June 2, 2022

Security Forces Defender breathes new life into augmentee program

The 78th Security Forces Squadron Training Section ensures base Defenders are fully qualified and capable of defending Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, in all situations. RESOne instructor brought new life to the SFS Augmentee Program to bolster their numbers in time of crisis. Staff Sgt. Ginger Kim, 78th SFS Training Section lead instructor said, the augmentee program trains Airmen from across the base to conduct installation entry control duties.

May 27, 2022

Emerging Capabilities Policy Office to Speed Policy Considerations of New Technologies

The speed of war is getting faster, with new capabilities, such as artificial intelligence, hypersonic technologies, and more, entering the services.  A new Pentagon office seeks to do for policy what the research and acquisition communities have been doing in regard to new capabilities. 

May 25, 2022

AFRL partners with New Mexico State University to test cooling solutions for directed energy weapons

The Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, Directed Energy Directorate recently signed a five-year Strategic Education Partnership Agreement (EPA) with New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces that extends the loan of a laser diode system NMSU will use in testing novel cooling solutions for directed energy laser and high power microwave systems.

May 10, 2022

Report to Congress on Navy Shipboard Lasers

This report provides background information and issues for Congress on shipboard solid-state lasers (SSLs) that the Navy is developing for surface-ship self-defense. The Navy’s proposed FY2023 budget requests continued research and development funding for these efforts.

April 30, 2022

Get Real or Get Outpaced: Reality and the Future of U.S. Navy

American domination in a period of unipolarity is coming to an end—if it hasn’t already. Advantages granted by leaps in technology now last weeks or months, not years as they once did during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. Flat and shrinking budgets, coupled with poor program concepts hedging on unproven or developing technology, management, and execution, have left the Navy with bloated contracts and ineffective platforms. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has never lived up to its billing, and maintenance costs far outpace its usefulness leading the Navy to retire relatively new hulls decades earlier than planned. The Zumwalt-class destroyer has grappled with program cuts to build count and immature technologies, which have left it without a full complement of weapon systems and an undefined role. The ballooning production and maintenance costs, along with the emergence of hypersonic weapons, threatened to render the Gerald R. Ford-class of supercarriers obsolete or, at the very least, less effective.