Army Cyber Accelerates; Electronic Warfare Lags
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PENTAGON: The Army is ahead of schedule building cyber teams — but its equally essential electronic warfare branch is lagging badly. Like a fiddler crab, one arm is much more developed than the other. While effective in the current fight against Daesh (aka ISIL), this unbalanced force would be at a severe disadvantage in future Multi-Domain Battles… Keep reading →
Dear Readers: What Should Trump Do With US Military?
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We haven’t done this much here at Breaking Defense, but when I ran DoDBuzz we used to sometimes take cogent and insightful readers comments and build them into a story. Here’s your chance to tell the new administration the smart things it could do with America’s military over the next four years. You can either… Keep reading →
Is Trump, Information Warrior, Key To Defeating Daesh (ISIL)?
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President-elect Trump has promised to destroy Daesh. If Trump wants to avoid being the third Administration in succession to sink into the morass of the Middle East, it is essential to first ask what declaring victory would look like. Part of the West’s challenge is rooted in that Daesh is a brand inside a religion and… Keep reading →
US Must Help Syrian Rebels To Blunt Russia, Terrorists
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The battle of freedom and democracy versus authoritarianism repeats time and time again: World War II, the Cold War, the Arab Spring. Now, the setting is Syria, where moderate, pro-democracy rebels have been lashing out against the brutal dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al Assad for over six years. How did we get to this… Keep reading →
Trump Won; Four Global Realities He Faces
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Americans woke up on November 9 with a collective sigh of relief: the election was finally over. Now, we get to the hard part: filling appointments in the executive branch, passing legislation, and getting the federal government to work again. The period between Election Day and January 20 is a great time for a refresher… Keep reading →
Fix Rules Of Engagement For Afghanistan Fight: Rep. Joe Wilson
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This is the first of our monthly op-eds by Rep. Joe Wilson, chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities. Dear readers, if you’ve got unique and useful topics you think Rep. Wilson should address, please let us or his office know. Read on. The Editor. Despite the Taliban clearly still… Keep reading →
Sorry, President Trump: Islamic State Can’t Be ‘Quickly Defeated’
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WASHINGTON: Donald Trump wants “a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.” But Kimberly Kagan, a leading advocate of the troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, warns that, this time round, “we need to recognize there are limits on how fast we can accelerate.” Part of the reason is tactical, Kagan told the DefenseOne Summit… Keep reading →
Ash Carter Walks Tightrope On Trump Transition
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WASHINGTON: There’s still no sign of Donald Trump’s transition team at the Pentagon yet, but they’ll probably come this week, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said this morning. In the meantime, the secretary is walking a tightrope trying to defend his policies on the Islamic State, NATO, and Russia without explicitly disagreeing with a President-elect who… Keep reading →
Trump’s Pentagon, Trump’s World; Defense Stocks Soar
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WASHINGTON: Hope for the best; prepare for the worst. It’s a standard military prescription for dealing with a sometimes hostile and usually unpredictable world. It’s also what an African-American chum told me this morning was his plan for life under President Trump. This guy is a fellow Chicagoan and Cubs fan, so he knows how to… Keep reading →
The Next War? Trench Warfare With Smart Bombs
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WASHINGTON: If you want a glimpse of future war, look back a hundred years to the bloody stalemate of the Somme, the cataclysmic battle of World War I. Instead of machineguns and artillery slaughtering soldiers in no man’s land, imagine smart weapons ravaging the air, land and sea. Instead of biplanes overhead, imagine swarming drones. Instead… Keep reading →