* The United Kingdom National Defence Association (UKNDA) think tank argues in a new report [PDF] that the country’s defense spending should be a higher priority and consume 3% of GDP, a significant increase from current levels. The threat that registers most with the British press: losing the Falklands; Daily Mail, Guardian (related reading: a series on the naval war in the Falklands). Meanwhile the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) warns that keeping the UK’s defense funding on a sound footing is far from a done deal [PDF].
* Blue Screen of Death? Citing recent articles by Defense News and Politico, Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) sent a letter to the US Army Secretary and its Chief of Staff to attract their attention to the DCGS-A program‘s actual performance. Facing numerous crashes and reboots sound a lot less attractive than being portrayed as the “Army’s cornerstone intelligence system for intelligence processing, exploitation and dissemination.” Civilian cloud computing and web application vendors have found time and again that scalability and availability are, by themselves, a feature.
* The US Coast Guard awarded a delivery order for about $13M to Metal Shark Aluminum Boats for the production of 38 Response Boats-Small (RB-S). Overall the plan is to replace up to 500 boats.
* US DOD acquisition leadership: in his farewell letter [PDF] to the AT&L community, now Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter wrote: “I leave you in the best of all capable hands in Frank Kendall.”
* US DoDI 5000.02 acquisition rule clarification: can a production RFP be issued before Milestone C? Yes, with caveats.
* The US GAO thinks that the many people who are involved in defense acquisition but do not fall under the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) should be more systematically tracked and trained by the Department of Defense.
* Today (Thursday) US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta meets military commanders to discuss spending scenarios. The Office of Management and Budget at the White House is said to ask for $25B in additional cuts. The Army already announced it will contribute by preparing to reduce its number of soldiers by 50K over 5 years – though 22K or 44% of that number is made of a relatively recent troop surge in Afghanistan that was always meant to be temporary.
* The US House Armed Services Committee’s prediction that deep defense budget cuts could lead to reinstating the draft is not convincing think tanks. Something for Buck McKeon’s just-hired communications director to ponder.
* Today’s video: C-17 Globemaster helps B-1 find the way home (embedded below):