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Sydney Freedberg Profile picture
Sydney Freedberg
@SydneyFreedberg
Contributing editor for future warfare @BreakingDefense, focused on cyber/EW, robotics, & AI. Views strictly my own. “Today is gonna be a happy day in Hell!”
Aug 5 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
PHYSICS IS STILL A THING, DAMMIT. Normally I wouldn't pick on Gen. (ret) Mark Milley & Google (ret) Eric Schmidt, who've done a ton to drag the US military into the 21st century, but their @ForeignAffairs piece out today makes a mistake people KEEP MAKING, and I am LOSING IT. /1 Image @ForeignAffairs Don't get me wrong, drones are amazing...but the catch-all term "drones" (or UAVs/UAS/RPAs) conceals a trap, because it makes it all too easy to make mistakes like this one, where Miley & @ericschmidt compare a $400~ FPV hobby drone, a $30~ MILLION MQ-9 Reaper, & an $80M F-35. /2 Image
Jul 24 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
SWARM WARS: Pentagon holds toughest drone-defense demo to date. Eight counter-UAS systems — wielding a mix of radars, machineguns, missiles, jammers, and more — were tested against swarms of up to 50 drones of different types attacking simultaneously from different directions. /1 Image Read our full story online at breakingdefense.com/2024/07/swarm-…
Apr 10 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Well, crap. I wrote last year that jamming was so effective against drones over Ukraine that there was no point in hardening them & it’s better to just buy lots of expendable ones, but I’d hoped the US might square that circle. Per @WSJ today, the answer is a resounding no [1/n]:


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Image Here’s that @WSJ article (link buried in second post to deceive evil algorithms): [2/n] wsj.com/world/how-amer…
Mar 11 • 42 tweets • 18 min read
What do Dune, Star Wars, Star Trek, Rome (the empire), Hamilton (the musical), and Hazbin Hotel (also the musical) tell us about the American Dream & the deep roots of US strategic power?

Yes, my idiosyncratic obsessions really do intersect here, bear with me. [1/n]
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Image One thing that struck me about #HazbinHotel is how -wholesome- it is. Yes, this foul-mouthed musical by a proudly bisexual woman (@vivziepop), whose protagonists are the literal daughter of Lucifer, her girlfriend, and a drug-addicted gay porn star with spider arms…. [2/n] Image
Jun 4, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
A sobering article indeed on Ukrainian tactical shortcomings in @WarOnTheRocks , excellently summed up by @BrynnTannehill in this thread: The big unanswered question: Are the elite assault brigades pulled off the line for intensive Western training able to free themselves from the dysfunctional post-Soviet legacy? washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/…
Jan 26, 2023 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
Ok, this Russian TV analysis is a gleaming pearl of bullshit grown from a single grain of truth. This gets technical, but TLDR: Russian tank guns can also shoot guided missiles for long-range targets… in theory. [1] So, back in the 1950s & 60s, there was a school that said long-range anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) would make tanks obsolete. (Sound familiar?) One bright idea tank designers came up with in response was dual-mode tank cannons that could fire regular shells -or- ATGMs. [2]
Jan 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Wait, ⁦@washingtonpost⁩ says #Leopard2 weighs 15 tons more than #M1 #Abrams? That…. can’t be right? Image From this otherwise solid article by @mradamtaylor @wneff & Daniel Wolfe @sadbumblebee : washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/…