Israel’s Defense Ministry Prevails in Budget Clash with Finance
Israel’s Defense Budget Settled with Decrease in the Rate of Increase
- A few months ago it looked like Israel’s defense ministry would have to weather its share of net budget cuts. A rift between defense and treasury officials remained apparent until the last minute, but in the end the country’s security cabinet approved a smaller increase in spending than the defense ministry had asked.
Syria; Russia
- Foreign Policy reports that Syria wants to keep its chemical weapons factories and convert them to civilian use. The big question is whether these facilities could easily be converted back to their original purpose.
- Israeli aircraft reportedly attacked a shipment of Russian missiles in Syria yesterday.
- US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that Syria is increasingly dependent on foreign manpower and Russian weapons supplies.
- President Vladimir Putin cancelled a working group meant to cooperate with NATO on missile defense.
- The delivery of a batch of 12 Mi-17 transport helicopters was completed last month as contemplated by a controversial contract between the US DoD and Rosoboronexport. They’re procured for Afghan forces. The video below shows a resupply flight with on of these helos:
Program Risk Management Spreadsheet
- A team from RAND Corporation is working on an Excel tool to assess acquisition program risk. It’s not publicly available for download, qualified interested testers should contact them.
Another Contractor Running into Q3 Speed Bump
- Exelis reported Q3 2013 revenue down 16% to $1.1B, but strong bookings should compensate for that in future quarters. They also dropped the legacy “ITT” in front of their name, 2 years after splitting from ITT Corporation.
Germany’s Future Role
- The Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik and the German Marshall Fund think tanks released a joint paper [PDF] on Germany’s place in Europe and the world. On defense, it states that “European defence industry can only be maintained in the long term by a broad consolidation of national industries within the European context.”
FBO Will Finally Tackle Spam Accounts
- DID’s Rapid Fire ranted in the past about spammers polluting the FedBizOpps database. FBO announced on their website that they will disable these vendor accounts on November 4. They are focused on the way vendor profiles are formatted, but another issue we have reported about months ago is vendors listing themselves as interested parties under opportunities they have obviously no business responding to.
Categories: Asia - Central, Budgets, Corporate Financials, Daily Rapid Fire, Helicopters & Rotary, Israel, Middle East - Other, Russia, USA
