* Airbus Military got a firm order from Kazakhstan for 2 C295 transport aircraft with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for 6 more. Four years ago EADS made titanium sourcing agreements with Kazakh suppliers.
* EADS North America is working on export opportunities for the UH-72A that got the company the US Army’s Light Utility Helicopter program.
* Finmeccanica, after winning a 50 million cybersecurity contract with NATO, is quite bullish about its prospects in the field and the size of the coming addressable market in Europe.
* ITT Exelis reported sales of $5.8B for 2011. Its total backlog grew by 2% to $11.7B, roughly a third of which is funded. The C4ISR division’s revenue decreased by $779M (almost 22%) which was almost offset by 32% growth in Information and Technical Services (+$727M from 2010). The recently spun-off group expects its 2012 to decrease by about 7% to ~$5.4B-$5.5B. Services accounted for slightly less than 38% of 2009 total revenue. Two years later they amount to almost 52% of total sales. Loren Thompson reckons Exelis is one of several large contractors likely to contribute to further sector consolidation in a context of shrinking budgets.
* Navy IT procurement memo [PDF]: Use of enterprise license agreements (ELAs) is mandatory where available, with the list of relevant software and hardware vendors.
* Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems reassigned its employees formerly involved in the Airborne Laser Test Bed program, now that it has been wrapped up.
* Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and Jim Webb (D-VA) introduced a bill [PDF] to clean up contingency contracting, following last year’s scathing report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting.
* Breaking the world record of the longest paper plane flight took a combination of science and quarterback arm strength. Video from the flight done at former McClellan AFB (BRAC’ed in 2001). And since it’s Friday, let’s indulge in a goofing-around twofer. The following video shows the now famous UPenn team of robot quadrotors playing a downtempo James Bond theme. Anyone’s up for swarms of synchronized ultralight gliders?