Rapid Fire Dec. 3, 2012: End of the Enterprise
The world’s 1st nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, was officially inactivated on Dec 1/12.
The US Army will proceed with a new acquisition for an Armed Scout helicopter, according to unnamed sources who talked with Reuters.
The slides used during the recent Senior Leaders’ Acquisition Training conference are available here courtesy of the Defense Acquisition University. Some interesting material in there including the defense industry as seen by Wall Street from Deutsche Bank analyst Myles Walton and post Nunn-McCurdy breach observations from Gary Bliss at the DOD’s Performance Assessment and Root Cause Analyses (PARCA) office [PDFs].
The US Air Force wants to brief the industry on its plans to replace its Air Education and Training Command T-38C and F-16D “bridge” training systems. An Advanced Pilot Training (APT) Family of Systems (FoS) industry day is scheduled to that effect on January 29-31, 2013 at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH. FBO.
Out of self-preservation the US Senate may soon consider the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act of 2011, whose introduction to the upper chamber competed for attention with dozens of amendments to the FY13 NDAA (S. 3254). The roll call for cloture of the defense bill is scheduled today. While droning through amendments staff is prohibited from watching the new Fiscal Cliff channel on Youtube.
James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma likely to replace John McCain next month as the Ranking Member in the Senate’s Armed Services Committee: Don’t Waste Precious Defense Funds on Biofuels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s doctrine, according to Der Spiegel: sell weapons to developing countries so that rich ones don’t to send troops to maintain order there. As WWII losers Germany and Japan are now opening up to armament exports (the former ahead of the latter), their public opinions and media struggle to come to terms with a normalized arms trade posture.
Thales CEO Luc Vigneron is openly challenged by a team of trade unions calling for his departure. The unions stopped talking with the upper management team in mid-September and are leaning on the French government to impose a change of course, as 27% of the company is owned by the state. AFP [in French].
Raytheon is rushing GPS anti-jam antenna systems to the UK Ministry of Defence.
