* Sales at EADS are up 14.6% Y/Y for the 3rd quarter, to 12.3 billion euros (about $15.7B). So far this year, Cassidian has seen stable revenue, Astrium and Eurocopter are healthily growing, and commercial sales continue to pull ahead. Airbus Military on the other hand is having a tough year because A400M revenue is significantly below 2011 levels. The group’s total defense order book decreased by 1.7 billion euros to 51.1B. Financial statement | Presentation [PDFs].
* Reuters looks further in depth into the reasons behind the failure of merger talks between EADS and BAE: “For Germany, this was a not just a battle for jobs, but for know-how and control.”
* Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS) announced it will rotate half a dozen top executives to different assignments within the company, effective next January. According to Reuters who has seen an internal company memo, they have plans to consolidate some business units in the next 3 years and “close some facilities in California.”
* Huntington Ingalls Industries reported Q3 2012 revenue of $1.6B, up 0.2% from last year. The total backlog reaches $16.4B, almost 79% of which is funded.
* The US Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) may skip the Senate floor and take the bill directly to a conference committee with House members, according to The Hill. Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma looks set to replace John McCain as the committee’s Republican ranking member by virtue of seniority and because McCain is facing a panel term limit, per their party’s conference rules.
* Leon Panetta is likely to retire soon from his position as the US’s Secretary of Defense, probably along a broader cabinet shakeup to start President Obama’s second term. Among the names discussed to replace him: Pentagon #2 Ashton Carter and former undersecretary Michele Flournoy. DoD Buzz | AP.
* J. Michael Gilmore, the undersecretary for Operational Test and Evaluation, in a recent memo [PDF]:
“operational test authorities shall evaluate operational suitability based solely on their own independent scoring of reliability failures treating externally-generated failure definitions and scoring criteria as guidance only.”
* The PEO LCS will have a Technology Day on Nov. 30 in West Bethesda, MD to launch the program’s Rapid Technology Insertion (RTI) process. FBO.
* The Pentagon gave David Packard awards to the Navy’s DDG 51 shipbuilding program and the Army’s Project Manager Combat Ammunitions Systems. The awards are meant to recognize “superior management and accomplishment in the successful execution of one or more of the Better Buying Power acquisition efficiency initiatives.”