* The US Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is starting to release the FY 2014 president budget request. So far only the long-term overview is available, which outlines the terms of a "grand bargain" to replace the sequester. The general release is expected at...
SpyLite mini-UAV(click to view full) With all the focus on North Korea, it's easy to forget about the Latin American LAAD 2013 exhibition. Chile has been a regional leader in the use of UAVs, including their 2011 purchase of long-endurance Hermes 900s. Now, they're...
* The US Navy will deploy a solid-state laser aboard USS Ponce during the coming fiscal year. USS Ponce, an amphibious transport dock ship formerly known as LDP 15, was refitted last year as an Afloat Forward Staging Base, Interim (AFSB-I), and will be deployed to the...
* The Pentagon will ask for $526.6B in the President Budget to be rolled out on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. Pretending that sequestration does not exist worked out so well, they're about to do it again with the FY14 budget. The House of Representatives will...
* British Prime Minister David Cameron is not ruling out defense budget cuts after 2015 (video embedded below), but he's arguing that the country is getting significant equipment upgrades for the money, and that the nuclear deterrent should be preserved. The left-wing...
* In a speech at the National Defense University, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the usual laudable calls for acquisition reform without quite explaining what would make it happen. Hagel asked for time and flexibility - as if huge bureaucracies ever willingly...
* Russian president Vladimir Putin wants to use loans to support armament sales but: "these loans must be based on market principles and not be like the loans the Soviet Union used to accord for ideological reasons, and that no one ever saw again. Our work in this...
* Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Greenert updated the US Navy on the state of their budget with a series of short videos. There's a shortfall due to sequestration, but it's not as bad as it was prior to the FY13 CR/Appropriations bill. "[P]riorities will be funding...
* To "speculation" that China's recent $10B investment package in Tanzania that includes port infrastructure in Bagamoyo may also have a military purpose, the official Chinese response is: of course not!. The reported claim that the port will handle 20 million...