• CRS (Congressional Research Service) analyst Ronald O’Rourke, who has often been right about shipbuilding programs when the US Navy was wrong, releases his August 2010 report on Navy shipbuilding plans [PDF].

• Meanwhile, Maritime Professional delivers an equally hard-hitting analysis of the fast-dwindling US Merchant Marine, and MARAD: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Taken together, these analyses are not encouraging.

• PricewaterhouseCoopers: The value of mergers and acquisitions in the aerospace and defense sector dropped to $2.2 billion in the second quarter of 2010 from $5 billion in the same quarter last year, despite significant M&A activity in the middle-market segment.

• Show Me the Money: A slew of private equity firms line up to buy McKechnie Aerospace, an Irvine, CA-based supplier of aerospace components for commercial and military customers, for around $1.2 billion. This is part of a broader PE trend.

• Turkey plans to keep on spending on major equipment buys. Its 2010 budget is 1.8% of GDP rather than the 2% commitment for NATO members – but that’s almost double the level for many European NATO countries.

• Rent-a-Cop: Private contractors will take up much of the security work in Iraq as US troops pull out, the New York Times reports.

• Cardinal Health in Dublin, OH snags DoD contracts worth a total of $206.6 million for medical supplies and services.

• US Customs and Border Patrol takes delivery of 3 Huey-IIs, upgraded from Bell UH-1Hs by ARINC. Meanwhile, 14 USCBP P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft will keep flying, thanks to Lockheed Martin’s re-winging service.

• ManTech in Fairfax, VA gets a $23 million contract to provide security and operations management support to a new Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) facility at Fort Meade, MD, to accommodate the BRAC-mandated closure of DISA’s Arlington, VA facility.

• Former US Representatives from Virgina Davis and Pickett to head commission set up to assess the impact of defense budget cuts on the state.

• Singapore to buy RFID-based armory management system as part of S$ 1.1 billion IT spending package.

• PricewaterhouseCoopers: The global aerospace and defense sector experiences strongest M&A deal quarter in 5 quarters.

• South Korea’s KIDA: “How to Deal with the Threat of N. Korea’s Special Forces?”

• US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “I’m not saying that they’re at the highest levels, but I believe that somewhere in [Pakistan’s] government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is, and we expect more co-operation….”

• Pakistan looks to accept Chinese Y-8 ZDK-03 AWACS aircraft in 2010. They’re part of a larger sanctions-proofing strategy, and will accompany its new Swedish Saab 2000 AWACS turboprops that are beginning to arrive.

• Elbit’s Hermes 450 UAVs operate from Santa Maria AFB in Brazil, as part of the government’s 2010 UAV evaluations.

• New French VBCI wheeled APCs headed to Afghanistan this summer. They’ll deploy in the Kapisa and Surobi regions.

• Lockheed delivers Norway’s 4th and last C-130J-30 tactical transport.

• General Dynamics completes critical design review of autonomous navigation system for US Army unmanned ground vehicles.

• Northrop Grumman may have to layoff 330 employees at its Fort Eustis, VA Logistics Support Services unit.

• Up to $25 million in Kratos Defense & Security Solutions for development of missile technology for the US Army.

• Wallace and Gromit travel to Kabul to keep streets safe.

• GAO blocks $1 billion contract award to Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, to train Afghan police, upholding DynCorp protest. Washington Post | Business Week | GovExec | DynCorp release

• European shipbuilder consortium (Fincantieri, Damen, Meyer Werft, STX, Thyssen Krupp) and EU sign grant agreement for 3.5 year BESST (Breakthrough in European Ship and Shipbuilding Technologies) project.

• Defense Threat Reduction Agency is looking for industry input for a robotic underground munition that would be an air-dropped mobile platform capable of drilling underground to deliver munitions. FedBizOpps notice | Ubergizmo.com | Tech Journal

• USJFCOM tests Lockheed Martin’s Valiant Angel system to sort through full-motion video from UAVs and sensors.

• New T-11 parachute doubles the number of paratroopers that can be deployed, according to US Army testing.

• L-3 gets $20.9 million order to build 4 F-16 flight simulators for the USAF.

• Canada awards C$14.9 million contract to M. Sullivan & Son to build a new 6,139 square meter health center at Canadian Forces Base Kingston.

CBRN Training
at Fort Leonard Wood
(click to expand)

KCI Construction Co. in St. Louis, MO won a $20.7 million firm-fixed-price design-build contract to renovate 3 existing 3-story barracks, a dining hall and a battalion headquarters building at the US Army’s Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

Fort Leonard Wood is the home of the US Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence, the US Army Engineering School, Military Police School, and Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) School, the Third Basic Combat Training Brigade, and Joint Training Detachments from the US Marine Corps, US Navy and US Air Force.

Under the contract, KCI will provide all analyses, design, procurement, installation, plant, labor, equipment, materials, and transportation and perform all required work…

Czech Republic soldiers have deployed a Provincial Reconstruction Team as part of NATO’s ISAF mission to Afghanistan’s southern Logar province, along the Pakistani border havens. The USA offered to lend them more than 20 up-armored Hummers for the duration, but the dangerous regions of southern Afghanistan also demand blast resistant vehicles for the tip of the spear. Hence the government’s November 2007 purchase of KMW’s Dingo 2s (currently in service with German forces to the north) and Iveco’s MLV. LMVs are known by many names, including MLV, Lince, etc.; they are heavier than a Humvee but lighter than the Dingos, incorporate a number of approaches to mine protection, and have been bought by many European countries for use in Afghanistan and other foreign deployment.

The Dingos appear to have run into trouble along the way, but Iveco’s MLVs are receiving additional orders…

USMC Air Station Miramar
(click to view larger)

Clark Construction Group in Costa Mesa, CA received a $27.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for design and construction of a prison at US Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar in California. The facility will absorb prisoners from other correctional facilities scheduled for closure due to the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Act.

Clark will perform work in Miramar, CA, and expects to complete it by February 2011. This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, with 5 proposals received by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest in San Diego, CA (N62473-09-C-1808).

MCAS Miramar is a 23,000-acre installation located in the northern suburbs of San Diego…

M1117 on base, Tikrit

Textron Marine & Land Systems in Slidell, LA received a $99.5 million firm-fixed-price contract for 191 M1117 Armored Security Vehicles (ASVs); 32 associated field support tool packages; 11 associated special tool packages; 38 M1200 Armored Knight vehicles; 10 associated field support tool packages; and 3 associated special tool packages. The contract’s total value is approximately $200 million, of which the $99.5 million announced amount represents what is is currently funded.

The M117 and M1200 Armored Knight represent different variants of the same 4×4 armored car…

+3 Terrorist Bane

Oct 3/06: L-3 Communications subsidiary MPRI Inc. in Alexandria, VA received a $15 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for law enforcement personnel embedded with units deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. Work will be performed in Washington, D.C. (13%), and Iraq or Afghanistan (87%), and the contract will end on Sept. 30, 2007. This was a sole source contract initiated on Aug. 31, 2006 by the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (W91CRB-06-C-0040).

DID has also reported MPRI contracts for operating artillery ranges in Iraq, and staff recruitment at Fort Knox.

Technical innovation is present in all militaries, but America’s combination of do-it-yourself types, large defense budgets, and a gadget-happy national character makes it particularly fertile ground. Now add a global war and its challenges, plus a defense sector with a strong small business component made up of ex-military types. The overall innovation transmission belt may not be as tight or as effective as Israel’s or Singapore’s, but the scale of the US defense establishment more than compensates in terms of the sheer number produced.

Adoption, of course, is another matter. One way to improve it is to raise the profile of sucessful innovations through awards. Along those lines, the US Army recently recognized some special innovators by naming its “Top 10 inventions of 2005,” a list that should be of interest to many militaries around the world.

It includes…

Project Sheriff ADS

The Active Denial System “riot breaker” is a microwave transmitter whose focused beams create burning sensations that force targets to flee in order to escape. Despite the pain, however, the beams reportedly cause no real injuries.Testing on human volunteers has been underway, and a September 2005 article noted the role of the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation in creating the ADS (aka. “Project Sheriff”) as an alternative to sometimes-lethal plastic bullets or even live ammunition in order to control hostile crowds.

In December 2005, DefenseTech noted that Iraq may soon have a new Sheriff in town…. but as of January 30, 2006, an article in US Air Force AIM Point expresses general puzzlement at the failure to release the system, despite the US Army’s requests.