CAPITOL HILL: The Army’s official futurist may have overstated the case when he said “we are outranged and outgunned by many potential adversaries,” the service’s chief of staff said this morning — but not by much. To make things worse, Gen. Mark Milley told the Senate, we have become dependent on huge headquarters with lots… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: With the rise of high-tech threats from Russia and China, the Marine Corps plans a major increase in its forces devoted to jamming, hacking, and deceiving enemies. That includes: putting new sensors and jammers in everything from ground units to drones to V-22 Osprey tiltrotors and KC-130 transports, despite a tight budget; adding 1,000 to… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: More gas. Less stealth. Maybe weapons. New name. Same money. Tighter schedule. That, in a dozen words, is how the Navy is evolving its program for carrier-launched drones. Since the cancellation of the original UCLASS drone– Unmanned Carrier-Launched Aerial Surveillance & Strike — Navy leaders have insisted they would get the simplified successor in… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Polar bears. Wind chill of 20 below. Ice floes drifting faster than ever thanks to global warming. Cutting holes in the ice big enough to drop unmanned mini-subs through. Keeping mini-drones aloft in the frigid winds to watch out for the aforementioned bears. Those are just some of the issues — many of them… Keep reading →

UPDATED with Lockheed response WASHINGTON: The Navy will scrap the troubled RMMV drone meant to hunt mines from its controversial Littoral Combat Ships, replacing it with a different type of robot boat, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said today. That’s a decision a more responsive acquisition system would have made long ago, added Chief of Naval… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy’s new flying robot fuel truck, CBARS, is being reviewed by senior officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Breaking Defense has learned. Details about the current review are hard to come by. But our regular readers may be getting déjà vu, because the predecessor program, the UCLASS recon/strike drone, was stuck in OSD… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Shipbuilding is under pressure in the 2017 budget, but that didn’t stop the Chief of Naval Operations from sketching out his service’s “next warship” this morning. He wants ships built from the keel up for cyber and electronic warfare. He wants modular designs that can be updated at the speed of Moore’s Law. And… Keep reading →

ARLINGTON: New threats from Russia and China mean the Army must take on new missions — but it’s got almost no new money so the Army is looking at ways to modify existing systems to do some radically new things. So imagine howitzers firing precision-guided cannon shells to shoot cruise missiles out of the sky or to sink… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL: As predicted, House Seapower subcommittee chairman Randy Forbes was swift to slam the Navy’s 2017 budget request. I asked him about the Navy’s proposals to deactivate a carrier air wing, sideline seven Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and replace the UCLASS drone program with a drone fuel tanker with “limited strike” capabilities, CBARS. Here’s what the fiery… Keep reading →

UPDATED: Adds DepSecDef Explanation For Additional LCS PENTAGON: “We don’t have enough money to do everything we want to do,” Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told me in an exclusive 85-minute interview in his E-Ring Pentagon office. “So what we’re doing this year, Sydney, is we are trying to prepare as many demonstrations on advanced… Keep reading →