UK NAO Says Army 2020 Plan Needs Reality Check

• The UK’s National Audit Office released sharp criticism of the government’s decision to downsize the Army:

“The MOD decision to reduce the size of the regular Army and increase the number of trained Army reserves was taken without appropriate testing of feasibility or evaluation of risk. […] The decision to adopt an Army structure with fewer regular soldiers and an increased number of reserves was made to enable the Department to provide defence outputs within its available budget. We have not seen evidence that the feasibility of increasing the number of trained reserves within the planned timescale, needed to provide the required capability, was robustly tested.”

Aerospace, Excelled: The USA’s Arnold Engineering Development Center

AEDC at work: X-29

The Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), named for U.S. Air Force pioneer Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold, bills itself as “The World’s Premier Flight Simulation Test Facility.” Nearly half of the AEDC’s 58 test facilities are unique in the U.S., and 14 are unique in the world. These specialized test facilities have played a crucial role in the development and sustainment of virtually every high performance aircraft, air-to-air and air-to-ground weapon, missile, and space system in use by all four of the U.S. military services today. The Center has also been involved in the development of every NASA manned space system, many satellites, and numerous commercial aircraft and spacecraft systems.

In 2003, the Air Force consolidated the test operations contract and the base services contract into a single contract for operations, maintenance, information management, and base support, which was awarded to Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA) in Tullahoma, TN.