* Textron Systems CEO Ellen Lord wants to grow exports from 35% to 50% of total sales by next year, noting strong foreign interest in its Ship to Shore Connector (SSC) hovercraft. The primary target markets are of course the Middle East followed by Asia.
* Russia has ambitious export goals too, and wants to pursue markets traditionally served by Western firms.
Selective Treaty Memory
* Russia is keen to buy French ships, but is reminding France that their own naval vessels can’t stay in the Black Sea for more than 21 days, per the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits. The Russians already played that card during their invasion (sorry, “liberation“) of South Ossetia in 2008. Backgrounder [PDF] from the US Naval Postgraduate School.
UK, European Conventional Forces
* The UK’s Ministry of Defence published its annual inventory [PDF] of equipment holdings of the UK and other nations within the scope of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). It lists the UK’s inventory by vehicle/aircraft and year from 2007 to 2014, and also provides aggregates for other European countries.
Trend Spotting: Cyber, Space, Tech Disruption
* The Brookings Institute hosted an event on the future of the US space program, discussing topics such as satellite miniaturization and launch costs. Video.
* Chandra McMahon from Lockheed Martin said at the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit that the company’s networks were the target of more than 4 times more cyber attack “campaigns” than in 2007.
* DARPA director Arati Prabhakar testified at a hearing from the Senate’s Appropriations Committee on defense research and innovation. “Plan X” came up, a project to build better cyberspace visibility. Statement | Video | DoD release.
* Prabhakar was also recently at the Atlantic Council to discuss disruptive technologies such as the ability to use more loosely coupled, easier-to-update system architectures in the defense world. She noted that disruptive tech is becoming much more broadly accessible – itself a disruption to a model where big nation states and their militaries could take for granted that they’d have a technological lead. Video below:
