FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Classification spending and “Bogus secrets.” Chandler Harris reports, “Federal spending for security classification reached $11 billion last year, nearly a $2 billion increase from the previous year and double the amount from a decade ago . . . . ‘we are classifying far too much information . . . . The credibility of the classification system is collapsing under the weight of bogus secrets.’”
2. Buy talent with year end funds. From Lindy Kyzer, “While agencies differ in both their missions and acquisition strategies, the one thing they all agree on is the importance of great employees. Today’s IT solution will be in tomorrow’s recycle bin, but a quality hire has a lasting effect on an agency’s ability to perform. One good hire improves a team, an empty desk can make the whole team resent the mission, and the extra workload.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Air Defense 101. AviationWeek.Com’s Bill Sweetman reports, “The Buk-M1 (SA-11 Gadfly to NATO) can be used by minimally trained operators to deliver a lethal attack, without the safeguards built into other comparable GBADS . . . . It is also one of the two GBADS—both of Soviet origin—that are most widely distributed in conflict zones with the potential for large-scale, cross-border or civil violence.”
2. Refuge in the ranks. Stars and Stripes’ John Vandiver reports, “Those who have served in the military are more likely to have suffered childhood abuse or to have lived in homes where there was violence than their nonmilitary counterparts, a study says. The findings . . . suggest that the military could serve as a refuge for those seeking to escape troubled home lives. The research also could provide the military with added insight into its struggle to curb suicide in the ranks, as people who have experienced severe childhood abuse are at a higher risk of attempting suicide.”
3. Gaza tunnel tactics. AP’s Tia Goldenberg reports, “A network of tunnels Palestinian militants have dug from Gaza to Israel—dubbed ‘lower Gaza’ by the Israeli military—is taking center stage in the latest war between Hamas and Israel. Gaza’s Hamas rulers view them as a military game changer in its conflict with Israel. The Israeli military says the tunnels pose a serious threat and that destroying the sophisticated underground network is a key objective of its invasion of Gaza.” See also, “Crunch time for Gaza truce talks as death toll passes 800,”“Shells take 15 lives at Gaza shelter,” and “Kabul residents rally against Israel war in Gaza.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. NGA’s fast-track acquisition. American Forces Press Service’s Cheryl Pellerin reports, “In the spirit of innovation, and as part of a revolution fomented among the workforce by Director Letitia Long, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is unbolting its doors to expand industry partnerships and slash the time it takes to acquire critical capabilities. . . . The revolution—driven by the director’s vision and the speed of technology advance—promotes a workforce commitment to transparency and accessibility. One of the programs representing the change at NGA is a newly expanding pilot called the GEOINT Solutions Marketplace, or GSM. . . . GSM operates as an online exchange for government and vendors, commercial partners, academic institutions and the broader geospatial intelligence community.”
2. Triple spending on UAVs. MilitaryAerospace.Com Editor John Keller reports, “The U.S. market for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will triple in size over the next five years, and should grow from $5 billion in 2013 to $15 billion in 2020, predict analysts at market researcher Information Gatekeepers Inc. (IGI) in Boston. . . . Major commercial applications are agriculture, real estate, filmmaking, oil and pipeline, electric utility, and specialized package delivery.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Robots with sneakers. Wired.Com’s Issie Lapowsky reports, “While visiting his doctor at the VA one day in November, he was wheeling himself past the Spinal Cord Damage Research Center, when he saw a contraption he describes as ‘a robot with sneakers.’ It was the ReWalk, a kind of computerized exoskeleton. In January 2013, Laureano joined a clinical trial of the device at the VA, and more than a decade after he was told he would never walk again, he took his first steps.”
2. Unmanned subscale platforms. AviationWeek.Com’s Graham Warwick reports, “Amid debate over the perils and potentials of unmanned aircraft, it is rare to find one that exists solely to improve the safety and efficiency of manned aircraft. Such a vehicle is Area-I’s Ptera, being developed for NASA as a low-cost, low-risk testbed for advanced controls and configurations. . . . Europe, meanwhile, is looking at using dynamically scaled flying models to test radical aircraft configurations and airframe-engine integration concepts under its Clean Sky 2 research program.”
3. Information and instability. Defense Media Activity’s Claudette Roulo reports, “As the world has become more interconnected and information travels faster than ever before, it also has become more unpredictable and dangerous, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said . . . . ‘People now understand more about what other people might have, what they might want, how much control they want—they want a say in their government—and so what you’re seeing is people have opinions and rise up through the ranks to challenge long-term hegemony that in many places is going on’ . . . .”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Shutdown shuffle: “House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that the House will not deal with funding the government before the August recess, but said that the House will tackle the issue when it returns in September. Boehner told reporters that the House will pass a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open sometime in September, avoiding a government shutdown that would otherwise occur on the last day of the month. The legislation would likely expire in early December, he said, punting decisions about the nation’s spending to a lame-duck Congress just after the midterm election.”
2. Room with a view: “There goes Joe being Joe again. Speaking to the National Urban League in Cincinnati, Ohio, Vice President Biden looked to his future retirement and said he wishes he had a Republican son–to help pay for his old folks home. ‘I should have had one Republican kid who’d grow up to make money . . . . You know, so when they put me in a home, I get a window with a view.’ Biden, who recently kicked off a blog of musings titled ‘Being Biden,’ referenced his daughter, a social worker, but not his two sons, one the Delaware Attorney General and other who is a well-paid lawyer.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Gaza: A turning point?” Aljazeera.Com contributor Adam Sabra argues, “Having left the Palestinians with no alternative but to fight, Netanyahu may have left himself with no choice but to go all the way and end the fiction of a peace process based on two states.”
2. “Meet Vladimir Putin’s master of propaganda.” Reuters’ contributor John Lloyd explains, “The joy that greeted Putin’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in March was due, at least in part, to a propaganda system less complete but more virulent than its Soviet predecessor. At the center of the system is a remarkable journalist called Dmitry Kiselyev.”
3. “Does This Make Me Sound Insecure? The linguistic tics that reveal self-doubt.” Slate.Com contributor Katy Waldman explains, “Insecurity expresses itself not just in what you say, but how you say it.”
THE FUNNIES
3. Putin-angelo.
