Rapid Fire July 18, 2013: Afghans Get Into Bridge Trolling Business
- The Afghan government, taking example from Pakistan, is trying to submit the US logistics flow out of their country to outrageous customs fees.
“The best and likely only real hope of tamping down tensions in the absence of an actual settlement of claims in the South China Sea is joint development of the disputed resources. […] Rivalry over these [fisheries and oil and gas] resources has been the immediate cause of most of the policing incidents, military clashes, and arrests of fishermen in the sea in recent years. Any successful effort to jointly develop resources must include China, the heavy hitter in the area and the provocateur of most episodes of violence in recent years.”
- President Putin said he’s proud of the readiness demonstrated by Russian troops during a large scale surprise exercise in Russia’s far east, which he assessed in person (and with his shirt on, for a change).
- The US Army wants to lighten the load, from fitting soldiers with the Conformal Wearable Battery (CWB), to using composite materials in helicopters.
- Great Britain’s House of Common’s Committee on Arms Exports Control issued a report saying the government should “apply significantly more cautious judgements on the export of arms to authoritarian regimes which might be used for internal repression.” Similar concerns have been vocally expressed in Germany.
- As they are about to reduce their ammunition stockpiles, the UK MoD intends to “reduce, reuse and recycle” as much as possible to lower costs while guaranteeing the availability of reliable ammo whenever soldiers troops need them.
- The UK updated their air and space doctrine [PDF].
- Peter Jennings, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and a former Deputy Defence Secretary, on the politics of defence white papers [PDF]:
“In the absence of credible policy on strategy, force structure or money, the only purpose the 2013 White Paper [link: DID] serves is a political one: to remove defence as a point of difference between the ALP and the Coalition in the lead up to the September 2014 election.”
- The video below explains how Walter Reed National Military Medical Center uses 3-D modeling and printing to make surgical models for pre-surgery planning, as well as cranial implants:
