Jason Atwell

Technology and Warfare, Strategist, Army Veteran. Opinions (and bad jokes) my own.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

@StevenJBurns @CorkNuts1 I think you might be using a different definition of liberal than I intended?

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

@CureHPS1 It's disheartening how many of the recent "reforms" are just going to get subsumed back into the existing bureaucracy.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

@Ami_Marisol Combat experience and warfighting ability should definitely count for more in promotions, but when you throw in joint...well the joint credit system is a bit of a mess.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

@thatdudeiniowa Wtf are you talking about? You can literally look up dozens of examples of egregious misconduct by senior officers, to say nothing of the complete strategic incompetence of the last 20 years.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

I can't fathom, after 20+ years of GWOT shenanigans, having this much faith in the selection system.

[Meghann Myers @MeghannMyers_]

So the question is, how did these officers get to the final step of selection if they didn’t deserve to be there?

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

I'll know we're serious when we start seeing netting show up over sensitive sites and events.

[POLITICO @politico]

Mullin: ‘Everybody’s a little behind’ in safeguarding against drones as World Cup looms https://t.co/6KpN06K0ps

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

Are we not being similarly illogical?

[War on the Rocks @WarOnTheRocks]

The most effective counter-drone weapon in the largest drone war in history entered service in 1976. Gulf states want F-35s instead.https://t.co/xGQSCzkcNO

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

There are some things here I wholeheartedly agree with, and others I have questions or concerns:
1. If Dept. of the Army has oversight, how will we avoid resourcing and personnel shortfalls that have already made the Army a poor caretaker of its own cyber capabilities?
2. I'm curious to see more about how they arrived at these force generation numbers and timelines.
3. I understand the logic behind avoiding a cyber reserve force, but the inability of the conventional forces to incorporate reserve cyber talent is already a shortcoming, so why repeat that mistake? Places a lot of confidence in the talent development and retention capabilities of the proposed force.
4. Cyber combined arms sounds great, but how do we address the fact that concepts like the cyber-space-SOF triad and the MDTFs have never actually materialized tactical or even operational cyber.
5. More flexible promotion and career management makes a ton of sense, and is badly needed, but how does that jive with giving the notoriously inflexible Army G-1 some responsibilities in administration?
6. "Industry exchange" is great, but if it's super useful, why not formalize it as some form of reserve component? Think a Det. 201 not populated entirely by C-suite execs with no operational knowledge or dedicated resources.
7. Having more cyber JAGs who actually know cyber is badly needed, but there will be redundancies with some talent that already exists at CYBERCOM, etc.

[Task & Purpose @TaskandPurpose]

Officers only: New report lays out what a ‘US Cyber Force’ could look like https://t.co/joqBmMCCJU

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

The thing is though, the military really doesn't retain and advance the best people, and has not for quite some time.

[Sabrina Singh @sabrinasingh24]

Our military depends on retaining and advancing the best people - yet again Hegseth is injecting uncertainty and politics into the promotion process.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

USARC loves to put out press releases about how critical COMPO 3 is to Army logistics, engineering, etc. but at the same time Big Army seems to be neglecting modernization of those units and commands. I really worry that we are not preparing the most important parts of how we scale logistics for a truly contested environment.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

This is where we ought to be putting a lot more effort into analytics and automation.

[Modern War Institute @WarInstitute]

The Glass Backbone: Why the Army’s Logistics Will Break in the Next War https://t.co/ofjcX5tXWV

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

We have incurred a massive debt by assuming a reactive posture in cyber for decades. The bill is coming due.

[Breaking Defense @BreakingDefense]

A Cyber Force budget would require at least $10 billion, new commission report says https://t.co/IA2n8lbimn

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

Given the shift to the ISV, we're gonna see a lot of JLTVs show up in law enforcement applications.

[Andrew Leyden @PenguinSix]

The U.S. Secret Service has a new armored vehicle.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

LFG

[AIScoop - @aiscoop.bsky.social @AIScoopNews]

The Defense Department is requesting close to $30 billion in fiscal 2027 to purchase and enable next-generation AI supercomputers and modernize the military’s computing infrastructure to power them. https://t.co/ksUjrnAAoY

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

Because I'm a heraldry nerd:
1. When are we going to see an Iran Campaign Medal?
2. Did Absolute Resolve get Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal credit?
3. It would be cool to see the Glider Badge and other Glider unit lineage brought back for both tactical UAVs and when we inevitably see drone-delivered infantry.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

@cmcoglianese Good answer, there's also Starry. Emory Upton might be the original. I'm mostly struck by the fact Rickover would go after industry just as hard as he fought the bureaucracy.

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

Does the Army even have an equivalent to Rickover?
Maybe somebody like Somervell?

[Sam @Discoplomacy]

“When submarine captains complained about the quality of work being done by outside contractors, Rickover informed all the contracting firms that after leaving a shipyard, their entire senior-management team was required to be onboard the refitted submarine the first time it dived.”

[Jason Atwell @JasonAtwell14]

My biggest interest in this is not what is possible when you get that many smart people in a room, but how you maintain it in the field with a sort of tech-savvy BSTB.

[DefenseScoop - @defensescoop.bsky.social @DefenseScoop]

Known as “Operation Jailbreak,” an initial swarm of engineers from roughly 20 defense companies descended on Fort Carson earlier this month with the overall goal of getting the Army’s vast stable of disparate military systems to talk to each other. https://t.co/o55AbZB6VN