* The US Air Force is setting aside its Afghanistan Light Air Support contract to Sierra Nevada before the litigation initiated by Hawker Beechcraft even completes its course: "Since the acquisition is still in litigation, I can only say that the Air Force Senior...
* No less than four congressional hearings are scheduled today to review the FY13 Pentagon budget. See our full schedule. Opposition to base closures continues with this letter [PDF] written by Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) and co-signed by 41 other members of Congress....
* Israel Aerospace Industries inks a $1.6B deal with Azerbaijan involving UAVs and missile defense systems. * The French DGA procurement agency released its 2011 activity report [PDF, in French]. Urgent operational purchase requests vastly decreased to just 20 million...
* Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Bob Pap made his annual State of the Coast Guard address [PDF]. On acquisition: "[T]here was a time when the Coast Guard operated 8 polar ice breakers. How did that happen? In 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed a hand...
* Turkey plans to proceed with its F-35 plans according to Reuters, while the US Defense Acquisitions Board (DAB) recently met to recertify the program because of its 2010 Nunn-McCurdy rule breach. See also the Feb. 16 update of the F-35 CRS backgrounder [PDF]....
* Contract Pricing Reference Guides (CPRG) have been made available to the American defense acquisition workforce in PDF and MS Word format. They cover price and cost analysis, quantitative techniques for contract pricing, federal contract negotiation techniques, and...
* Spending on private consultants within the UK's Framework Agreement for Technical Support (FATS) is again making headlines: The Telegraph; The Guardian. Soon after being appointed, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said last year that he was working on it. * Kim...
* France and Great Britain had a summit last Friday where they announced they are tightening their defense and nuclear energy cooperation. The two countries plan to establish a Joint Force headquarters and confirmed their joint UAV plans. * According to The Telegraph...
* German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the first rule of peace talks with the Taliban is, you don't talk about peace talks. Well, he didn't actually paraphrase Fight Club, but that's the substance of his position expressed during a joint press conference...