There are times and places in the history of war in which improvements in firepower force anyone in range to take cover instead of advancing, as machineguns and howitzers did a century ago on the infamous Western Front. The fundamental difference today is the width of the killing zone would be measured, not in hundreds or thousands of yards, but in hundreds or thousands of miles.

Army soldiers are testing goggles with an image-recognition system that can automatically spot threats like tanks and warn the rest of the squad — or transmit the target data to a distant missile battery so they can take it out.

The JSDR database won’t just keep American communications officers from mistakenly scrambling each others’ signals, either. By providing a comprehensive baseline of what friendly transmissions look like, the mega-database will make it easier for Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Electronic Warfare (EW) troops to hone in on enemy transmissions.

“NATO is clear that we will not perform offensive cyberspace operations,” said Maj. Gen. Wolfgang Renner. “However, we will integrate sovereign cyberspace effects from the allies who are willing to volunteer.”

“We failed the audit. We never expected to pass it,” Pat Shanahan said. But at least the Space Force will cost less than half of the Air Force’s estimate.

Until cyber operators can both train realistically and see the their digital battlespace as clearly as traditional commanders see physical battlespace, they’ll be hard-pressed to defend everyone else’s systems.

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is preparing to release its first-ever audit as soon as this week, making it the last federal agency to complete a top-to-bottom scrubbing of its processes, business practices and finances. The fallout is likely to be messy. While expectations have built over the years that the audit will uncover large savings and… Keep reading →

The defense budget may be caught between doves on the left and budget hawks on the right, but so far Army Secretary Mark Esper isn’t ceding any ground.

The goal is to give the 6,200-strong Cyber Mission Force a common, compatible set of tools so they can act in cyberspace as a coordinated military unit.

Chief of Staff Mark Milley declared air and missile defense the Army’s No. 5 priority — one of the Big Six which the service is pushing to accelerate, if necessary at the expense of everything else in their budget.