ARMY WAR COLLEGE: The brutal ground war in Iraq holds vital lessons for sophisticated future operations in the Pacific, Australian Maj. Gen. Roger Noble said today. Military pundits often draw a sharp distinction between what they consider low-tech warfare against irregular forces, as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and high-tech war against states like China […]
WASHINGTON: “You get whacked a lot.” Those are the words of someone who should know, the leader of the aggressor squadron at Red Flag, the man who tries to kill U.S. forces. Lt. Col. Tyler Lewis, commander of the 57th Adversary Tactics Support Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base, echoed comments we’ve heard before, that […]
PENTAGON: The Army is ahead of schedule building cyber teams — but its equally essential electronic warfare branch is lagging badly. Like a fiddler crab, one arm is much more developed than the other. While effective in the current fight against Daesh (aka ISIL), this unbalanced force would be at a severe disadvantage in future Multi-Domain Battles […]
WASHINGTON: Soon after President Donald Trump took the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” the White House posted two documents declaring they would boost the size of the Navy and Air Force, increase our offensive and defensive cyber capabilities and end sequestration. In the first document, Making Our Military Strong Again, the Trump Administration […]
FARNBOROUGH: For much of the last few years when one thought of electronic warfare, one tended to think of Raytheon. After all, they’re building the Next Generation Jammer, right? BAE Systems would like to change that and is beginning to take a guarded but more public stance. For years, Air Force officials have declined to […]
WASHINGTON: Why does the internet still work in Raqqa? That simple question about the Syrian capital of Daesh, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, posed today by retired fighter pilot Rep. Martha McSally, goes to the heart of how the military will use — or refrain from using — cyber weapons. It goes to deep suspicions that […]
Cyber war is coming to the street fight. Just weeks ago, when the Army’s 1/1 Armored Brigade conducted both live and virtual wargames against a simulated enemy, the old-school treadheads had a revolutionary new ally: offensive cyber teams, with two to three specialists from Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER). Capabilities once restricted to national missions and strategic […]
WASHINGTON: In a report out this morning, CSBA scholars Bryan Clark and Mark Gunzinger argue that we don’t just need new technology and new tactics to confront the growing missile threats from China and Russia, though lasers, railguns, and hypervelocity projectiles are all useful. We need a different missile defense mindset than what we have today, one that trusts […]
PETERSEN AFB: As he welcomed America’s first female combatant commander, NORTHCOM‘s new leader Gen. Lori Robinson, Defense Secretary Ash Carter detailed publicly some of the cyber attacks against Daesh — what his deputy called “cyber bombs” — that US forces have launched in recent months. “We’re using these tools to deny the ability of ISIL leadership […]
BUCKLEY AFB: Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told reporters today that ISIL is under tremendous pressure from the United States — “from every single direction, the north, the east, the west and the south” — and the terrorist group has lost every engagement with allied forces over the last six months. That apparently includes in cyberspace. […]
WASHINGTON: The US is waging an outright cyber war against Daesh, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs made clear this morning. While Carter did not say so, we believe this is the first official confirmation by a senior military official that the United States has waged […]
Ted Cruz now leads Donald Trump in at least some national polls. So when the senator offered a fairly detailed military blueprint for his presidency on Tuesday, CSIS defense budget analyst Mark Cancan jumped on it. He ran Cruz’s assumptions and numbers through CSIS’ Force Cost Calculator. What did he find? Read on. The Editor. In […]
A blizzard slams the East Coast and the lights go out. Then they stay off. Is it an attack? How do we figure out who’s behind it? What do we do in retaliation? These are all questions that need answering since what looks like the first successful cyber attack on an entire nation’s power grid. Ukraine says that […]
One of today’s toughest defense problems is drones. But not what the Air Force likes to call Remotely Piloted Aircraft that carry missiles and bombs. The bigger threat – one that worries law enforcement and the Secret Service as much as the Pentagon – is drones like the hundreds of thousands Santa brought to kids […]