• President Obama will attend today’s Pentagon briefing on strategic adjustments that will lead to a 10+% reduction in the number of ground troops (presumably from peak levels): NYT | Reuters | C-Span stream (to start live at 10:50am ET).

• The UK’s defence secretary Philip Hammond will meet his American counterpart Leon Panetta later today. Hammond’s take: “today the debt crisis should be considered the greatest strategic threat to the future security of our nations. The fact is, in this era of austerity… not even the United States can afford the astronomical resource commitment required to deal with every threat from every source.”

• Boeing confirmed it’s going to close its Wichita plant in Kansas by the end of 2013. Some of the 2,000+ jobs will be moved to sites in the states of California, Oklahoma and Washington; others will be cut. Congressman Mike Pompeo is fuming while Tom Cole and Rick Larsen are obviously more upbeat.

• Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) chief Marion Blakey: “At this point we see all of the oxygen in the room being absorbed by the presidential debates. We want to be part of that oxygen, if you will.” (WSJ)

• The British MoD is using balls of rubber strengthened with Kevlar to deliver fuel by helicopter or transport aircraft. Known as the Mk 5 Air Portable Fuel Containers and manufactured by GKN Aerospace, they weight 2 tonnes (4,400 pounds) when full. See a short video at the bottom of this entry. Now, wouldn’t this make sense slung under a K-Max?

• Vincent Manzo, a research analyst at the National Defense University asks [PDF]: where do space and cyberspace fit in questions of deterrence and escalation in cross-domain operations?

• DARPA scientists have found that using an antibiotic and a protein together is more effective to fight radiation than when used separately. Well, at least for mice, but the potential for human application seems promising.

• Gunther Krauter, the general secretary of Austria’s (left wing) Social Democrats (SPO), said the country should sell its Eurofighter jets. Though they belong to the same political party that’s currently leading the government, such as sale is not on the agenda of defence Minister Norbert Darabos, so he was not thrilled by Krauter’s unexpected suggestion: Austrian Independent | Austrian Times. Austria does plan to sell many of its tanks; another contentious issue is Darabos’ support for ending conscription (Germany did so last year, France too in the late 90’s/early 00’s). The right wing People’s Party (OVP), the junior member in an obviously uneasy coalition, had its spokesman call the SPO (in German) the Unsicherheitspartei (the “non-security party”). Surely there must be a 19-letter word for “ouch” in German.
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The USAF Medical Service needs qualified health care workers to provide direct patient care services inside military treatment facilities, and to act as extensions of the military treatment facilities within the United States and Guam. The 773rd ESG/PKJ at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH received 26 proposals, and issued 23 multiple-award, indefinite delivery/ indefinite quantity fixed-firm-price contracts with a maximum total value of of $992 million. This sort of contract is not uncommon; the US Army does the same thing.

Recipient will be eligible to bid on specific delivery orders, and each is guaranteed only $5,000 as a way of offsetting bid expenses. Winners included:

USNS Comfort, Haiti 2010

Boston Ship Repair, LLC in Boston, MA recently won a $9.2 million firm-fixed-price contract for a 60-day regular overhaul/dry-docking of Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort [T-AH-20] for ship repair and maintenance. Work will include dry-docking and undocking of the ship; tank preservation; freeboard preservation; underwater hull painting; switchboard upgrade, sea valve repair; and pump overhauls. The contract includes options which could raise its value to $11.9 million.

Comfort’s primary mission is to provide emergency, on-site care for deployed U.S. military forces, and the ship is also used extensively for humanitarian engagement missions around the world. Work will be performed in Boston, MA, and is expected to be complete by April 13/12. This contract was competitively procured via a solicitation posted to the Federal Business Opportunities website, with more than 50 companies solicited and 3 offers received. US Navy Military Sealift Fleet Support Command manages the contract (N40442-12-C-5001).

• Britain is really missing its Nimrod patrol planes. They had to dispatch a Type 42 destroyer from Portsmouth on the English Channel, to watch a Russian battlegroup 25 miles off of Scotland that included the Admiral Kuznetzov aircraft carrier.

• The British Ministry of Defence (MOD) awarded BAE a £40M (about $63M) contract dubbed Future Combat Air System (FCAS) to support UAV research.

• A $1 billion cyber-warfare program in Iran? Hard to judge. It might add credence to claims that they hacked Lockheed’s RQ-170 stealth UAV down, though there are doubts. The USAF’s emergency buy of a General Atomics Predator C Avenger jet UAV, and reports that it will be deployed to Afghanistan as an apparent replacement, make one wonder if there is a flaw.

• A quick think tank review on Dear Leader’s death: CNAS, CSIS, CFR, Brookings, USIP. Euphemism of the day: uncertainty. It’s quite dark there, who really knows what’s going on?

• Looks like Frank Kendall is well positioned to be confirmed as US acquisition deputy secretary, a position he’s filled in an acting capacity since last September.

• The new Counter-IED Collective and Individual Mounted Training Program at Camp Atterbury (Indiana) tries to simulate the sound and furor of living through an IED blast within an armored vehicle.

• Advances in battlefield medicine have relied on better protection gear, medical practices and logistics to increase survival rates.

• In speeches to Brazil’s generals [in Portuguese], president Dilma Rousseff and defense minister Celso Amorim said financial mechanisms should be put in place to give more visibility and continuity to the country’s defense procurements, thus providing a sustainable foundation for the local industry (as opposed to relying on exports). In the last decade Brazil has grown its official reserves to the 6th position in the world with $350B as of November 2011. Last week French Prime Minister Fillon met with Amorim.

• Syria gets its shore batteries of 72 supersonic P-800/SS-N-26 Yakhont missiles, in the midst of a growing civil war with demonstrators and a Turkish-supported Free Syrian Army. Maybe introducing the missiles wasn’t the best idea right now? And maybe supporting the Kurdish PKK wasn’t Syria’s best idea ever?

• Norway takes delivery of their 1st NH90 NFH naval helicopter – after placing the order in November 2001.

• Bangladesh inaugurates its new Chinese HQ-7/FM90 short range air defense missiles at Kurmitola Air Base. The MBDA Crotale knockoff is a first for Bangladesh. Not the first Chinese weapons, the 1st surface-to-air missiles.

• The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) signed a contract to purchase 450,000 gallons of biofuel made from used cooking oil and algae. The fuel will be used by the US Navy. next summer during the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC). The biofuel is “drop in”, which means engines can use it without modifications, and it will be mixed with aviation gas or marine diesel fuel.

• Fuel is expensive not just to consume, but also to deliver. Up to $400 a gallon in Afghanistan says the WSJ, once you factor in airdrops and parachutes that don’t open.

• Speaking of which, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank released a policy brief [PDF] advocating a change of mission in Afghanistan.

• Cambridge Design Partnership and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory’s (DSTL) Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) won this year’s Engineer Technology and Innovation Awards in the UK for an oxygen concentrator powered by a micro-diesel engine rather than a heavy battery. The idea is to produce a lighter device so that oxygen can more readily be administered to soldiers wounded in the field.

• Lockheed Martin signs a mentor-protege agreement with Chicago’s Sciacky, in partnership with Morehouse College and the University of Texas at El Paso. Sciacky has a unique “Electron Beam Direct Manufacturing” (material printing) technology. Direct/Additive manufacturing can make parts to any configuration, with near-zero waste and little finishing; Lockheed thinks it may have a future for the F-35’s hard-to-make titanium parts. See the video after the jump:
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On the front lines

Your friend is on the ground, bleeding out. If you can’t replace the lost circulation volume, he’ll die quickly from shock. If the replacement you use hinders clotting, his odds to make it through the Golden Hour aren’t good. The bad news? Because of your location, frozen blood plasma isn’t available.

Entegrion, Inc. in Durham, NC thinks they have an answer, and the US Army is funding it with up to $43.8 million, to advance Resusix through phase II and phase III trials. What is Resusix?

• Finmeccanica’s AgustaWestland, following in BAE’s footsteps, will cut up to 375 jobs in the UK. The company’s plant in Yeovil manufactures AW159 Lynx Wildcats for the MoD. However, while AgustaWestland’s license to manufacture Chinooks as ICH-47Fs that led to sales in Italy also covers Britain, it lost to Boeing when the MoD decided to get more helicopters, so the job cuts were predictable. ADS, the UK’s aerospace & defense trade association, warns that there’s potential for significantly more cuts ahead.

• Closer, but no cigar. UAW workers rejected Oshkosh’s latest 5-year contract terms on Saturday. They don’t see eye to eye on temps.

• Stan Soloway, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, reviewed US federal spending on services during the first half of the previous fiscal year (i.e. Oct 2010 to March 2011) and notes that for the first time in a decade, orders for professional, administrative and management services have been decreasing. According to Soloway the US Army alone accounts for a 3rd of the federal total and saw a 15% decline, at least based on preliminary data.

• US Air Force Research Laboratory Propulsion Directorate came up with cheap vibration dampers to preempt much more expensive engine maintenance.

• Frank Kendall listed his priorities [PDF] as acting USD AT&L: rapid procurement and efficient logistics to support deployed troops, program affordability and acquisition efficiency, and strengthening the industrial base and the acquisition workforce. Sounds like a direct continuation of Ashton Carter’s policies.

• Attorney William Welch notes that at the US GAO they’re not big fans of redundant, frivolous protests. Speaking of the GAO, it states that logistical challenges remain in Afghanistan, including RFID tracking shortcomings, customs clearance slowdowns, and difficulties in collecting information on all incidents of pilferage and damage.

• According to Danger Room a virus has infected UAV ground control stations (GCSs) at Creech Air Force Base, ND, probably while map updates where loaded from removable drives. Some Wired readers countered: “psyops!” but the fact video from Predators was intercepted in the clear with cheap software less than 2 years ago is not reassuring. Once “wiped” from a computer network a virus is not supposed to “keep coming back” when you know what you’re doing.

• Meanwhile The Economist argues that the “future of air power belongs to unmanned systems” and calls for tighter monitoring of their use. The New York Times calls it an arms race.

• The US House of Armed Services Committee (HASC) will have a busy week with no less than 5 hearings: “future of defense” follow-ups, national Guard and reserve component acquisition and modernization, nuclear weapons modernization in Russia and China, and aerial refueling including KC-46A. Members of the recently-formed HASC Defense Business Panel visited Rock Island Arsenal last Friday to discuss how to increase small business participation in defense contracts. Finally, HASC Chair Buck McKeon (R-CA) stuck to his portrayal of reduced increases as “cuts” in the 1st video embedded below.

• Video of amazing cranial reconstruction work done by US Army doctors also embedded below. Warning in case you just had breakfast and don’t like the color red: it’s pretty graphic at times.
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RNA vs. DNA

In September 2011, the RN Armor Vax international consortium in Orlando, FL received a $17.3 million technology investment agreement from US DARPA. Their research and development program is designed to “identify, investigate, and develop candidate RNA vaccines against infectious disease.” Work will be performed in Orlando, FL (19.59%); Lyon, France (11.93%); Tubingen, Germany (56.62%); and Nantes, France (11.86%). The work is expected to be completed by September 2015. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency manages the contract (HR0011-11-3-0001).

RNA is very useful for synthesizing proteins. This has led to research into ways of using it as a trigger, so that cells synthesize very specific proteins that will kill tumor cells, trigger correct immune responses, or perform other related functions. Dendritic immune cells, for instance, which stimulate the production of defensive killer T-cells, are a useful vector for RNA codes that direct the production of specific proteins. Another interesting function is RNA-enhanced vaccines using “silencing RNA,” which shuts down specific proteins in the cells that process a vaccine. That lets the vaccine offer more of an antibody response, which is very useful for parasitic infections, or create more of a cellular-kill response for viral infections.

Another research contract; WSJ Top 50. (Sept 23/11)

Achaogen in San Francisco, CA is working on “preclinical development of novel therapeutics that reduce the virulence of, and inhibit resistance in, Class A Bacterial Pathogens.” Achaogen closed a $26 million round of venture financing in October 2006, and they had raised $103 million in equity by March 2011. Their approach focuses on small molecules that inhibit the emergence of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Initial efforts had the goal of making the bacteria susceptible to existing fluoroquinolones, and potentially to other classes of antibacterial drugs.

So, just what are “Class A bacterial pathogens?” You certainly know some of them by name…

Aug 30/11: The President and Fellows of Harvard College in Cambridge, MA receive a $6.7 million cost reimbursement contract for research to develop technologies and approaches to predict natural viral evolution. We’d all benefit from that, but we’re still likely to be surprised by what actually happens.

Work will be performed in Cambridge, MA (39%); Laurel, MD (37%); Baltimore, MD (9%); Ann Arbor, MI (9%); and Pittsburgh, PA (5%). Work is expected to be completed by Aug 31/12. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) manages the contract (HR0011-11-C-0093).