Afghanistan Drawdown Update * Winter slows down combat in Afghanistan, and ISAF Commander General Dunford sounds rather optimistic about how the 2013 fighting season unfolded, but he recognizes that "[m]uch work remains to be done in developing the institutions,...
Electronics & IT Articles
Private Firms to Transport and Store US Military Members’ Private Vehicles
Private Vehicle Storage(click to view larger) When a military family is moved abroad, what happens to their cars? That just one of the private vehicle dilemmas confronting the US military on a regular basis, as approximately 650,000 service members, family members,...
NSA Spying Pervasive Throughout Europe, Though Maybe Not So Secret to Government Leaders
NSA Euro Saga * According to El Mundo [in Spanish], the NSA proceeded in Spain to the same sort of spying denounced by France and Germany last week. * Meanwhile the Süddeutsche Zeitung claims [in German] that not only the French government knew of at least some of the...
@NetSecWonk’d: Lessons from the Joseph Affair
Former National Security Council (NSC) non-proliferation staffer and potential Pentagon AT&L advisor Jofi Joseph isn't the first person to be undone by social media, and he won't be the last. The inconvenient truth is that social media security isn't even close to the...
US Budget Talks: Big Ideological Sacred Cows Probably Off Limits
US Budget Negotiations to Restart * Congressional leaders are signaling a more realistic stance as they're about to restart budget negotiations next week. They are shrugging off any sort of ambitious "grand bargain" deal, and may instead be content to tinker at the...
LEMV Airship Sold Back to Manufacturer for a Song, and Future Data
LEMV concept(click to view full) The rise of modern terrorism, sharply increasing costs to recruit and equip professional soldiers, and issues of energy security, are forcing 2 imperatives on modern armies. Modern militaries need to be able to watch wide areas for...
Prime Contractors Massage Their Earnings But Face Revenue Pressure
Primes Under Booking Pressure * General Dynamics' Q3 revenue was down by 1.7% to $7.8B. Information systems sales break from the trend with a 4.4% increase, but even combined with healthy aerospace gains, they can't quite compensate for Combat Systems shrinking to...
Makers On the Front Lines: The Army REF’s Ex Labs
Ex Lab(click to view full) What do a fresh look at what "logistics" means, the ongoing electronics revolution, new manufacturing techniques, and the social norms and movements arising from these trends, have in common? Within the US Army, the answer is the Rapid...
Choices, Changes & Opportunities: Corporate Lessons from the Afghan R4D Exit
M-ATVs, hauling out(click to view full) The US Army's Retrograde, Reset, Redeployment, Redistribution, and Disposal (R4D or "Afghan retrograde") is a huge effort, moving an estimated $17 billion of good out of country at a cost of around $6 billion. Some of its...

