Rapid Fire 2012-01-04: National Guard Joins Joint Chiefs
Jan 04, 2012 08:15 ESTRelated Stories: Americas - Other, Americas - USA, Boeing, Budgets, Daily Rapid Fire, Middle East - Other, Mines & Countermine-IED, People, Policy - Doctrine, UAVs
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- US SecDef Leon Panetta will present the result of the Pentagon’s latest strategic review tomorrow. Nothing dramatic or really new appears in the pre-announcement coverage so far: Bloomberg | NYT | Reuters. Expect a confirmation of a relative, but not drastic shift from Europe to Asia, and some program delays.
- As chief of the National Guard Bureau and in execution of the 2012 NDAA, US Air Force General Craig R. McKinley is now a statutory member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- New experimental anti-IED device: the remote-controlled leafblower-wheelbarrow hybrid, courtesy of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Fort Halstead, Kent, in England (a site that incidentally DSTL will leave in the years to come). Meanwhile Dr Andrew Baxter at DSTL in Porton Down received an award for his design work on light protected patrol vehicles (LPPV).
- Boeing is meeting today with its workers in the Wichita, KS plant the company is said to be considering closing.
- Elbit gets another Hermes 900 UAV order from an unnamed customer in the Americas. Chile is known as the 1st export customer for that platform.
- Learnings about how the Americans are fighting in Afghanistan, as seen by the Chinese.
- Iran’s claims on the Strait of Hormuz are the usual bombastic nonsense but it’s still useful to have some context. The CSIS think tank has a primer. it’s not just the US reaction that’s worth watching (so far, a shrug), but also China’s.
