Atop the Indo-Pacific Watchtower
From worries about South Korean troops to a bigger footprint for Japan, here are the must-read stories Breaking Defense's man in Sydney.

Culture, Not Tech, Is Obstacle To JADC2: JAIC
“This is not a panacea,” the deputy director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center says. “You can’t just sprinkle AI on all these legacy systems and expect them to work and talk together….That’s not how it works.”

How To Make The Third Offset Real: The Combined JADC2
There are places where jointness, that still sometimes elusive character, is on full display in the US military and one of those is where close air support meets the Army. The Army’s Joint Support Team trains 4,200 Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine and Special Operations Command students in joint air-ground operations education, training and command-and-control systems integration. Few…

Heckler & Koch’s HK416
By Caleb Larson, The National Interest: “German engineering at its finest and most lethal.”

U.S.-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group Authorization Provides Opportunity for Biden Administration

Teaching Technology, Innovation, and Modern War at Stanford, Part 8:
From Capitol Hill to the Defense Industrial Base
By Steve Blank, Modern War Institute: “I think there’s a serious debate going on within the Biden national security camp about what direction to go." ​

The Navy Needs a Retention Strategy
By Sam Calaway & John Bice, Proceedings: “The Navy has several programs and incentives for officer retention: the Career Intermission Program, Fleet Scholars Education Program, Targeted Reentry Program, and Low-Residency Graduate Education Program, to name a few. However, a web of disparate programs that tries to entice officers to stay is not a retention strategy."

LSCO is a Lost Art…and it’s About Time
By Kaman Lykins, Small Wars Journal: “War is one of the oldest and most terrible of human endeavors and Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) is war at its conventional zenith."

Why Masrour Barzani should resign from leading Iraqi Kurdistan
Michael Rubin | The National Interest

Espionage Emergency: China 'Floods' America with Spies  by Gordon G. Chang 

A recent Boeing MQ-25A Stingray flight test was a success, according to the company, and demonstrated that the UAV can fulfill its intended role as an aerial tanker and extend the reach of carrier air wings. – The National Interest

From new contract structures to robotic safety tools, Army Materiel Command is working on an ambitious master plan to modernize its arsenals, depots, and ammunition plants. – Breaking Defense
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Kris Osborn writes: Close air support for advancing infantry and precision-guided pinpoint strikes on enemy positions and fortifications were indispensable amid efforts to destroy Iraq insurgents, ISIS and the Taliban, yet there was no need for any kind of air-to-air engagement or destruction of advanced enemy air defenses. These things would be crucial in any war against a major adversary capable of projecting massive and destructive power from the sky. […]These dynamics are likely one reason why both Air Force and Army leaders signed a joint, mutual-service agreement to reinforce one another, support each other’s domain and more successfully network weapons and attack platforms to one another in real-time. . . . thus enter Joint All Domain Command and Control.  – The National Interest

Kris Osborn writes: The U.S. Air Force Reaper Drones were crucial to victories in the War on Terrorism by delivering lethal, decisive and precise hellfire missile attacks upon terrorist and insurgent targets. They also provided countless hours of real-time intelligence to ground commanders through video surveillance in the Middle East and around the world. In fact, these drones have been continually expanding mission scope through a growing weapons arsenal and even new air-to-air attack capability. Yet, could the Reaper survive a war against China or Russia? Probably not. – The National Interest
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Jason Lyall writes: Cheap, survivable drones, combined with armor and artillery, offer the militaries that field them real advantages. The four recent conflicts in which drones have appeared show that even modest vehicles can help win military victories and reshape geopolitics. And as drones become part of the arsenals of more countries—surging from eight in 2015 to 20 today—new actors are poised to seize the opportunity they offer to grab territory or ignite previously frozen conflicts. Governments and analysts need to rethink the role these weapons may play in actually increasing the risk of interstate violence. – Foreign Affairs

Iranian oil exports rise as Tehran circumvents sanctions, finds new buyers

Seth J. Frantzman writes: The threat matrix is changing, and among today’s enemies, Iran is Israel’s main regional adversary with multiple complex missiles and drones. To confront these myriad threats, Israel needs its own complex multitiered system. Iron Dome has worked for 10 years to confront close-range threats and is the workhorse of Israel’s air defenders. David’s Sling, which is supposed to face higher-level threats and is similar to the US’s Patriot batteries, uses an impressive interceptor to stop enemy missiles. – Jerusalem Post
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Yossi Melman writes: It is a classic example of the Mossad acting as Israel’s shadow foreign policy arm, and it would be no surprise if relations with other states – such as Oman, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, where Israel’s secret services have also taken the lead, come into the open too, with the establishment of formal diplomatic relations. – Haaretz

Policy Implications for the Emergence of Artificial Intelligence
Via Decision 2020In the twentieth edition of the Decision 2020 Report, Hoover fellows assess the economic, national security, and geopolitical implications of innovations in artificial intelligence (AI).

Right of Launch:
Command and Control Vulnerabilities After a Limited Nuclear Strike
By Bruce G. Blair, Sebastien Philippe & Sharon K. Weiner, War on the Rocks: “Imagine a rapidly escalating conflict between Russian and NATO forces. Compensating for Russia’s perceived conventional inferiority, Russian commanders execute a limited nuclear strike — a small number of low-yield weapons intended to change conditions on the battlefield.” ​

​Why Five New National Quantum Information Science Centers Are a Huge Deal 
By Paul Dabbar and Darío Gil
​Through quantum computers, we'll tackle some of the world's greatest challenges, explain Energy Department's Paul Dabbar and IBM Research's Darío Gil.

The Atlantic Council has a handy new hypersonic weapon backgrounder 
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​The Ronald Reagan Institute has a new report about ways to strengthen the U.S. National Security Innovation Base.Among its findings: "Washington has not yet fully adjusted to the new reality that national-security-relevant technologies are largely being driven by the commercial sector—not the USG, the DOD, or even the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) sector, as was true in the past."

Get Ready for a New Type of Israeli War
Jacob Nagel and Jonathan Schanzer— The National Interest
A string of credible reports suggest that Israel recently targeted Iranian forces and infrastructure in Syria. Reporters broadly describe these strikes as a continuation of the “War Between Wars,” a campaign whereby Israel erodes the capabilities of its enemies to forestall the next major conflict. In a December interview shortly before he retired, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot revealed that Israel had destroyed thousands of military targets in Syria, taking credit for very few. Read More

Milley Assigns Service Roles In All-Domain Ops Concept
By Theresa Hitchens; Wednesday, July 22, 2020 1:30 PM
The Air Force will lead work on the concept for command & control, the Navy will lead joint fires, and the Army has logistics.

There Is No Thucydides Trap Between the U.S. and China
By Richard Hanania, RealClearDefense: “The Thucydides Trap is among the most well-known concepts in international relations. Recently, discussions about the rise of China have invoked the phrase, arguing that the nation's growing economic and military strength potentially puts it on a collision course with the United States."

The Chip Wars of the 21st Century by Steve Blank

5 Reasons James Taiclet Is an Ideal Successor to Lockheed’s Marillyn Hewson
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: “There was a time when the U.S. aerospace and defense sector was dominated by larger-than-life leaders, with egos to match, who frequently took big risks with their shareholders’ money. Those days are long gone."

An Expeditionary Support Ship for a Navy-Marine Team
By William Stearman, Proceedings: "Marine Corps Commandant General David H. Berger, in his 3 March Force Design 2030 document, expressed the need for “forces that . . . can operate inside an adversary’s long-range weapons engagement zone (WEZ).” General Berger further noted that he does not believe that “forcible entry operations are irrelevant or an anachronism . . . different approaches are required given the proliferation of anti-access/area denial (A2AD) threat capabilities in the mutually contested spaces.”"

The looming crisis in civil-military relations
Giselle Donnelly | The American Interest

CHINA:
Has China Gone Into Stealth Mode With Its Military-Civil Fusion Plans?
By Matt Ho, South China Morning Post: "There was no apparent word in this year’s government work report of the defence strategy that has raised alarm in Washington."

Anachronistic Export Policy Is Damaging the U.S. Drone Industry and National Security
By Dave Deptula, Forbes: “Adherence to an obsolescent approach to the international nuclear non-proliferation export guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is hurting the United States (U.S.) both commercially and from a national security perspective."

Pentagon Reshuffles R&D Priorities
By Jon Harper, National Defense Magazine: "The Defense Department is shaking up its list of research-and-development priorities as the Pentagon builds new roadmaps for pursuing future capabilities."

SOCOM’s Hyper-Enabled Operator: Will It Work This Time?
By Paul McLeary, Breaking Defense: “As Special Operations leaders rush new programs to incorporate AI and advanced communications into their intelligence gathering and influence operations around the globe, they want individual soldiers in the field to be a key part of pushing that data."

The Promise and Risks of Artificial Intelligence: A Brief History by Rebecca Slayton

Chinese Debates on the Military Utility of Artificial Intelligence by Michael Dahm

You Can Teach a Marine Deterrence: Understanding Coercion Requires Changing PME by Benjamin Jensen and Matthew Van Echo

On Military Innovation, the More Things Change, the More Things Stay the Same by Paul R. Ignatius

Army Patriot Missile Connects With Air Force F-35 to Destroy Cruise Missile
By Kris Osborn, Warrior Maven: "This kind of warfare development, wherein multiple sensor nodes track and share information across domains to identify and destroy threats, represents the exact intention of the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS)."

Michael Dahm writes: China’s strategy for the use of AI technology is evolving from their interpretation of the character of war and is ultimately an extension of the PLA’s informationized warfare concepts.  While there is certainly overlap with U.S. military thinking on the use of AI, Chinese military scholars appear to be reaching different conclusions. […]In developing strategies to counter Chinese military capabilities, the Pentagon should pay close attention to the PLA’s evolving warfighting concepts and views on AI in future combat. – War on the Rocks ​

Dan Blumenthal and Nicolas Eberstadt write: If the current arrangements were overwhelmingly disadvantageous for the U.S., it would be a straightforward matter (albeit painful and unpleasant) just to end them. But this is not the case. Instead we find ourselves in a tableau mainly painted in shades of gray. Careful discrimination and informed judgment will be required to determine whether each of the myriad cords that bind us to China today is actually in the American interest. For each of these cords, domestic U.S. constituencies will be at the ready to make the case that their particular relationship really is. – National Review Institute

Assessing China’s Civil and Military Crisis Response Capabilities
By Hugh Harsono, Divergent Options: "COVID-19 has highlighted China’s strengths in terms of rapid quarantine implementation and mobilizing national-level resources quickly. It has also highlighted failures in China’s bureaucratic nature and failing public health systems and breakdowns on the military front."

How AI will soon change special operations
(Defense One) A new SOCOM office is pursuing tools to understand and influence populations, clear rooms with robots, and spot new forms of jamming

Pentagon legislation aims to end dependence on China for rare earth minerals
(Defense News) The Pentagon has proposed legislation that aims to end reliance on China for rare earth minerals critical to the manufacturing of missiles and munitions, hypersonic weapons and radiation hardened electronics, by making targeted investments.

Think You Know Where Defense Spending Is Headed After Coronavirus?
Guess Again.
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: "As in other sectors of the economy, the coronavirus crisis has spawned uncertainty about the future in defense circles. Military planners, think tank analysts and media pundits are all speculating where Pentagon spending may be headed in the aftermath of the worst global pandemic in a century."

Neither Manned Nor Unmanned:
The Future Of Air Warfare Will Be About Teaming
By Dan Gouré, RealClearDefense: "There are three basic types of unmanned “wingmen.” They are distinguishable based on their sophistication (and therefore, by their cost) as well as the role they play in enhancing the capacity of manned systems."

Hypersonic Defense Requires Getting Space Sensor System Right
By Douglas M. Fraser, Frank Gorenc &  John S. Shapland, RealClearDefense: “While the U.S. is rightly focused on combatting the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for the leaders within Congress and the Pentagon to also prioritize preparing for another threat for which the nation currently has no defense: hypersonic weapons."

Our nation’s defense supply chain imperative
(Defense News) The Department of Defense and defense industry have a long history of responding quickly and forcefully to crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception.

Army Futures Commander: AI-Driven, 'Hyperactive Battlefield in Future War
By Kris Osborn, Warrior Maven: "Future warfare will be characterized by what the Commander of Army Futures Command calls a “hyperactive battlefield” -- a chaotic, fast-moving mix of complex variables in need of instant analysis as lives….and combat victory...hang in a delicate, hazy balance of uncertainty."

Multiple Reality and the Future of Command and Control
By Robert Clifford, RealClearDefense: "With MR, we can rethink how the U.S. conducts command and control."

Innovating in a Secret World: Can America Innovate Its Way to Security?
By Kurt Degerlund, Strategy Bridge: “Despite the promise of open government innovation, few open innovation projects have been able to produce more than token innovations that solve simple resource maintenance and allocation problems."

What Does AI Mean for the Future of Manoeuvre Warfare?
By Franz-Stefan Gady, IISS: "AI-enabled technologies based on machine learning algorithms that accelerate the so-called ‘kill chain' by linking sensors and shooters in an internet of things or system of systems architecture could have a profound effect on conventional offensive military operations."

The Maritime Patrol Enterprise: Shaping a Kill Web Future
By Robbin Laird, SLD.info: "“We are taking full advantage of the leap forward in many sensors and communications technology to interoperate in ways that were previously impossible. Faced with a resurgent and challenging ASW threat, we have not given up on the old tool sets, but we are adding to them and weaving them into a new approach.""

China's Supply Chain Threat to U.S. National Security
By Jim Banks, RealClearDefense: "The Chinese government’s mismanagement of the novel coronavirus not only spread the virus worldwide, it shut down many supply chains that the U.S. and other countries had become accustomed to; indeed, that the U.S. deeply relied upon."

A Typology of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency
By Donald Stoker, Military Strategy Magazine: "The literature on insurgency and counterinsurgency is voluminous and this is certainly not the place to discuss it, and wars in which insurgency is the dominant factor are invariably described as “limited.” What we must point out is that much of the writing on these topics is tactical and thus not directly related to our discussion."

Germs: The Seventh Domain of Warfare
By James G. Foggo III, Proceedings: "To protect our national security, we must improve our ability to fight pandemics—germs, the seventh domain of warfare."

Resilience Theatre
By Kenneth Weisbrode & Heather H. Yeung, RUSI: “That the post-9/11 era is over, supplanted by a pandemic, is now taken for granted. In the defence and security world, the intellectual fascination with counterinsurgency has long since passed, replaced by ‘great power competition.'"

Toward a New Theory of Power Projection
By Michael J. Mazarr, War on the Rocks: "Now that the pandemic crisis is hammering America’s finances, U.S. strategy risks veering even further into permanent insolvency."

Preparing for a Dark Future: Biological Warfare in the 21st Century
By Thomas G. Mahnken, RealClearDefense:  "News of the spread of COVID-19 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the subsequent relief of its Commanding Officer has highlighted the tension that exists between maintaining military readiness and the need to safeguard the health of members of the armed forces in the face of a pandemic."

Defense Department Must Keep R&D on Track
By Connie Lee, National Defense Magazine: “The Defense Department is speeding up early research-and-development efforts by working closely with academia and switching to a distributed research model, which will allow multiple organizations to work on initiatives more easily."

Building a Marine Corps for Every Contingency, Clime, and Place
By T. X. Hammes, War on the Rocks: "The Marine Corps’ efforts to date represent a powerful first step in the process of transforming the force from its current configuration to one more suited to the rapidly changing international security environment."

FVL: See The Army’s Future Scout In Flight
The Army will pick either the Bell 360 Invictus or the Sikorsky Raider-X as its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. Get a close-up look at both contenders.

FARA: Sikorsky Touts Cutting-Edge Tech
The Raider-X compound helicopter not only meets the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance needs today, Sikorsky FARA director Tim Malia told us: It has the margin for growth “to be a good investment for the taxpayer for decades to come.”

TRISO Nuclear Mini-Reactors Will Be Safe: Program Manager
If the Pentagon does build the mobile reactors, it will deploy them far from the front lines – and even if they’re hit, their revolutionary TRISO fuel pellets will stay intact at temperatures that can melt steel.

Shaping a Way Ahead on Military Strategy:
The Need for Strategic Coherence
By Robbin Laird, SLD.info: "With a growing array of single service initiatives designed to compete for “deterrence badges” in the great power competition, there is a clear danger of splintering deterrence rather than reinforcing it."

Is the Infantry Brigade Combat Team Becoming Obsolete?
By Daniel Vazquez, War on the Rocks: "The infantry community has a problem. The centerpiece of the Army's operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the infantry brigade combat team, is in danger of becoming obsolete in the face of near-peer opponents."

China’s Strategy to Reorient U.S. Tech Companies Is Exposed — What Next?
By Alex Gallo, The Hill: "China’s aggressive behavior to outright steal our technological secrets, build a generic version of our technological platforms, and re-orient U.S. tech companies has been exposed, to paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, “slowly... then suddenly.”"

Why This Pandemic Is Different
By Shlomo Ben-Ami, The Strategist (ASPI): "Long before people and goods were traversing the globe non-stop, pandemics were already an inescapable feature of human civilisation. And the tragedy they bring has tended to have a silver lining: perceived as mysterious, meta-historical events, large-scale disease outbreaks have often shattered old beliefs and approaches, heralding major shifts in the conduct of human affairs. But the Covid-19 pandemic may break that pattern."

The Future of Drugs in War
By Gareth Rice, Grounded Curiosity: "Drugs have a long history in war. In fact, drugs and war may have always existed together in some form, leading Wes O’Donnell to declare that “Wars are rarely fought totally sober.”

Quantum Computers Will Break the Internet, but Only If We Let Them
Quantum computers are expected to be powerful enough to break the current cryptography that protects all digital communications. But this scenario is preventable if policymakers take actions now to minimize the harm that quantum computers may cause. Read more »

NO "TIME OUTS" IN FUTURE CONFLICTS

A Bottom-Up Approach to Multi Domain Operations
By Andrew Smith, Over the Horizon: "Special Operations missions are rarely confined to a single domain of warfare, making Special Operations Forces (SOF) joint to a degree unseen across the DoD."

Why We Need A Modern Theory of Special Warfare to Thrive in the Human Domain
by Arnel P. David, Dave Allen, Aleksandra Nesic & Nicholas Krohley, Wavell Room: "Strategies and plans are made, but lack execution or meaningful implementation. This is due, in part, to a state of strategic confusion, wherein ill-defined concepts are being deployed without adequate grounding in a coherent theoretical framework."

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Alice Hunt Friend and Shannon Culbertson write: During this period of change, policy guidance on how to implement the NDS and prioritize competing demands will help the SOF community arrest negative readiness trends and help channel into new challenges the innovation and drive for which the community is well known. Policymakers should initiate a rational process to determine the right balance of missions for SOF and then estimate the steps necessary to implement needed investment changes and timelines for implementation. – Center for Strategic and International Studies

All-Domain Ops Require Rethinking Combatant Commands: Goldfein
“This is foundational to who we are,” Goldfein says of the new all-domain operations warfighting concept.

The Future of Tactical Airlift Is Here and It Is Vertical by Walker D. Mills and Dylan “Joose” Phillips-Levin

​Future Vertical Lift: Army’s Aerial Vanguard
The Army isn’t just replacing old helicopters. It’s building a networked “ecosystem” of mutually supporting manned and unmanned weapons that can drive a flying wedge into Russian and Chinese air defenses.  

FARA: Five-Way Fight For Army’s Future Scout
AVX/L3, Bell, Boeing, Karem, and Sikorsky have submitted their designs for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft. None of them is a conventional helicopter.

Beyond The Black Hawk: Defiant Vs. Valor
After decades of R&D, the race to replace the UH-60 helicopter is entering its last few years.

FVL: Zoom In On The Competitors To Replace The Black Hawk
Zoom in on the Sikorsky-Boeing and Bell contenders to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk with exclusive photographs.

​FVL: Bell, Sikorsky-Boeing Split $181M To Finalize FLRAA Designs
After two years of intensive digital engineering, in 2020 the Army will pick either a Bell tiltrotor or a Sikorsky-Boeing compound helicopter to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk.

FLRAA In Flight: Watch The SB>1 Defiant & V-280 Valor In The Air
A close-up look at the two competitors to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk.

FVL Q&A: 7 Leaders On The Future Of Army Aviation
New Future Vertical Lift aircraft are just part of the solution. So are new tactics and technology upgrades for existing helicopters.

FVL: Army Picks Bell & Sikorsky For FARA Scout
The Bell 360 Invictus and the Sikorsky Raider-X will vie for the final contract to build FARA, with rival prototypes in flight by 2023. Bell and Sikorsky (with Boeing) are also facing off for the FLRAA transport.

FVL: The Army’s 10-Year Plan For FARA Scout
The Army’s urgently developing new air-launched drones, long-range missiles, and electronic architecture to go on the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft that Bell and Sikorsky are vying to build.

The City Is Not Neutral: Why Urban Warfare Is So Hard
By John Spencer, Modern War Institute: ““Contrary to what is often supposed, urban warfare is not more difficult than other types of warfare.” That’s what a recent article published in the Texas National Security Review argues. The authors believe, in fact, that urban environments are “neutral,” not to be feared—that, as in almost every other environment, the better-trained and more-professional force should have an advantage. Unfortunately, history does not support this notion of urban terrain’s neutrality, nor do the realities of modern warfare."

Making the Most of Spontaneous Civil Engagement:
An Introduction to the Engaged Awareness Cycle
By Andrew J. Bibb, Small Wars Journal: “Civil Affairs (CA) Soldiers, by virtue of their being selected for acceptance into the CA branch, are expected to make the most of every opportunity to improve upon existing relationships and seek to create new opportunities for cooperation in support of U.S. objectives. Consequently, U.S. Army CA doctrine requires that CA Soldiers to be proficient in two tactical tasks: Civil Reconnaissance (CR) and Civil Engagement (CE). The first of these, CR, is always “targeted, planned, and coordinated"[1] and generally not to be conducted in a hasty manner."

Drones, Deniability, and Disinformation: Warfare in Libya and the New International Disorder by Wolfram Lacher

Beyond The Black Hawk: Defiant Vs. Valor

FVL: Zoom In On The Competitors To Replace The Black Hawk
​Zoom in on the Sikorsky-Boeing and Bell contenders to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk with exclusive photographs.

Israel's Iran Confrontation Is Pointing the Way to the Future of War by Seth Frantzman
The Hill
February 26, 2020
https://www.meforum.org/60482/israel-is-pointing-the-way-to-the-future-of-war

China’s Bid for Maritime Primacy in an Era of Total Competition
By Patrick M. Cronin, CIMSEC: "In this decade, the United States Navy may be displaced as the most formidable maritime presence in the Pacific Ocean. China is determined to challenge America’s ability to project military power forward into the Western Pacific."

Behind Moscow’s Arms Control Offensive
By Stephen A. Blank, Eurasia Daily Monitor: "Russia has a long track record of importuning the United States and its allies regarding arms control treaties and negotiations. But the sentiment Moscow presents to the West is far from altruistic."

The Evolving Role of the Fighter in the Integratable Air Wing:
The View From TOPGUN
From SLD.info: "With the developing relationship between sensors and shooters in the maritime kill web, what is the evolving role of the fighter?"

Marketing Land Power: Lessons from the Atomic Army to the Present
By Joe Buccino, Strategy Bridge: “The U.S. defense budget in 2021 and beyond, already projected to flatten and then trend downward, is certain to take a measurable hit as result of the pandemic. The U.S. Army, in particular, may be a target, with the potential to witness a breathtaking budget and force size reduction, especially should the Pentagon decide to continue to prioritize new technology, new equipment, and new domains."

Weight on the Scales
By Ali Wyne, the interpreter: "Middle powers might seek to balance the U.S. and China, but inevitably their own actions change the equation."

JADC2 and AI Should Enable Post-Pandemic Military Creativity, Not Replace It
By Bryan Clark & Dan Patt, RealClearDefense: "Beyond eliminating war’s fog and friction, Net-Centric Warfare promised efficiency and optimization to make the most of a smaller U.S. military."

Trump’s National Security Advisor Touts New 'Streamlined' NSC
By David A. Wemer, Atlantic Council: "Less than five months on the job, U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien reported that the National Security Council was in the final stages of a reorganization that would get it “back to a manageable size.”"

Fog, Friction, and Thinking Machines by Zach Hughes

The New Spheres of Influence
By Graham Allison, Foreign Affairs: “In the heady aftermath of the Cold War, American policymakers pronounced one of the fundamental concepts of geopolitics obsolete."
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An Assessment of U.S. Leadership Potential in Asia via the TPP
By Heather Marie Stur, Divergent Options: “The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) enables the U.S. to assert leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. Although U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the TPP, he indicated in 2018 that he would consider returning to the alliance."

With U.S. Afghan Exit, Russia Eyes Central Asian Security
By Azima Akhmatova, the interpreter: "While commentators have written extensively about the pros and cons of the U.S.-Taliban deal, the ramifications for the security stance of Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours in Central Asia have been largely overlooked."

Algorithmic Warfare: Defense Department’s AI Posture ‘Challenged’
By Yasmin Tadjdeh, Defense One: "While artificial intelligence has become a top priority within the Pentagon, a new report by the RAND Corp. has found that the Defense Department has shortcomings in its AI posture."

The ABCs of AI-Enabled Intelligence Analysis by Iain J. Cruickshank

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6473/30

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200102143405.htm

https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/after-us-india-set-to-sign-path-breaking-logistics-support-agreement-with

https://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/release/208768/israel-unveils-laser-air_defense-weapon.htm

Emerging Tech and Crossing "The Valley of Death" by Robert D. Atkinson

Simplicity Before Complexity: Conceptualizing Long-Term Military Competitions
By Sam Canter, Strategy Bridge: "Buzzwords impersonating military strategy are not a new phenomenon in the United States. Concepts like Flexible Response, Revolutions in Military Affairs, and Full Spectrum Dominance each failed to successfully transition from idea to policy."

Pentagon AI Efforts Disorganized: RAND
By Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense: "A congressionally mandated study warns the Defense Department's current efforts to harness artificial intelligence are “significantly challenged” by shortfalls in organization, planning, data, and talent, and testing, setting the stage for changes in the next defense policy and spending bills."

GRAHAM ALLISON ON CHINA & AI SUPREMACY

Breaking D’s 2019 Top Five: From Multi-Domain Ops To Killer Robots
Breaking D has been at the forefront in reporting the Pentagon’s shift toward a new way of war, Multi-Domain Operations, since Day 1.

Bringing Back the Punitive Expedition
By Kevin Benson, Modern War Institute: "A punitive expedition results in a measured, relatively swift, focused response. It can be of some duration but only long enough to achieve the policy ends of punishing the group that threatened U.S. interests or caused U.S. casualties. There is no regime change, no re-ordering of the existing power structure in a region."

ASIA TIMES

The Future of War Technology Whispers to Us From the Past, and We Must Listen Better by Alexander Kott

EXCLUSIVE Killing Cruise Missiles: Pentagon To Test Rival Lasers
DoD is finalizing contracts for three competing demonstrators, aiming for a 300-kilowatt weapon by 2022 and 500 kW by 2024, laser R&D director Thomas Karr told us.

Artificial Intelligence and the Adversary
​What will Beijing do with the data it stole about American military service members and others?

AI: In Defence of Uncertainty
By David Whetham & Kennneth Payne, Defence-In-Depth: "Military planners have been seeking the Holy Grail of being able to see through the fog of war that introduces so much uncertainty and doubt into military decision making. Whether this was the Revolution in Military Affairs or Network Centric Warfare, the tantalising promise of reducing friction has been extremely attractive. AI appears to offer the same thing today ..."

MDA Kickstarts New Way To Kill Hypersonic Missiles
​It looks like the military is taking a regional approach to hypersonic missile defense, while it continues to pursue a space sensor layer for homeland defense.

Best of 2019: The Technology of Defense
By Patrick Tucker, Defense One: "Here’s a look back at some of the top defense-technology-related stories of the year."

Top Stories 2019: International Operations
By Ben Werner, USNI News: "The U.S. Navy pushed its interoperability with foreign allies and partner nations in 2019 to counter increased naval activity by Russia and China."

Nanotechnology Is Shaping the Hypersonics Race
By Patrick Tucker, Defense One: "A protective coating of carbon nanotubes may help the Pentagon field warplanes and missiles that can survive the intense heat generated at five times the speed of sound."

CHINA:
China’s Achilles’ Heel When It Comes to Cyberspace
By Mark Pomerleau, Fifth Domain: "If “mutually assured cyber destruction" were to occur, one Marine Corps leader said, authoritarian nations such as China might have more to lose than the United States."

Benefits and Pitfalls of Data-Based Military Decisionmaking
By Scott S. Haraburda, Small Wars Journal: "Recently, senior Army leaders demanded visualized access to massive amounts of data to enhance their decisionmaking, which quickly morphed into an ambition project called Army Leader Dashboard."

U.S. Electronic Warfare: You’re Doing It Wrong
By Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense: "Despite rising budgets and high-level attention to electronic warfare, the Pentagon’s “efforts have been unfocused and are likely to fail,” warns a congressionally mandated study out today. What the US needs, the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments report says, is a radically new approach that can outfox Russia and China."

How Nanotech Will Help the U.S. Military Reach Mach 5
By Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics: "Materials engineered at the atomic level will enable hypersonic weapons to survive punishing heat and stress."

How to Respond to Russia’s INF Treaty Violation
By Gary Schmitt, RealClearDefense: “When The New York Times reported that Russia had likely deployed a nuclear-armed cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.” ​

The Art of Command, The Science of AI
Future commanders will need to know how to use artificial intelligence to make decisions—including when not to trust it. But how do you decide?

ASIA TIMES:  WHY CHINA WILL WIN THE AI WAR

Modernizing U.S. Army Reconnaissance and Security for Great Power Conflict
By Nathan Jennings, Military Review: "The U.S. Army is currently grappling with a critical gap in its capability to win expeditionary wars against near-peer adversaries"

As it grapples with the advent of Multi-Domain Operations (MDO), NATO is asking industry how companies can help ensure interoperability among allied fighters, tankers and airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms. – Breaking Defense

‘Bob, How Do We Bottle This?’ Making Infantry As Good As Special Ops
Our elite close combat forces are outnumbered. As a national priority we must increase the numbers of those capable of doing these hazardous jobs by transferring the skills of JSOC warriors to Army and Marine conventional infantrymen.

Incorporating Uncertainty Into the Navy's Force Structure Assessment
By Jack McKechnie, CIMSEC: "The U.S. Navy has perhaps the toughest problem among the U.S. armed services for planning long-term force structure. Navy ships and submarines are much more expensive and require far longer times to procure compared to the military equipment of the other services."

Hypersonic Weapons: Tactical Uses and Strategic Goals
By Alan Cummings, War on the Rocks: "Hypersonic flight is not new. The V-2 rocket and the vast majority of the ballistic missiles that it inspired achieved hypersonic speeds (i.e., speeds faster than the speed of sound or Mach 5+) as they fell from the sky, as did crewed aircraft like the rocket-powered X-15."

U.S. Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Weapons Dangerously Entangled
By James M. Acton & Nick Blanchette, Foreign Policy: "In October 1973, an unreliable radiation detector could have caused the end of the world."

OSD & Joint Staff Grapple With Joint All-Domain Command
The armed services agree they need to work together better — they just don’t agree on how. Now the Joint Staff is taking a hand.

By Gregory Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs.1 The sole object of power is the imposition of will. Now, finally, technologies are beginning to exist which take much of that task of “imposing will” away from physical force capabilities and into the realm of information dominance — ID — systems and doctrine. 

This very fact must transform the way national security forces think about deterrence, power projection, nation-building, and defense. ID is at the core of the entire govern-mental and social structure, and therefore determines the stability of currencies and economies. It can be used to build national cohesion, and erode it in opposing nations. 

ID warfare has its own set of technological capabilities, firmly rooted in all uses of the electronic spectrum. This has only been possible as a result of scientific advances over the past century. 

So now, for the first time in a century or more, defense procurement and acquisition strategies must account for threats and operational responsibilities which extend be-yond the conventional, kinetic defense spectrum. 

At the same time, because of sociological and population changes, alliance structures which have been in place for decades are now under extreme pressure, and in many areas may have lost their utility. When great sociological and historical upheavals occur, the threat of change creates uncertainty among populations, and this automatically trig-gers a turn away from globalist thinking toward nationalism. This has been the case throughout history. It is the case now, as we enter a period of great upheaval in the bal-ance of power. 
​
This means, as we enter a period of greater emphasis on state sovereignty (national-ism), that self-reliance in national security will become of primary importance. It does not, however, afford us the luxury of abandoning entirely old alliances, nor even of abandoning entirely the doctrine, force structures, and technological patterns on which we have relied. But we will now need to look at new frameworks which accommodate hybrid and proxy conflict in both the military and social spectra. 

Air Force ABMS: One Architecture To Rule Them All?
The Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System is growing from an alternative to JSTARS to a multi-domain mega-network to connect all four services in future wars. Is this a revolution or overreach?

Israel Tests New Air-Ground Tactics Vs. Islamic Jihad
​The Israeli Air Force just wrapped up a “Blue Flag” wargame with the US & European allies and a real war with Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Mobile Nuclear Power Will Enable a Logistics Revolution for the Army by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Dan Christman

How Lockheed Martin Is Trying to Link Everything on the Battlefield
By Patrick Tucker, Defense One: "Experiment by experiment, the company is weaving aircraft, ground vehicles, satellites, and the rest into a network that will someday give commanders unprecedented decision-support options."
Soldiers Conduct Call-for-Fire with Robots
By Kris Osborn, Warrior Maven: "“We had four robot vehicles conduct a tactical mission while humans were safe in defilade. We built four robots that are refurbished M113 tracked vehicles and we’ve taken two Bradleys -- gutted them -- and turned them into two control vehicles with all kinds of sensors on them.”"

Navy’s Secretive Program to Project False Fleets From Drone Swarms
By Brett Tingley, The WarZone: "The U.S. Navy has been quietly developing what could be one of the most important, transformative, and fascinating advances in naval combat, and warfare in general, in years. This new electronic warfare "system of systems" has been clandestinely refined over the last five years ..."
Army Evaluating Advanced Fire Control Optics for Non-Infantry Soldiers
By Matthew Cox, Military.com: "Army infantry officials at Fort Benning, Georgia, are testing a handful of advanced fire control optics in an effort to one day help non-combat arms soldiers shoot more accurately against close-quarter and long-range enemy targets."

DoD Leaders’ Modernization Plans
Will Require Rethinking How It Partners With Industry
By Dan Gouré, Lexington Institute: "The Pentagon and the Military Services want to modernize faster and cheaper. This means reforming all parts of the acquisition process, from requirements definition and engineering development to contracting, testing and life cycle management." ​

​Army Pushes 600 Programs From Acquisition to Sustainment
By Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense: " The multi-million-dollar move will help Army Futures Command focus on new technology while Army Materiel Command focuses on sustaining the current force."

U.S., U.K.:
U.K. Successfully Tests SABRE Hypersonic Engine in Colorado
From The Engineer: "The UK’s Reaction Engines has tested the vital precooler of its SABRE engine in airflow conditions replicating speeds of Mach 5."​

Russian Nuclear Force Expansion and the Failure of Arms Control
By Mark B. Schneider, RealClearDefense: "Today, there is a debate over whether we should extend the New START Treaty, amend it to eliminate the loopholes, or try to negotiate an expanded agreement."

Win the Race for Invisibility
By John D. Miller, Proceedings: "Infrared, radar, acoustic, and optical stealth are the new frontier in low-observability, and the winner of the metamaterial competition will have an enormous advantage in the next fight." ​