There’s an old trope in intelligence circles that defenders have to be right all the time, while the terrorists only need to get lucky once to execute a successful attack. The knowledge that no one is right all the time makes most counterterrorism experts cautiously pessimistic about the likelihood of another successful terrorist attack on… Keep reading →

LONDON: Farnborough is an air show, but many of the briefings scheduled by American companies this year focus on electronic warfare and missiles — not airplanes. Raytheon, winner of the Next Generation Jammer competition, and the other four defense giants know that much of the money to be made in the next decade will come… Keep reading →

We don’t often run such items but the info graphic below nicely summarizes the art and history of psychological operations, though it doesn’t touch on the newer aspects of the art — social media and data mining. (After all knowing details of your target audience — age, sex, location, etc. — and influencing its actions… Keep reading →

  WASHINGTON: The F-35 is barely out of the stable and hasn’t been ridden hard yet, but the Pentagon is already beginning work on the next generation of improvements to the Joint Strike Fighter, with a close eye on the Chinese J-20 and J-31 stealth aircraft — and other capabilities. Frank Kendall, the Defense Department’s… Keep reading →

LATVIAN EMBASSY, WASHINGTON: “We are neighbors of Russia and we have always been realists,” Ambassador Andris Razans told me. “Sometimes we might be characterized as alarmists, troublemakers, etc., but I think we are realists.” Even as President Obama exchanges tense words with Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of today’s D-Day anniversary ceremony, many Americans and… Keep reading →

For years, the news about the most expensive conventional weapons system in US history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has been driven by its enormous cost, design, and schedule screw-ups. The Pentagon and Congress and the public have rarely spoken about what the F-35 would do, how effectively it could destroy an enemy’s air defenses,… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: For more than a decade, the US military has fumbled and groped and stumbled and, gradually, figured out ways to buy a mix of commercial satellite communications and dedicated military satellites so it could communicate and watch video from Predator, Global Hawk, and Reaper drones in theaters where military bandwidth was precious. For much… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: If you want to understand why President Obama spoke so much about terrorism in his widely panned West Point speech, the head of Pentagon intelligence explained it pretty well today. Terrorism is and remains the top threat to the United States, Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence Mike Vickers said this morning at the Center for… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: “One of the things I try to tell the work force out there is this is not what is going to define us,” said Adm. Mike Rogers, new head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. After two months in the job — and halfway through this morning’s Q&A at a Bloomberg Government… Keep reading →

UPDATED: With DNI Clapper’s Comments WASHINGTON: Robert Cardillo, the man who has organized President Obama’s daily intelligence briefing and brought the first tablet to the White House for a president to see intelligence product firsthand, will be named the new director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Cardillo, the current Deputy Director of National Intelligence for… Keep reading →