WASHINGTON: Over the past month, US Air Forces in Europe took delivery of their largest shipment of ordnance in two decades. It’s another sign of the rearming of the continent as the United States pushes troops and equipment back into the region after years of drawing down, even as its NATO allies — and increasingly,… Keep reading →

While the current Army requirement is purely for transport, manufacturer HDT has carefully designed in enough horsepower and electrical power to handle a host of heavy upgrades, including the machinegun shown here.

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 Army is ready for unmanned vehicles but not yet for a completely unmanned convoy. The 2020 iteration is called Expedient Leader-Follower because the Army still wants a human soldier driving the lead vehicle, with up to nine autonomous trucks following in its trail. But Oshkosh and Robotic Research told me they could take the humans out altogether, if the Army wanted.

These single points of failure already limit military modernization and potentially could disrupt operations in a crisis. That’s especially true if production needed to ramp up urgently for a major war, a subject the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, has publicly angsted about.

The concepts the Warfighting Lab comes up with aren’t holy writ, but rather a baseline for young Marines to build on, “a point from which to deviate,” said Maj. J.B. Persons, a special projects officer at MCWL. “Give Marines new tools or toys, and they’ll surprise you every time.”

It would be wrong for Europeans to conclude that President Trump wants to withdraw all US forces from Europe. The President simply wants the US military to be NATO’s security guarantor of last resort, not NATO’s “first responder.”

The future of the RAF is on display at the Farnborough Air Show. With the F-35, the RAF is part of the multi-domain airpower transformation and will work closely with European allies, notably in reshaping Northern Tier Defense. With the Typhoon, the RAF is seeking a modernized aircraft reworked to compliment the F-35 but with a yet undetermined relationship with its European partners. And the A330MRTT and A400M aircraft, as well as MBDA missiles, are part of a broader context of resolving Brexit.

As feared, President Donald Trump came out swinging at the NATO summit. He castigated Germany for being subservient to Russia (guess he forgot about his idea to welcome Russia back to the G-7) and continued his focus on getting Europe to spend more on defense. Given the political environment, we welcome these constructive suggestions for how Europe… Keep reading →

The Army needs to figure out how to support the forces it has more efficiently so they can maneuver more freely, with less frequent pit stops for maintenance or supply runs for repair parts. That’s where Uptake’s AI comes in.