September 2007 Archives

Major General Ng Chee Khern, chief of the Republic of Singapore Air Force, sent me an invitation to interview him when he came to Washington DC this week.

As the head of one of the most sophisticated -- and secretive -- air forces in the world, I was very glad to accept the offer.

I met General Ng in a meeting room at the Wardman Park Hotel at the end of a long day of the AFA convention. Dressed in civilian clothes, I found him surprisingly youthful, thoughtful and open to answer any question I asked.

You can read my full article in next week's Flight International magazine. But here are some notes from the interview. I know it's not exactly in proper journalistic narrative style, but I hope some of you find it useful.

F-5 replacement?

-- The Singapore Air Force has a requirement to replace F-5s by 2015.
-- The choice is between replacing the F-5s with a follow-on batch of F-15s or a new batch of F-35s
-- The US government will deliver the final configuration for the proposed Singapore AF F-35 early next year.
-- Singapore will study whether the final configuration meets its requirements or whether the F-15 would be more suitable
-- The ability to operate and to modify the F-35 with some degree of national sovereignty is a major consideration

Mobility

-- I mentioned that Boeing had briefed reporters earlier that morning that Singapore is considered a “business opportunity” for selling more C-17s
-- Ng said there is “not a whole lot” of interest in the C-17
-- Right now the C-130 is meeting its needs; the A400m and JCA will still be available in 10-15 years when the C-130 would be replaced

Advanced trainer

-- RFI has been released for advanced trainer
-- Singapore has already evaluated the 346 and T-50. An evaluation team will be sent to the UK in October to look at the Hawk.
-- The air force will shortlist to two aircraft and issue an RFP in early 2009
-- Major difference with Korea's requirement: Singapore wants synthetic electronic systems such as radar and electronic warfare, as opposed to the actual systems
-- The aircraft will be used almost exclusively as trainers. No operational role is expected.

Unmanned developments?

-- Singapore needs to replace or mid-life update Fokker 50 maritime patrol fleet by 2015
-- Unmanned systems are the likely replacement candidate, with the US Navy’s BAMS selection a major interest
-- Singapore received a briefing on Global Hawk in 2006; still awaiting clearance from US government for export, but no progress made so far.
-- Boeing’s manned/unmanned G550 “might” meet the requirement

Notes between bites of an $8 sandwich and a $2.40 20oz bottle of Diet Coke:

The convention winds down today. The highlight is the 2pm speech by General Michael Moseley. I go straight to the airport after his speech, so I can get to Los Angeles in time to attend the Society of Experimental Test Pilots's (aka, "The Neil Armstrong Show") annual convention tomorrow.

My final round of awards for AFA:

The award for best mini-controversy of the show goes to: "C-5-cost-gate"

Background: Secretary Michael Wynne and Moseley both took Lockheed Martin to task for submitting an offer to complete an upgrade for the C-5 fleet that air force experts say is way too low.
Lockheed says it can finish the job of reengining and improving the reliability of the C-5 fleet for $11.7 billion, but Wynne and Moseley disagree. They said their experts tell them the actual cost is somewhere between 50% and 100% higher than Lockheed's estimate.
Those with long memories may recall Lockheed's original cost estimate for the C-5A program in 1964 was $1.9 billion, but eventually ballooned to $5.8 billion by the time the program was cut short in the early 1970s. Hmmm ...

The award for "most creative question by a reporter" goes to Defense Daily's Michael Sirak

In a press conference with the incoming commander of Air Mobility Command, Mike brilliantly linked a microenomics lesson on the Irish potato famine to the rising costs of the C-5 RERP program.
Here's the logic: Because potatos were a staple fund, Mike explained, the rise in prices during the famine didn't cause demand to drop. The Irish simply bought less of other things and still purchased about the same amount of potatos.
How does that relate to the C-5 program, you may ask? I could try to tell you that, but I'm still trying to figure it out, too. I think it means that the C-5 is a staple, so the air force is stuck with it no matter how much the price continues to rise.
Who says reporters don't know math?

My personal headlines from walking the convention's exhibit floor today:

1. EADS shows off A400M at US Air Force event, yet Hell remains unfrozen
2. Lockheed Martin shows uncanny foresight, reserves US101 CSAR-X exhibit space months ahead of GAO decision keeping competition active
3. Northrop Grumman steals coveted "best swag" title with "tanker toad" stuffed animal giveaway
4. No, a bowl of bite-size candy does not qualify for "best swag" competition

[UPDATE: UNITED TECHNOLOGIES, THE PARENT COMPANY OF SIKORSKY, SAYS THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EMAIL POSTED BELOW AND ARE AS OFFENDED BY ITS CONTENT AS I AM.]

I received an email yesterday from a man I've never heard of, representing a PR firm I've never heard of, representing an unidentified client that is obviously either Lockheed Martin or Sikorsky.

I am posting here because I think's illustrative of the back-door manueverings of the CSAR-X bidders. I have received nearly as many unsolicited calls and emails from random "subject matter experts" as I've had on the CSAR-X program, and I don't think this is very helpful for the acquisition process. Here's the email:

Stephen, are you going to the Boeing presser today at 3:00 at the AFA conference?

If so, just wanted to pass this along - Boeing hasn't had to go on record to answer any of the following questions to date:

- Could Boeing have won CSAR if the Air Force had not made the one-word change of mission ready to flight ready?

- Which Air Force and Pentagon officials did Boeing meet with to get the KPP for air transportability changed?

- Boeing was unable to perform all of the tasks in its air transportability demonstration and instead it simply told the Air Force how it would do it if they won the competition. Which steps were simply explained to the Air Force rather than fully demonstrated. Where is the video tape of the demonstration?

Typed frantically between evening cocktail receptions:

Best contractor quote #1:

George Muellner, Boeing’s loquacious president of advanced systems, was speaking about the dual role air dominance missile (DRADM), which the air force wants to develop to replace the AMRAAM and the HARM. I mentioned that the navy seems to think this idea is a little dumb, and asked for his response.

Muellner replied: “The navy is always smart enough to not join these programs until it’s very mature, so the can buy off the production lots.”

Best contractor quote #2:

Harry Heimple, one of Northrop Grumman’s B-2 guys, was talking about why commercial operators have bumped the bomber off the slice of the spectrum it uses for radar signals. My question: at the end of the day, the B-2 is a nuclear bomber, so why can’t it use any part of the spectrum that it wants to use? Heimple answered that there were a lot of air force generals who asked the same question.

He added: “It took a roomful of lawyers to explain to them who was going to jail if they didn’t get out of the frequency.”

Most quizzical contractor exhibit:

Boeing’s exhibit includes a wall illustrated with a photo of the X-48 Blended Wing Body. Just below is it a an aircraft that I’ve never seen before, but looks utterly ridiculous. Think of a scaled-up version of Boeing’s air-dropped Dominator loitering munition, but with at least three people pictured sitting inside. No one in the Boeing exhibit, including George Muellner, knew anything at all about the vehicle. It remains a mystery.

Call me an amateur airpower interlocutor, but when I see the pilgrimmage of the blue-suited horde to the annual convention of the Air Force Association at the Wardman Park Hotel this week, I want to ask the pilgrims with the stars on their shoulders and the self-satisfied smiles of ex-fighter jocks a few fundamental questions, and those questions are these:

Why is that -- 60 years after the air force was born -- so many people are still struggling to define just what in the wild blue yonder is an air force supposed to, you know, do?

Is airpower applied in isolation of a combined arms strategy really a contradiction of the term "power"?

How more or less effective would the US Army be today if its air arm was never allowed to separate and develop its standalone theories of airpower?

You may remember the now-infamous Northrop Grumman comic book that appeared on this blog two weeks ago. For a stuffy defense contractor, those guys sure do know how to entertain themselves. Behold, their latest innovation: a desktop computer game!

No, it's not the Blue Angels.

Iran today has released the most impressive images yet of the Saegheh ("lightning") fighter: a Northrop F-5 modified with a V-tail. The images came from a public flight test at Tehran's Mehrabad airport.

Why are they painted in the same color scheme as the Blue Angels?

Answer: I don't have a clue, but I think it's very funny.

[UPDATE: Click here to read Graham Warwick at The Woracle blog tell us what the Iranians may be up to with design changes that include the bizarre V-tail and mysteriously enlarged inlets.]

Why does Boeing want to make it harder for 787 passengers to survive a plane crash?

That's the hugely loaded question that is being asked this week by a 46-year Boeing engineer, Vince Weldon, who went public with his concerns about the 787's crashworthiness on a Dan Rather-hosted TV special last night. Watch the show here.

Weldon believes Boeing is rushing the 787 into service before it knows for sure how the all-composite fuselage will behave in a crash landing scenario. Two key questions: Will composite structure absorb as much of the impact shock as an aluminum airframe? Does composite resist fire as well as metal?

I had my say about this issue during a live spot on the TV morning show Fox & Friends this morning, but -- in case you missed it -- here's the gist of what I said.

The bottom line is that Boeing will have to prove that the 787 meets at least the crashworthiness standard of aluminum structures. If there are unknowns or validated problems, the FAA will rightly refuse to certify the aircraft.

Weldon's real question, however, may be whether Boeing or the FAA knows enough composite structures to make a reasonable judgement.

This may be a philosophical clash more than anything else.

Weldon comes from a generation of venerated Boeing engineers who were famous for being hard-headed about safety and testing. This is a group that believed in physically validating almost any assumption.

But times have changed across the the industry. These days, more engineering assumptions are validated digitally in computer labs versus physically in flight test conditions.

I would not write Weldon off as a disgruntled employee grinding a composite ax. But nor would I write off the consensus opinion -- shared by every airframe manufacturer in the business -- that composites are a safer and more efficient alternative to metal.

I wouldn't have believed it unless I saw it myself, but the army is thinking about buying either a used Airbus A300 or a used Boeing 767. Really.

Back from a Northrop Grumman news conference on its bid to win a $40 billion contract to produce 179 KC-30 tankers for the US Air Force, I feel inclined to make some awards.

In the category of "best gotcha question", the award goes to: Andrea Shalal-Esa, of Reuters, who asked NG's SVP Paul Meyer: "Is the [air force] program being run in a protest-proof way?"

Tough one! If Meyer says "yes", it will look bad if NG loses and protests the award. If he says "no", the air force won't be very happy with him. So what does Meyer say? Here's his response: "In today's environment I have no answer to the question. I don't know what that means anymore."

Well-played, Mr. Meyer.

In the category of "best soundbite", the award goes to Representative Jo Bonner, of Mobile, Alabama, who said: "Northrop Grumman is in LA. This project is going to be in L.A.: Lower Alabama".

Bravo, Congressman.

In the category of "best unexpected scoop", Northrop Grumman says it's "inevitable" that it will switch to the A330-300F airframe if it wins the contract. This means GE will have a second shot at the A330's freighter version even after it rejected a role on the commercial program earlier this summer. If you're a fan of commerical aviation news, you know that this is not a trivial development.

What gives you better bang for the buck: the F-22 or the F-35?

The answer will of course depend on the evolution of the F-35's price tag, so is probably unknowable for several more years.

But I'm glad that didn't stop Captain J. Michael Stelly, who has recently published his master's thesis for the Air Force Institute of Technology. The thesis is entitled "Price versus Performance: The Value of Next Generation Fighter Aircraft".

Assuming the F-35's price tag remains constant, he concludes the JSF is by far the more cost-effective purchase.

He claims that the F-35 shares every major weapons capability with the F-22 with one exception -- super-cruise, which is usually defined as the ability to fly faster than Mach 1 without afterburners. According to Stelly's models, this feature carries a relative value of $68 million per each F-22, making its somewhat slower rival a better overall affordable solution.

I'm not sure I completely follow this line of reasoning, but I think it's a worthy debate to have, and I'm glad Stelly has filled the factual vaccum with some empirical data to work with.

Thanks to my buddy Geoff Fein for this. I give you history's most bureaucratic-sounding job change announcement:

Secretary of Defense Robert G. Gates announced the following Department of Defense Senior Executive Service reassignment: Paul J.C. Hulley, foreign relations and defense policy manager in the office of the deputy secretary of defense, office of the assistant Secretary of defense (International Security Affairs), Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy), reassigned to foreign relations and defense policy manager in the office of the deputy secretary of defense (Western Hemisphere Affairs), office of the assistant secretary of defense (Homeland Defense and America's Security Affairs), Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) effective 16 Sept. 2007.

Today's Business Week features an investigation on Congressional earmarks, finding that (shock number 1) defense companies dominate the list of corporate recipients and (shock number 2) the navy used earmarks to buy a posh G550 to shuttle around the Chief of Naval Operations and the Secretary of the Navy.

I applaud the magazine for shedding light on the dark subject of extra-budgetary hand-outs to PAC-giving defense companies, but, please, a measley $50 million for a C-37 is your symbol of unnecessary government spending? Why not first bust lawmakers for continuing to earmark more than two-thirds of the navy's science and technology spending, including funds for examing cold fusion (cold fusion!!!!!) as a potential energy source?

Don't forget to download The DEW Line's database of PAC spending by the seven largest defense companies during the first six months of 2007. Here is the document: Download file

Aviation journalists like me generally don't write news stories about the aircraft that don't crash. So, even though air travel is statistically safer than than walking across the street to buy a vanilla soy latte at Starbucks, give me an airplane crash and I'll give you 24/7 wall-to-wall coverage.

But I'm going to break with this time-honored and web traffic-proven tradition today to report about some airplanes that haven't crashed this year: namely, those flown by the US Air Force (USAF).

A quick check of the Accident Investigation Board web site reveals that the USAF is quietly compiling a historically safe year. With only two weeks remaining in fiscal year 2007, USAF pilots are enjoying the longest streak of crash-free days and fewest number of total "Class A" mishaps since at least FY99.

It may be the safest year the USAF has ever recorded but I can only find safety statistics going back to the year before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

There hasn't been a major USAF aircraft crash this year since May 30, which means the current streak has lasted 109 days. The previous longest streak that I could find went from March 19, 2000 to May 31, 2000, which was only 73 days.

The number of total crashes is, by comparison, even more significant. Even including the 73-day streak in FY00, 24 USAF aircraft suffered Class A mishaps that year. The number so far this year is 13, which is nearly 50% of the previous best year since FY99.

With the USAF's fleet aging and the cost of recapitalizng growing with every F-22 and F-35 added to the procurement budget, this safety trend has major implications for the air force's long-term fleet plans.

Normally, I'd be tempted to add a little photo of a crashed jet at the end of this post, as crash pictures are like liquid gold for web traffic, but I shall refrain. It's obviously a good time for breaking a bunch of traditions about aviation crashes.

In the "potentially-first-of-its-kind-unless-I'm-really-wrong" file, the US Department of Defense is buying a commercial unmanned aircraft system for the first time that I'm aware of. The honors go to the Raytheon Cobra UAS, which I must admit always reminds me of a flying lawnmower (see pic below).

The US Army Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg is the procuring agency. Read the relevant document here.

DOD has leased quasi-commercial UAVs like the Boeing/Insitu Scan Eagle in the past, but I do believe this is the first time a completely commcercial UAV is being purchased.

"We're here. We're unmanned. Get used to it." (Source: FAA)

Er, speaking of flying lawmowers ...

The karma of defense acquisition scandal is a fickle beast.

For almost a year, Lockheed Martin and Sikorsky have made hay on the CSAR-X contract, forcing the US Air Force to return to square one and re-compete the contract they errantly awarded to Boeing last November.

This week, Lockheed is getting some of its own contract overturning medicine in Ottawa. Last March, Canada fast-tracked a contract award to Lockheed for the Sniper XR targeting pod despite the fact Northrop Grumman and Raytheon were offering pods already in service with F-18s.

It was even more of a coup because it was widely believed that Canada would follow the lead of Australia, which the year before had selected Northrop's Israeli-derived Lightning AT pod, which is usually described as the cheapest of the three third-generation targeting pods offered by the US for export.

Now, a tribunal in Ottawa has overturned Lockheed's $126 million contract, according to the Canadian press. The news reports say the tribunal sustained a protest by Northrop Grumman "in part", but do not describe any specific reasons for overturning the contract.

So Canada's weapons buyers will likely have to re-evauate the decision even as Lockeed goes on delivering pods to the CF-18 units.

Even in the US, the odd over-abundance of options for third-generation targeting pods has made for some awkward moments. I remember about three years ago when John Young, who was then head of the Navy's acquistion system, decided to re-evaluate the navy's contract with Raytheon for the Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) pod, suggesting that three different pods in-service with the US military was overkill.

Whether Young's real strategy was to kill off one or two pods or to negotiate a better price with Raytheon remains open for question, but the navy's re-evaluation died a silent death about six months after it began..

In case you had forgot, the Federal Register this morning reminds us the state of emergency declared six years ago -- and three days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC -- lives on.

Notice of September 12, 2007

Continuation of the National Emergency With
Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks

Consistent with section 202(d) of the National
Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing
for 1 year the national emergency I declared on
September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect
to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New
York, New York, the Pentagon, and aboard United
Airlines flight 93, and the continuing and immediate
threat of further attacks on the United States.

Because the terrorist threat continues, the national
emergency declared on September 14, 2001, last extended
on September 5, 2006, and the powers and authorities
adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in
effect beyond September 14, 2007. Therefore, I am
continuing in effect for an additional year the
national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001,
with respect to the terrorist threat.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register
and transmitted to the Congress.


(Presidential Sig.)

THE WHITE HOUSE,

September 12, 2007.

Tks, JWC.

In one of the more wacky legal disputes in defense industry history, Lockheed Martin has announced today that a third country -- Thailand -- recognizes the company's right to call its laser-guided bomb the "Paveway".

Previously, the courts of Oman and Turkey came to the same conclusion. But this bizarre dispute of nomenclature goes on in the courts of 13 other countries, including the United States.

Why is this happening?

Raytheon (nee Hughes) is the inventor of a laser-guided bomb code-named Paveway and for many years its only manufacturer. But several years ago Lockheed developed a rival design and sold it to the US Air Force and US Navy, which means Raytheon and Lockheed compete every year for Paveway orders.

You can imagine how excited Raytheon was by this development.

In 2005, Raytheon won approval by the US Patent and Trademark office to trademark the name "Paveway", meaning that henceforth Lockheed couldn't legally market its rival product by that name.

Lockheed argues that the term was a government-furnished code-name for what was once a classified weapons technology, not a proprietary marketing brand.

Raytheon, of course, seeks to protect its competitive position as the sole heir of the original Paveway technology.

"That's Mr. Paveway to you!" (Source: Raytheon)

Pemco has announced that it has lost the contract to provide depot maintenance on the KC-135.

The winner, oddly enough, hasn't been announced yet, but since Boeing was the only other known competitor, I think it's safe to assume that the KC-135's original manufacturer has won the job. If true, this means Boeing has pulled off a coup, beating the KC-135 program depot maintenance incumbent Pemco for a contract worth billions over the next 10 years.

Although you wouldn't know it by reading most of the trade press, this is one of a handful of high-profile contracts to be awarded this year.

And you know what that means. So far, the only multi-billion dollar weapon system contract awarded by DOD that hasn't been legally challenged by the losing party -- or parties, a la CSAR-X -- was Boeing's win of the $2 billion A-10 re-winging contract. Even a couple of years ago, it was highly rare for losers to protest a lost contract. Proof: can anyone today imagine Boeing not protesting the Joint Strike Fighter contract decision?

So, the 10-day clock for filing a protest with Government Accountability Office will soon begin. Pemco's statement says only that it is a requesting a debriefing on the US Air Force's reasons for rejecting its bid.

"We're broken, and we can't get up" (Source: USAF)

When you realize that the Shah paid for everything you see in this promotional clip, while most of his own people still lived in poverty, you can see why a little revolution took place two years later.

Wall Street thinks Nick Chabraja, CEO of General Dynamics, is one of the shrewdest -- if least talkative -- executives in the aerospace and defense business.

If you're looking for someone to read political-industrial-strategic tea leaves for you, Chabraja's your man. And he's expected to retire in the near future, so savor his words now.

Chabraja certainly didn't disappoint during a 50-minute chat with analysts yesterday at the Morgan Stanley Industrials CEOs Unplugged Conference, which I tuned into via webcast. Here's what he said.

On why defense industry CEOs like himself don't fear an about-face for US security policy after the Bush term expires in 2008:

It seems to me that the market is unduly preoccupied with the Iraqi situation. These companies do not depend on that particular deployment. And when that one’s done there’s going to be another one. We will not be out of Afghanistan under any circumstances. So I don’t – I don’t know how to tell you what the industry could do to make it better. In many respects this is a wonderful market to be in. The credit of your customer is very good. They are mature in terms of systems. Very predictable in a lot of ways. In its early days, this industry was highly cyclical, had long shoulders, long cycles, but severely cyclical. And, I would say, in the first 40 years of its existence the aerospace and defense industry didn’t make any money for anybody. A 3% return on sales was probably the [total of the] first 40 years, with a lot of bust years. I think the investment community didn’t very much like the industry because they don’t do very well with it. I would say that this is an industry that has done very well since the end of the Cold War. You would think it would be just the opposite. [However], the cold war ended and the industry started to perform. Since early 1990 probably the returns from this industry have been as good as anybody else’s. But normally we have not been accorded very healthy multiples.

On how defense acquisition reform really works:

Change is constant in the defense side of our business. Why is that? Because acquisition is run by civilians many of them political appointees, and many of them -- at least against the sands of time -- are in office for a short period of time. Each [are] anxious to imprint some lasting improvement and legacy for their tour of duty. So the industry is faced with new initiatives from service secretaries, assistant secretaries for acquisition, technology. So this is not new. But there are only so many contract vehicles known to man, and we are going to have to deal with a handful and new initiatives. And I think it’s incumbent upon industry to be disciplined and flexible to meet our customers needs and at the same time to be able to calculate and measure the risk that we face for the benefit of our shareholders and not engage in foolish contracting practices. But I don’t think it’s political-party sensitive. But it comes with change in administration.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Industrials CEO conference a few minutes ago, Lockheed Martin chief Bob Stevens predicted the US Department of Defense's Fiscal 2009 budget request -- not scheduled to be unveiled for five months -- should be about 5% higher than the $482 billion request in FY 08.

The good news: that means the DOD budget will grow to $503 billion, not including the supplementals.

The bad news: that means DOD's core budget growth is decelerating from 10% in FY 08 to 5% in FY09.

I'm listening to a web cast of Nick Chabraja, CEO of General Dynamics, addressing the Morgan Stanley Industrials CEOs Unplugged conference this morning.

Heidi Wood, Morgan Stanley's always informed aerospace/defense analyst, asked Chabraja whether or not he thinks his company's first Littoral Combat Ship is over budget.

Chabraja's response: "'Budget' is a funny word."

End-quote.

A co-worker showed me a neat trick last week: how to look up who has written what on Wikipedia!

Could I use this new tool to discover whether defense contractors use Wikipedia to spread propaganda about their products, or, alternatively, to trash their rivals?

The answer, as you'll see, is definitely yes!

Here's how it goes: Every time someone creates a new page or edits an existing one, they create a digital trail that can be tracked. The authors can be identified not by name, but by their IP address – the Internet’s equivalent of a forensic-quality fingerprint.

Without further ado, here’s what I’ve found so far:

-- On March 6, 2006, someone using a Boeing IP address re-fought the Joint Strike Fighter competition, explaining that Lockheed Martin’s victory was not due to superior performance but because the “Air Force did not want an airplane monopoly”, adding: “The Boeing entry, which was designed for ease of manufacture, may be, in retrospect, the better choice due to its lower cost and less complex design.” (This particular edit has since been removed.)

-- On February 14, 2007, a Boeing employee made a small change to the page for the C-17, adding the word “amazing” in this sentence: “The Boeing (formerly McDonnell Douglas) C-17 Globemaster III is an amazing strategic airlifter manufactured by Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.”

-- On April 26, 2007, a Lockheed Martin IP address was used to modify the page for the Hellfire II missile, inserting a couple of gratuitous sentences about the status of the Hellfire’s would-be replacement – the Joint Common Missile (JCM). After a sentence explaining that JCM was cancelled, the Lockheed user added: “… although some military and industry sources have produced data showing JCM is the most cost-effective way of adding performance across multiple platforms to meet projected threat growth on a timely basis.”

These are just a few examples. Feel free to go dig for yourselves. Here’s the link you need. Just type in a company’s name into the search bar, and search for edits by IP address. Good hunting!

Behold the latest innovation in the art of merchandising advanced weapons: Northrop Grumman's new series of promotional comic books!

I am withholding judgment, except to just wonder aloud who they think is the target audience for this (... surely not the Pentagon's weapons buyers, right?)?

(Click on the 'continuing reading' link below the image to read the whole comic book.)

Sorry for the lack of new entries during my extended Labor Day holiday. Since I'm still a little bit in the vacation mood, let's talk about Brazil's defense industry for a change -- specifically, Embraer.

Several years ago, Embraer's highly-respected executive team felt the time was right to make a major play at the world defense market, seeking to grow defense revenues from the single-digits to 20% of corporate revenue. It all seemed to make so much sense at the time. International arms sales were galloping forward in the wake of September 11, 2001, and Brazil's air force was not least among the buyers.

The Forca Aerea Brasilia, or "the FAB" for short, was laying plans to 1) modernize its F-5BRs, 2) acquire a new batch of air superiority fighters, 3) upgrade its A-1 AMX attack jets and 4) buy a whole bunch of Embraer Super Tucanos, amongst other major purchases. Embraer figured to be the lucky beneficiary of each one of those big projects.

Several years later, Embraer's bullishness on defense was quenched by the force of reality. Its share of revenues from the defense market remains in the single-digits, and only items #1 and #4 have seen any major activitiy. The FAB's budget for item #3 was turned on only last week, despite the fact that the FAB awarded Embraer a contract to start working on the project about four years ago! Item #2 has been turned on and off more times than I can immediately think to count, and currently remains stuck in limbo.

On top of all that, the company's ambitions to enter the US defense market fell apart in 2006 when the army terminated Lockheed Martin's contract for Aerial Common Sensor, which would have used Embraer's ERJ-145 as the platform.

I sometimes hear US defense companies whine about the uncertainty of the Pentagon's acquisition system. It makes me wonder how the US defense industry would survive in almost any other country, where budgets are often the secret play-things of feckless generals and politicians and there is no 'Big Defense' lobby to push things through in a pinch.

Embraer may soon enough be back in the US market. The US Air Force is due to release a request for proposals on behalf of the Iraqi Air Force for a fleet of turboprop-powered "light combat aircraft". (The USAF previously called this a "counterinsurgency aircraft" fleet.) The Embraer Super Tucano is one of the prime contenders, and would open the door for the company to open a US assembly line in Jacksonville, Florida.