Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places, American and other Western officials say.
The Pentagon is taking a new approach to help solve its cyber workforce retaining and recruitment challenges, one that will require thinking “outside the box” and a cultural shift within the department itself, Mark Gorak, principal director for resources and analysis for the Pentagon’s chief information officer, tells Breaking Defense.
The U.S. Air Force awarded Umbra, a commercial operator of radar imaging satellites, a $1.25 million contract to demonstrate the capabilities of space-based radar sensors to track moving targets on the ground. Under the Small Business Innovation Research Phase 2 contract, announced Aug. 22, the Air Force will work with Umbra on “space-based moving target indication.”
Virtually every part of the Department of the Air Force’s drive to modernize is being shaped by Secretary Frank Kendall’s seven Operational Imperatives—lines of effort that address the most important and urgent challenges facing the Air Force today. Now, the department and industry are working together to develop solutions for each imperative, and the results will likely change the Air Force and Space Force for the next generation. Keep up with all the latest news on each Operational Imperative.
The longer the debate churns on over how to best align the roughly 1,200 personnel within the Air National Guard who now do space-related jobs with their Active-Duty cohorts in the Space Force, the more erosion of service readiness is inevitable, according to the National Guard Bureau’s new top space officer. “[T]he status quo is not going to be sustainable,” Director of Space Operations Maj. Gen. Edward Vaughan told Breaking Defense in an interview Aug. 18. Vaughan, whose call sign “Hertz” is a reflection of his career in electronic warfare, took over the position only two months ago.
A recent academic paper out of China proposes a new method for controlling drones and steering them to targets in environments where GPS is under attack, a new sign of the growing importance of drones in conflicts where adversaries have advanced electromagnetic jamming capabilities. The paper, published at the end of July in the journal Engineering, proposes using data from the drone’s cameras to estimate things like how quickly a target is moving (target velocity) and the target’s position.
The Department of the Air Force is again fielding pitches for savvy new schemes and clever gizmos as a part of its annual Spark Tank competition. Airmen and Guardians of all ranks have until Sept. 4 to submit their “best ideas for improving the department’s capabilities.” Finalists will have the chance to present their proposals to a panel of senior department leaders and industry figures.
Air Force and Space Force leaders are being called to testify publicly before Congress as an outraged House chairman investigates the decision to keep the U.S. Space Command headquarters in Colorado rather than moving it to his home state of Alabama. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., announced Aug. 22 that he has invited Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, Space Command chief Gen. James Dickinson, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman to testify before his committee about the Space Command basing decision.
The Navy announced a pair of contracts worth more than $400 million to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies to support work on helmet-mounted displays and engine systems for F-35 joint strike fighters. Work will be done on F-35 fighter jets for the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and foreign military sales (FMS) partners, among others, according to a Defense Department announcement Aug. 21.
A team of divers have been trolling the deep, cold waters of Lake Huron off Michigan’s Thumb for several weeks each of the past few years searching for scattered pieces of aviation—and Black military—history. Their target is the wreckage of a World War II-era fighter plane flown by a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen that crashed during training nearly 80 years ago near Port Huron, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northeast of Detroit.