Auto giant General Motors is the outsider in a competition against two teams of companies with decades of defense experience: Oshkosh-Flyer and Polaris-SAIC.

Army Secretary Mark Esper has publicly said the armored off-road truck was designed to defeat guerrillas, at a time when the Army is refocusing on great powers. But the Army still plans to buy about 50,000 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and has even added JLTV to its elite list of 31 top-priority programs.

The battery of eight missiles, while primarily meant to test out tactics, will be capable of combat. So will a prototype battery of lasers entering service in 2021.

The Army’s rebuilding to face China and Russia. That may leave programs designed over the past decade for COIN operations in the dust.

The Army’s not sure it wants 55,000 JLTVs — but manufacturer Oshkosh is doubling down. Why?

Don’t think about the Terminator or Iron Man: Think about Sigourney Weaver’s power loader lifting crates in Aliens.

INF proponents emphasize the risk of nuclear weapons. But, despite its name, the treaty bans a wide range of conventional weapons as well — and it’s non-nuclear, precision-guided missiles that have changed how war is actually waged.

AUSA: The Army is investing more and more money in lasers to defeat incoming rockets and enemy drones. Across the Air & Missile Defense (AMD) portfolio, “we put over 50 percent of our S&T (Science and Technology) money going towards directed energy projects,” up from about a third previously, said the AMD modernization director, Brig. Gen.… Keep reading →

The Google Car and Tesla Autopilot have blazed a trail for the future Army. Both robotics technology and Army thinking have come a long way since 2009, when Defense Secretary Bob Gates cancelled the massive Future Combat Systems program. Where FCS tried to invent new technology on a schedule for 19 different manned and unmanned… Keep reading →

The Army is ready for unmanned vehicles but not yet for a completely unmanned convoy. The 2020 iteration is called Expedient Leader-Follower because the Army still wants a human soldier driving the lead vehicle, with up to nine autonomous trucks following in its trail. But Oshkosh and Robotic Research told me they could take the humans out altogether, if the Army wanted.