• Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith told reporters the Department will review their JSF purchase timetable, in light last week’s confirmation that the US will take it slow.

• Jim Maslowski, President at Hawker Beechcraft Defense and a former US Navy Rear Admiral, is retiring tomorrow. Meanwhile retired USMC Gen. James E. Cartwright joined Raytheon’s board and former US Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III has been confirmed as DRS Technologies’ new Chairman and CEO.

• EADS plans a big round of top management changes, in the usual balancing act between Germany and France: Tom Enders will replace Louis Gallois as CEO while Arnaud Lagardere take over as Chairman of the Board from Bodo Uebber.

• Opinions on the Pentagon’s budget preview: FPI, CRFB, Heritage, Stimson Center, and a video from CSIS at the bottom of this entry. CSIS ran these slides [PDF] during the talk that include a few multi-decade charts showing how previous drawdowns were executed. They’re not sold on booking $60B in efficiency savings before said savings are realized.

• Iraq’s future F-16IQ pilots have begun training in the USA. And Iraq’s officials have begun protesting the presence of American (unarmed) UAVs they’re saying they haven’t authorized.

• A Heron TP UAV crashed yesterday in Israel during tests, apparently because of a human error.

• “It’s not a case of IEDs on the battlefield. IEDs are the battlefield.” Says Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) Director Lt. Gen. Michael D. Barbero quoting an officer in Afghanistan.
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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.

MPLC

In December 2011, Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense in Simsbury, CT received a $10.8 million firm-fixed-price contract for 3,000 Man Portable Line Charge Systems that can fire rope-shaped plastic explosives for remote detonation, and 206 Inert Training Systems. Work will be performed in Graham, KY; Simsbury, CT; and Sterling, CT, with an estimated completion date of April 8/12. One bid was solicited, with 1 bid received by US Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (W91CRB-12-C-0012).

In August 2011, an FBO.gov RFI explained the rationale behind the MPLC: US forces needed a system for quickly clearing paths through land mines, which was lighter and easier to carry than existing gear. To be specific…

• The US Navy takes delivery of the 25,000t LPD 22 San Diego. Commissioning is set for Spring 2012, in her homeport of… San Diego.

• The Pentagon hopes supply routes in Pakistan will be reopened soon. Driving through Russia and other countries surrounding Afghanistan is more expensive and takes more time.

• 5 Polish soldiers died from a roadside bomb explosion earlier today in Afghanistan. It appears they were driving one of the Cougars leased to Poland by the US.

• Navistar finished its FY11 strongly with $13.96B in revenue and a $320M pre-tax income. Earlier this year billionaire investor Carl Icahn disclosed he had built positions of almost 10% in both Navistar and Oshkosh.

• Boeing has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with 2 Brazilian companies to strengthen its Super Hornet bid in the F-X2 competition. Brazil has made it clear that offsets would bear a lot of weight in its decision, while Boeing is not giving up on the fighter market.

• France takes delivery of the 1st of 8 more Airbus CN-235 light transports, 2 months ahead of schedule. They were bought as an immediate stopgap, due to A400M delays and a C160 fleet that’s aging out.

• Eurocopter delivered the first 2 Ecureuil AS350 B2s of a total 9 helicopters ordered by the Ecuadorian Armed Forces in July 2010.

• Will we see unmanned surface vessels (USVs) built and used to fight piracy?

• Germany’s military is facing retention issues after it transitioned away from compulsory military conscription earlier this year.

• 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.

• The US DSCA managed [PDF] $28.3 billion in Foreign Military Sales cases in FY 2011, and another $6.5 billion were made through Direct Commercial Sales, etc. Top 10 buyers were Afghanistan ($5.4 billion), Taiwan ($4.9 billion), India ($4.5 billion), Australia ($3.9 billion), Saudi Arabia ($3.5 billion), Iraq ($2.0 billion), the United Arab Emirates ($1.5 billion), Israel ($1.4 billion), Japan ($0.5 billion), and Sweden ($0.5 billion). Afghanistan is basically US donations, so it shouldn’t really count, but it’s an eye-opening figure.

• Another interesting turn of events in Afghanistan: the country has vast mineral resources (including copper and gold) that the US DOD and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have helped map. The Afghan Mining minister has just opened a tender process to tap these deposits.

• Meanwhile a German government report [PDF in German] points to record weapons exports of 2.1 billion euros (about $2.8B) in 2010. Sales to EU/NATO countries amount to 77% of the total with more than half for submarine sales to Portugal and Greece alone. But with these countries threatened with being U-booted out of the Euro, Germany will probably have to look elsewhere in the future. This might be easier said than done. German parliamentarians are unhappy [in German] about the delayed, partial data they get from the executive about armament sales, especially when they involve countries where human rights abuses are committed. The Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) and the Joint Conference on Church and Development (GKKE) have both produced research [PDF, nochmal auf Deutsch] on this topic. Still, this is a drop in the bucket for the 1 trillion euro export powerhouse that Germany has become.

• Hackers are using a vulnerability in Adobe Reader 9.4.6 for Windows to target defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, reports Reuters. Attack emails embedded a bogus “contract guide” PDF attachment.

• Assistant Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Joseph Dunford said the FY13 President Budget should preserve USMC procurement but will see a smaller number of troops.

• RAND’s Arroyo Center has looked at how to optimize truck logistics within the continental United States (CONUS).

• Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith will speak at an event organized by the Asia Society tomorrow in Mumbai. Beyond allowing uranium sales to India, will this lead to strengthened military ties between the two countries?

• UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond spoke at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) earlier today. He announced that the final cost of operations in Libya was £212 million (about $330M) – 68% operations costs / 32% ammo.

• The Canadian Army is hosting a counter-IED symposium this week, arguing that improvised landmines are not going away neither will dealing with them. Videos in English and French embedded below:
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• Libyan lessons learned have made new Airbus A330 MRTT aerial tankers a bigger priority for France, alongside their aging C-135FRs. An interim contract for 5-7 A330 MRTT planes is now expected in 2013.

• Rheinmetall Defence and ADS GmbH successfully demonstrate their AMAP Active Defense Systems against an RPG-7 rocket, protecting a Fuchs wheeled vehicle. This technology is growing in importance on modern battlefields, because tandem-warhead missiles can beat armor defenses.

• Ghana’s 1st C295 light transport plane arrives.

• Distributed AWACS? Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have adopted the SABR AESA fighter radar into a Vigilance pod that can be carried on its future carriers’ AW101 Merlin Mk2 naval helicopters, and on RAF transport aircraft. Could more + cheaper + networked end up being better?

• Research nonprofit RAND investigates whether applying a rotational equipping strategy can help the US Army save money.

• The US Army War College updated its Information Operations (IO) primer [PDF], mostly to reflect the DoD’s latest strategic and organizational changes in the cyberspace realm. Recently US Army Lieutenant Colonel John A. Mowchan argued that maintaining ambiguity on the nature of the US military response in the digital domain would have benefits.

• US Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 1 (VMAQ-1) received the Phoenix Maintenance Award from DoD. The unit reduced the annual cost in ordered components almost by half while it supported 590 combat missions totaling 2,293 combat flight hours so far this year.

• US Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) compared the effects of the sequester [PDF] on spending by category. It is worth noting that DoD’s budget would still grow by 2% over the period between 2012 and 2021, but that’s in nominal terms and would mean a decline of more than 20% in real terms (i.e. with inflation factored in).

• Sappers of the 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion show a Bobcat dubbed “Minotaur” modified to detect IEDs in the video below:
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Minehound VMR2

W.M. Robots, LLC in Colmar, PA already supplies their Vallon GmbH subsidiary’s hand-held mine detectors to the US military, and in September 2011 they added a $9.6 million firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract from the government of Afghanistan, plus options that could bring the cumulative value to $12.4 million. Afghanistan is clearly moving to beef up their mine-detection and removal capabilities; September also saw a buy of MMP-30 robots for these roles.

Work will be performed in Colmar, PA, and is expected to be complete by September 2012. $7.9 million will expire at the end of the current fiscal year, on Sept 30/11. As this is a Foreign Military Sales program buy, the US military is acting as Afghanistan’s agent. This contract was synopsized as a sole-source buy, therefore, and is managed by the US Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division in Indian Head, MD (N00174-11-D-0015).

APOBS

The MK7 MOD 2 Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System (APOBS) is used to clear mines or wire obstacles, and create a safe footpath for troops. APOBS can be carried by 2 people, takes 30 to 120 seconds to be set up, and fires a rocket from a 25-meter standoff position, sending a line charge with fragmentation grenades over the minefields or wire obstacles. The grenades clear the mines, and sever the wires. Developed by the US Army Armaments Engineering and Technology Center in Picatinny Arsenal, NJ, APOBS won a US Army top military inventions of the year award in 2004. It replaces the Bangalore Torpedo, which was heavier, took longer to set up, and required 4 times the number of people to carry.

In 2006, small business qualifier Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense Co. in Simsbury, CT received a maximum $150.8 million, 5-year contract for up to 3,000 units. In 2011, however, the Army/USMC contract shifted to Chemring Ordnance, Inc. in Perry, FL…

Off you go

On August 12, 2011 Northrop Grumman was awarded $26,178,369 on a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract modification basis for Sand Dragon B Tier II UAVs. The goal is to develop and deploy a counter-IED unmanned aerial system. Northrop Grumman told DID that the product in question is the Bat-12 model within the company’s Bat family of medium altitude UAS’s.

The contracting activity is the Research Laboratory (AFRL) at the Wright-Patterson, OH Air Force Base (FA865011C7147).