* The US Army intends to perform a Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) and On-Condition Cyclic Maintenance (OCCM) on its fleet of 34 Landing Craft Utility 2000 (LCU 2000) vessels. They are in service since 1990 and were originally planned for a 25-year service life, which the Army wants to extend by another 10 years. A Request For Information [MS Word] is out with the intent of eventually issuing a single contract to a prime contractor for fleet management (an RFI is not an RFP yet). The “pre decisional” schedule spans from FY14 to FY21 with vessels located in Kuwait, Japan, and on the two US coasts.
* Revived tensions between the Philippines and China on the development of offshore gas and oil resources show the South China Sea is going to remain in the spotlight.
* Probably less tense, but not quite at-ease: Germany on EADS moving some operations away from Germany.
* How do you say Schadenfreude in Russian? The Russian Army apparently spent serious money to get Tetris and a couple other lousy Flash games instead of the fancy website upgrade it was expecting.
* Last week’s Congress testimonies by senior DoD officials involved in science and engineering are now available in PDF form (scroll down that page). They review how S&T portfolios by service fare within the FY13 budget, while DARPA deputy Director Kaigham J. Gabriel talked about electronic warfare and modern consumer electronics. Civilian commoditization runs at odds with the Pentagon’s posture of technological superiority that’s implicitly guaranteed by outspending other nations on proprietary research. From Gabriel’s testimony:
“EW was once the province of a few peer-adversaries. It is now possible to purchase commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for more than 90 percent of the electronics needed in an EW system. This has reduced the barriers to developing, producing, and fielding such systems to within the capabilities of many nation states and non-state actors.”
* Another batch of Congressional hearings on the FY13 NDAA today – see our calendar.
* Boston Dynamics’s DARPA-funded, 4-legged Cheetah robot can run up to 18mph (29 kph) on a treadmill. Not quite as fast, let alone elegant as the actual 70-mph animal just yet, but it’s a new record nonetheless. Videos below: