Rapid Fire March 7, 2013: Fixed and Flexible Contract Terms?

Mar 07, 2013 09:50 UTC by Defense Industry Daily staff
  • The US Air Force would like more flexibility in the payment of future fixed-priced development contracts and multiyear procurements, reports AviationWeek. In other words, the benefits of commitment without really committing. It seems likely that such flexibility will have its own price tag.
  • As expected the US House of Representatives swiftly passed HR 933, a CR/Appropriations bill introduced earlier this week. The 267-151 roll call included 53 Democratic yeas and 14 Republican nays. Next step: the Senate.
  • The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) submitted their final report [PDF]: “oversight was an oversight.”

  • The UK’s House of Commons Defence Committee report on the Ministry of Defence’s accounts is a litany of familiar complaints, as the MoD remains unable to produce timely, thorough accounting and faces nagging inventory management issues. After parsing too many such reports you get the impression their most dramatic update is the timestamp. This series of reports, the government’s responses to Parliament, and the MoD’s account reports themselves are all in our Google Drive cloud extranet.

  • UAV manufacturer AeroVironment met quite the air pocket in its FY13 3rd quarter, with Y/Y revenue down by almost 35%. That their backlog is also down by 24% indicates this is more than just one bad quarter. Product and service categories can cool off pretty quickly as needs are evolving and markets are maturing (witness cyber).

  • Meanwhile Cobham expects a more stable outlook thanks to growing commercial sales. The US defense market brought half of the company’s 2011 revenue but is now down to 40% of their sales. Financial Times.

  • Reuters: China navy seeks to “wear out” Japanese ships in disputed waters.

  • Indigenisation of defense manufacturing in India underway? Not so fast.

  • A good point in East Asia Forum to explain Indonesia’s relative lack of assertiveness compared to another emerging country like Brazil (with a population almost 50M smaller than Indonesia’s):

    • “It also does not have military superiority over the region. These situations are much different from other emerging powers which are far more dominant than their peers in their respective regions. Brazil, for instance, is an undebatable economic, military and political powerhouse in South America.”

    Categories: Britain/U.K., Budgets, China, Daily Rapid Fire, India, Industry & Trends, IT - Cyber-Security, Japan, Official Reports, Scandals & Investigations, UAVs, USA

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