* Britain is really missing its Nimrod patrol planes. They had to dispatch a Type 42 destroyer from Portsmouth on the English Channel, to watch a Russian battlegroup 25 miles off of Scotland that included the Admiral Kuznetzov aircraft carrier.
* The British Ministry of Defence (MOD) awarded BAE a £40M (about $63M) contract dubbed Future Combat Air System (FCAS) to support UAV research.
* A $1 billion cyber-warfare program in Iran? Hard to judge. It might add credence to claims that they hacked Lockheed’s RQ-170 stealth UAV down, though there are doubts. The USAF’s emergency buy of a General Atomics Predator C Avenger jet UAV, and reports that it will be deployed to Afghanistan as an apparent replacement, make one wonder if there is a flaw.
* A quick think tank review on Dear Leader’s death: CNAS, CSIS, CFR, Brookings, USIP. Euphemism of the day: uncertainty. It’s quite dark there, who really knows what’s going on?
* Looks like Frank Kendall is well positioned to be confirmed as US acquisition deputy secretary, a position he’s filled in an acting capacity since last September.
* The new Counter-IED Collective and Individual Mounted Training Program at Camp Atterbury (Indiana) tries to simulate the sound and furor of living through an IED blast within an armored vehicle.
* Advances in battlefield medicine have relied on better protection gear, medical practices and logistics to increase survival rates.
* In speeches to Brazil’s generals [in Portuguese], president Dilma Rousseff and defense minister Celso Amorim said financial mechanisms should be put in place to give more visibility and continuity to the country’s defense procurements, thus providing a sustainable foundation for the local industry (as opposed to relying on exports). In the last decade Brazil has grown its official reserves to the 6th position in the world with $350B as of November 2011. Last week French Prime Minister Fillon met with Amorim.