* The UK’s government released 2013 defense export numbers up 11% to £9.8B ($16.8B), thanks to helicopter sales to Norway and South Korea, ongoing Middle Eastern deals, and a still respectable billion pounds worth of orders from the US. The report shows the UK...
* Bloomberg has seen the US Navy’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan, which finally acknowledges that it “requires funding at an unsustainable level” to deliver the number of new vessels in the plan. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been...
* Last week Japan’s cabinet changed its constitutional interpretation of the country’s right to collective self-defense. Ryo Sahashi, a visiting professor at Stanford University, argues that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe still has much convincing to do in...
* Iraqi forces clashed with a militia following a local Shia cleric in Karbala, south of Baghdad. Prime Minister Maliki seems to be losing support even from his Shia backers. * Meanwhile fighting against ISIL continued in the north in several contested areas of...
* France’s state-owned Nexter and Germany’s privately-owned Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) have announced [PDF] their intent to form a joint holding company. If this alliance (the word merger is studiously avoided) is completed as expected next year, the...