VIDEO: Rep. Peter King told reporters that former CIA Director David Petraeus believes the attack was a ‘clear terrorist involvement’ not a spontaneous protest.
ON THE FIGHT
"Northern Mali would be another theater in which the U.S. would be waging an ‘undeclared war‘ […] There is already circumstantial evidence that the Obama administration is taking this possibility seriously: according to The Washington Post, the U.S. has rapidly built its intelligence and military capacity in North Africa — especially in and around Burkina Faso, which neighbors Mali."
For the first time ever, Treasury has designated a key Taliban member – Mullah Naim Barich – not a terrorist, but a drug kingpin. The counternarcotics mandate is significantly less defined than counterterrorism, after all. Meanwhile, Rep. Michael McCaul, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management, released a Majority Staff report entitled “A Line in the Sand: Countering Crime, Violence and Terror at the Southwest Border,” detailing the Subcommittee’s findings regarding the increased presence of Middle East terrorist networks in Latin America and their growing relationship with drug cartels.
President Obama’s choice to lead the war in Afghanistan has come out strongly against the 2014 timeline. Awkward.
"Countering Criminal Street Gangs: Lessons from the Counterinsurgent Battlespace"
ON THE FORCE
Seen taped to a Marine’s desk in the Pentagon:"Mattis 2016."
“[We competed] for an undisclosed customer and we won and they have certain requirements.” Aviation Week, on the mysterious Firebird.
The Pentagon has told the Obama administration that any military effort to seize Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons would require upward of 75,000 troops. The estimated size of the potential effort, provided to the White House by the military’s Central Command and Joint Staff, called into question whether the United States would have the resources to act quickly if it detected the movement of chemical weapons and forced President Obama, as he said in August, to “change my calculus” about inserting American forces into Syria.
"Every two weeks, we get another Growler," Cmdr. Christopher Middleton said at the Navy’s electronic warfare hub. The Navy target is to buy 114 EA-18G Growler aircraft. And it’s those Growler aircraft that will be the cutting edge of future Naval strikes against future"anti-access area denial" defenses like those being built by China. To break through such defenses, the Navy is very publicly working on a joint "AirSea Battle" concept with the Air Force, but the two services have taken starkly different approaches to defeating enemy radar.
The former director of intelligence at Cyber Command, Rear Admiral Cox, has moved on to lead the Office of Naval Intelligence.
With no stars, bars, eagles or oak leafs among their multitude of stripes, the enlisted force of the Air Force Special Operations Command nominated their former Chief of Staff of the Air Force for his induction into The Order of the Sword at Hurlburt Field Nov. 15.
ON THE INTERSECTION OF TECH AND PRIVACY — OR LACK THEREOF
Google published its latest Transparency Report this week revealing it received 20,938 requests from governments around the world to hand over user data between January and June 2012. The bi-annual Transparency Report shows an increase of 2,681 requests since the last report and an increase of 5,194 requests from the same period a year ago. Google says the requests were for account information on 34,614 accounts and that the United States led with 7,968 requests, India came in second with 2,319 requests and Brazil rounded out the top-three with 1,566 requests. The number of requests to actually remove content also spiked from 1,048 requests between July to December 2011 to 1,791 in the period ending last June.
ON SECRECY – OR LACK THEREOF
Splinter Cell, the movie: it’s a thing, and it’s on the way.
ON BENGHAZI
"Ms. Feinstein said that in addition to meeting with Mr. Petraeus on Friday to hear his account of the attack — as well as an assessment of a visit he made just two weeks ago to the C.I.A.’s station in Tripoli, Libya’s capital — the committee would hold at least three additional hearings on the matter."
CONTRACT WATCH
SAIC will develop an unmanned vessel that spies on enemy submarines under a $58 million prime contract. The autonomous surface vessel will be able track a diesel-electric submarine for months over thousands of kilometers, the company said.
The Justice Department awarded a $21.4 million contract to SRA International for help with a biometric database system. SRA will continue managing, operating and maintaining the department’s Joint Biometric Data Exchange Hosting Environment infrastructure.
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.
