Oh my goodness, weapons and weapon's sales are everywhere lately. As I have said before, I wish that the money spent on weapons was being used for the public good instead. Most money spent on weapons is wasted because the big ticket items are hardly used in the scheme of things. The country that probably gets the most use out of their weapons is the U.S., since we seem to be fighting wars all over the place.

The Russians have been forced to suspend operations of their SU-25 strike aircraft, because of a crash. The crash took place on March 20, 2008 and killed the pilot. The plane is known as Grach, which means rook.

The Australian government has cancelled the Super Seasprite. The Super Seasprite is a helicopter project that would have cost the Aussies over 1 billion of their dollars. The reason for the cancellation was that there were problems with airworthiness and software. This had put the project over seven years behind schedule. Wow, you certainly don't want any aircraft that has airworthiness problems, I can't recall hearing this about any other aircraft lately.

Ecuador is updating the sonar in their two Shyri-class, German built submarines. Thales is installing their new S-Cube sonar suite that will allow the boats to have an extended service life.

The U.S.has been conducting trials of munitions to be used by the Navy. Since 2005, there have been a series of failures that have been embarrassing. The new tests have still produced disappointing results. The munitions that I am speaking of are Raytheon's Extended Range Guided Munitions (ERGM) and Alliant Techsystems' (ATK's) Ballistic Trajectory Extended Range Munitions (BTERM) .

Sperry marine has been awarded a contract to supply the mechanics for the U.S. Navy's amphibious assault ship the LHA 6. The ship weighs 44,850 tons. The contract is worth almost 48 million dollars. Boeing has been testing NanoSAR radar aboard a UAV. The unmanned ariel vehicle was a ScanEagle Mini. Everything is just getting smaller, this allows the application of systems and devices to shrink and this allows small and tiny UAVs to become more powerful. New defenses for aircraft are being built that can be used on passenger planes. In today's world you can never be too careful. These new systems are composed of early warning of a threat and countermeasures that take place automatically. Look for more of these systems to become available on airlines over the next few years.

Well it has finally happened. The United States Air Force has created and tested a synthetic fuel. It was tested during a supersonic flight on March 18, 2007. A B-1B Lancer bomber was fueled with the new mixture and took off from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. The fuel was a mixture of 50 percent conventional fuel (JP-8) and 50 percent synthetic fuel made from liquefied coal. One has to remember that the Germans were making fuel from coal in World War II. The bomber was the first plane to ever break the sound barrier using synthetic fuel.

Remember when the U.S. Navy shot down that satellite? They are now saying that it only took a couple of weeks to modify their missiles to make them capable of such a task. L-3 Communications Wescam has won the contract from Boeing and will supply the imaging sensors to the U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft. The contract calls for many different types of sensors, such as infrared, electro-optical and others. This will allow planes to stand off in the distance and still be able to observe, since the optics can be highly magnified. Some vendors of military hardware are now facing extreme pressure from the shrinking U.S. dollar. One is Lockheed Martin. Their F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter known as the JSF is now in trouble because of the weak dollar. The weak dollar is forcing the cost of the plane up. The U.S. is going to push the Blackswift project. That is the project to develop hypersonic aircraft. They are claiming that this will be the replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird. They would have us believe that a plane that was the fastest in the world and discontinued for about 11 years had not been replaced with something secret.

The British have upgraded the armor on Warrior Infantry fighting vehicles, known as IFVs. The armor is next generation and is being used in Iraq already. The new armor is placed over the sides and front of the vehicle and is known as Wrap Two.

The Raytheon Corporation is fitting U.S. carriers and assault ships with the new Evolved SeaSparrow Missile system called the ESSM. This is a medium range air defense system. Raytheon was given almost 18 million dollars for eight kits. The kits will allow for the upgrading of the missiles, because they modify the existing systems so that the missile can be accepted.

Spain has just launched the biggest warship in it's history. It is a 27,000 ton displacement, strategic projection ship. It is 230 meters long and was named the Juan Carlos. You never know what type of weaponry will attract customers and where it will come from. Serbia is exporting arms. A company named Yugoimport, which I guess should have been called Yugoexport, is selling 155 mm NORA B-52 self propelled guns. The guns are mounted on a truck chassis and the customer list is confidential. The U. K. is hoping to deploy the new ASTOR stand-off radar system by Raytheon by July. They want to use it in the middle east and specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just in case anyone is wondering, the JSF Program that is producing the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter program is currently costing us 950 billion dollars and the Government Accountability Office or GAO has just criticized the DoD, Department of Defense, for making decisions that are going to raise the cost of the program in the future. Hey maybe we can get it up to a trillion without too much work, the contractors need the money.

Sri lanka seems to be leaning toward purchasing MIG-29 fighters. This is not earth shattering, especially since the total purchase is for 4 MiG-29SM and one Mig29 UB.

Janes, the respected weapons watchdog has announced that it has seen documents that indicate that Iran is still pursuing the advanced technologies to develop a nuclear weapon or weapons. They claim that the documents are verified by independent sources in Vienna.

A new gun is in town. A company named Tataedr, in Belarus is developing a new gun-missile system. It is called the A3 which stands for Anti-air, Anti-armor and Anti-terrorism. It is said to be coming out in a wheeled and tracked version and that there are naval applications being proposed.

South Korea is getting an upgrade for their SAM-X system. Raytheon will upgrade the system to allow it to operate Patriot missiles. Pakistan warns that the recent Indian firing of a nuclear-capable submarine launched missile is going to start a new nuclear arms race in the region. Elop has developed a new series of lightweight thermal sights for the infantry. They will be fitted to guns and machine guns. They will also work on rocket launchers and long range sniper rifles.

Lockheed Martin has successfully tested the Direct Attack Guided Rocket, DAGR, in three different tests. The Munitions has now passed six out of six tests. Look for it's adoption soon. It seems that all sorts of new battle command systems are being released and utilized. The battlefield of the future will be composed of different systems working against each other and only the simplest and most competent system will win. Poland is planning to modernize it's ground-based air defense missile systems.

Norway began sea trials of it's new Skjold class fast strike craft in late January. It is now up to the Norwegian parliament to okay or deny the construction of four more ships.

Lockheed Martin has won a space network system contract worth 5.7 million dollars. They will compete in a space technology and demonstration program run by DARPA. The idea is to replace large satellites with a group of smaller, individually launched and wirelessly networked and cluster flown spacecraft modules.