WASHINGTON: DC’s biggest defense conference just stopped getting smaller. The Association of the US Army’s annual meeting is a cultural touchstone for the largest service and a leading indicator for the health of the defense industry. Like the Pentagon budget, AUSA attendance peaked during the troop surge in 2010, then shrank rapidly with the drawdowns,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: As budgets dwindle, programs get cancelled, and the Army shrinks, the DC area’s biggest defense conference is getting smaller every year — but it’s still plenty big. That’s the story in the statistics provided Breaking Defense by the Association of the United States Army. AUSA’s annual meeting is a huge event with huge institutional… Keep reading →

AUSA: “Russia has used political, economic, and military tools to undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighboring countries, flouted international legal norms, and destabilized the European security order by attempting to annex Crimea and continuing to fuel further violence in eastern Ukraine.” With those words, Defense Secretary Ash Carter captured the enormous shift in… Keep reading →

AUSA: Watch the skies: The US Army is paying close attention to Russia’s “massive use of drones [to spot for] artillery,” Gen. David Perkins, head of the powerful Training & Doctrine Command, said here today. “In Iraq and Afghanistan, we were kind of the only ones that had Unmanned Aerial Systems [UAS or UAVs] and they pretty… Keep reading →

AUSA: The Association of the US Army’s annual meeting is a massive gathering of the US Army faithful. But in his first address to AUSA as the service’s Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley made sure to avoid preaching only to the choir. After the obligatory thank-yous and jokes, Milley’s first substantive statements were in… Keep reading →

AUSA: When it comes to drones, the Army is now thinking small. The next new drone the service will buy is a Rucksack Portable UAS, Col. Courtney Cote, project manager for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), told reporters at an Association of the United States Army update on Army UAS plans. Cote’s office already has a… Keep reading →

AUSA: If Congress can’t pass proper spending bills for 2016, it will hurt more than 400 Army programs and damage combat readiness, two senior officials said here today. “I have a binder yea-thick of impacts,” Heidi Shyu, the Army’s senior acquisition official, told reporters today, holding her fingers several inches apart. “Over 400 programs are impacted if… Keep reading →

AUSA: As John McHugh wraps up seven years as Army Secretary, one of his greatest frustrations is that he’s still making the same basic arguments for why a large land force matters. Even Russian aggression in Ukraine hasn’t shifted the debate. “The thing that is most frustrating for me…if the last 18 to 20 months… Keep reading →

AUSA: “There’s never been that much power on a vehicle this small,” said Jeff Wood, showing off Northrop Grumman’s new Hellhound scout car. In fact, he told reporters, standing amidst the buzzing chaos of the exhibit space at Washington’s biggest defense conference, “I can power this entire hall with this vehicle.” In a disaster scenario, he… Keep reading →

AUSA: The Army is groping for solutions to the worst threat helicopter pilots face in Afghanistan,  Iraq and other sandy places – brownout and other forms of Degraded Visual Environment (DVE), which from 2002 to 2015 caused nearly 400 aircraft losses in combat operations at a cost of 152 lives and roughly $1 billion. “Of… Keep reading →