* The US House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee quickly approved – behind closed doors – its markup for the FY13 funding bill. Today the Armed Services Committee is starting longer, more difficult discussions, but they will happen in the open [video]. More details in our ongoing coverage of the 2013 NDAA.
* With the release of its 2013 budget, Australia confirmed its delaying of the acquisition of 12 F-35s and other programs as well as some cancellations and early C-130H aircraft retirements. Major capital investments are reduced by AUS $664M. More materiel acquisition details in this PDF.
* According to The Telegraph the UK Ministry of Defence is about to announce that they will revert their decision to buy F-35Cs to choose instead F-35Bs STOVL, which would confirm earlier press reports.
* Britain may be about to sell the Saudis 30 Hawk Advanced Jet Trainers, but it probably won’t be in time to save BAE’s Hawk factory in Brough, Yorkshire, UK.
* The AEHF-2 high-bandwidth secure communications satellite was launched successfully from Cape Canaveral on May 4/12. Everything seems to be fine so far, unlike AEHF-1, which had quite the adventure getting to its orbit.
* The Dutch have an RFP out for a Medium Altitude, Long Endurance UAV system.
* Unmanned ground military vehicles are a tough challenge for engineers to figure out, especially the necessary software. Progress is made in the civilian world. Following legislation passed in June last year, Nevada has just granted driverless car licenses to Google.
* Huntington Ingalls Industries has been an independent company for a year. Their Q1 2012 results: $1.57B sales (-6.9%) with a total backlog of $15.5B down 4.7% from the end of 2011 and about 10.5% below where it was at the end of 2010.