Serious Defense Tech, Not-So-Serious Delivery
The Navy's Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle program is billions in and still searching for a clear mission. Here's what's actually going on.
K. BrennanThe Army is spending $6 billion to upgrade its Stryker fleet, but the vehicle's identity crisis is older than the program itself.
K. BrennanThe Navy's directed energy weapons can fry drones for pennies per shot, so why aren't they on every ship? Clouds, salt, and physics have opinions.
K. BrennanThe Army bet $43 billion on HoloLens-based goggles that would turn soldiers into cyborgs. Instead, troops got nausea and blurry icons.
K. BrennanThe Marine Corps' ACV costs $100M+ per vehicle and struggles to do two jobs at once. Here's why designing for both sea and land is so brutally hard.
K. BrennanThe Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System promised soldiers a heads-up display for the battlefield. What they got was a $70K headache.
K. BrennanThe B-21 Raider is America's most expensive bomber ever, but the real story isn't the price tag. It's that no one can verify it.
K. BrennanThe Army's FLRAA program promised to replace the Black Hawk by 2030. Spoiler: it won't. Here's what went wrong and why it matters.
K. BrennanThe Pentagon's hypersonic weapons can fly at Mach 5+ but struggle with basic targeting, here's why speed isn't everything.
K. BrennanHow Ukraine's cheap cardboard drones are forcing a complete rethink of modern air defense economics and strategy.
K. BrennanThe Pentagon's SATCOM systems cost billions but deliver dial-up speeds while commercial options race ahead.
K. BrennanThe USS Gerald R. Ford's electromagnetic catapults promised revolution but delivered headaches and billion-dollar delays.
K. BrennanThe Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program has a sticker shock problem that makes F-35s look like a bargain.
K. BrennanGhost Robotics' quadruped robots face an unusual problem: everyone wants to use them for target practice instead of reconnaissance.
K. BrennanA look at the absurd procurement pipeline that turns simple purchases into Pentagon-grade paperwork nightmares.
K. BrennanJoint All-Domain Command and Control sounds intimidating. It's actually a pretty simple idea buried under a mountain of jargon.
K. Brennan