Rapid Fire Nov. 6, 2012: UK Middle East Sales Tour
- British Prime Minister David Cameron is visiting the Middle East where he is supporting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Oman. The Telegraph.
- Bob King, president of the United Auto Workers union, wrote an open letter to US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to “to express our concern with the Army’s proposal to end tank modernization.” He sent the letter a month ago but it was published in The Lima News yesterday, in hotly contested Ohio. Clearly a coincidence with today’s election.
- Foreign Policy: Lies, Damned Lies, and Defense-Job Statistics:
“But the claims that Pentagon spending has uniquely salutary economic effects — or, conversely, that cuts will have disproportionately harmful ones — suffer from a basic conceptual error: They ignore the opportunity costs. Simply put, Pentagon spending cuts can be expected — all other factors being equal — to generate greater economic activity elsewhere.”
- Russian President Vladimir Putin fired his defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov, apparently because of the fire sale of military assets. AP.
- SAIC announced who will be appointed to top leadership positions in the 2 companies it is going to split into. Current CEO John Jumper will continue to lead the part in charge of national security, health and engineering solutions.
- Has China set its sights on the Azores where the US Air Force has had a presence since WWII? This may seem like reading a lot from a short stop by a Chinese official earlier this year, but Portugal needs cash and China has shown its appetite for assets of strategic value. Last year’s $3.5B investment from China’s Three Gorges in Portugal’s power supply (EDP) and grid (REN) made it the largest shareholder in Portuguese electricity overnight.
- You may think your program is still at the pre-Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAP) stage because it is not listed as such by the US DoD’s Acquisition Resources and Analysis (ARA), but a Q&A on the Defense Acquisition University’s website suggests that if it walks and quacks like a duck, that’s what it is. The distinction is not purely semantic, as MDAPs (latest list) are subject to a whole extra layer of regulatory oversight and documentation.
Categories: Bases & Infrastructure, Britain/U.K., China, Daily Rapid Fire, Europe - Other, Legal, Middle East - Other, People, Russia, T&C - SAIC