* Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a massive surprise exercise last Friday in the Eastern Military District, which he is now overseeing himself. With 160,000 men, 5,000 tanks and armored vehicles, 130 aircraft, and 70 warships, nothing of this scale had been seen since the end of the USSR. The maneuvers are seen as a way to signal readiness to China. Japan and South Korea scrambled jets to keep track of Russia’s strategic bombers.
* The British government published its review [PDF] of Trident alternatives. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have long been at odds on the scale of a replacement for the UK’s current nuclear deterrent. Tories want a full replacement while Lib Debs see Trident as “the last, unreformed bastion of Cold War thinking” and have been arguing for something cheaper and more lightweight.
* General Dynamics is consolidating its Dynamics Armament and Technical Products division into Ordnance and Tactical Systems. They will close headquarters in Charlotte, NC, by the end of the year, but haven’t made clear what the impact on jobs would be.
* US Army veteran Steve Russel wants to scrap the Navy’s proposed LRASM/OaSUW strike missile, and keep the BGM-109 Tomahawk. Unfortunately, the comments section below his article responds with a respectful and informed beat-down. Starting with the fact that the Tomahawk isn’t the missile LRASM would replace.
* Here we go again: the companies which lost the US Navy’s Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) intranet contract recently awarded to HP et. al. filed a GAO protest.
* The International Maritime Bureau is reporting a continued increase in piracy acts in in the Gulf of Guinea, off West Africa’s coast.
* The RAND Corporation explains why the US Army wants and needs an infantry fighting vehicle that can carry at least 9 soldiers, for context to GCV requirements.
* Don Geiss, program director of the Defense Department’s Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC) sings the praises of the organization he’s heading, as “an acquisition reform initiative that is working.”
* The US Joint Enabling Capabilities Command (JECC), part of TRANSCOM, published a document about its strategy [PDF] for the next 5 years, which seems to consist in overwhelming use of buzzwords. “The JECC delivers unmatched joint operational command and control enablers to joint force commanders conducting emergent full spectrum operations.” In practice they support the services with planning and communications staff.
* For more substance, the CSIS think tank published another [PDF] of their trademark data-dense slidedecks on the US defense budget.
* US NAVAIR and the US Coast Guard are working on communications integration to get videos shot from UAVs to the right people, as explained in the video below:
