When the new British prime minister visited the White House, one of the meetings he had was with Sen. John Kerry, the man leading the effort to ratify the arms export treaties with Britain and Australia. We hear that Kerry pledged David Cameron in late July that he would do his very best to shepherd the treaty through the Senate before it left for the August recess. Of course, that didn’t happen, but we hear that other activities are under way.

One of the trial balloons floated in the last two weeks in the fevered European debate about what not to buy for defense was that France and Britain would share aircraft carriers.

Publicly and officially their defense ministers repudiated that idea today but they did raise the prospect of sharing the fleet of the hugely over-budget but technologically impressive A400M air transport, as well as helicopters.

The iconic Space Shuttle has two launches left. The Delta II, workhorse for many of NASA’s scientific missions and for medium-sized Pentagon and intel payloads, also faces retirement in fall next year. Once the shuttle and Delta II are retired the United States will face the prospect of a serious decline in its ability to build, launch and maintain liquid propelled rockets. Into that breach Orbital Sciences hopes to step with its Taurus II rocket, a medium payload system for NASA, the intelligence community and the Pentagon to use.

In space warfare one man’s refueling or repair capability can look an awful lot like another man’s ability to destroy or cripple your satellite. Now one Chinese satellite has approached another and, apparently, bumped its target and changed the orbit. U.S. analysts of Chinese space efforts seem to agree, so far, that this was not an anti-satellite test.

UPDATED: Raytheon Video of Missile Destroying T-72
Raytheon and Boeing took a step closer last week to qualifying their prototype Joint Air to Ground Missile for the next acquisition milestone in the $5 billion program with what company officials say was a visually spectacular test. The missile, which had no explosive warhead, struck a working T-72 tank after a 4-kilometer flight and destroyed the tank, driving it half a foot across the ground, sending a several hundred pound road wheel flying through the air and leaving White Sands Missile Range with nothing much left to shoot at, said Mike Riley, Raytheon business development manager for JAGM.