NSA Euro Saga
* According to El Mundo [in Spanish], the NSA proceeded in Spain to the same sort of spying denounced by France and Germany last week.
* Meanwhile the Süddeutsche Zeitung claims [in German] that not only the French government knew of at least some of the NSA’s activities, but they even had a partnership in place with the Five Eyes countries through a program dubbed “Lustre”. In a TV interview with TV5 [in French] on Sunday, Foreign Trade minister Nicole Brick refreshingly dropped the pretense that France is neither spying nor aware that its allies do so too.
* And L’Espresso suspects [in Italian – without providing source documents] that Italy may have been both targeted by, and possibly participant in, these NSA-led data collection programs. They accuse the UK’s Tempora program of having a very broad scope, and this mass tapping of undersea fiber optic cables may have served British business interests in competition with Italian firms for deals in the Middle East.
* The UK’s GCHQ feared a “damaging public debate” and “legal challenges” if the full extent of its activities was revealed. You think?
* Der Spiegel reports that “[f]rom the roof of the [US embassy in Berlin], a special unit of the CIA and NSA can apparently monitor a large part of cellphone communication in the government quarter.”
* US House Intel Chairman Mike Rogers [R-MI] counters that the NSA’s activities in Europe have been misrepresented, and anyway it’s for the Europeans’ own good. Rogers’ core argument is less convincing than his pointing out that the Europeans hold Americans to a higher standard than they hold themselves to.
The Future of the US Strategic Bomber Fleet
* Lockheed Martin will be Boeing’s main partner for a joint bid on the US Air Force’s future Long-Range Strike Bomber program. It’s unclear where competition will come from, as Northrop Grumman is not commenting at this time.
The Future of the US Carrier Fleet
* The US Chief of Naval Operations is acknowledging that carrier cuts need to be considered seriously, given the Navy’s future budgets. James Hasik was thinking about this 2 years ago, and produced a private study that advocated a careful mix of retirements and mothballing – rather like the options Britain has been looking at for its forthcoming CVFs.
UK UAVs
* A memo released by the UK’s House of Commons Defence Committee reveals that flight trials of BAE’s Taranis UAV took place sometime this year.
Helos for the Philippines
* The Philippine Air Force (PAF) is reportedly buying 8 AW109 Power attack helicopters from AgustaWestland, for PHP3.4 billion (about $79M). The country’s Navy will soon receive 5 AW 109s ordered earlier this year.
Energy Storage on a Chip?
* Researchers from Vanderbuilt University have managed to produce supercapacitators made out of porous silicon. This sounds like an electrochemical oxymoron, but their device was stabilized thanks to a thin layer of graphene on top. Press release | Paper.
Future Vertical Lift
* The US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) would like helicopters to be structurally more stable, and they’re hoping the use of carbon nanotubes in rotorblades might help. See the video below, which includes inhumane torture inflicted to a Chinook chained to the ground:
