Elliott Suthers's blog

The Army’s beleaguered Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) battle just keeps getting more interesting. Thought to be all but dead less than eight months ago, the $13 billion-plus Army and Marine troop carrier program is now being sought by no fewer than six contractors.

At last week’s AUSA Winter Symposium, the industry trotted out its latest gizmos and gadgets for the Army’s top brass. And as hard as contractors were trying to sell, the customers just weren’t buying.

With the 2012 election cycle in full swing, congressional approval hovers around 9%. To put this into perspective, at the height of Watergate, President Nixon's favorability never dropped below 23%. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) joked that the 9% who endorse Congress at this point are likely blood relatives or paid staffers.

Tonight’s CNN debate in Charleston, South Carolina, could well be the last stand for Newt Gingrich. Politico’s most recent poll, released this morning, shows the former Speaker of the House bearing down on Governor-bot Romney, closing the gap to about seven points.

It’s been a slow build, but 2012’s crop of GOP candidates have finally begun to stake out their positions on the defense budget. And apart from the decidedly confused Ron Paul — who seems to think that the State Department and Pentagon are the same thing — the group seems to be generally pro-military spending, defying the doom and gloom scenarios that many were expecting.

Well, what a year 2011 was. A new SecDef and Pentagon leadership, sequestration and budget cuts, the debt ceiling debate, bin Laden finally getting his comeuppance, U.S. forces withdrawing from Iraq, acquisition reform and all the merger/acquisition/spin-off activity that seems to have captivated the industry are all enough to make anyone’s head spin. I get tired just thinking about the past 12 months.

On Monday morning, the Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — or Super Committee — announced that it had failed dismally to find the $1.2-1.5 trillion in budget cuts it had been charged with implementing. The word in D.C. is that the parties were never even close.

Tension was in the air at last week’s AUSA meeting. Hanging over the entire conference was an impending sense of doom. Companies wondered where their next sale would come from; program managers worried about meeting their sales goals; and the military just focused on getting in and out without contractors bleeding them dry. It was quite a scene.

On Wednesday night America lost a legend. An innovator, an iconoclast and the embodiment of American Exceptionalism, Steve Jobs and his inventions defined a generation. Steve Jobs was, is and will always be Apple. He’s irreplaceable, and Tim Cook, as effective a CEO as I’m sure he’ll be, will simply never fill a black turtleneck the way Steve Jobs did.