* Big defense contracts in Eurocopter’s sights, according to La Tribune [in French]: the US, Qatar, Poland, Norway, India, and Malaysia.
* The US started shipping weapons to Jordan to deliver them to Syrian rebels.
* The US Air Force’s Cold Weather Aviation System (CWAS) is intended to provide multi-layered clothing for aircrews working in Arctic conditions. Here is their brief from a recent industry day.
* Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute has a realistic view of how defense budgets get done and tells his well-meaning fellow think tank wonks to accept that politics often prevail over policy.
* The incredible shrinking “M” at OMB: it’s hard for the US Office and Management and Budget to manage much when key staff is not sticking around and positions are left vacant or handled by caretakers. This cannot help the Pentagon deal with its post-sequester budget adjustments.
* The Thin Pinstriped Line blog thinks the UK Ministry of Defence [MoD] handled well the spending review results revealed yesterday:
“[The] MOD appears to have done remarkably well out of this settlement compared to previous public expectations of doom and gloom. It is no small feat to emerge from a bruising spending round with a relatively small cut to the overall budget, and with a commitment to keeping capital expenditure on a flat (i.e. real terms small decline) basis.”
* Finland and Sweden may in the future participate in air surveillance in Iceland, pending parliamentary due process and discussion with NATO.
* The French government is postponing the submission of it Loi de Programmation Militaire (a 5-year budget plan) by at least 2 weeks. President Hollande announced flat budgets, as opposed to dramatically decreased ones, but this will come with lots of strings attached, such as a lack of inflation indexing. Le Point [in French].
* Today’s video below features helo eye candy from the US Marines training at Camp Pendleton, CA: