Originally slated to deploy last year, the Triton drones will give US commanders in the Pacific a powerful new tool to conduct surveillance, and track Chinese moves from afar.

Using lessons from places like Niger, commandos are looking for drones to carry blood to injured troops, as well as small systems that can fly indoors, through tunnels, swarm, and operate when being jammed.

Project Maven has made huge strides in its first year, but the key is remaining open to updates from whoever has the best idea for new algorithms, and new code, a military leader says.

The new rules, which are still a work in progress, will allow for easier export of laser-designating drones, while shipping more and more weapons overseas to cut into Chinese and Russian sales.

PENTAGON: The 2016 edition of Black Dart, the Defense Department’s formerly classified counter-drone exercise, expands to Eglin Air Force Base this year, in search of more space and more capabilities, including ships. “Eglin will allow us to deliver added uncertainty in the way of providing multiple locations for launching UAS at different distances so we can explore the… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: A sleek little model sits on the desk of Lt. Gen. Jon “Dog” Davis, Marine deputy commandant for aviation. What is that, we asked? The next tiltrotor Bell Helicopter Textron hopes the Marine Corps will buy. But it’s not the V-280 Valor, the new manned tiltrotor Bell plans to fly next year. It’s an… Keep reading →

  The core task of the men and women who buy America’s weapons is to envision the adversaries and environments of tomorrow and buy forces that are up to the challenge. This involves generating a similar set of assumptions to those used by operational strategists. Today, three assumptions underpin U.S. acquisition strategy that will leave tomorrow’s forces… Keep reading →

WEST PALM BEACH,  Fla.: Army experts are “extremely excited” by the idea of hybrid electric aircraft, one of the service’s top Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) experts revealed Tuesday. “My team has believed that was the case for some time,” Lars Ericsson, chief of the technical management division in the Army UAS office, said on a panel… Keep reading →

ARLINGTON, Va.: The Army aviation chief, Maj. Gen. Michael Lundy, wants to spend the service’s shrunken aircraft acquisition budget — down about 40 percent over the past three years — on manned rather than unmanned aircraft. After all, this is the Army. “We’ve got a lot of unmanned stuff out there,” Lundy told an Association… Keep reading →

AUSA: When it comes to drones, the Army is now thinking small. The next new drone the service will buy is a Rucksack Portable UAS, Col. Courtney Cote, project manager for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), told reporters at an Association of the United States Army update on Army UAS plans. Cote’s office already has a… Keep reading →