California International Business Report

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, Governor Schwarzenegger told Bush administration officials that he is tired of the Pentagon treating the California National Guard like a stepchild by using its equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan without returning or replacing it.
The Republican governor, in a visit to Washington for the annual meeting of the National [...]

A Silicon Valley businessman was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for helping broker the sale of a night vision camera to a research institute linked to the Chinese military, according to an AP report. Philip Cheng, 60, pleaded guilty in October of last year to violating a U.S. law forbidding the [...]

The recent shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians by Blackwater USA contractors has helped galvanize the opposition to their plans to build a private military base in California. In the most recent incident, Blackwater employees shot into a group of cars in a Baghdad square, killing at least 11 Iraqis and wounding 12. The Blackwater [...]

The Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events at the University of Southern California recently speculated on the impact of a radiological dispersal device- i.e. a “dirty bomb” on the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA. Their conclusion: such an attack would likely result in few deaths, but there would [...]

Moller International Inc. has been selected as a primary vendor for the Department of Defense development services, the Davis company has announced. The 12-18 month contract will not have an impact on the flying-car developer’s bottom line, Moller said. The contract will take advantage of Moller’s experience with ducted fans, manned and unmanned [...]

“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded a $1.2 million contract to Fluential Inc. for a two-way speech translation technology, the company said. Sunnyvale-based Fluential said the contract calls for technology for English-Arabic to be used by service members in Iraq. Fluential said it received the contract under DARPA’s Spoken Language Communication and Translation [...]

“Northrop Grumman received a $287 million contract from the U.S. Air Force for the next production run of its Global Hawk unmanned aerial system… Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, such as the Global Hawk have played an increasing role in U.S. military operations in southwest Asia, providing continuous monitoring of activities on the ground for [...]

No one seems to know for sure, but there is great concern that California might be losing its last aircraft manufacturer. The C-17 is a huge cargo plane designed to transport large equipment, supplies and troops directly to small airfields anywhere in the world. About 5,500 people are directly employed building the C-17 [...]

“A U.S. Army medic who refused to return to Iraq because he believes war is morally wrong was convicted of desertion Tuesday and sentenced to an eight-month prison term – far short of the maximum seven-year sentence. Specialist Agustin Aguayo, 35, of California and his attorneys turned to each other and smiled after Judge [...]

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is paying Rutgers $3 million to oversee development of computing methods that could monitor suspicious social networks and opinions found in news stories, Web blogs and other Web information to identify indicators of potential terrorist activity. The software and algorithms could rapidly detect social networks among groups by [...]

“Aligning himself with congressional Democrats in the debate on the Iraq war, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reiterated Sunday that the U.S. needs to set clear timelines for bringing troops home, lest Iraq devolve into a quagmire with no end in sight. Republican Schwarzenegger, speaking on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation,’ said Americans won’t support a war that [...]

“The Navy has rejected additional safeguards to protect whales from high-power sonar during war games in Southern California waters, saying that state officials who asked for extra precautions have no authority to tell the U.S. Navy what to do.”

“Health Net Inc. said Monday that it has won a five-year contract worth about $50 million per year to provide counseling to members of the U.S. military and their families.”

Northrop gets $200M deal for B-2 supportThe U.S. Air Force has given Northrop Grumman Corp. a one-year, $200 million contract to implement a more efficient maintenance process for the nation’s B-2 stealth bomber fleet.Northrop is the prime contractor for the B-2, which was brought into the USAF in 1993. Los Angeles’ Northrop (NYSE: NOC) [...]