Author: Defenceline Webdesk

President Donald Trump’s new plan to enlist private companies to help disrupt cybercriminals abroad may face a fundamental problem when it comes to Russia: distinguishing criminal hackers and state-backed operatives.Russian intelligence services have long tolerated, protected or intermittently recruited financially-motivated hackers without exercising full control over them. That dynamic gives Moscow easier access to hacking talent, and it complicates a major carveout in Trump’s new directive that excludes groups part of or directed by a foreign government, experts and former U.S. officials say.“The line between government control, government-affiliated and government-acknowledged is certainly blurry in Russia,” said Michael Daniel, president and…

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—There are less than four months left in the year, but defense and aerospace company Arcfield’s plans seem to just be getting started, as they prepare for an upcoming satellite launch and explore manufacturing a highly specialized component key for optical sensors and laser communications.“There’s a lot going on at Arcfield. And what we’re really focused on is bringing the government a fully-baked solution,” Dan Knight, Arcfield’s vice president for Golden Dome initiatives and strategy, told Defense One at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., last week. “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, I’m the one-trick wonder that…

In recent years, Pakistan’s private sector has shown a capacity to design original solutions, especially in the domain of unmanned aerial systems (UAS). In fact, at least one such company is working on the sensor-to-effector networking and automation layer that programmes like Heavy Industries Taxila’s (HIT) P-905 counter-drone system depend on. Likewise, at least one company is developing its own interceptor drone stack, i.e., from both automated lightweight and heavyweight effectors to a network-enabled system integrating sensors and providing additional automation elements in the process. Gradient Aerospace, which revealed its ‘Atlas’ perception stack alongside the Swift and Shark interceptors at…

When the United States sanctioned International Criminal Court (ICC) President Akane Tomoko on August 18, Tokyo’s response was swift – and carefully calibrated. The next day, Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Kitamura Toshihiro called the move “very unfortunate,” reaffirming Japan’s consistent support for the ICC and the rule of law. Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae commented publicly on the same day, telling reporters that she considered the sanctions “very unfortunate” and would continue communicating with the United States and other relevant countries. She did not, however, say whether Tokyo would ask Washington to withdraw the sanctions. It was a statement of principle,…

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on August 18 ordered the government to shift imprisoned former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan to the hospital for examination and treatment amid growing concerns over his health. The top court issued the directive on petitions seeking Khan’s hospitalization, access to personal physicians, and meetings with family members. The transfer comes after persistent requests from his legal team and family regarding the 73-year-old leader’s health while in detention. Medical reports have noted issues with Khan’s blood pressure and cardiac health, alongside a specialized eye condition that may have affected his right eye. Khan…

WASHINGTON and AUGUSTA, Ga. — The Army is toying with new ways to deal with communication disruptions on the battlefield by trading the linear, step-by-step contingency plans soldiers once followed for mutually reinforced layers that look more like “electromagnetic camouflage,” I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane said today. “Our traditional PACE plans — primary, alternate, contingency, emergency — ways to [communicate] are dead. A sequential PACE plan, predicated on responding to failure with manual, step-by-step user actions is useless against concurrent multi-band jamming,” McFarlane told an audience at the annual TechNet Augusta conference. A boilerplate PACE plan that any soldier…

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Iturup Island (known in Japan as Etorofu) on August 13. It’s the largest of the disputed Southern Kurils, which are known as the Northern Territories in Japan. The islands have been occupied by Russia since the end of World War II but are also claimed by Japan.  The Kuril Islands have been a constant thorn in Japan-Russia relations. The disputed islands are one of the reasons that Japan and Russia have yet to sign a peace treaty concluding World War II. Japan has long sought to foster economic cooperation with Russia as part of a…

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s Golden Dome Office has repeatedly refused requests from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for a briefing on its plans, a senior CBO official said today amid criticisms from the Pentagon that the watchdog organization’s $1.2 trillion cost estimate for the missile shield is based on inaccurate information. “We have, to date, not been able to talk to the Golden Dome Office,” David Mosher, head of the CBO National Security Directorate, told the Brookings Institution. “We’ve asked them for briefings, and we have not gotten any. They’ve not been willing to do so. So, I know…

AUGUSTA, Ga. — The baseline AI layer for the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) architecture is being built by the software and technology firm Striveworks, Army officials told Breaking Defense on Tuesday. The news comes as the service prepares to roll out NGC2 at the corps-level next year with a focus on Pacific operations. “There’s going to be a lot of software data, the volume of all of that being processed at the corps level is going to be greater,” Joseph Welch, portfolio acquisition executive for command and control and counter-command and control, said in an interview here…

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