Category: Emerging Defense Challenges

Atlantic Council Event with SpaceX President Featured

By Gwynne Shotwell

NASA Spaceflight featured the Atlantic Council’s event with the President and COO of SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell:

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 […]

Webcast: Atlantic Council Captains of Industry with Gwynne Shotwell

Please join us on June 4, 2014 from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. for the latest event in the Atlantic Council Captains of Industry series, a discussion with SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell on the company’s ongoing efforts to support commercial, civil, and national security customers with All-American launch services and the challenges […]

DARPA’s Crusade on Costs

By James Hasik

If the alternative is another round of acquisition reform, let’s bet on technology. Just after our recent Disrupting Defense conference, in an interview with Marcus Weisgerber of Defense News, DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar argued that the “High Cost of Weapons Threatens Security” (17 May). Her organization wants to be part of the solution, funding potentially “powerful new approaches” in armament, sensor, […]

Buying Out a Ship Contract, or a Whole Shipyard?

By James Hasik

The French sale of helicopter carriers to Russia shows just how hard industrial rationalization in Europe really is. Back in March, I argued (“Did NATO rearm Russia?”) that arms sales to Moscow had been been more embarrassing than alarming, but that the occupation of Crimea meant that it was really time to stop. Most egregious, I still […]

“I want drones!”

By James Hasik

Allies and adversaries will get them, whether the US exports them or not. Congressman Gregory Meeks (D-NY) had a strong reaction this week to the story of Deborah Peter, a young woman visiting the Congress, about the murder of her family by Boko Haram: I want drones, I want something, because they don’t belong on this earth.The congressman from […]

Webcast: Atlantic Council Captains of Industry with Steven F. Gaffney

Please join us on May 22, 2014 from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. for the latest event in the Atlantic Council Captains of Industry series, a discussion with Steven F. Gaffney, Chairman & CEO of DynCorp International, on the role of service contractors in the US and around the world.

DARPA versus the Congress

By James Hasik

New payloads for old platforms may be the best we can hope for. At our Disrupting Defense conference last week, DARPA Director Arati Prabakhar expressed some surprise that Pentagon officials have been asking her for radical ways out of their budgetary predicament:      Usually budget pressure translates to incrementalism for R&D because people say ‘what have you done […]