and new electronics with the time-tested chassis from the European ASCOD family.

The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) must have enough artificial intelligence to fly unmanned at least part of the time, a secure network to control drones, and combination of speed and range that’s impossible for traditional helicopters.

As the Pentagon wrestles with how to ready itself for competition with China and Russia, the issue of how to move troops, equipment, and supplies around the globe is becoming increasingly important.

The Air Force can be an “angel investor” for some startups, said Will Roper, the service’s top acquisition official.

The Google Car and Tesla Autopilot have blazed a trail for the future Army. Both robotics technology and Army thinking have come a long way since 2009, when Defense Secretary Bob Gates cancelled the massive Future Combat Systems program. Where FCS tried to invent new technology on a schedule for 19 different manned and unmanned… Keep reading →

The actual Robotic Combat Vehicle that gets mass-produced and fielded by 2028 will be an all-new design, not a converted M113. But why wait for someone to design and build the perfect hardware, when you can start testing the software and the tactics on something cheaply available today?

In the wake of objections from employees, Google withdrew from its Project Maven contract with the Pentagon, designing software to improve the analysis of drone imagery. Worried that it might lose access to critical technology, part of the military’s response to Silicon Valley is creation of a new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), which includes a… Keep reading →