Our Twitter followers will have read about the excitements and angsts surrounding the staging of DSEi 2011 in London’s former docklands. If I were G4S and Smiths, I’d think carefully about how security is done – the inevitable talking point on day 1, and at peak times, both here and at Farnborough, is the queues waiting as patiently as they can for their staff and kit to process them. Do you want an audience of your peers standing in judgement of your efficiency in such a way every year? We shall have to await the data, but anecdotal evidence is that visitor numbers are down, even though 641 UK based companies were exhibiting in a total of over 1300.

ADS published a report on the economic significance of the defence and security domain at home and abroad. Defence ministers and parliamentarians duely turned up to bury them in praise. There were so many announcements, conferences, releases that complete coverage isn’t possible. So here are some bullets of stuff that caught our eye over the first three days.