* The Pentagon’s recent Strategic Choices and Management Review (SCMR, pronounced skimmer or scammer depending on your inclination) has been described as Fight Club: “the first rule of SCMR is, you don’ talk about SCMR.” Aside from that deliberate opacity, was it a case of the budget driving the strategy? At least hopefully someone or something was driving, which beats the past 2 years spent pivoting to far Asian shores with the support of make-believe budgets. Picture your favorite gritty action movie hero(ine) performing a self-budgectomy: get this bloat out!
* The US GAO explains the legal factors and market forces affecting how much of the DoD’s demand for titanium aircraft parts is held by domestic manufacturers. In short, they have most, but not all of the business.
* Filipino President Benigno Aquino III wants to give his country’s air force an overdue boost. He also would like to let the US or Japan access military bases in the country to counterbalance China’s “bullying”, to the extent the constitution allows it.
* Russia’s Proton-M rocket carrying 2 satellites for its Glonass global navigation satellite system exploded seconds after launch, following the successful launch of a satellite back in April. The program was mired in a corruption scandal just months ago.
* From the US State Department: the latest aggregate numbers of ICBMs and SLBMs owned by the US and Russia.
* The French government needs to sell assets to make good on its promise to maintain a flat defense budget (in nominal terms) through the next 5 years. Such “exceptional receipts” (recettes exceptionnelles or REX for short) were already promised but not fully delivered in recent years. The sale of government stakes in defense companies Thales, Safran, EADS, DCNS, or Nexter, are not supposed to be available to plug holes in the general budget, but accounting gimmicks may provide a suitable workaround. This is not marginal: they need 3.1 billion euros ($4B) over 2013/14, or roughly 5% of the defense budget. France’s 5-year LPM budget law is now expected to be submitted by the government on August 2. La Tribune [in French].
* Lockheed Martin created a division to grow its international business, with dual headquarters in Washington DC and London, UK, and offices in Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Saudi Arabia, the USA, and Israel.
* Boeing sent a 4th round of layoff notices to some of its employees in Washington state.
* Brownouts from sand and dust have been a huge liability for helicopters flying in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last 12 years. BAE pitches their Brownout Landing Aid System Technology (BLAST) in the video below:
