The U.S. Space Force enters its fifth year amid heightened threats to the nation’s space assets, rising geopolitical tensions and technological challenges. Space Force chief of space operations Gen. Chance Saltzman set the tone for the year ahead in a keynote speech at the service’s first annual conference in December. A central message from Saltzman is that Guardians have to understand and communicate the intricate connection between space systems and earthly warfare, and need to fully grasp the role of space systems in military operations amid competition with China and Russia.
Should the tragedy of war with China occur, the Air Force will play a critical role in ensuring America is able to meet the challenges of conflict in the vast stretches of the Indo-Pacific. Gen. David W. Allvin, the 23rd chief of staff of the Air Force, joined the show to talk ... about his priorities and how he is directing the Air Force to meet America’s evolving national security needs by following through on the work of his predecessors. Listen to learn more about how Gen. Allvin views the future of training, logistics, and refueling in contested airspace, the lessons from Ukraine, why he admires George C. Marshall, and more.
“For more than 75 years, U.S. nuclear forces have underpinned American power and kept our homeland safe. The Soviets understood our stockpile’s potential, which kept them from moving against us. That stockpile has deterred a host of other enemies since. This makes the preservation of our nuclear shield nonnegotiable. But critical updates to our arsenal are underfunded and behind schedule. Congress and the White House must act quickly to solve these problems and prevent more from emerging,” write Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), ranking members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, respectively.
Nations eager to bolster their military drone chops should look to South Korea, where officials recently centralized the discipline’s various functions under a single command, the chief of South Korea’s Drone Operations Command said.
Autonomous weapons are coming. Recent Pentagon breakthroughs in experimental aerial and naval craft are paving the way for low-cost attack drones and new tactics that feature AI in key roles. Navy and Air Force experiments also highlighted how the U.S. military might employ autonomous weapons differently than China or Russia.
The Office of the Secretary of Defense plans to gather a select group of innovators this spring to pitch technical solutions for moving, processing and transforming data into actionable information. The special notice about the meeting, posted Jan. 19 on Sam.gov, comes as the Pentagon is pursuing a warfighting construct known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), which is aimed at connecting the U.S. military’s various sensors, data streams and weapon systems—and those of its international allies and partners—under a more unified network for faster and better decision-making.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is launching a new program designed to greatly expand intelligence and insights gleaned from unclassified sources for use by U.S. and allied analysts. The focus of the effort, called Luno A, is primarily on data gathered by commercial remote sensing satellites, an NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
Recruiting patterns in the military have increasingly come to reflect the nation's red state-blue state political divide, with recruiting strong in the South and Midwest but lagging on the coasts, retired Army Brig. Gen. Michael Meese said at a Rand Corp. event Jan. 18. “When you look at it regionally, the North and the West tend to be less positive” on military service “than the South and the Midwest,” said Meese, the former head of West Point’s Department of Social Sciences.
The Pentagon has a new missile defense assignment: craft a comprehensive strategy for developing, acquiring and operationally establishing an integrated air and missile defense architecture for select locations across U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, a 100-million-square-mile region that constitutes more than 50 percent of the earth's surface.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense has confirmed that its F-35B stealth fighters will be armed with Meteor air-to-air missiles and SPEAR 3 precision-guided standoff munitions by the “end of the decade.” The new weapons promise to bring a major leap in capability for the F-35B, especially when combined with the enhancements that the Block 4 upgrade will provide, especially for the aircraft’s radar, which will make the Meteor even more formidable.
On Jan. 25, 2024, Edwards Air Force Base will roar with excitement as it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the mighty F-16 Fighting Falcon, Alert 5 reports. This iconic aircraft, known for its sleek design and unparalleled agility, has revolutionized air combat and continues to serve as a vital weapon in the U.S. Air Force (USAF) arsenal.
