As of Friday, February 3, 2006, the USA’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review has been released. As Title 10, Section 118 stipulates, the QDR’s Congressional mandate is:
The Secretary of Defense shall every four years… conduct a comprehensive examination (to be known as a “quadrennial defense review”) of the national defense strategy, force structure, force modernization plans, infrastructure, budget plan, and other elements of the defense program and policies of the United States with a view toward determining and expressing the defense strategy of the United States and establishing a defense program for the next 20 years.
DID has a roundup of relevant resources and links:
eDefense Online covers a number of highlights from the USA’s FY 2006 defense appropriations law H.R. 2863.ENR, now Public Law #109-148. eDefense Online writes:
“In the end, the US House of Representative and US Senate agreed to authorize $491.5 billion in defense spending for 2006, including $50 billion for ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the “global war on terrorism,” which President George W. Bush signed into law on Dec. 30 without much ceremony. The $441.9 billion approved for defense programs is $20.9 billion higher than last year’s budget… Spending levels set for various services and their material procurement include, for the Army, $2.8 billion for aircraft and $1.3 billion for missiles; for the Navy, $9.9 billion for aircraft and $2.7 billion for various weapons; and for the US Air Force (USAF), $13.2 billion for aircraft and $5.5 billion for missiles. But the spending bill’s references to individual programs are perhaps more revealing, reflecting the culmination of debates over the past year on how the US military’s force structure should be shaped in the future, as well as whether it is adequately equipped to perform the kind of operations presently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan…
Over the past couple of weeks, the major American defense manufacturers have announced their Q4 2005 and FY 2005 financial results. Below, DID has noted some quick year-end figures for each. These figures are for total operations, including defense and civilian activities.
Follow the links for more in-depth results and in some cases, performance breakdown by division:
Boeing (Sales $54.85B/+5%; Net income $2.57B/+37%; EPS $3.29/+39%)
General Dynamics (Sales $21.2B/+11%; Net Earnings $1.46B/+19%; Dil EPS $7.22/+19%). You’d think with all that cash, they could afford to do something about the worst major defense contractor site on the web…
Lockheed Martin (Sales $37.21B/+4.7%; Net earnings $1.825B/+44%; EPS $4.10/+44.9%)
Northrop-Grumman (Sales $30.7B/+3%; Net income $1.4B/+29%; Dil EPS $3.85/+30%)
Raytheon (Sales: $21.9B/+8%; Net income $871M/+109%; Dil EPS $1.92/+104%)
It appears that Boeing has come to similar conclusions. They’ve just announced plans for a new 737 signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft that can be used for airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and also advanced net-centric communications.
This weekend, DID got a note from reader J.A., who informed us that the site’s auto-refresh every 6 minutes or so was driving him batty. He hated it. We hadn’t really thought about that; it’s something built into the site’s original software templates, and it became unnoticeable to us after a while. Once he brought it to our attention, however, we decided he was right. Thank you, sir.
We’re going to make some technical changes and lengthen the refresh rate to once per 30 minutes, which is longer than most reader on-site times. That should stop interruptions but avoids ripping anything out, and still caters to the set of readers who seem to use the feature. Readers with comments or thoughts to add on this subject can get in touch with us via editorial, here @ defenseindustrydaily.com
