PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA: Minesweeping and “fast” are two words you’d normally be nervous about hearing in the same sentence. But as the Navy looks to new technologies to remedy its decades-long neglect of mine warfare — a favorite weapon of both Iran and China — it sees real potential to speed up a painfully slow… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: Last year’s Libya campaign revealed painful shortfalls in NATO, including intelligence sharing so molasses-slow that French pilots gave up on waiting for target data from US Predator drones. That’s something the allies are anxious to correct. “In Libya we got away with it. We made do, we had work-arounds, [but] we were not… Keep reading →

The Army’s new, streamlined approach to improving its battlefield networks took a big step forward this week when five MRAP armored trucks with the latest digital communications gear shipped out to be tested at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Testing at Aberdeen is the last major hurdle before fielding what’s called “Capability Set 13” to… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The defense spending bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee today keeps Block 30 Global Hawk drones flying, instead of letting them be warehoused as the Air Force had planned, a congressional source confirmed to Breaking Defense. That is arguably the final flourish on Congress’s utter rejection of the Air Force’s proposed cuts in… Keep reading →

As the Senate reconvenes to debate the cybersecurity bill, President Obama himself has set the stakes in terms of preventing a future catastrophic attack. But some say the real and present danger is what’s happening under our noses right now, in an online theft of intellectual property that Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander called… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: The four service cyber commands want to move personnel and resources from routine network operations — the classic IT jobs — to online attack and defense executed with a “warrior” mentality, their senior officers told Congress yesterday afternoon. Increasingly “these men and women view themselves as warriors,” Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, chief of… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The Army showed off an impressive array of battlefield wi-fi gadgetry today in the Pentagon courtyard, exhibiting new-found realism about what gadgets it might not need. Consider the hardware to connect the individual foot soldier to the brigade-wide command network, which has been stripped down from a 14-pound prototype to a militarized smartphone plugged… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Two retired colonels are moving in to the office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer, which has the herculean task of improving the Pentagon’s business practices. One is a former Marine logistician who worked on the reconstruction of Iraq, the other a former Air Force IT expert, a rare African-American woman in her high-tech… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: How much will it really cost to shut down the Army’s ill-fated Future Combat Systems program? Up to $1.5 billion, potentially three times the “special termination cost” reported by Inside Defense on Friday. Three years after then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cancelled the sprawling FCS program — the Army’s ambitious attempt to build a… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: An Army general was named Friday to head plans and policy at Cyber Command, based at Fort Meade, Maryland. Maj. Gen. Jennifer Napper is moving from Fort Huachuca, where she headed Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, to Fort Meade, where she’ll be the director of plans and policy — staff section J-5 — for… Keep reading →