Humph Day Highlights & This Time Last Year
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. You’re certifiable! No. Really. Contributor Tranette Ledford explains, “First Lady Michelle Obama announced the new partnership between the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Coursera . . . . The partnership means every veteran is eligible for one free Coursera Verified Certificate. Coursera’s move to broaden its online certificate program for veterans now makes it easier to refine or improve military skills through courses that directly result in certificates recognized by civilian employers.”
2. Resume recommendations. Editor Lindy Kyzer offers, “If you’re a veteran you can probably write an OER or NCOER without breaking a sweat. But writing a civilian resume may feel like heavy lifting. If you don’t know a skills summary from an objective statement, here are a few tips to consider. . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. ISIS on shores of Tripoli. AP’s Diaa Hadid reports, “Sunni Muslim-majority Tripoli is seen as particularly vulnerable to becoming a foothold for militants from Syria, including the Islamic State group, to expand into Lebanon. Years of neglect have deepened poverty in the city, Lebanon’s second largest. Many among its conservative Sunni residents are bitter over what they see as domination of the central government by Shiites, the Hezbollah guerrilla group in particular—giving fertile ground for the sectarian hatred that militants often feed on. The city also has a geographical sectarian fault line, worsened by Syria’s civil war.”
2. Spotlight: physiology of female Marines. NPR’s Tom Bowman reports, “Four-hundred marines—including about 100 women—are training to see whether both women and men can meet the combat standards. They’ll track speed, endurance and marksmanship. Sensors on their weapons will pinpoint who hits a target. They’ll test how an all-male squad compares with a squad with one woman, then two women. . . . Pentagon leaders want women to begin serving in ground combat jobs beginning in January 2016, though the Marine Corps could still request a waiver.”
3. Sectarian squabbles sour successes. Rudaw.Net’s Sirwe Hewrami reports from Erbil, “A top Iraqi militia commander said that no Kurdish forces took part in the operation that pushed back Islamic State (IS) gunmen from the strategic city of Saadiya which had been seized by the jihadists militants since early summer. Hadi Ameri, who is the head of the Shiite Badr militia, said Iranian army played a key role in liberating the two cities of Jalawla and Saadiya. ‘Saadiya was liberated by the (Shiite) People’s Protection Force (HASHD) with heavy artillery and air support from the Iraqi army and national police force,’ Ameri told Rudaw. ‘No Peshmarga force took part in the battle for Saadiya,’ he added.”
4. Filling gaps in Afghanistan. Reuters’ Jessica Donati reports from Kabul, “The United States is preparing to increase the number of troops it keeps in Afghanistan in 2015 to fill a gap left in the NATO mission by other contributing nations, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation. The final numbers are still being agreed, but there will be at least several hundred more than initially planned, one of the sources said. ‘If they hadn’t done that, the mission would have lost bases’ . . . .”
5. Flournoy: thanks, but no thanks. Reuters’ reports, “Michele Flournoy, a former top U.S. Department of Defense official widely tipped as a possible replacement for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, has taken herself out of consideration for the job, according to multiple sources familiar with the circumstances. Flournoy . . . asked President Barack Obama to remove her from consideration to head the Pentagon.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Merging manned and un-manned. AviationWeek.Com’s Graham Warwick reports, “Unmanned aircraft are most often viewed as augmenting manned aircraft, perhaps eventually replacing some of them, but a more likely future lies in their becoming intimately essential to each other. Two new U.S. research notices give hints of such an outcome.”
2. $20 million BAE towed decoy order. MilitaryAerospace.Com’s John Keller reports, “Electronic warfare (EW) experts at the BAE Systems Electronic Systems segment in Nashua, N.H., will build 283 AN/ALE-55 fiber optic towed decoys (FOTDs) under terms of a $19.9 million U.S. . . . Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., are asking BAE Systems to build the RF airborne countermeasure, which is designed to protect the Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18E/F Super Hornet carrier-based jet fighter-bomber from radar-guided missiles.”
3. Hagel resignation anchors LCS replacements. DoD.Buzz.Com’s Kris Osborn reports, “The Navy’s plan to replace the last 20 littoral combat ships with a new, more survivable small surface combatant hangs in a balance of uncertainty amid Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s resignation. Pentagon sources confirmed Hagel has made a decision about the direction of the new ship following his review of recommendations from the Navy’s specially-configured Small Surface Combatant Task Force, or SSCTF.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Spying: Grandma did what? USA.News.Net reports, “A World War II heroine who parachuted behind German lines on “perilous” spy missions, but was so modest she only told her children about it 15 years ago, was Tuesday presented with France’s highest honour. British-born Phyllis (Pippa) Doyle, now 93 and living in New Zealand, was awarded the Chevalier de l’ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur, or Knight of the national Order of the Legion of Honour.”
2. Ending collateral damage. Wired.Com contributor David Axe reports, “[T]he U.S. military is hard at work on a dizzying array of pricey new guided munitions to match its trillion-dollar investment in stealth fighters, bombers and killer drones. Some are super smart. Others, super fast. A few are designed to be tiny. All of them have one purpose: to blow away the target, and only the target.”
3. Osprey Talons. Marine Corps Times’ Joshua Stewart reports, “The Marine Corps’ most unique aircraft is going to get a bigger punch. A Marine Corps planning document shows that officials want to arm the MV-22B Osprey with more weapons so the aircraft can support the service’s new crisis response forces that carry out missions like embassy evacuations. An ‘enhanced weapon systems is in early development to increase all-axis, stand-off, and precision capabilities’ . . . .”
4. Sentenced: Navy’s insider threat. FederalTimes.Com’s Aaron Boyd reports, “A former nuclear systems administrator with the Navy was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the 2012 hacking of the Navy’s Smart Web Move database and publicly releasing personal records of some 222,000 service members. Team Digi7al member Nicholas Paul Knight, 27, of Chantilly, Va., was sentenced Friday after pleading ‘guilty’ in May.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Is STUPID tattooed on my forehead? “You’ll be working for a president who once declared that he was elected to end wars but who now finds himself stuck, reluctantly, in a new one in Iraq and a prolonged one in Afghanistan — and who badly wants to finish up both in two years, though that’s probably impossible. He’s also a president who won’t listen much to you, since he apparently has little intention of altering the White House’s tight grip on the national-security apparatus, which was the bane not only of Hagel but his two Pentagon predecessors, Leon Panetta and Bob Gates.”
2. Lines of succession: “Obama conceded that Americans would want to make a fresh start after two terms of his administration . . . . [H]e doesn’t expect the eventual Democratic nominee to agree with him very often or ask him to campaign for him or her. But Obama said he would be just fine staying in the background and helping his party’s nominee behind the scenes. And, he offered high praise for Hillary Clinton, his former secretary of state and the likely Democratic nominee in 2016.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. EXCELLENT READ “When is war over?” New York Times contributor Elizabeth Samet argues, “Knowing when—and how—to stop is a problem as old as war itself. Ascertaining the logical limits of a campaign presents not merely a strategic but a psychological challenge to its architects and its participants. . . . the first step toward seeing the end is to come to terms with what it means to be right in the middle.”
2. “Should Putin fear the man who ‘pulled the trigger of war’ in Ukraine?” Reuters contributor Lucian Kim argues, “Girkin is a loose cannon. He views himself as a warrior in a bigger war against a godless West that has lost its Christian roots and thirsts for Russia’s resources to feed its decadent ways. Girkin prides himself on his service to the greater Russian cause and has no reason to toe the Kremlin line. Hardcore Russian nationalists already consider him a worthy alternative to President Vladimir Putin.”
3. “A very secular jihad.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Crispian Cuss argues, “While ideological reasons are cited in justification, the real reason many individuals travel abroad to fight is an age old search of adventure. This more than anything may have played its part in luring westerners to the Kurdish cause, just as others before them went to Bosnia or Rhodesia. The difference being, this time the war against ISIL provides a useful pretext for their actions.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Lucy does Hagel.
2. On schedule.
3. Latest beheading.
