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Rapid Fire April 12, 2013: Australia Boldly Challenges US Lead in Self-Unaware DoD Briefings

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* Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) published its 5-year strategic plan [PDF]. Let it be known that the US DoD has not been the sole issuer of “read it if you really must” briefings this week. The DSTO ode to itself features a variation of the word “lead” 44 times in 55 pages, so don’t say you haven’t been warned. * The April issue [PDF] of the UK MoD’s Defence Focus has a piece on their planned withdrawal from Germany and rebasing at home. The total cost of relocation between now and 2020 is estimated at 1.8 billion pounds (about $2.8B). * Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) on cooperation between India, the biggest armament importer in the world, and Israel, its second supplier behind Russia: “Beyond arms sales and a few other areas of defence cooperation, it is unlikely that Israel will soon, if ever, realise a strategic partnership with India. While India maybe be very important to Israel’s foreign and security policy, New Delhi sees the relationship in a much more limited respect. India has too many internal constraints – a Muslim population of 160 million, an ardently anti-Israeli left – to ever get […]

* Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) published its 5-year strategic plan [PDF]. Let it be known that the US DoD has not been the sole issuer of “read it if you really must” briefings this week. The DSTO ode to itself features a variation of the word “lead” 44 times in 55 pages, so don’t say you haven’t been warned.

* The April issue [PDF] of the UK MoD’s Defence Focus has a piece on their planned withdrawal from Germany and rebasing at home. The total cost of relocation between now and 2020 is estimated at 1.8 billion pounds (about $2.8B).

* Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) on cooperation between India, the biggest armament importer in the world, and Israel, its second supplier behind Russia:

“Beyond arms sales and a few other areas of defence cooperation, it is unlikely that Israel will soon, if ever, realise a strategic partnership with India. While India maybe be very important to Israel’s foreign and security policy, New Delhi sees the relationship in a much more limited respect. India has too many internal constraints – a Muslim population of 160 million, an ardently anti-Israeli left – to ever get too cozy with Israel.”

* The broader question is what does India really want? Recently from the Economist:

“Instead of clear strategic thinking, India shuffles along, impeded by its caution and bureaucratic inertia. The symbol of these failings is India’s reluctance to reform a defence-industrial base that wastes huge amounts of money, supplies the armed forces with substandard kit and leaves the country dependent on foreigners for military modernisation.”

* From the US Army War College’s SSI: Egypt’s New Regime and the Future of the US-Egyptian Strategic Relationship. This monograph was completed in August last year and things have not gotten any better in Egypt since then.

* Piracy waned off the coast of Somalia, but it is rising on the other side of the continent, in the Gulf of Guinea.

* The CIMSEC think tank contends that Russian president Putin should, but won’t, stop his warmongering. Russia’s neighbors, starting with Georgia, didn’t like Russia’s recent unannounced, large scale exercise in the Black Sea. Russia plans to have a full-fledged naval base in Novorossiysk by 2020, with the first facilities completed by the end of 2013.

* A former Specialist in the US Army has been indicted in the District of Colorado for her alleged role in assisting fuel theft by the truckload at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Fenty in eastern Afghanistan during the spring 2010, and laundering the proceeds.

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