Rapid Fire 2011-05-19: KC-767A Tankers for Italy

* US Army Corp of Engineers unveils $5 billion Civil Works plan for FY 2011. * Nearly 1,000 workers at 3 defense contractors in the Washington, DC area – General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman – are being laid off this year, the Washington Examiner reports. * A number of projects are working to free science from the bottlenecks of copyright-bound paper articles, even for research produced on the public dime. Open source science is impractical for much defense R&D, except as a potential input. On the other hand, new Open Science approaches have shown great promise for areas like disease cures – which do have a military dimension. * India continues working on creating a nuclear triad with the deployment of its 1st Arihant class nuclear submarine expected in 2012. It also has inspection teams doing assurance checks in advance of an expected buy of M777 ultra-light howitzers. * UK announces plans for a new nuclear-powered submarine to replace its existing Vanguard class submarine. Advance design contracts for the missile section started a while ago, and the main build decision is expected in 2016. * Italy accepts 2 of its 4 ordered KC-767A aerial tankers into service, after […]