On the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, the guns ceased. Today, the British Commonwealth countries remember those who came before, and those who came after, and all who have given in their nation’s service. Americans know this day as Veteran’s Day, and a number of European countries know it as Armistice Day.
On this day, DID offers background and worthy official sites related to Remembrance Day and Veteran’s Day. Readers may be interested in seeing the slight differences as well as the similarities – gaining new perspectives which may come in handy in project, liaison, or foreign posting situations.
The USA’s DD (X) future destroyer program faces political challenges. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett [R-MA, Chair of the House Projection Forces Subcommittee] has openly noted that “we’re now down to a little more than a technology demonstrator platform,” and added that given its cost, a fleet of 5 ships was likely to be the end result rather than the 8-12 planned (or the 32, then 24, originally envisaged). Nevertheless, Rep. Bartlett also notes that the rise of China and US industrial base concerns are driving demand for new options of some kind.
Reuters in Berlin reports that Germany has finalized a long-delayed deal to sell 298 surplus Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Turkey. German defense group Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) will now modernize the tanks and prepare them for sale. This move is just the latest step in a massive German fire-sale that has made second-hand Leopard 2s the standard tank of European armies, and may be positioning KMW for a consolidation leadership role within the European defense market. The sale also reflects a new willingness to sell arms to Turkey, and some sources speculate that this move may have been influenced by that country’s upcoming EU membership negotiations.
When one compares the recent US “National Intelligence Strategy” with, say, the Defense Logistics Agency’s FY 2006 Transformation Roadmap, the intelligence document suffers greatly by comparison. With that said, some of the subsidiary strategy papers are beginning to show promising potential. GovExec.com hosted a breakfast that included Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He noted that within the next several years, movement across some of the 15 agencies in the intelligence community will probably become a requirement for employees looking to become senior executives.
A related approach has been used by some very effective military general staff structures in the past. Read the entire GovExec.com article for more details.
Finally, note that the 15 agencies in the intelligence community include the: Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and National Security Agency; plus offices in the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard, and in the departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, and Justice.
Northrop Grumman IT has been awarded a indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract with a potential value of approximately $375 million over four years, in order to provide a range of scientific and technical advisory and assistance services to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA, also known by some as Nunn-Lugar) that will support DTRA’s mission to reduce the threat from weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
