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Defense Industrialist

Jul 3, 2014

Battlestar Google

By James Hasik

How is DARPA supposed to build its Cylons if Google is buying all its contractors? Schaft and Boston Dynamics are the two robotics companies that recently took first and second place in the penultimate round of the DARPA Robotics Challenge. Both were bought by Google last December, and with an announcement from the new parent company […]

What the Failures of Iraqi and Ukrainian Armies Can Teach Us

Defense Industrialist

Jul 3, 2014

On the Failures of the Iraqi and Ukrainian Armies

By James Hasik

Political change must precede successful assistance from the west. The collapse of the Iraqi Army last month did seem shocking: eight hundred gunmen from the jihadist group formerly known as ISIS, armed with nothing heavier than a DiShKa on a technical, somehow routed two Iraqi divisions in just days. As I noted last weekend, Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki blames this fiasco on […]

Iraq Ukraine

Defense Industrialist

Jun 29, 2014

Russian Military-Industrial Complex 1, USA’s 0.

By James Hasik

Dmitry Rogozin’s people got jets and pilots to Iraq yesterday. In yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen, David Pugliese quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as finding yet another way to blame the collapse of his army on the United States. His new F-16s are not due to arrive until the autumn, and he asserts that “if we had air […]

Iraq

Defense Industrialist

Jun 20, 2014

Four Questions on the LRS-B, Part 3

By James Hasik

Does it really need a nuclear capability? “Within days,” Air Force Assistant Secretary Bill LaPlante told us at the beginning of the week, but we’re still awaiting that RFP on the LRS-B. So, I continue to prematurely work through the four questions that I believe policymakers should want answered if the program is to proceed. To recap […]

Missile Defense Security & Defense

Defense Industrialist

Jun 19, 2014

Four Questions on the LRS-B, Part 2

By James Hasik

What’s the real range requirement for a “long-range” bomber? As we await whatever is releasable in the US Air Force’s request for proposal (RFP) for a new Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B), I am working through the four questions that I believe policymakers should want answered if the program is to proceed. To recap from yesterday, those are If the bomber […]

Defense Industrialist

Jun 18, 2014

Four questions on the LRS-B

By James Hasik

Part One—How survivable will today’s bomber be a decade on? In the next few days, the US Air Force will release its request for proposals for its long-planned Long-Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B). Two proposals are expected: one from a team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and one from B-2 builder Northrop Grumman. The program should proceed quickly: Speaking at an Atlantic […]

Defense Industrialist

Jun 13, 2014

Gunships against ISIS

By James Hasik

The AC-130 isn’t a functional replacement for the A-10C, but could it be a political one? This past Monday, Lt. Col. Paul Darling of the Alaska Army National Guard wrote an editorial in Defense News arguing—and as an infantry officer—that the USAF’s A-10C should indeed be retired. The savings, he said, should be reinvested in two programs: a replacement […]

Iraq Ukraine

Defense Industrialist

Jun 11, 2014

One Engine or Two for Canada?

By James Hasik

The hard work of evaluating the suitability of the CF-35A Professor Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia has produced a report for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on the presumed preference of Harper Government for the F-35A Lightning II as the next fighter jet for the Royal Canadian Air Force. The title summarizes the argument: “One Dead Pilot: Single-Engine F-35 […]

Defense Industrialist

Jun 9, 2014

Money and Organization, or Rules and Norms?

By James Hasik

What limits the diffusion of dangerous weapons technologies to bad actors? Last week the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released its report Creative Disruption: Technology, Strategy, and the Future of the Global Defense Industry. My colleague Steve Grundman, our Lund Fellow for Emerging Defense Challenges, served on the panel that informed the work of authors Ben Fitzgerald […]

Defense Industrialist

Jun 5, 2014

Where are the Robo-Frigates?

By James Hasik

How SAIC and Rolls Royce could disrupt the shipbuilding business. As I wrote last week, DARPA’s war on costs is an effort in technology, funding potentially “powerful new approaches” in armaments, sensors, navigation and communications, aimed at radically decreasing the cost of fielding the next generation of weapon systems. What may be less obvious is just how commercially disruptive those technological developments […]

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