* US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent a letter [PDF] to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s leadership outlining the consequences of keeping sequestration in place next year, though the Pentagon has yet to produce anything granular enough to express more than very generic trade-offs. This “contingency plan”, such as it is, oddly starts with military personnel accounts, which so far have been exempted [PDF] by the President from the effects of the Budget Control Act.
* US Department of Justice: a former US Army Reserve captain pleaded guilty to accepting more than $90,000 in bribes from contractors while he was deployed to Iraq. Complaining about budget cuts will not play well with public opinion as long as such news keep coming with alarming frequency.
* The US Army recently released its latest equipment guidance [PDF] for 2013-2016.
* The US National Air and Space Intelligence Center published its 2013 assessment [PDF] of ballistic and cruise missile threats, which claims, as its 2009 predecessor [PDF], that “Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015.”
* ITT Exelis and SAIC have teamed up for DARPA’s Adaptive Radar Countermeasures (ARC) program.
* The UK government will release soon a document on alternative to its Trident nuclear deterrent. In the meantime, the issue of what would happen if Scots vote themselves into independence continues to be thorny. The Telegraph | The Guardian.
* Some Indian observers think China is taking their country for a ride over incursions beyond the Line of Actual Control that separates them: PTI | Indian Defence Review.
* Navy Cmdr. William “Jack” May, a reservist who deployed to Afghanistan from October 2012 to April 2013 with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) won the Military Logistician of the Year award:
“When I got there, we were demilitarizing 200,000 pounds of scrap at forward operating bases per week, then later a million. Since I left, they are up to scrapping about 5 million pounds of equipment a week. We want to make sure we get rid of items that our enemies can’t later use against us.”
* Afghan troops may start to show some basic troop discipline, but the homegrown logistics necessary to sustain decent readiness are not in place, reports the Los Angeles Times.
* Afghan National Security Forces, including their fledgling special forces, and Afghan police, explain their efforts on the ground in the video below:
