Before the Air Force will trust AI to pick out targets, Gen. Holmes said, it has to get smarter than a human three-year-old.

WASHINGTON: At least a dozen major Army weapons programs face big decisions in 2019. The service will launch a competition for new armored vehicles; award development contracts for scout aircraft and helicopter engines; conduct key tests of long-range missiles, anti-aircraft defenses, rifles, targeting goggles, and multiple battlefield networks; and field new electronics for command posts.

WASHINGTON: The presumptive House Armed Services chairman, Adam Smith outlined his agenda for reporters this morning in a wide-ranging discussion laced with his trademark tactical snark. While many of his stances were unsurprising — he wants equal treatment for transgender troops, less spending on new nuclear ICBMs, and zero border-wall funding carved out of the… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Stop refueling Saudi warplanes as they fly to and fro, bombing, strafing and generally laying waste to Yemen. Freeze the sale of offensive weapons to the Kingdom of Saud. But the sale of defensive weapons is another matter, Sen. Jack Reed told reporters this morning. The danger posed by Houthi missiles and other threats… Keep reading →

We will probably never know much about it, but the Air Force’s top Electronic Warfare task force has completed its first scrub and should report to top service leaders in the next month or so.

In a world where knowledge increasingly matters more than physical power, US troops can’t quickly access vital information in a labyrinth of often incompatible and inaccessible databases. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure — archly acronymized as JEDI — aims to fix all that.

WASHINGTON: The Air Force does not plan to cut its planned purchase of 1,763 F-35As — in fact, it’s not even not considering doing so — but it is pushing hard to bring down the sustainment costs of Lockheed Martin‘s prize program, the Air Force Chief of Staff told reporters this morning. “We are all… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon will ramp up research on hypersonic weapons with a stunning 136 percent increase in the 2019 budget request. Here’s the breakdown of the $257 million: $139.4 million, the lion’s share, goes to the Air Force-DARPA collaboration on rocket-propelled hypersonics, Tactical Boost Glide (TBG), which will produce an “operational prototype” by 2023; $14.3… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: North Korea has cut the warning time America has to a “dozen minutes or so” before an ICBM launch because of the mobile launch trucks it’s using, according to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “We may have gone from tens of minutes to up to an hour (previously) to a dozen minutes… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Army Reserve is preparing 10,000 soldiers for major war with intensive training on machineguns and automatic grenade launchers. For many, these Cold Steel exercises held across the country are the first time they’ve touched such heavy weapons since basic training, said the chief of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. Charles Luckey. The Reserve… Keep reading →