DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Our Eligible Bachelor Defence Minister Peter MacKay Has Tied The Knot With A Persian Beauty Queen

 DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Our Eligible Bachelor Defence Minister Peter MacKay Has Tied The Knot With A Persian Beauty Queen

*DTN News like to extend it's heartiest congratulations to Our Defence Minister Peter MacKay on his wedding to former Miss World Canada Nazanin Afshin-Jam and wish the couple a life full of joy together.

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Winnipeg Free Press

 (NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 7, 2012: Peter MacKay is sharing a moment of his recent intimate wedding with the public.

The Defence Minister has posted a photograph of him and his new bride leaving an oceanside chapel in Mexico on his public Facebook page.

The picture, captioned "Our Wedding Photograph," shows a beaming MacKay holding hands with his wife, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, as they descend the stone steps of the chapel in which they were married on Wednesday.

Afshin-Jam, who holds a bouquet of white long-stemmed lilies in her left hand, is wearing a sleek white gown with a subtle lace trim and simple pearl jewelry.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-canada-defense-news-our.html

DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Panetta, Hammond Discuss Strategy In Pentagon Meeting

DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: Panetta, Hammond Discuss Strategy In Pentagon Meeting

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 6, 2012: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and British Defense Secretary Phillip Hammond talked defense strategy and the way ahead during a meeting yesterday at the Pentagon.

It was Panetta's first meeting with Hammond, and it came following President Barack Obama's announcement of the new U.S. strategic defense guidance.

Officials will use the guidance to set spending priorities in the president's fiscal 2013 defense budget request. The aim is to set priorities in a constrained fiscal environment, as the department plans to trim $487 billion from the budget over the next 10 years.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-defense-news-panetta-hammond.html

DTN News: U.S. Department of Defense Contract Dated January 5, 2012

DTN News: U.S. Department of Defense Contract  Dated January 5, 2012

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 5, 2012:  Mantech Telecommunications and Information Systems Corporation, Chantilly, Va., was awarded a $100,854,656 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract.  The award will provide for the sustainment support services in support of route clearance vehicle systems, Special Operations Command, and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Family of Vehicles.  Work will be performed in Afghanistan; Kuwait; Germany; and Chantilly, Va., with an estimated completion date of Oct. 31, 2012.  One bid was solicited, with one bid received.  The U.S. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Mich., is the contracting activity (W56HZV-11-C-0168).

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-us-department-of-defense_5651.html

DTN News - INDONESIA DEFENSE NEWS: Australian Surplus Hercules To Be Given To Indonesia

DTN News - INDONESIA DEFENSE NEWS: Australian Surplus Hercules To Be Given To Indonesia

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 5, 2012: AUSTRALIA will hand over four unneeded C-130 Hercules transport planes to Indonesia.

The Royal Australian Air Force transports are understood to have been in storage.

The RAAF's inventory has been boosted by the purchase of six giant C-17 Globemaster II transports, so the smaller and older Hercules are no longer needed. The C-130Hs that will go to Indonesia have been largely superseded in the RAAF by the more powerful J model.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-indonesia-defense-news.html

DTN News: U.S. Department of Defense Contracts Dated January 4, 2012

DTN News: U.S. Department of Defense Contracts Dated January 4, 2012

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 5, 2012: Electric Boat Corp., Groton, Conn., is being awarded a $13,788,820 fixed-price incentive fee modification to previously awarded undefinitized contract action (N00024-03-C-2101) for warranty work on USS New Mexico (SSN 779).  Work will be performed in Groton, Conn. (99 percent), and Quonset Point, R.I. (1 percent), and is expected to be completed by June 2012.  Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.  Supervisor of Shipbuilding Conversion and Repair, Groton, Conn., is the contracting activity.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-us-department-of-defense_04.html

DTN News - THAILAND DEFENSE NEWS: Thailand ~ Joining The Crusade Against China

DTN News - THAILAND DEFENSE NEWS: Thailand  ~ Joining The Crusade Against China

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 4, 2012: Thailand is developing military links with India, which is part of the movement by China's neighbors to create an alliance that can limit any possible Chinese aggression. The growth of Chinese military power, and claims on neighboring territory has made all this coalition building popular.

In the south, security forces chip away at the criminal infrastructure that supports the smugglers and Islamic terrorists. The smuggling has long been a major part of the economy, and local culture. The government generally tolerated it as long as the gangsters were discreet. Radical Islam is something that was always just beneath the surface. In the last few decades, Islamic radicalism became fashionable and found material, if not moral, support from the smuggling gangs. That made the Islamic terrorists much more difficult to find and catch. The terrorists are being protected by the same loyalties and secrecy that has long protected the criminal gangs. But even some of the gangsters are getting tired of all the violence, and additional security forces, the Islamic terrorism has brought to the neighborhood.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-thailand-defense-news-thailand.html

DTN News - PAKISTAN TALIBAN NEWS: Pakistan Taliban Commanders "At Each Other's Throats"

DTN News - PAKISTAN TALIBAN NEWS: Pakistan Taliban Commanders "At Each Other's Throats"

 (NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 4, 2012: Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militants have held a series of meetings aimed at containing what could soon be open warfare between the two most powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders, militant sources have said.

Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and his deputy, Wali-ur-Rehman, were at each other's throats, the sources said.

"You will soon hear that one of them has eliminated the other, though hectic efforts are going on by othercommanders and common friends to resolve differences between the two," one TTP commander said.

Any division within the TTP could hinder the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda's struggle in Afghanistan against the United States and its allies, making it more difficult to recruit young fighters and disrupting safe havens in Pakistan used by the Afghan militants.

Despite multiple reports of the Rehman-Mehsud split, Rehman told Reuters on Tuesday there was no problem between the two.

"There are no differences between us," Rehman said.

The TTP, formed in 2007, is an umbrella group of various Pakistani militant factions operating in Pakistan's unruly northwestern tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan.

It has long struggled with its choice of targets. Some factions are at war with the Pakistani state while others concentrate on the fight against the United States and its allies in Afghanistan.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-pakistan-taliban-news-pakistan.html

DTN News: U.S. Department of Defense Contract Dated January 3, 2012

DTN News: U.S. Department of Defense Contract  Dated January 3, 2012  

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 3, 2012: Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, McKinney, Texas, is being awarded a $25,823,405 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract.  This effort will continue to improve the Multi-Spectral Targeting System-B and build the advancements made with the original delivery order.  A primary focus of this effort is to improve the system imaging from standard definition to high definition.  The location of performance is the Raytheon Co., McKinney, Texas.  Work is expected to be completed Jan. 31, 2013.  ASC/WIIK, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA8620-06-G-4041 001202). 

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-us-department-of-defense.html

DTN News - IRAN NUCLEAR FACTORS: France Says Iran Still Developing Nuclear Arms

DTN News - IRAN NUCLEAR FACTORS: France Says Iran Still Developing Nuclear Arms

 

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 3,  2012: French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Tuesday that Iran was continuing to develop nuclear weapons and called for stronger sanctions against Tehran.

"Iran is pursuing the development of its nuclear arms, I have no doubt about it," he told French television I-Tele. "The last report by the International Atomic Energy Agency is quite explicit on this point."

"This is why France, without closing the path of negotiation and dialogue with Iran, wants stricter sanctions," he added.

He said French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed a freezing of assets of Iran's central bank and an embargo on exports of Iranian oil, a move also being considered by the European Union.

Tensions have risen in recent days after Iran -- which insists its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes -- test-fired a series of missiles near the key Gulf oil supply route of the Strait of Hormuz.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-iran-nuclear-factors-france.html

DTN News - INDIA DEFENSE NEWS: Why Indian Pilot Training Is So Dangerous

DTN News - INDIA DEFENSE NEWS: Why Indian Pilot Training Is So Dangerous

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 2,  2012: The Indian defense procurement bureaucracy has struck again. Despite over a decade of pressure from the Indian Air Force to obtain new trainers, new basic flight training aircraft have still not been obtained. As a result, trainee pilots are only getting 25 hours of flight time before going off to train on a specific type of aircraft (fighter, transport, helicopter). These trainees are supposed to get 75 hours before moving up to the advanced trainers and service aircraft. This problem has been building for years.

For example, back in 2009 the Indian Air Force shut down its acrobatics team, so that the aircraft they use (which are basically trainers) could be transferred to pilot flight training units, which were desperately short of flyable trainer aircraft. India's fleet of training aircraft is quite old and increasingly prone to breakdowns and crashes.

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-india-defense-news-why-indian.html

DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet In Kabul Backing U.S. To Open Talks With Taliban

DTN News - AFGHAN WAR NEWS: French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet In Kabul Backing U.S. To Open Talks With Taliban

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 1,  2012: French soldiers part of the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) leave a hall after listening to a speech by French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012. France's defense minister on Sunday backed U.S. efforts to open peace talks with the Taliban, even as NATO reported the death of another service member that brought last year's toll to 544 troops killed in Afghanistan. (Photo - AP)

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/

DTN News - OBAMA IN HAWAII: U.S. President Barack Obama And The First Family At University of Hawaii On His Christmas Vacation

DTN News - OBAMA IN HAWAII: U.S. President Barack Obama And The First Family At University of Hawaii On His Christmas Vacation

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 1,  2012: U.S. President Barack Obama and the First Family exit an exhibit about his mother's work in Indonesia at the East West Center at the University of Hawaii while he is on Christmas vacation in Hawaii in Honolulu January 1, 2012. (Photo - Reuters)

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/

DTN News - IRAN NEWS: Iran Scientists Produce Nuclear Fuel Rod

DTN News - IRAN NEWS: Iran Scientists Produce Nuclear Fuel Rod

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 1,  2012:  Iranian scientists have produced the nation's first nuclear fuel rod, a feat of engineering the West has doubted Tehran capable of, the country's nuclear agency said Sunday.

The announcement marks another step in Tehran's efforts to achieve proficiency in the entire nuclear fuel cycle—from exploring uranium ore to producing nuclear fuel--despite U.N. sanctions and measures by the U.S. and others to get it to halt aspects of its atomic work that could provide a possible pathway to weapons production.  

http://defense-technologynews.blogspot.com/2012/01/dtn-news-iran-news-iran-scientists.html