Rapid Fire August 28, 2013: France, UK Back US Strike Against Syria While Germany Stalls, Iran Barks
- As the US is getting ready for a limited strike on Syrian military installations, the non sequitur of the day comes from Iran’s Fars news agency:
“[Parliament Speaker] Larijani said there is no need for Syria to respect the international regulations if they will be ignored by the West and certain regional states in the interest of the Zionist regime, implying that any foreign aggression against Syria would issue the needed permission for a strike on Israel.”
- The UK and France have indicated their willingness to participate in, or otherwise support, a military strike against Syria, but Germany does not seem so inclined, with some politicians trying to dodge the issue [in German] by claiming their military’s capabilities abroad are already tapped out.
- Recently-retired US Air Force Secretary Michael Donley will lead an organizational review meant to cut headquarter overhead at the Pentagon.
- A CSIS memo [PDF] on FY12 federal contracting trends highlights how data of dubious quality is a pervasive issue getting in the way of proper analysis:
“In the most recent revision of the Product or Service Code Manual (PSC), new codes were instituted for several service code categories under FRS&C to improve data granularity, replacing the old codes for FY2012. Unfortunately, awareness of these changes appears to be lacking within the acquisition community, as significant amount of contract dollars are still being coded under the obsolete PSCs in FY2012.”
- German cloud software providers are thanking the NSA for a successful marketing campaign done on their behalf.
- The George Clooney-backed Satellite Sentinel project reports [PDF] that Sudan now has at least 3 Sukhoi Su-24 bombers, apparently acquired from Belarus. That sounds plausible given past sales, using loopholes in UN resolutions, from Belarus to Sudan, and Belarus phased out their Su-24s.
- Russia’s state-backed development bank may be lowering its stake in EADS, but titanium specialist VSMPO-AVISMA is strengthening its partnership with Airbus, in parallel with their relationship with Boeing.
- The video below recaps the opening of the MAKS-2013 airshow in Russia:
Categories: Africa - Other, Britain/U.K., Budgets, Daily Rapid Fire, Europe - Other, France, Germany, Industry & Trends, IT - Cyber-Security, Russia, Think Tanks, USA
