* US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James is worried about the service’s current readiness because of budgetary squabbling, but that didn’t stop her from releasing a lofty long-term strategy document [PDF] where the word “global” appears no less than 65 times (one time more than “future” and 65 more than “interesting”). Read it if you need a dose of game-changing high-end full-spectrum multi-domain verbiage (quoted verbatim). In the future such vapid documents will be both written and read by robots, letting humans focus on actual thinking.
* Actually 30 years from now the US Air Force will be flying F-35s running software version 7E, with luck [Bloomberg].
Good News from the Real World
* The US House of Representatives passed a conference report on the HR3230 bill meant to solve the Veteran Affairs backlog with a 420-5 roll call, so it is hopefully days away from a presidential signature.
Future of Expeditionary Tech
* The US Navy is extending by 1 year its request for white papers that identify new technology supporting mine detection, better sensors, ship-to-shore mobility and other issues pertaining to expeditionary warfare. This is handled by the OPNAV N95 office, which held an industry day [PDF] on mine warfare last March.
Could You Please Stop
* The latest US DOJ war corruption conviction: former employee of a U.S. construction company working in Afghanistan pleads guilty to receiving illegal kickback. There’s not a month that goes by without at least one of these.
* Canada’s government denounced a cyber intrusion on the IT infrastructure of its National Research Council “by a highly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored actor.”
More Q2 Results: The Expensive British Pound
* Half into 2014 BAE Systems’ sales are down 10% from a year ago to £7.6B ($12.8B). The order backlog shed 3 billion bounds to £39.7B ($67B). These numbers were affected by the fact the pound reached an exchange rate with the US dollar not seen in 5 years, though that has started to recede a bit in the past few weeks. Investor presentation | half-year report [PDFs].
* Likewise engine maker Rolls Royce complained about the strength of the sterling in its own half year results.
Not Used to Exporting
* Japan may have opened up export opportunities for its so far insular armament manufacturers, but the video below shot at the recent Eurosatory event shows their executives may be handicapped by a lack of foreign language skills:
