FAREWELL
The last senate member of the Greatest Generation leaves us. “Frank Lautenberg, New Jersey Senator in His 5th Term, Dies at 89”
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Michelle Kincaid brings us up-to-date on our nation’s position on the cyber threat in her “Cybersecurity News Round-Up.” “China is back in the cyber spotlight again,” explains Kincaid. “This time charged with hacking into U.S. networks to steal information on the country’s most advanced weapons systems.”
2. Tranette Ledford explains the rise and advantages of recruiting by way of social media: “It’s boom time for social media pros in human resources. In fact, Forbes Magazine has called 2013 the year of social HR, as organizations increasingly strive to integrate social technologies for the dual purpose of recruiting and retaining employees,” observers T. Ledford.
3. Don’t miss ClearanceJobs.Com most popular article as you study for your next polygraph: William Henderson explains, “There are some federal law enforcement jobs that require a polygraph exam for determining employment suitability regardless of the security clearance involved. Within the Department of Defense (DoD) there are also limited situations where an issue-oriented exam can be used to clear up serious credible derogatory information that can not be resolved by normal investigative methods. This includes exculpatory exams when requested by the Subject of an investigation and the exam is considered essential to a just and equitable resolution of the matter under investigation.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. A new understanding of ‘unfettered’ warfare. We fondly remember the good old days before 9/11 when Air-Land battle was all the rage and young officers played drinking games using USSR flashcards with black and white line drawings of BTRs and BMPs. Military theorist Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. of Breaking Defense welcomes what he calls a surprisingly unclassified and refreshingly lucid manifesto on Air Sea Battle: “unlike its acknowledged inspiration, the Army-Air Force concept of AirLand Battle against the Soviet Union, AirSea Battle remains more vague than vivid. Part of the problem is so much of it is classified, part is that the idea is still evolving, but some of the blame must fall on the Air Force and Navy, the concept’s chief proponents, who have never articulated it all that well in public – that is, until now.” Welcome to Freedberg’s brave new world. The year is 0002 A.B.L. (after Bin Laden).
2. “Right size” – there’s that damnable 20th Century phrase again, but the target is DoD civilians, not The Army: Government Exec’s Kedar Pavgi betrays Washington Think-Tankers’ plan to address the cost of defending the nation: “think tank analysts on Monday encouraged Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and congressional leaders to ‘rightsize’ the Pentagon’s civilian and contractor workforce to contain rising personnel costs and bloat. The 25 analysts—ranging from both ends of the political spectrum—said in a letter that ‘the size and structure’ of the civilian workforce needs reform. They said the “changing needs of a downsizing military and shifting strategy” no longer correlates with the current number of civilians at the Defense Department.”
3. Future Army force focuses “’left of the bang’” and imagines itself more expeditionary. Army Times’s Lance Bacon shares what might be a bleak picture of the new deployment cycle, which includes rotational forces in Korea (no more short tour?) and, according to Brig. Gen. Kimberly Field, Deputy Director of Strategy, Plans and Policy, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-3/5/7, “will take approximately five years to fully implement.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Navy to build $6.2 billion worth of destroyers, and the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) contract still available. Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Raytheon are likely winners. Defense News’ Christopher Cavas announces that “construction contracts worth more than $6 billion were awarded Monday to shipbuilders General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls to build nine new DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.”
2. Terex – the “happy company” after $327.5 million contract award “equates to approximately 22% of annual revenues from Terex’s Cranes division and, if implemented in full, could secure 4.4% of that division’s business each year for the next five years.”
3. Paying it forward, DoD invests in the best and brightest: “Department of Defense Announces Research Equipment Awards”: “awards to 140 university researchers at 77 academic institutions to support the purchase of research instrumentation and equipment. The awards total $38.7 million and are being made under the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. It is hard to keep a really good secret. “U.S. publishes details of missile base Israel wanted kept secret,” read McClatchy headlines. Sheera Frenkl reports on Israel’s ire after the Administration releases details of a new Israeli ballistic missile defense system. The Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state-of-the-art facility to house a new ballistic-missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls.
2. DNA is back on the table as the U.S. Supreme Court sanctions samples. Robert Barnes reports that “A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that police may take DNA samples when booking those arrested for serious crimes, narrowly upholding a Maryland law and opening the door to more widespread collection of DNA by law enforcement.” Read: buy DNA industry stocks.
3. Thinking “out of the box” is old school. There is no box. Dominic Basulto lays out the books that will “make you smarter” in things like solutionism, anti-social syndrome of social media, our inevitable movement to Mars, the future of technology, and “the basics of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Glenn Keiser deciphers Senator Roy Blunt’s cryptic language and drags Disney into the discussion. “Amber Marchand, communications director for Blunt, said the senator was not trying to be misleading”: translation – the senator was being misleading.
2. Sequestration to turn two in 2014, and small business is throwing the party. Armed Forces Press Services Nick Simeone shares Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall predictions that already taint New Fiscal Year’s Eve celebrations for FY2014.
3. “We’ll fix it, and we mean it this time.” Craig Whitlock reports on tension between Congress and military execs faced with the prospect of prosecutions outside the chain-of-command as a way to address the sexual assault syndrome: “The nation’s military chiefs have told Congress in writing that they oppose or have strong reservations about a controversial bill that would reshape military law by taking sexual-assault cases out of the hands of commanders, setting up a likely clash with lawmakers who are pushing the idea.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Super Tuesday for Uniform Code of Military Justice Legal Eagles on Capitol Hill. New York Times editorial provides a pre-game for Senator Carl Levin’s response to the sexual assault syndrome spanning the services: “The [sexual assault] issue will get an airing Tuesday at a hearing convened by Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, to consider possible changes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, using the annual defense authorization bill as a vehicle. The question, however, is whether Congress will undertake the broad reforms necessary to encourage more victims to come forward and to show that legislators take seriously the pledge of zero tolerance for such crimes that military leaders and successive administrations have been making for decades.”
2. The “Chinese Dream” probably isn’t about picket fences, new Pontiacs, and cold bottles of Pepsi . Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt reads tea leaves to decipher Xi Jinping’s acceptance speech: “As he accepted the Communist Party’s designation to be China’s president and supreme military leader in March, Xi Jinping vowed ‘to achieve the Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’ Xi’s speech to the National People’s Congress won plaudits from the press. ‘His crisp yet rich voice and frank yet resolute gaze revealed a power to invigorate the people,’ the China People’s Daily reported. But the speech left analysts guessing about what sort of rejuvenation – also translated as ‘revival’ or ‘”renaissance’ – the new leader has in mind. Presumably President Obama will be looking for clues when he meets with Xi later this week in California.”
3. Calling all helo pilots – get ready for combat contract RW in a post-ISAF Afghanistan. Wall Street Journal’s Gary Anderson has it exactly right in his commentary about airlift and Afghanistan after 2014. ISAF is training Afghan helo pilots, but the Afghan National Security Forces will never be able to succeed (much) without substantial helicopter support: “the primarily non-Pashtun soldiers had essentially mutinied at the idea of unsupported ground operations. They knew very well that the Afghan Air Force in the region had only 10% of what would be required to replace ISAF forces. Any serious wound in combat in our remote district was tantamount to a death sentence once the U.S. Army surgical hospital was gone. The Afghans also knew that they would be buried where they fell if they died and that the locals would likely desecrate their graves.”
