Dave Deptula, the first general charged with overseeing drones and the Air Force general in command of the Air Operations Center when the first Predator fired a Hellfire missile, steps right into the debate about whether death by drone is moral, legal or qualitatively different from other weapons that strike from afar. He says drone… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: Senate Republicans have mounted a filibuster against former senator Chuck Hagel, the president’s nominee for Defense Secretary. That’s according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Senate’s top Democrat made an impassioned speech decrying the move, calling it “tragic” and noting this had never happened before. Initially, it looked as if a GOP… Keep reading →

ARMY WAR COLLEGE: Hours before Pyongyang conducted its latest nuclear test, military officers here at the Army War College began waging a wargame whose classified scenario is transparently concerned with North Korea. That is not happenstance. [Click here for more coverage of the Army’s “Winter Wargame”] After a decade of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Long-awaited talks between the world’s six most powerful nations and Iran are set for February 26 in the mountain city of Almaty in Kazakhstan. The question is, are the two sides ready to bridge the considerable rift dividing them and actually negotiate? This has not happened in a decade of diplomacy that started in… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Tomorrow morning, overshadowed by sequestration, the House Armed Services Committee will hold a rare full-committee hearing on a topic that would normally be high-profile, even explosive: whether to give the Defense Department, and especially its elite special operators, broader legal authority to work with foreign forces worldwide, from Colombia to Mali to the Philippines.… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: After months in deep freeze, cybersecurity legislation is showing signs of life again on Capitol Hill. The spark behind this renewed activity is the long awaited executive order on cybersecurity, which President Obama signed Tuesday and was released today at a press conference at the Commerce Department. The Obama Administration began working on the… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: In one of the least salubrious displays of partisan rancor in a long time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the defense policy panel sent Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Senate floor on a straight party-line vote, 14-11. In a hearing that, at times, had faint echoes of the infamous anti-Communist witch hunt… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Apparently realizing that its year-long campaign to stop the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration by focusing on the severe impact on national security has not been effective, the Aerospace Industries Association tried to broaden its appeal Monday by joining with a coalition of non-defense organizations and trying to shift the focus to “entitlements.”… Keep reading →

Sitting in the cockpit of her A-10 Warthog somewhere over Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base on Jan. 10, Maj. Olivia Elliott flipped a switch. In an instant her blunt, twin-engine warplane with the 30-millimeter cannon in the nose was transformed. No longer just the Air Force’s most heavily-armed attack jet, now the A-10 was also… Keep reading →

Richard Whittle, in addition to being a regular contributor to Breaking Defense, is a senior scholar at the Wilson Center. He is writing a book on the Predator, the first armed drone. In an earlier incarnation, Rick once accompanied the late congressman Charlie Wilson to Pakistan for a visit to the Afghan mujahedeen. The Editor… Keep reading →