The Pentagon insists it doesn’t want them. But could a global ban really rein in Russia or China?

Don’t fear robots who rebel against their human masters. Fear robots that obey the wrong human.

A single F-35 could have a flock of “loyal wingman” drones to carry weapons, jam radars, and if need be take a hit and die to save their human commander.

“These are engines that would fit on your tabletop,” said Kratos exec Stacey Rock. “We don’t want hundreds of ‘em, we want thousands [of drones] to overwhelm the threat.”

The move could save more than $30 billion over 25 years to invest in high-tech weapons — but Congress is sure to explode in outrage.

“Before I took office,” IAI chairman Harel Locker said at a recent conference, “(I) realized that if the company did not change, it could collapse within a few years.”

“AFWIC was told to inform and try to shape the ’20 POM,” Fantini told reporters, but that 2020-2024 budget plan is due out in February and was already largely locked down. “But the ’21 POM,” he said, it’s “game on.”

DETROIT: The Artificial Intelligence the military needs most is not some kind of killer robot, the Army’s three-star senior futurist told me today. The Army really needs AI to make sense of lots of data, fast, so commanders and quartermasters can send the right forces with the right supplies to the right place on the… Keep reading →

AUSA: The Army is investing more and more money in lasers to defeat incoming rockets and enemy drones. Across the Air & Missile Defense (AMD) portfolio, “we put over 50 percent of our S&T (Science and Technology) money going towards directed energy projects,” up from about a third previously, said the AMD modernization director, Brig. Gen.… Keep reading →

The Air Force is buying a static version of AUDS for base defense, mounted in a CONEX shipping container for ease of transport and set-up. For the Army, Northrop is proposing to integrate AUDS onto the workhorse Stryker vehicle.