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COVID-19: Army Futures Command Takes Wargames Online

While the pandemic’s halted field exercises, tabletop wargames can continue long-distance. The catch? Getting classified bandwidth so you can discuss specific military capabilities.

Services Wargaming Multi-Domain Consensus: Army 3-Star Futurist

“All the services understand the need to move to Multi-Domain Operations,” Lt. Gen. Wesley said. “Second, we all agree that MDC2 [Multi-Domain Command & Control] is the most important joint problem that we have to solve. After that, the specifics of how you conduct MDO – that’s where the variance is that we’ve got to converge on.”

US Army’s Brain Transplant: Futurists Move To Futures Command

“We’ve done concepts for many years and, frankly, the Army hasn’t changed much,” admitted the three-star chief of the Army’s in-house think tank on future war. But on Friday, when the Army officially put its futurists under the same roof as its scientists, engineers, and program managers, the notoriously hidebound service aimed to break down the barrier between thinking about the future force and building it.

Army Multi-Domain Update: New HQs, Grey Zones, & The Art of The Unfeasible

Smart missiles to strike hard targets hundreds of miles away. Wireless links to pull data from stealth fighters and foot soldiers alike. Command posts agile enough to coordinate it all — not only in open war, but in the ambiguous “grey zone” of hacking, proxy warfare, and Twitter trolls. That’s just a few of the […]

Forget The Terminator For Future Army AI: LTG Wesley

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 […]

Army Unveils Multi-Domain Concept; Joined At Hip With Air Force

Just as AirLand Battle was aimed straight at the former Soviet Union, with its massed mechanized armies, Multi-Domain Operations is aimed straight at Vladimir Putin's Russia, with its long-range missiles, electronic/cyber warfare expertise, and Little Green Men.

Army Futures Command: $100M, 500 Staff, & Access To Top Leaders

“CFTs (Cross Functional Teams) and Army Futures Command will always have a place on my schedule and the chief’s schedule," Esper said. Over time, he said, "it becomes a routine… the expectation not just for AFC and the CFTs, but for future service secretaries and future chiefs of staff."

Can Army Futures Command Overcome Decades Of Dysfunction?

"There are ways to be innovative in the Army," retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr said. But you have to protect the innovators from the institutional culture of the Pentagon: "You can send them someplace else, like Austin."

US, UK Test Robot Breachers, Drones In Germany

This week's experiment used a small zoo of specialized systems remote-controlled by humans, each with its own modest niche, working closely with each other and human forces.

Army Outlines Futures Command; Org Chart In Flux

"If you start a process with an org chart, you’re toast," Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy said. "Focus on what you want to achieve."

Speedier Software Upgrades For Army Vehicles: Open Architecture

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB: The Army’s wheeled vehicle programs like Stryker and JLTV are leading it on the path to open architecture, a modular approach to designing software and electronics that makes them easier to upgrade. That’s particularly critical when, facing Russian GPS jamming, the Army is looking to improve Position, Navigation & Timing (PNT) on tens […]

Armed Robots: US Lags Rhetoric, Russia

AUSA: American military leaders talk how artificial intelligence will change the face of war, but the unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) actually in development are much more modest and less lethal. They’re mostly small, mostly unarmed, and fall short not only of Pentagon visions of future warfare, but of the tank-like machines the Russians are experimenting with today. […]

Milley Announces Biggest Buying Shift In 40 Years: Army Will Get Weapons The SOCOM Way

AUSA: The Army will start buying weapons the way Special Operations does, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley told reporters here, bringing different specialists together in one streamlined team. The often-insular Army is also studying the other services, Milley said, particularly the rapid development of the nuclear Navy under legendary Adm. Hyman Rickover. A three-star […]

No Safe Place In Next War: The Army’s Expanded Battlefield

What if the next war starts, not with a gunshot, but with a tweet? As tensions rise, US troops discover their families’ names, faces, and home addresses have been posted on social media as they prepare to deploy, along with exhortations to kill the fascists/imperialists/infidels (pick one). Trolls call them late at night with death […]