Daily Rapid Fire Morning 2011-05-31: Azerbaijan’s Satellite

* President Medvedev is longing for the good old days when poor contract performance earned a Siberian home, Russia is prosecuting people for a catastrophically failed GLONASS GPS launch… and now Russia’s chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky tells Rossiiskaya Gazeta that around 20% of Russia’s military spending is stolen every year by corrupt officials, dishonest generals and crooked contractors. One more reminder that their military modernization will be a tough slog. * The Russian Severnaya Verf shipyard in St. Petersburg begins construction of new Steregushchy-class corvette. The Russian Navy has publicly announced that they expect to buy at least 30 of these ships, for all 4 major fleets. The challenge will be delivering them before some of those fleets rust out. * South Korea is getting ROVER 5 devices for its forward air controllers, to share data with fighters overhead; US JTAC counterparts see them as a way of crossing the language barrier. * Not content with auctioning off the B-2’s radar frequency and costing the US government $1 billion, the FCC’s latest move to approve Lightsquared for 1525 – 1559 MHz L-Band satellite broadband is now confirmed to cause “complete loss” of civilian GPS receiver functionality within its coverage. […]