FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Cleared jobs—looking up. Contributor Tranette Ledford reports, “With half the year behind us, the employment forecast for the next two quarters looks more than positive for veterans looking for cleared careers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent jobs figures, the unemployment rate is down to its lowest point since 2008 (6.1 percent), with 288,000 jobs added in June. That trend looks to continue, due to a hiring manager frenzy to fill technology slots and other specialized fields, including a host of cleared careers.”
2. Cleared women—a strategy. Also from Tranette Ledford: “For cleared women veterans, it’s not so much a jungle out there as a labyrinth. Even with an active clearance, transitioning into civilian careers can be a challenge for veterans. But women face specific obstacles; a disproportionate number of men compared to women employees in numerous fields, responsibilities on the home front that may delay the job search, and military skills that are sometimes difficult to translate to hiring managers. For those reasons and a host of others, cleared women veterans need a well-crafted job search strategy for getting hired.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Update Iraq. DefenseOne.Com’s Dan Murphy reports, “While it would be hard to find a candidate less popular than Mr. Maliki among the country’s Sunni Arabs and its independence-minded Kurdish minority, building an effective military is a project of years, not weeks or months. Today, the major northern city of Mosul remains outside of government hands, as does Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein about 100 miles north of Baghdad. Government efforts to retake the city have repeatedly been repelled. While the southern edge of the city came under a withering government barrage overnight, Iraqi forces are no closer to retaking it and control of the highway that stretches north to the Shiite shrine city of Samarra and ultimately Mosul.” See also from New York Times, “U.S. Sees Risks in Assisting a Compromised Iraqi Force.”
2. Gaza growing worse (after Hamas ignores truce). Aljazeera.Com reports, “Israel has resumed air strikes on the Gaza Strip just hours after agreeing to an Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire on which the Palestinian group Hamas said it was never consulted. . . . Hamas official, Mushir al-Massri, told Al Jazeera that the group was never involved in the formulation of the ceasefire and only learned about it from media reports. . . . Hamas has demanded that Israel stop its aggression in Gaza, reduce restrictions on movement in and out of the territory, and release the dozens of Palestinian prisoners that were freed in a prisoner swap in 2011, but were subsequently rearrested.” Reuters reports, “Israel targets top Hamas leader as Gaza cease-fire collapses.”
3. F-35: only a little fire. DefenseNews.Com’s Hope Hodge Seck reports, “As the Pentagon announced it was un-grounding the F-35 fleet following an investigation into a June engine fire, the commandant of the US Marine Corps reiterated his support for the fighter program and said the mishap amounted to a fluke. ‘This is what we would probably call a one-off,’ said Gen. Jim Amos, speaking at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution on Tuesday. ‘It doesn’t mean it’s not significant; it doesn’t mean we’re not going to pay attention to it. But it does mean that the level of confidence to return to flight operations is pretty doggone high.’”
4. VA’s crisis creep. National Journal’s Jordain Carney reports, “The scandal that erupted over allegations of data manipulation at the Veterans Affairs Department’s medical facility in Phoenix has now spread to the VA’s disability claims. At a hearing Monday, House lawmakers questioned whether the laserlike focus by the Veterans Benefits Administration on ending the pension and compensation claims in 2015 has caused the rest of its workload to suffer. ‘Whatever win you attempt to take credit for in 2015, you will not be celebrated,’ said House Veterans Affairs’ Committee Chairman Jeff Miller during his opening statement at the hearing. . . . One report from the inspector general revealed that a worker in the VA’s Baltimore regional office inappropriately stored 8,000 documents that could impact benefits payments.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. $7 billion awarded by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. FederalTimes.Com’s Steve Watkins reports, “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded contracts to 15 of 23 bidders on its five-year, $7 billion Research, Measurement, Assessment, Design and Analysis (RMADA) procurement program. The contract is considered among the biggest civilian contract programs to be awarded this year and will provide a variety of professional, scientific and technical services. Vendors in the RMADA program will provide research and payment and service delivery models aimed at reducing costs in the Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare programs, according to the RMADA request for proposals. The cost-cutting initiatives were authorized by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).”
2. Space Boost—Boeing wins DARPA’s $4 million. GovConWire.Com reports, “Boeing (NYSE: BA) has been awarded a $4 million contract to design a reusable first stage launch vehicle for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The company will develop the XS-1 Experimental Spaceplane unmanned booster to carry and deploy small satellite payloads weighing 3,000-to-5,000 pounds into low-Earth orbit . . . . the booster will work to transport the second stage and payload to high altitude and launch them into space. ‘The booster would then return to Earth, where it could be quickly prepared for the next flight by applying operation and maintenance principles similar to modern aircraft’ . . . .”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. DARPA’s neuroprotheses. American Forces Press Service’s Terri Moon Cronk reports, “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working to develop wireless, implantable brain prostheses for service members and veterans who suffer memory loss from traumatic brain injury. Called neuroprotheses, the implant would help declarative memory, which consciously recalls basic knowledge such as events, times and places . . . . The neuroprosthetics developed and tested over the next four years would be as a wireless, fully implantable neural-interface medical device for human clinical use . . . .”
2. Marine’s UHAC—Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector. DefenseMediaNetwork.Com Editor Chuck Oldham reports, “The UHAC half-scale prototype departed Marine Corps Training Area Bellows, entered the water, and proceeded to the amphibious dock landing ship USS Rushmore (LSD 47), where it entered the ship’s well deck. Once aboard it was loaded with an Internally Transportable Vehicle, after which it launched from the well deck and successfully returned to shore. . . . The UHAC employs tracks with track feet that are fitted with dense air-impregnated foam blocks to give it buoyancy on the water and propel it on land. Its maneuverability and operation is similar to other treaded vehicles. Full-scale operational UHACs would be armed and armored.”
3. Neighborhood Watch: hyperspectral imaging for your personal UAV. MilitaryAerospace.Com Editor John Keller reports, “Headwall Photonics Inc. in Fitchburg, Mass., is introducing the Nano-Hyperspec sensor to provide small hand-launched commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with hyperspectral imaging capability. The low-cost electro-optical sensor operates in the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (400 to 1000 nanometers) and includes onboard data processing and storage to minimize size, weight, and power constraints inherent with small UAVs. The Nano-Hyperspec sensor can work together with optional Global Positioning System (GPS) and inertial measurement unit (IMU) navigation technologies.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Tryin’ spyin’: “Staffers from the House veterans affairs’ committee showed up at the Veterans Benefits Administration regional office in Philadelphia on July 2 in response to complaints from frontline employees. The staffers met with Philadelphia managers in a fourth-floor conference room and then were told another room had been prepared for them on the third floor, complete with computers. Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., told a hearing held last night the third floor room also was wired for sound and video to surreptitiously record the staffers—who quickly figured it out and moved to a room used by the inspector general staff free from observation. This sounds like a cheap spy thriller and would be comical if it was not tragic.”
2. Immunity: “David Simas, the director of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, will not comply with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s subpoena for him to testify, counsel Neil Eggleston said in a letter Tuesday to panel Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). ‘The committee’s effort to compel Mr. Simas’s testimony threatens longstanding interests of the executive branch in preserving the president’s independence and autonomy, as well as his ability to obtain candidate advice and counsel to aid him in the discharge of his constitutional duties . . . . Mr. Simas is immune from congressional compulsion to testify on matters relating to his official duties’ and will not appear at the hearing Issa’s committee had scheduled for Wednesday morning.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “U.S. needs a discussion on when, not whether, to use force.” Washington Post contributor Robert Kagan argues, “The question today is finding the right balance between when to use force and when not to. We can safely assume the answer lies somewhere between always and never. Perhaps we can move away from the current faux-Manichaean struggle between straw men and caricatures and return to a reasoned discussion of when force is the right tool.”
2. “Israel can’t win this or any future conflicts by bombing Gaza.” Los Angeles Times contributor Ibrahim Sharqieh argues, “Israel cannot win this or any future conflicts by bombing Gaza. Without addressing the root causes, even crippling Hamas—which was able to impose calm after 2012—would not be a victory. Instead, it would merely set the stage for the next time, against whatever group or groups—perhaps even more radical than Hamas—that would inevitably emerge to take up its mantle.”
3. “Hamas rockets backfire on Palestinians.” USAToday.Com’s Editorial Board argues, “If ever there were a government bent on messianic self-destruction, it must surely be Hamas. The rulers of Gaza seem never to learn from their mistakes and seem always in the thrall, to one degree or another, of their most violent leaders. Today, Palestinian civilians are paying the price.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Missile defense.
2. Take the drone.
