* The US Air Force made its FY13 force structure announcement [PDF] to reflect its strategic guidance [PDF] in how its manpower is allocated. Its reserve is to change about 3,000 jobs in FY13.
* An F-35A Lightning II made – in the words of Team Eglin Public Affairs – a “small step into the next half century of air dominance” by shortening its first training sortie at Eglin AFB to 15 minutes vs. a planned 90 minutes because of a potential fuel leak. Stuff happens, and the pilot did what he was trained to do. Updating doctrine to “maintain air dominance, 15 minutes at a time” does not sound very convincing, nor fair. But could the lofty rhetoric possibly be taken down a couple of notches?
* During yesterday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing on missile defense, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy Brad Robert said the Administration is considering sharing classified data to allay Russia’s concerns over NATO’s plans in Europe.
* In that same HASC hearing Republicans questioned whether the Pentagon intends to provide enough support to Israel. DOD plans to request about $100-105M per year for the next 5 years for Israeli missile defense. That’s roughly in line with the Obama administration’s FY12 request but significantly less than what Congress decided to fund for the current fiscal year. Total US security aid to Israel in the FY13 budget request tops $3B in what Leon Panetta calls an “ironclad pledge […] so that Israel can maintain military superiority.”
* House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) also recently introduced a bill (HR 4133) to reaffirm the alliance between the two countries and compel the executive branch to report to Congress on expediting F-35 sales to Israel.
* The Israeli Air Force explains how and why IMI’s Delilah loitering cruise missile has become their go-to weapon, and how it differs from missiles like Raytheon’s JSOW-ER, Lockheed’s JASSM, or MBDA’s Storm Shadow & KEPD 350.
* EADS North America is talking to a large number of American companies for potential acquisitions. Such external growth sounds likely, though it is hard to see a Franco-German conglomerate “pull a BAE” on the US market.
* The RAND Corporation looked at what learnings can be derived from commercial applications using motion imagery such as CCTV surveillance and “reality TV” production, to inform how the Air Force can deal with always-increasing streams of UAV-captured video.
* The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) published a primer [PDF] on ground vehicle modernization challenges. “In the absence of a major breakthrough in vehicle defense technologies, spending large sums on developing new systems seems ill-advised.”