Obama administration’s fiscal year 2012 budget [PDF] boosts defense spending by $22 billion over FY 2010 appropriations, to $671 billion, while projecting $78 billion in “savings” through 2016. [Update: 2013 request.]
Russia’s armed forces rely on aging equipment, lack transport capability, and suffer from manpower shortages, according to a NATO report cited in a leaked US diplomatic cable.
Ceradyne’s new Enhanced Combat Helmet may be twice the price, but it looks like a 70% plus increase in head protection over the current American ACH design, with a new ability to stop close rifle shots. The USA plans to buy 200,000 ECH helmets, beginning in the fall of 2011.
You can find it in those deployed ranks, though. Kudos to Canadian Master Corporal Shawn Grove, who taught himself Pashto and became a big asset to the Afghan campaign, without any help from his military.
Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush backs easing of high-tech export controls.
Israel’s IAI looks to work with Bombardier as well as Gulfstream, unveiling a maritime surveillance Dash-8 mockup at Aero India 2011, and considering Airborne Early Warning planes based on Bombardier’s Global Express jets.
2 Thai F-16s crash during Cobra Gold 2011. The pilots are safe, and the country’s F-16 upgrade program should be unaffected.
Recent WikiLeaks revelations re: Saudi Arabia have reignited the peak oil debate. Joe Lazarro says we may or may not have hit peak oil, but we can say goodbye to cheap oil.
300 “Boomerang III perimeter systems.” (Feb 14/11)
Sniper attacks are an ongoing problem/ opportunity in any urban conflict, which is tailor made for the practice. The bad news is that most future conflicts and even peacekeeping operations can be expected to spend a lot of time in urban settings.
Western armies tend to field much better snipers than their enemies do, and the results show. Nevertheless, better support for those snipers, and for non-specialist troops under fire, offers those armies a critical new asset that gives them an edge. The question is, how to accomplish that in a way that provides immediate results, and is reliable? A number of solutions have been developed over the past few years, some of which are also working to reduce crime in American neighborhoods – another urban setting that sometimes features opponents with AK-47s. On the front lines abroad, the most widely deployed system comes from Raytheon-BBN Technologies, Inc., a firm that helped to invent the Internet. Enter a system called Boomerang…
