Northrop Grumman Corporation has committed to sponsoring a team of high school students from Dickson College who are competing in the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Outback Challenge 2013, aimed at promoting UAVs and demonstrating their utility in civilian applications.

At the end of June, ASC signed a new contract with the Submarine Training School, based at Western Australia.

HSV 2 Swift, the high speed vessel which has been in service with the US Navy - Military Sealift Command, over the past decade, returns to Hobart.

The Defence Capability Plan sets out the ADF's long term capital programs. ADM provides some context for this vast resource in their DCP calendar which can be downloaded here.

A summary of the latest news and views in the defence industry, locally and overseas. Check out our webpage for daily news updates on the ADM home page and make sure you bookmark/RSS this for a regular visit.

The Pentagon's top acquisition executive, Frank Kendall, is calling for a new, independent cost estimate of the Navy's $40 billion Littoral Combat Ship program and will ask the Joint Staff and the Navy to conduct a requirements assessment study to revalidate the original LCS capabilities document.

Ship service diesel generators on the Freedom are only operating at about half their required reliability level, and as a result the ship lost power on July 21 while in Singapore and was forced to dock for maintenance instead of participating in a Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training exercise.

The full version of Defence Week Premium no.263 of 25 July 2013 can be downloaded here as a PDF. A separate PDF of the latest Defence tenders can also be downloaded here.

Following its down selection in December 2011 as preferred tenderer for Land 121 Phase 3B Protected and Unprotected Medium and Heavy Vehicles and following lengthy negotiations, RMMVA has now been awarded a contract to supply some 2,500 protected and unprotected logistical vehicles in a contract worth $1.58 billion.

Australian-based SME, Calytrix Technologies has been awarded a number of recent contracts, internationally and locally.

In follow up to our recent piece on what the Defence portfolio would look like under a Coalition government, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has confirmed that current Defence Materiel Minister Dr Mike Kelly would be his pick to lead Defence should they retain government later this year.

While ex-director of the CIA, Michael Haydon warns that we are moving to a world in which cyber is being used to deliberately create direct kinetic consequences such as effects on information, networks, and assets of value, with such security risks expanding over time, here in Australia BAE Systems Detica has released ways on how businesses can protect supply chains from cyber attacks.

The US Navy signed an agreement with the Australian Government on May 31 to provide its High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile and Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile training capability as part of the Royal Australian Air Force acquisition of the EA-18G Growler.

Quickstep has completed all qualification tasks required by Lockheed Martin's materials and process technical engineering testing program. This confirms Quickstep's readiness to manufacture composite parts for the Lockheed Martin C-130J 'Hercules' aircraft.

While a report in ADM's current issue states that the ADF's Counter IED Task Force will continue to support deployed forces and continue its quest to develop advanced CIED capabilities, the US Joint IED Defeat Organisation is concerned that the Counter-IED fight is slipping as Afghans take the lead.

The US Department of Defense has established a new standard for weapons interfaces onboard unmanned aerial vehicles as a result of ongoing US Army UAV weapons testing, according to army officials.