In September 2012, Beretta USA Corp. in Accokeek, MD received a 5-year, $64 million firm-fixed-price contract for up to 100,000 of their M9 9mm Pistols. All of the pistols will be manufactured at the Beretta USA facility in Maryland, where an American work force of nearly 300 employees has been making M9 pistols since 1987, and will now continue doing so until Sept 8/17. The bid was solicited through the Internet, with 4 bids received. The U.S. Army Contracting Command in Warren, MI manages this contract (W56HZV-12-D-0011). Beretta USA adds that:
“We are very proud to continue supplying the M9 pistols to the U.S. Army… and we look forward to the opportunity of working with the Army to improve the current M9 design with many of the existing solutions available to us in the new Model 92A1 [USMC] and 96A1 pistol families”.
Beretta’s M9 is the standard sidearm pistol for the US military, with over 600,000 pistols delivered to date. SOCOM operators can use other pistols, and the US Marines’ MARSOC special forces formally decided to go back to the stopping power of Colt’s .45 caliber pistol in July 2012. Even so, Colt will need to fix some of the guns’ failures if they want wider adoption in the Corps.
In September 2012, Northrop Grumman Information Technology Inc. in McLean, VA received an $8.2 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to support the Biometric Identity Intelligence Resource System. Biometrics has found an important but unheralded niche on modern counter-insurgency battlefields, and there are a number of programs underway within the services. It all starts with the ability to match, and disseminate, biometric personal data to known (and especially flagged/ watchlisted) identities.
Work will be performed in Charlottesville, Va., with an estimated completion date of Sept 6/15. Sixteen bids were solicited, with one bid received by US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) in Charlottesville, VA (W91QUZ-07-D-0005). This order was actually issued under the US Army’s $20 billion ITES-II umbrella contract.
Swedish general Hakan Syren, the Chairman of the European Union Military Committee, tells it like it is:
“The military capabilities of the EU member states are on a steady downward slope. […] Looking a few years into the future, it is simple mathematics to predict that many member states will be unable to sustain essential parts of their national forces, air forces being the prime example.”
The French and German governments have started talks among advisors about the BAE/EADS merger plans, in preparation of a meeting between President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend. EADS CEO Tom Enders has argued in a letter seen by AFP [in French] that broader access to international defense markets was vital to EADS, given its current reliance on shrinking European budgets. The primary concern, whether in Berlin or Paris, is preserving jobs and maintaining influence: Der Spiegel [in English] | L’Usine Nouvelle [in French] | Le Monde [in French].
