North Korea Unraveling, Leaving Afghanistan, and Stingrays – Daily Intelligence

Tuesday’s Tops & Good night, Vietnam

FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM

1. The Great Place—Ft. Hood, Texas. Contributor Jennifer Cary reports, “Whether you love it or hate it, there’s no denying that there are lots of opportunities at Fort Hood. . . . there are a lot of benefits to moving to the Fort Hood area when it comes to employment, education and even entertainment. Top it off with a cost of living that falls below the national average and it may be time to consider ‘The Great Place’ as a viable option for your next move.”

2. Future Air Force. Contributor Charles Simmins reports, “The Air Force has released a series of planning documents, addressing the direction that the service hopes to take over the next 30 years. The document with the longest outlook, America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future – Air Force 30-year strategy, was available at the end of July 2014. While the budget and strategic choices for the next three decades clearly remain unknown, the text does suggest what the current thinking is.”

THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT

1. Arms to Kurds—it’s official. DefenseNews.Com reports, “The United States has begun urgently shipping weapons to the Iraqi Kurdish forces battling an advance by extremist Islamic State militants, a State Department spokeswoman said Monday. . . . Harf said the effort had been underway since last week, but did not say which US agency was leading the effort or how many and what type of weapons had been sent.” See also, “Limits to air power.”

2. North Korea—into oblivion. TheWeek.Com’s Kyle Mizokami reports, “The mighty North Korean People’s Army is crumbling. . . . North Korean equipment is so old nobody makes spare parts anymore. For years the military has cannibalized some equipment in order to keep the rest running. The fact that three MiG-19s have crashed in the span of seven months is a strong indication that cannibalization is no longer working and entire types of equipment are overdue for a trip to the junk heap. . . . The North Korean People’s Army will likely continue to back the Kim regime and march into oblivion.”

3. Maliki—not gently into that good night. Reuters’ Michael Gregory and Ahmed Rasheed report, “Iraq’s president named a new prime minister to end Nuri al-Maliki’s eight-year rule on Monday, but the veteran leader refused to go after deploying militias and special forces on the streets, creating a dangerous political showdown in Baghdad. Washington, which helped install Maliki following its 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, congratulated Haidar al-Abadi, a former Maliki lieutenant who was named by President Fouad Masoum to replace him. Maliki said in a televised speech the president’s decision to name a replacement for him was a ‘dangerous violation’ of the constitution and, flanked by political allies, he vowed ‘we will fix the mistake.’” See also from Aljazeera.Com, “Iraq’s Shia divided over new PM nomination” and “Iraq’s incumbent grows more isolated.”

4. Afghanistan—we’ll leave, and this time we mean it. Khaama.Com reports, “The NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has warned that the alliance will be forced to take a decision regarding the total NATO forces pullout from Afghanistan unless a deadlock over the Afghan election ends and the new Afghan president signs the bilateral security agreement with Washington and NATO status of forces agreement. Rasmussen said the NATO summit slated for September 4-5 in Wales would be very close to a deadline for taking that decision. ‘Soon we will have to take tough decisions because if there isn’t a legal basis for our continued presence in Afghanistan, we will have to withdraw everything by the end of this year and to do that we will have to start planning . . . very soon’ . . .”

CONTRACT WATCH

1. NASA picks Concurrent. MilitaryAerospace.Com editor John Keller reports, “Space researchers at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., needed real-time computers to help them develop flight sensors and emulators. They found their solution from Concurrent Computer Corp. in Duluth, Ga. NASA-Marshall officials announced their intention last week to purchase ImaGen rackmount visual servers from Concurrent to help them build operation flight instrument (OFI) sensors, United Launch Alliance (ULA) emulators, and Integration Test Lab (ITL) emulators within the NASA-Marshall Integrated Avionics Test Facilities.”

2. Navy coming up short. DoDBuzz.Com’s Kirs Osborn reports, “The Navy’s recently released 2015 30-year shipbuilding plan says the service is in danger of not realizing its anticipated vision for a fleet size of more than 300 ships and submarines because there simply is not enough money available to meet stated requirements. The planned pace of retirement for many of the surface ships built between 1980 and 1990 and the funding needed to secure production in 2021 for the first next-generation ballistic missile submarine, the Ohio Replacement program, are placing extensive strain on available resources . . . .”

TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY

1. Stingrays. VentureBeat.Com’s Richard Byrne Reilly reports, “The U.S. government wants to know the extent to which criminals and foreign spies are using ‘Stingrays’ against Americans. A task force has been set up by the Federal Communications Commission to study how electronic surveillance devices, including those that are commercially available, are being used to electronically follow Americans, eavesdropping on phone calls and infecting devices with malware. The particular focus of the FCC’s interest is the so-called Stingray, a platform also known as a IMSI catcher that intercepts mobile phone traffic.”

2. A complex environment. FierceGovernmentIT.Com’s Henry Kenyon reports, “Vast and rapid technological changes are affecting government, the IT industry and society as a whole. How organizations and individuals respond to those changes, especially when it comes to enacting security policies, will have a major impact on the Internet’s future and personal freedoms . . . . Dan Geer, chief information security officer for In-Q-Tel, noted that cybersecurity is now a matter of national policy because of its impact. ‘Not only has cybersecurity reached the highest levels of attention, it has spread into nearly every corner of daily life’ . . . .”

3. Russia’s bugging Ukraine. CNBC.Com’s Sam Jones reports, “Dozens of computers in the Ukrainian prime minister’s office and at least 10 of Ukraine’s embassies abroad have been infected with a virulent cyber espionage weapon linked to Russia. The cyber attack has also affected embassies in eastern Europe of at least nine countries including Germany, China, Poland and Belgium. Sensitive diplomatic information has been made available to the perpetrators of the attack as a result.”

POTOMAC TWO-STEP

1. Hillary in the kitchen with a candlestick: “Clinton’s interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic—in which she dinged Obama for ‘the failure to help build up a credible fighting force’ of moderates in Syria, leading to ‘a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled’—is leading to a lot of headlines about the former secretary of State sprinting from the failing foreign policy of her former boss. This political knifing of Obama is surely not the friendliest thing the Clintons have ever done. And it’s obviously hypocritical—Clinton was secretary of State for four years! Nonetheless, this rhetoric is music to the ears of both GOP and Democratic hawks, friends of Israel, and many Americans of all political stripes watching in horror as ISIS commits crimes against humanity in Iraq. It’s called triangulation. It’s a method perfected by Bill Clinton and Dick Morris. And it’s brilliant.”

2. Fine lines: “President Obama will be on shaky legal ground if he continues to attack the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria without approval from Congress, constitutional law experts say. . . . ‘Over the past few days, American forces have successfully conducted targeted air strikes to prevent terrorist forces from advancing on the city of Erbil and to protect America civilians there,’ President Obama said Monday during a press conference from Martha’s Vineyard. Most constitutional law experts say Obama acted within his authority to defend Americans in Erbil from immediate danger. But critics say Obama should have sought congressional approval before expanding a fight with ISIS that could last months or even years.”

OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS

1. “Prepare for a long war against the Islamic State.” Los Angeles Times’ Jonah Goldberg argues, “No one in the West wants a generational struggle with jihadism anymore than Israel wants perpetual war with Hamas in Gaza. The problem is the enemy always gets a vote. And it just may be that the Middle East will become the West’s Gaza. And so far, nobody has a good answer for what to do about it.”

2. “Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and Gaza are falling apart and John Kerry’s not helping.” Reuters’ Peter Van Buren argues, “A secretarial visit has traditionally not been to initiate small steps, but to cap off big efforts; he or she otherwise appears weak, or inconsequential. But this secretary parachutes himself into each crisis in a game of global whack-a-mole.”

3. “Why US is bombing in Iraq, not in Syria.” Stars & Stripes offers Adam Taylor’s argument, “Many of Iraq’s current problems are a direct or indirect result of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. While the Obama administration and much of the public at large likely loathe the idea of wider military action, there is still a sense that this is our mess, and we have to help fix it.”