FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Family affairs. Contributor and barrister Sean Bigley explains, “Unless you really are a member of a mafia family, no security clearance adjudicator will expect you to disown your family because of your brother’s drug habit, your parents’ under-the-table business transactions, or your cousin’s gang membership. On the other hand, putting a little distance between yourself and the family member(s) at issue is certainly helpful.”
2. Unpeeling appeals. Also from ClearanceJobs.Com’s office of special counsel spokesman Sean Bigley, “For the roughly five percent of security clearance applicants who find themselves facing a denial, the idea of an appeal is, well, appealing. I receive phone calls on a weekly basis from people inquiring about just that. Technically, however, the appeal is the last step in a three stage process. To better put the appeal stage in context, let’s take a look at the process as a whole . . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Turkey condones drones. DefenseNews.Com’s Brian Everstine reports, “Air Force drones in Turkey have reportedly received the OK to join the fight against the Islamic State. Incirlik Air Base is a joint US and Turkish Air Force facility that is host to about 1,500 US military members. The base is home to the 414th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, which has flown the MQ-1B Predator since the unit reactivated in 2011. . . . Turkish officials reportedly approved the use of unmanned aircraft for reconnaissance, but will not allow use of manned aircraft from the base . . . .”
2. War gaming the Battle for Baghdad. Christian Science Monitor’s Dan Murphy reports, “As it stands, Baghdad is far from a safe place. On Thursday IS fighters carried out at least four car-bombings and a mortar attack across the city that claimed at least 36 lives. The car-bombings of Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad obviously have value to IS in instilling fear and fueling the impression that the central government can’t keep civilians safe. But they also serve to enrage Shiite soldiers and the Shiite militias along with them, something that has frequently led to atrocities targeting Sunni Arabs during Iraq’s 11-year-old war. And that can lead to more sympathy and recruits for the IS army of Sunni jihadists.”
3. ISIS off-shoot sprouting in Algeria. Aljazeera.Com reports, “Jund al-Khalifa, previously part of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was founded in September when top military commanders of AQIM’s central region officially broke away from al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch and sided with ISIL. In a communique, Gouri Abdelmalek, whose nom de guerre is Khaled Abu Suleimane, accused AQIM of ‘deviating from the true path’. . . . ‘ISIL wants to have a worldwide psychological impact and it is succeeding’ . . . .”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. F-135 engine buy a go (fire problem unsolved). AviationWeek.Com’s Amy Butler reports, “The Pentagon’s long-awaited deal with Pratt & Whitney to build the seventh low-rate production lot of F135 engines for the multinational F-35 fighter has finally been signed, though officials have not yet outlined a clear path forward to address the design issue that led to an engine fire that grounded the fleet of single-engine aircraft this summer. . . . The average price for the 36 engines included in low-rate, initial production (LRIP) lot 7 is $18.8 million. . . . Pratt received a $263 million sustainment contract in December 2013 for LRIP 7 activities, bringing the total cost of this lot to $943 million.”
2. Red tape choking drone sales. DefenseOne.Com’s Marcus Weisgerber reports, “The painstakingly slow government process of selling weapons and drones to allies is hurting U.S. defense companies at a time when the industry is trying to compensate for lower Pentagon sales, says Ellen Lord, president and CEO of Textron Systems. Moreover, the lack of speed is allowing European, Chinese and Russian firms to swoop in, particularly in the Middle East, where countries often want arms as quickly as possible due to a host security threats, including the recent spread of Islamic State militants. ‘If we can sell F-35s to our allies, why can’t we sell [unmanned aircraft] and some small weapons on UAVs?’”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Trust as a power projection technology. AviationWeek.Com’s John M. Doyle reports, “To implement the national strategy to work with partner nations in handling man-made and natural crises, USARPAC needs to engage with numerous militaries and work around language barriers and information technology interoperability issues . . . . What is needed, [Gen. Vincent Brooks, USARPAC’s commander ] said, are ‘technologies that help us project ourselves, whether it’s lighter-weight physical technologies, different kinds of composite materials or things that provide different protection, better climate control or simply transport, like ships.’ Brooks said the best way the U.S. military can project presence across the region and build trust is through engaging with partner nations . . . .”
2. Raytheon laser-guided 155’s. DoDBuzz.Com’s Kris Osborn reports, “Raytheon is testing a new laser-guided 155mm artillery shell which adds laser-designation to GPS guidance in order to provide more targeting options and better pinpoint targets on-the-move, company officials said. The new Excalibur S 155 round, which was recently test-fired at Yuma Proving Grounds, Ariz., allows the munition to alter course in flight toward emerging or moving targets.”
3. The really secret X-37B space drone. DefenseOne.Com contributor Tim Fernholz reports, “America’s top-secret space drone is coming home . . . after a record 22 months in orbit—and we have no idea how it spent its time up there. The X-37B, made by Boeing for the US Air Force, is catnip for space fans, but despite lots of public interest and plenty of speculation, we know next to nothing about the futuristic craft. . . . NASA announced that it was handing over the hangars and facilities that formerly housed the Space Shuttle program to the Air Force, for use with the X-37B. In the past Boeing has hinted that it will develop a manned version of the X-37 for the Air Force. As NASA turns to private companies for access to space, perhaps the Air Force, too, would simply like its own manned space plane.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. My kingdom for a fan! “On Wednesday night, Rick Scott tried to separate Crist and his fan. The two men were about to begin their penultimate debate, and there it was, waiting for Crist under the podium. Scott, the incumbent Republican governor, whom Crist is trying to unseat to get his old job back, put his foot down. He wasn’t going to go onstage with that thing. It was, he insisted, against the rules. . . .”
2. Hillary hits the Mitt: “Hillary Clinton on Thursday in Michigan took a veiled swipe at Mitt Romney as she criticized those who would have ‘let Detroit go bankrupt’ following the financial crisis in 2008. . . . Clinton said that [Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Gary Peters and gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer] stood up for Michigan in Congress. ‘They could have lined up with those saying, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt. Let manufacturing just wither away,’ Clinton said at the event at Oakland University in Rochester. ‘They could have been on the side of those who were criticizing what they called Government Motors’ Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, wrote a November 2008 op-ed in The New York Times titled, ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt’ . . .”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Joining Islamic State is about ‘sex and aggression,’ not religion.” Reuters contributor Arie W. Kruglanski argues, “Extremist ideology is effective . . . because it offers a quick-fix remedy to a perceived loss of significance and an assured way to regain it. It accomplishes this by exploiting humans’ primordial instincts for aggression and sex.
2. HEAVY READ: “Understanding Stalin.” The Atlantic contributor Anne Applebaum offers, “[T]he idea of Stalin as a rational and extremely intelligent man, bolstered by an ideology sufficiently powerful to justify the deaths of many millions of people . . . . means we might want to take more seriously the pronouncements of the Russian politicians who have lately argued for the use of nuclear weapons against the Baltic states, or of the ISIS leaders who call for the deaths of all Christians and Jews. Just because their language sounds strange to us doesn’t mean that they, and those who follow them, don’t find it compelling, or that they won’t pursue their logic to its ultimate conclusion.”
3. “So Lockheed Martin Says It’s Made a Big Advance in Nuclear Fusion . . . .” Wired.Com contributor Katie M. Palmer argues, “So far McGuire’s team has built a structure—a few meters long by a meter in diameter—to test its plasma confinement claims. If they can iterate fast enough, they may just be the first to get to a functional nuclear reactor… probably in about 10 years.”
THE FUNNIES
2. Metatextuality.
