Rapid Fire 2011-10-13: Defense Offsets | F-35 Congressional Support
Oct 13, 2011 07:45 EDTRelated Stories: Americas - USA, Budgets, Daily Rapid Fire, Field Innovations, IT - Cyber-Security, Issues - Political, Lobbying, Missiles - Ballistic, Russia, Tanks & Mechanized
- Don’t mind me, I’m just the user. Driven mostly by political pressure, defense offsets have grown to 130 countries for an estimated $100B/year.
- Russia is likely to continue renewing its aging materiel, at least if oil prices remain high and Putin gets, as widely expected, the presidency back. They’ll have finished scrapping their T-64 tanks by the end of the year.
- The Military Logistics Forum reviewed the effectiveness of current ground vehicle RESET/RECAP programs.
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- Right steps, wrong order. Tech. Sgt. Joshua Lopez realized the Technical Order Data (TOD) he was following to test the rail launcher that mounts an AIM-9 Sidewinder on an F-22 could lead to damage of the launcher’s $14K detent assembly. Rather than just go through an informal workaround he submitted a request to reorder the TOD and got rewarded for it.
- What gets measured gets improved. RAND surveyed troops using the Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT) Warfighters’ Forum (SWfF StrykerNet), a private website made to help them get ready for deployment. The non-profit found the site’s users satisfied with the service, but recommends among other things to implement some form of tracking/analytics to better assess usage of future similar warfighting communities. This would require caution re: confidentiality but in this day and age barely any private actor would consider deploying a new web service without some level of embedded analytics.
- US DoD Systems Engineering aka DASD (SE) and the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) announced their 2011 award winners: Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense (AIAMD), Chinook CH-47F Multi-Year I, Advanced Explosive Ordnance Disposal Robotic System (AEODRS), CH-53K Heavy Lift Replacement Helicopter (HLR) and Enterprise Business Systems.
- World of Malcraft. USAF issued an official statement with more details on the type of malware recently found on ground control stations at Creech AFB: “more of a nuisance than an operational threat.” More serious is the lack of internal transparency on this issue. In an interesting parallel, the head of cyber security at Raytheon UK warns that if you choose to sell to Taiwan, you will be under constant attack from the large continental country across the strait. This requires organization-wide mobilization and response.
- F-35 by numbers. Well, maybe not the kind of numbers you had in mind: 1,300 subcontractors, 130,000 jobs in 47 states, and a Congressional Caucus approved [PDF] on September 14 that already has 40 members, according to the AP. The caucus is co-chaired by Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-TX 12, member of the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee) who clashed with Senator McCain (R-AZ) last month on F-35 funding. According to the Sunlight Foundation, Lockheed Martin (employees + PAC) was Granger’s #2 campaign finance contributor for 2009-2010.
- Details might finally emerge today at a US House Armed Services Committee (HASC) hearing on where budget cuts might be made, a question carefully dodged so far. Freshly-appointed Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey will testify, and they’re not fans of cuts themselves. A group of 65 House Democrats sent a letter [PDF] to the deficit supercommittee urging it to find savings in nuclear weapons, while conservative think thank Heritage Foundation argues in favor of missile defense. Finally, in case you had any doubts about how they feel, HASC Republicans made the video clip below and chairman of Military Personnel Subcommittee Joe Wilson (R-SC) wrote this op ed:
