The U.S. Army has just published the 2013 edition of its annual Weapon Systems Handbook, which is filled with updated information on dozens of weapon systems, the military contractors who produce them, and the foreign countries that purchase them.
So one learns, for example, that the RQ-11B Raven Small Unmanned Aircraft System is marketed to Denmark, Estonia, Lebanon, and Uganda, while the United States sells artillery ammunition both to Israel and to Lebanon.
An appendix provides an informative breakdown of military industry contractors by weapon system and by the state where the contractor is located.
“The systems listed in this book are not isolated, individual products. Rather, they are part of an integrated Army system of systems designed to equip the Army of the future to successfully face any challenges,” according to the Handbook introduction.
“After 10 years of combat, today’s Army is significantly more capable than the Army of 2001. As we draw down from Iraq and Afghanistan, we must remain flexible, adaptable, and agile enough to respond and meet the needs of the combatant commanders.”
“Our objective is to equip and maintain an Army with the latest most advanced weaponry to win and return home quickly.”
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
To better understand what might drive the way we live, learn, and work in 2050, we’re asking the community to share their expertise and thoughts about how key factors like research and development infrastructure and automation will shape the trajectory of the ecosystem.
Recognizing the power of the national transportation infrastructure expert community and its distributed expertise, ARPA-I took a different route that would instead bring the full collective brainpower to bear around appropriately ambitious ideas.
NIH needs to seriously invest in both the infrastructure and funding to undertake rigorous nutrition clinical trials, so that we can rapidly improve food and make progress on obesity.