Walking into the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber this year, conference goers were immediately greeted with a large display from Google Cloud—a contender for the Pentagon’s major tactical cloud program and one of the conference’s major sponsors. On the floor, SAIC’s tower was right behind the Air Force Research Laboratory's booth, like a beacon of would-be connectivity. And after three days of panels and speeches, there was one big tech takeaway: autonomous aircraft are coming en masse. Or at least that’s the plan.
A new memorandum of agreement between the Defense and Commerce Departments on space monitoring cooperation essentially kicks the can down the road on key issues—including the thorny, vital question of whether the Pentagon will have a veto on the dissemination of any commercial data gathered for a future civil space traffic management regime, according to a copy of the document obtained by Breaking Defense.
The U.K defense secretary, Ben Wallace, has said military spending will double from its current level to hit £100 billion in 2030 as a result of Prime Minister Liz Truss’s commitment to increase the armed forces’ budget to 3 percent of GDP. The minister said in a newspaper interview that the military was “actually going to grow” for the first time since the end of the Cold War—although he did not specifically commit to reversing a planned cut in the size of the army.
“The U.S. Air Force celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding last week. There is much to celebrate about the accomplishments of our Air Force over the past three quarters of a century, but today, as China is increasingly bellicose and Russia is waging a brutal war against Ukraine, American airpower is no longer the dominant force we need it to be,” writes retired USAF Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, president of the Air & Space Forces Association.
While a recent audit of the Pentagon’s use of nontraditional Other Transaction (OT) authorities in contracting showed no illegalities, the Defense Department’s internal watchdog found significant holes in policies for ensuring compliance with federal law—lacunae that could easily have resulted in violations. The Defense Department concurred with the audit’s finding, and now has begun work to write new oversight guidelines, a DOD spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
A new $66 million aquatic training center being constructed for Air Force Special Warfare candidates will include mixed-sex restrooms, locker rooms and showers as the service tries to further integrate its facilities. The 76,000 square-foot facility will have two swimming pools as well as private showers and bathrooms that will accommodate both men and women. Officials for the Special Warfare Training Wing, also called SWTW, at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland said those plans are just a small part of the larger efforts to provide equal spaces for trainees going through the most rigorous courses the Air Force has to offer.
A bipartisan group of 10 senators is pushing to include the Pentagon’s request for a critical munitions acquisition fund in the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced the PROCURE Act on Sept. 26 alongside eight other senators, noting they intend to file it as a floor amendment to the NDAA as well.
It was a little over a week ago that Iranian drones first began appearing in the skies over Ukraine. Andriana Arekhta, a junior sergeant with the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said the drones flew from Crimea to attack her special forces unit fighting near the southern city of Kherson. The drones evaded the soldiers’ defenses and dropped bombs on their position, destroying two tanks with their crews inside.
In its pursuit of trusted artificial intelligence and autonomy, the Defense Department is looking at running additional algorithms on its platforms to test and monitor performance, as Tesla has done with its self-driving cars. The concept, which Tesla calls “shadow mode,” helps innovators develop and test new software by having algorithms run in the background on a vehicle without actually taking operational control of the platform.
Lately, most big multinational naval training exercises have been in the Pacific Ocean, not the Atlantic. And British and American forces haven’t really been able to show what their arsenal can do to a conventional target. That’s why they clearly relished the chance to unleash their weapons on a real ship. A new video released on Sept. 23 shows the two nations’ armed forces turning a decommissioned American frigate into a burning wreck.