Slim pickings this week, in part because I did not do my usual defense news trawl every morning. My bad.
Books
- I’m still plowing through Volume 1 of Foote, having now made it past Grant’s victory at Shiloh, the entirely unsuccessful Confederate attempts to march through the desert Southwest to California, and the capture of New Orleans. It’s worth remarking how the story of the Civil War is the Confederacy winning slightly in one place and losing badly in four other places.
Defense
- On the new KC-46 – We’ll see how the next year or two goes, but the KC-46 might end up on our list of procurement successes.
- The GAO to DoD: “Stop spending so much on redundant bureaucracy – ‘Redundant bureaucracy’ is itself redundant.
- Which defense companies make the most money? – Kawasaki Heavy Industries tops the revenue growth list, thanks to CDR Salamander.
Guns
- The AK Guy makes an AK – And I, for one, think it’s a pretty good deal.
- CMP 1911 prices are out – And they’re very expensive.
Football
- NFL Coaches already on the hot seat – Not wasting any time.
- Why the Patriots Suck – Because we hate them.
Miscellaneous
- Capitalist markets in North Korea – My opinion on the currently-ruling Mr. Kim is that his secret desire is to be remembered as a liberalizer who brought North Korea out of darkness and into the modern age, owing to his evidently-long childhood in the West, but that his ability to do so is limited by the North Korean power structure. Not to say our man Jong-un is anything but a brutal dictator even by the standards of brutal dictators, which is what the preponderance of the evidence suggests, but brutal dictators who liberalize tend to be treated decently by the world, whereas the rest of the North Korean government would pretty much all end up on trial for crimes against humanity.
- From the gee-who’d-have-thunk file, a novelist who wrote about how to murder your husband has been charged with murdering her husband.