Will the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft “replace” some AH-64 Apache gunships? Sort of, technically — but that’s a misleading slice of a bigger story.

How can Army accelerate its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft when one leading contender started flight tests just seven days ago?

No Army vice-chief has won the top job since Eric Shinseki. But Gen. McConville brings some unique credentials.

The thing that delayed Defiant, it turns out, is the same thing that makes it really attractive to the Army.

Sorry, you won’t be punching aliens in the face. But loading 200-pound missiles onto a helicopter by yourself? That’s plenty useful.

All told, the Army’s investing $57 billion in modernization over five years — but it wants to take time to test new technologies before it commits to them.

Good news: That’s more money than the Army thought it could get for its top priorities. Bad news: We won’t see most of it this year.

“He said you’ve got tremendous people, you prototype pretty effectively, and you’re absolutely terrible — he had some more colorful words than that — for machine learning,” Gen. Thomas said. “It gave me a spark … and turned me into a zealot.”

Every Breaking Defense reader has a good idea how huge the US military’s modernization backlog is. But it sometimes takes a deep dive to show how big the problem is. In a new study by the Center for Strategic & International Studies — embedded below — scholars Gabriel Coll, Andrew Hunter, and Robert Karlen look… Keep reading →

Having wasted tens of billions and almost 30 years since the end of the Cold War, the Army is out of time. But after decades of incremental improvements, its existing weapons — including the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that GE’s new engine will upgrade – are overweight, underpowered, and running out of room to grow. Meanwhile, the Army’s attempts at a high-tech great leap forward kept getting cancelled as unaffordable, unfeasible, or both.