The UAE’s Falcon Eye Satellites: Quis custodiet?

Pleiades 1B

The United Arab Emirates’ AED 3.4 billion (EUR 703 million/ $925 million) “Falcon Eye” optical observation satellites are meant to provide a wholly new capability to their military by 2018, and represented the most advanced optics France had ever sold to another country. France’s CNES cites 0.7m / 2′ 4″ spatial resolution for the Pleiades Class at nadir, and a field of view of 20 km. EADS DS/ Astrium touts up to 100 km x 100 km in strip mapping mode.

The deal has had a rough road lately, and is currently hung up in re-negotiations…

Aerospace & Defense Firms Had Better Worry About Tech Competitors

• Airbus CEO Tom Enders in an interview with AFP:

“I think that in the future our industry will have to work much more closely with these new high-tech companies [the Microsofts, Amazons, Facebooks, SpaceXs, Yahoos] if only because these guys are increasingly intruding on our territory.”

• Politico: 2 tech firms shun inside defense game.

• Kevin Fahey, who was just appointed as the US Army’s Director for Agile Acquisition, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (reporting to Heidi Shyu), thinks the Army should learn from the Navy and get better at systems and network integration.

• The Brookings Institution will ask this very question during an event tomorrow in Washington, DC: how can the Department of Defense keep pace with changes in IT?