FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Shaping perceptions: clearance interviews. Contributor Sean Bigley advises, “Whether you are applying for your first or your fifth security clearance, sitting down with a background investigator can be a nerve-wracking experience. A lot is on the line, and many candidates are uncomfortable discussing highly personal issues like finances, drug use, and marital history. You may not be able to change unfavorable facts in your background, but you can help influence your investigator’s perception of you.”
2. Appealing clearance denials. Also from 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. China’s budding island defenses / offenses. Reuters’ David Brunnstrom reports, “Recent satellite images published on Thursday show China has made rapid progress in building an airstrip suitable for military use in contested territory in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands and may be planning another, moves that have been greeted with concern in the United States and Asia. . . . A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said the scale of China’s land reclamation and construction was fueling concerns within the region that China intends to militarize its outposts and stressed the importance of freedom of navigation.”
2. ISIS derailing Iraqi reform. Christian Science Monitor’s Howard LaFranchi reports, “When the Pentagon announced this week that Islamic State fighters have been pushed out of more than a quarter of the Iraqi territory they invaded and laid claim to last year, the missing element of that cautiously upbeat assessment was Iraq’s political environment. . . . Yet despite some small rays of progress since Haider al-Abadi became prime minister last September, the Shiite Muslim majority has relinquished little in the way of political power and the government has accomplished few meaningful steps to heal Iraq’s deep sectarian divides, some Iraq experts say.”
3. Ash Carter’s national security priorities. Defense Media Activity’s Tyrone C. Marshall Jr. reports, “The secretary said his first priority is to help President Barack Obama to make the best possible national security decisions and then to implement those decisions. Second, he said, is to ensure the strength and health of Defense Department personnel around the world, and the third priority is the future of the department’s course, its people and its technology. To achieve these priorities, Carter said, he’s traveled to Afghanistan and Kuwait to meet with American personnel working there, and he has worked with Congress to secure the resources needed to protect the country and continue to build the force of the future while gaining stability in the defense budget.”
4. Drones: top of Mabus’ list. Breaking Defense’s Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. reports, “Navy Secretary Ray Mabus may want to move drones to the top of his priorities, but what kind of unmanned systems do the Navy and Marine Corps want to buy? Don’t think Predator or even the Navy’s new 131-foot-wingspan Triton. Imagine a swarm of buzzing, scuttling or swimming robots that are smaller but smarter. While a human has to fly the Predator by remote control, these systems would make decisions and coordinate themselves without constant human supervision — perhaps without any contact at all.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Public-private partnership propulsion. DoD Buzz’s Brendan McGarry reports, “The U.S. Air Force wants to partner with rocket makers — not engine manufacturers — in developing a new propulsion system that could replace Russian-made technology used on existing boosters, officials said. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and Gen. John Hyten, head of Air Force Space Command, on Thursday at the Space Symposium discussed plans for the so-called public-private partnership to develop a new American-made rocket engine.”
2. Raytheon’s next-gen shipboard missiles. Military & Aerospace Electronics Editor John Keller reports, “Missile experts at the Raytheon Co. are moving forward with a project to design a next-generation shipboard missile able to defeat a wide variety of aircraft and missile threats with an active radar seeker than can operate independently of the launch ship. Officials of the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington announced a $517.3 million contract to the Raytheon Missile Systems segment in Tucson, Ariz., earlier this month for full-scale development of the RIM-162 Evolved Seasparrow Missile (ESSM) Block 2. RIM stands for radar intercept missile.”
3. Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation: Booz Allen’s $40 million task. Federal Times’ Aaron Boyd reports, “Six of the government’s biggest agencies are on track to vastly improve their cybersecurity postures with the award of the second set of task orders for Group B of the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program. The $39 million contract was awarded to Booz Allen Hamilton, one of 17 prime blanket purchase agreement (BPA) holders on the government’s massive cybersecurity effort, led by the Department of Homeland Security. Booz Allen Hamilton and its partners will be providing monitoring services for the six agencies under Group B, giving them a real-time view of their networks, vulnerabilities and breaches, as well as the tools to mitigate the effects of the latter.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Drone strike murder (?). Time’s Sabrina Toppa reports, “A senior judge in Pakistan has ordered police to formally investigate former CIA agents for allegedly authorizing a 2009 drone strike. If the case moves forward, it may subject the U.S. embassy in Islamabad to sensitive police investigations and even result in U.S. citizens for the first time being charged with murder for covert drone strikes in the South Asian nation.”
2. NSA hiring. Nextgov’s Jack Moore reports, “The National Security Agency is probably among the best-equipped parts of the federal government at recruiting, training and staffing an elite team of cybersecurity professionals. Thanks to Congress, the agency has been granted significant leeway in bypassing the sluggish federal hiring process to onboard staff quicker and greater latitude to pay new recruits retention bonuses and provide other perks. But even that’s not enough to stop some top-level technical talent from jumping ship.” See also, “Cybersecurity firms hire former military, intelligence cyber experts.” “US cyber reserve is in the works,” and “Shortage of IT security professionals is not unique to government.”
3. ISIS employs surveillance drones. The Long War Journal’s Caleb Weiss reports, “In a newly released video showing the Islamic State’s assault on the Baiji oil refinery complex, several scenes depict the jihadist group using unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance and battlefield coordination. The use of drones allowed the Islamic State to gather intelligence to be used by commanders for command and control purposes, as well as act as spotters for artillery pieces. In addition to the scenes showing the use of the drones, other footage features several Islamic State commanders in an ‘operations control room’ directing the fighting at the refinery. It is unclear what kind of unmanned aerial vehicles were employed by the group.”
4. Next-gen cyber-defense. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “The next generation of cyberattacks will be more sophisticated, more difficult to detect, and more capable of wreaking untold damage on the nation’s computer systems. So the U.S. Department of Defense has given a $3 million grant to a team of computer scientists from the University of Utah and University of California, Irvine, to develop software that can hunt down a new kind of vulnerability that is nearly impossible to find with today’s technology.” See also, “How Terrorists Are Turning Robots Into Weapons.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Reason to run. “Republican Carly Fiorina took a step closer to running for president, revealing Thursday that she is near a decision while blasting Hillary Clinton’s policies as ‘crushing the middle class.’ . . . ‘If Hillary Clinton were to face a female nominee, there are a whole set of things that she won’t be able to talk about. She won’t be able to talk about being the first woman president. She won’t be able to talk about a war on women without being challenged. She won’t be able to play the gender card.’”
2. Taxation without representation. “Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) has introduced legislation to eliminate the federal income tax for residents of Washington, D.C. until they have a full voting representative in Congress. The D.C. delegate can vote in committee and introduce bills, but cannot vote on the House floor. Gohmert argued that requiring residents of Washington, D.C. to pay federal income taxes amount to ‘taxation without representation,’ a rallying cry for the American Revolution.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “What the ISIS Campaign Teaches Us About the Future of War.” Defense One contributor Peter W. Singer argues, “Nature may abhor a vacuum, but chaos loves it. In the absence of credible, stable mechanisms to participate in society, young people got ‘disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised – and then radicalised and violently militant,’ to borrow Ali Khedery’s apt summary. The implication for the future of war is that we should focus on finding and making opportunities to disrupt the cycle.”
2. “Would a new Russian missile system make Israeli airstrikes on Iran impossible?” Reuters contributor Noga Tarnopolsky argues, “With so much posturing, and so little concern for the facts at hand, it is difficult for Israelis to know whether, in fact, the Russian announcement posed a new threat to their well-being.”
3. “Kurdish politics in an unpredictable region.” Rudaw contributor Kamaran Muhamad Aziz argues, “A great deal of the issues in the world depend on how they are defined and reproduced. This is exactly why Kurds need to redefine their position in the world and perhaps even their image, which will inevitably lead to a set of Kurdish politics much different from that of others. Indeed, Kurds cannot claim sovereignty if they are unable to distinguish themselves from others.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Falling stars.
3. Act of protest.
