09 May 06. DoD Announces Installation Realignment in United Kingdom. The Department of Defense announced today that the United States military would cease operations at the Army Prepositioned Site (APS) in Hythe, United Kingdom. Due to U.S. European Command force structure realignment and transformation, and the attendant reduction in storage requirements that has occurred during the past several years, the U.S. Army storage facility at Hythe has been identified as excess to the Army’s needs and will begin the process to be returned to the host nation.
10 May 06. DML opens enhanced facility to support rapid capability insertion. An upgraded Communications Shore Integration Facility (CSIF) to support the rapid capability insertion of communications capability to Trafalgar Class submarines was officially opened today, Wednesday 10 May, at DML Group’s Devonport Royal Dockyard by Submarine Support (SUB) IPT AD Capability, Captain J Hart RN. The fully functional facility, which is LAN-enabled and security accredited to receive and transmit live data, is fitted with racks, cables and operational equipment to fully replicate the submarine WT office, within a dedicated screened room and with roof-mounted antennae, The facility has been developed as a joint project between DML and the MoD and represents a substantial investment toward de-risking future upgrade work. It has been designed to enable significant time and cost savings and increased efficiencies in equipment maintenance, testing and trials on communications programmes including CCSM (Communications Coherency for Submarines) and CESM (Communications Electronic Support Measures) equipment insertion. The facility will enable full evaluation of new equipment and associated capability insertion processes. Integration, test and acceptance of design solutions can be de-risked, with procedures established in CSIF in a controlled environment before installation on board the host platform, significantly reducing time required on-board to test and prove systems. Upgrades can also be set-to-work in CSIF, minimising the chances of a problem occurring when fitted on the submarine, again representing substantial time saving and efficiencies.
08 May 06. MAN has opened its first production site for heavy goods vehicles in India together with local partner Force Motors. The factory belongs to MAN Force Trucks pte. Ltd., the joint venture in which MAN holds a minority stake of 30 per cent. The two partners have each invested 150m euros in the joint venture.The first vehicles are set to leave the new factory at the end of the year. MAN said that the lorries would be more simply constructed but that they would retain the same quality. The German company revealed that production costs in India were around one-third lower than in Europe and that the HGVs produced by MAN Force would be sold at around half the price of their European equivalents, but that the price was still relatively high for India. In the medium-term, MAN hopes to construct 24,000 units annually at the site for India, but will export to South-East Asia, Africa and Russia at a later date. (Source: Abstracted from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung/FT.com)
09 May 06. DALLAS—The Defense Department’s enemy is decentralized, networked and unpredictable. To become better equipped to fight this enemy, the intelligence community is being restructured into an integrated, joint enterprise with a focus on getting information to warfighters quickly. Part of this restructuring occurred April 3 when Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed off on establishing a Defense Joint Intelligence Operations Center (DJIOC). The center, managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, was established to integrate and synchronize full-spectrum intelligence operations on behalf of the combatant commands. The DJIOC will be housed at the Defense Intelligence Analysis Center at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, with final operational capability expect