If the outcome of wars is decided decades before they are fought, the U.S. is already late in planning for future conflicts

Swedish army’s chief of staff is restructuring the service as a modern force.

With the evolution of modern satellite-based navigation, miniaturized inertial measurement systems, advanced electro-optical and laser sensors and powerful yet compact computing and advanced data links, robots are becoming smart enough to carry out autonomous missions as efficiently, or better than, their human counterparts.

Armies using new technologies, force structures to counter evolving threats

Combining assets to defeat the rocket, artillery and mortar (RAM) threat has proven successful, but other traditional threats (aircraft/cruise missile) and emerging asymmetric ones (unmanned air systems) still have been treated separately. The RAM experience suggested an integrated approach to defeating these threats and to the acquisition process. This approach unites sensor, weapons and mission-command components with a standard set of interfaces using a standardized set of networks to communicate—a meta-system for air defense.

While the U.S. Special Operations Command has seen its force size and budget grow despite the current fiscal austerity sweeping Washington, it is looking not for new platforms but for ways of obtaining more data from its existing unmanned air systems, especially small ones such as AeroVironment’s man-portable, hand-launched RQ-11 Raven.

Over the past decade, Pentagon plans to replace the AGM-114 Hellfire have been scaled back from joint-service development of an all-new tri-mode missile for launch from rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft, fast and slow, to a dual-mode guidance section upgrade for the AGM-114R now carried by U.S. Army and Marine Corps attack helicopters. Delayed and descoped, the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) finally looks set to move into full development.

In what might seem paradoxical, worker retirements are bringing benefits to many A&D contractors