The US Navy needs to get better at hunting sea mines. The Royal Navy needs to get better at robots. So the two fleets are joining forces off Scotland in what the Brits are calling “the largest demonstration of its type, ever,” Unmanned Warrior 2016, with “more than 50 unmanned vehicles from over 40 organizations.”… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Russian threat has driven Sweden so close to NATO that the once-neutral nation is becoming an ally in all but name. While the current Swedish government won’t apply for NATO membership — a position it just reiterated Friday — every other kind of collaboration is not only on the table, but actually happening… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, just weeks after retiring as NATO’s Supreme Commander, Europe, urged the alliance to reopen “a line of communication” with the Kremlin. While Breedlove’s tenure as SACEUR was wracked by the annexation of Crimea, the invasion of eastern Ukraine, and NATO’s race to strengthen its defenses, his focus was not on… Keep reading →

At the annual Ssang Yong wargames, US Marines and their South Korean counterparts are testing a small gadget that could solve a big problem: incompatible radios. Getting different networks to connect is hard enough between the Marine Corps and the US Navy, the Army and the Air Force, but multi-national operations are chronically plagued by… Keep reading →

As former Air Force Chief of Staff “Buzz” Moseley once declared, “there is not a place on the face of the earth that the USAF will not fight their way into.” But this aspiration has been complicated by 15 years of fighting low-end opponents like the Taliban even as peer adversaries like China and Russia… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: 35,000 NATO and partner-nation troops. 140 aircraft. 60 naval vessels. 30 nations. But who are they fighting? When planning began two years ago for NATO’s largest wargames since 2002, the imaginary adversary wasn’t Russia. Officially, it still isn’t. But since the seizure of Crimea, the alliance’s chief of “transformation” told reporters today, planners have… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR: Matthew Broderick in his basement, playing Wargames over a landline, is still the pop culture archetype of a hacker. But as wireless networks became the norm, new-age cyber warfare and traditional electronic warfare are starting to merge. Hackers can move out of the basement to the sky. In a series of experiments, the… Keep reading →

AFA CONFERENCE: China’s increasing assertiveness and modernizing military are “concerning,” even “disconcerting,” the head of the US Air Force in the Pacific said today. But there are still strong prospects for military-to-military ties, Gen. Lori Robinson told the Air Force Association conference here this morning. Increased Russian patrols complicates US strategy more, Gen. Robinson told me… Keep reading →

Most of what was learned at this year’s Black Dart counter-drone exercise will remain classified, but it proved that one of the oldest and deadliest weapons in the U.S. arsenal works against the 21st Century threat of drones, too. “The Marine sniper shot from a UH-1Y Huey,” Lt. Cdr. Ryan Leary, a Black Dart project… Keep reading →

HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: US missile defenses can hit a bullet with a bullet, shooting supersonic weapons right out of the sky — when they can see them. But as the Russians are showing in their invasion of Ukraine, radar can be jammed. That’s why the US Army conducted an unprecedented wargame this spring to test its new… Keep reading →