Shoot, move, communicate. This was the clear, succinct analysis given by an Army major when asked to describe the key …
R&D
“When an 82-year-old pacifist nun gets to the inner sanctum of our weapons complex, you cannot say `Job well done.' She's in the audience. Would you please stand up, ma'am? We want thank you for pointing out some of the problems in our security.”
Unmanned Jet Headed to Carriers
Young boys of a couple of generations ago loved to get dizzy, flying their yellow Cox PT-19 with its buzzing .049 Babe Bee engine in endless circles. The “pilot” was connected to the plane via a pair of control lines that allowed the model planes to climb and dive…and occasionally crash.
That’s why the X-47B is so exciting. …
What Good Are Acts of War If You Don’t Get Credit For Them?
Big-thought-thinker Martin Libicki has long focused his attention on cyber warfare. But now the Rand Corp. senior scientist is studying what he calls non-obvious warfare, of which cyberwar is only one part:
Innovations, both
…
How Drones Can Reinforce Failure
Gaeta, Italy — This report by independent journalist Gareth Porter is extremely important. Porter, one of our finest investigative journalists, highlights one of the central problems in drone warfare: how its imperfect …
Planning for SNAFUS
The Air Force spent a lot of time and money a generation ago when it designed its C-17 cargo airplane to take off and land at short, unimproved runways around the world – “austere” was the word of choice. But it couldn’t imagine that capability would be needed because a pilot would someday err and land at the tiny Davis Islands …
Betting Against a Drone Arms Race
Bold predictions of a coming drones arms race are all the rage since the uptake in their deployment under the Obama Administration. Noel Sharkey, for example, argues in an August 3 op-ed for the Guardian that rapidly developing …
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Beijing Doubling-Down on Stealth Fighters
If a single stealth fighter is good, two must be better. The U.S. military, after all, thinks so: look at its F-22 and F-35 warplanes.
And now China is apparently joining the two-stealth-birds-in-the-hand are worth …
Designation Resignation
Battleland was at a party this weekend where someone got the X-37B confused with the X-47B. You’d think the Air Force and the Navy would have a Joint Operating Coordination Committee on Aircraft Designation and Nomenclature to avoid fielding two new aircraft with such similar designations (but you’d be wrong: back in the early 1980s …
Not A Silver Drone…
All this recent reporting on drones and robots might lead one to think the U.S. is nearing the sweet spot, where remote-control war clicks firmly from science fiction to reality. Not so fast, cautions Bill Roggio in an analysis …