TEARLINE
African jihadists from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya have been killed while fighting in Syria for the Furqan Battalion, with operates with the al-Qaeda-linked Al Nusrah Front.
Major defense contractors have confirmed they’ll send tens of thousands of employee layoff warnings shortly before Election Day.
Christine Fair argues that the United States should consider designating Pakistan as a foreign terrorist organization — in addition to the Haqqani network.
The deputy leader of al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen has been killed. Said Ali al-Shihri, a Saudi national and the deputy emir of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and six other people were killed in a military operation in the southern Yemeni province of Hadramaut.
AROUND THE WORLD
Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Anne Richard will travel to, among other places, Turkey around the same time.
ON THE FIGHT
The Defense Intelligence Agency is seeking to exploit open source information to an even greater effect by leveraging so-called “gray” literature and unclassified, proprietary information. By fusing unclassified and classified information from commercial government, and intelligence sources, DIA hopes to “exploit sources and employ selective judgment in the evaluation of authoritativeness, timeliness, and relevance of information.” Ideally, this would result in a better targeting a more informed view of the battlefield and the varied areas of operation organizations like the Defense Clandestine Service will find themselves in.
SAIC has secured a $24 million sole-source contract to provide services to NGIC (National Ground Intelligence Center) in support of CITP (Counter Insurgency Targeting Program). CITP provides counter insurgency network analysis and targeting, counter improvised explosive device targeting and related intelligence and operational support and has been subject to criticism from the wider intelligence community and quarters of the Department of Defense for emulating and in some cases duplicating what JIEDDO, or the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, does.
ON TECH
AT&T will unlock in-contract iPhones for military men and women deployed overseas for the first time. To qualify for the complimentary service, active military members must have an account in good standing and provide the carrier with deployment verification — that’s it, no other hoops to jump through. The revelation was made yesterday as part of a change to AT&T’s Device Unlock Portal, which allows off-contract iPhone owners to apply online to have their handsets unlocked. Considering how prevalent prepaid SIM and micro-SIM cards are overseas, this change will be overwhelmingly well received by servicemembers the globe over.
CONTRACT WATCH
ITT Exelis has delivered 500 anti-jam Global Positioning System antennas to U.S. and allied military forces. The seven-element N79 Controlled Reception Pattern Antenna is capable of preventing deliberate jamming and unintentional interference of timing signals when used with anti-jam GPS systems like the next-generation Advanced Digital Antenna Production and legacy GPS.
Robert Caruso is a veteran of the United States Navy, and has worked for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, Business Transformation Agency and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
