FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCE JOBS.COM
1. $400 billion buys “cautiously optimistic.” No, it’s not the war in Afghanistan; it’s the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. You can just see it clearly emerging from behind that tree yonder, if you close one eye and squint the other. “Bedeviled by cost overruns and schedule delays,” Marc Selinger of ClearanceJobs.com reports, it “is still not out of the woods, but has made ‘a good deal of progress’ in the past year, according to a key Pentagon official.” See also, “V-22 Offers Lessons for F-35 Savings,” where Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, USMC Deputy Commandant for Aviation, shares his logistics wisdom: “savings [on the Osprey] occurred in large part because of a shift in maintenance policy. Instead of sending the vast majority of parts to depots for time-consuming and expensive repairs, as manufacturers normally intend, more repairs were being done on location.” (Also see, #5 under Contract Watch, below, regarding the Osprey.)
2. With the IRS allegedly hot on the trail of whistleblowers, some might profit from “The Cleared Whistleblower and Incident Reports”: “There are a host of reasons why a supervisor in good faith might file a report in response to events leading to a whistleblowing event. Indeed, the unwitting employer may not even know the events are leading to or associated with an impending and legitimate whistleblowing event.” (See also, “Contractors & Whistleblowing” under Contract Watch, below.)
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Bowe Bergdahl – Taliban’s first card. ABC News posts the story by Kathy Gannon, one AP reporters in Pakistan: Gannon writes, “The Afghan Taliban are ready to free a U.S. army soldier held captive since 2009 in exchange for five of their senior operatives imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay as a conciliatory gesture, a senior spokesman for the group said Thursday. . . . The prisoner exchange is the first item on the Taliban’s agenda before even opening peace talks . . . .” Gannon reports that the “Taliban are insistent that they want their first interlocutors to be the United States.” Karzai is not happy.
2. If you do it, I’ll do it. American Forces Press Services’ Nick Simeone reports, “President Barack Obama today announced his intention to seek deeper cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, provided Russia is willing to negotiate similar reductions. . . . U.S. officials said the proposed cuts would take the number of strategic warheads for both countries below the limit of 1,550 established by the 2010 New START Treaty, provided Russia is willing to agree to those levels as well. Administration officials said the reductions would still leave the United States with a credible nuclear deterrent as well as strategic stability with Russia and China, while reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy.” Also see, “Obama sparks new fight” and “Obama challenges Russia.”
3. If you do not change, you will become extinct. “In a wide-ranging speech . . . at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, his alma mater, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel talked about the necessity of adapting the nation’s military to operate in a world that’s undergoing far-reaching geopolitical, technological and economic change.” Karen Parrish from AFPS reports. Go Mavericks! See also, “Hagel Speaks.”
4. Anchors away. Baltimore Sun’s Carrie Wells reports, “Three male midshipmen at the Naval Academy have been charged with raping a female midshipman and giving false official statements.” See also Reuters’ report: “President Barack Obama spoke at the Naval Academy’s graduation ceremony on May 24 and urged the new officers to stamp out sexual assault among their ranks.” Someone was listening.
5. They pushed the Hueys overboard: somehow, that was more dignified. WaPo’s Ernesto Londono reports, “Facing a tight withdrawal deadline and tough terrain, the U.S. military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds of vehicles and other military equipment as it rushes to wind down its role in the Afghanistan war by the end of 2014. . . . much of it will continue to be shredded, cut and crushed to be sold for pennies per pound on the Afghan scrap market – a process that reflects a presumptive end to an era of protracted ground wars.” See also, the end of MRAPS.
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Contractors & Whistleblowing – is there protection? WaPo’s Joe Davidson doesn’t think so: “Most federal employees who report waste, fraud and abuse have legal protections against retaliation by their bosses. If employees are retaliated against, the law defines certain procedures designed to get justice for whistleblowers. For employees in national security agencies, the protections are still a promise. National security contractors don’t even have that.” See also CJDC’s “Cleared Whistleblowers and Incident Reports” and “Security Clearances and Employee Rights.”
2. New on the GSA roster: Sys-Con reports, “Remedy Informatics Awarded GSA Contract”: Gary Kennedy, Founder & CEO of Remedy Informatics says, “’This GSA contract will obviate the need for an often lengthy bid process, making it easier for government agencies to procure and deploy our software . . . . ‘With our enterprise-level software, government agencies involved in cutting-edge and key research initiatives will be able to break down data silos, improve data management and ultimately accelerate the pace of their discoveries and subsequent innovations.’”
3. Save your receipt. Pentagon wants a refund from Boeing, WaPo reports: “The Pentagon’s purchasing agency said Boeing must refund $13.7 million in excessive charges on spare parts, including a $10 device for which the defense contractor charged $2,286 apiece. The Defense Logistics Agency ‘is seeking a refund from Boeing,’ spokeswoman Michelle McCaskill said in an e-mailed statement.”
4. Bring in the drones. DefenseTech reports that “Spain recently deployed the first of a planned several MX-series imaging systems made by Wescam, part of New York-based L-3. The device, which houses multiple thermal imaging and electro-optical sensors, was installed beneath a helicopter that flew over the capital of Madrid on a law-enforcement mission to track speeding motorists on the highways. . . . L-3 is also poised to announce the first sale of the new MX-25 unit to a U.S. customer, officials said.” Wonder who that might be? (possible answer, below, in Tech, Privacy, Secrecy)
5. At the end of the discussion is a Bell-Boeing contract. Defense News’ Marcus Weisgerber dives deep into the US Air Force CSAR debate: “The future of a long-stymied US Air Force effort to buy new combat search-and-rescue helicopters is once again uncertain as top-level generals are intensely debating the type of aircraft and which arm of the service is best suited to conduct this critical mission.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. French google Google. Natalie Huet (Reuters) reports from Paris, “France’s data protection watchdog [The National Book Center, or CNIL] ordered Google on Thursday to change its privacy policy or face fines, leading a Europe-wide push to get the Internet giant to clarify its intentions and methods for collecting user data. . . . The move is the result of a year-long tussle with the top search engine and email provider. The CNIL said Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain were undertaking similar infringement procedures that could result in fines on Google of several million euros in total.” That’s nothing: “Ray Kurzweil – director of engineering at Google – claims that by 2045 humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal – an event called singularity. He made the statement at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York.”
2. Henry Hill wasn’t wrong. RT reports, “The FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance purposes, the head of the agency told Congress early Wednesday.” See also, “FBI director tells Congress agency uses drones for surveillance on U.S. soil” and “Congress struggling to come up with rules at the dawn of the drone age.”
3. Drones on longer than a mother-in-law. Doug Page of Military1 reports, “Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory recently shattered their own UAV endurance record by flying an Ion Tiger UAV for 48 hours and 1 minute without landing.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. McConnell to be sequestered. WaPo’s Sean Sullivan reports, “Senate Majority PAC and Patriot Majority USA announced the new ad as part of what it says will be an extended effort against McConnell leading up to the 2014 election. . . . The effort comes on the heels of print attack ads aimed at Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) that were launched by a pro-McConnell super PAC. Grimes is mulling a run and represents Democrats’ best (and really only) hope of competing for McConnell’s seat in 2014.”
2. Angela, this is different. Washington Times’ Jackie Calmes explains how POTUS courts Merkel: “Pressed personally by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about the United States’ surveillance of foreigners’ phone and e-mail traffic, President Obama said Wednesday that terrorist threats in her country were among those foiled by such intelligence operations worldwide — a contention that Ms. Merkel seemed to confirm. . . . That disclosure has been particularly provocative in Germany, where the history of the Nazi era and then postwar surveillance in Communist East Germany have left a legacy of national concern for privacy and civil liberties.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. POTUS courts Putin, too. The Post’s Editorial Board wags its finger: “President Obama has portrayed Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a ruler with whom he can build a ‘constructive, cooperative relationship that moves us out of a Cold War mind-set.’ It’s a blinkered view that willfully ignores the Russian president’s behavior.”
2. Don’t fold when there are Afghan chips on the table. USA Today’s Khaled Hosseini sees gains we must not abandon: “There are today two main story lines when it comes to Afghanistan: the scheduled pullout of the U.S. troops in 2014, and what a hopeless cause the country has turned out to be. The widely accepted impression is that, for all the resources poured into Afghanistan, little of value has been achieved on the ground. The implication is that continued engagement in the country’s future will only lead to disappointment. Though this view is, at least on the surface, understandable, it does not depict a full picture of the reality. In fact, a great deal has been achieved in Afghanistan, some of it quite dramatic.”
3. Just one word. The Beast’s Eleanor Clift audits IRS language: “Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen has an idea so simple it’s a wonder that it hasn’t been acted upon before now. He is joining with two campaign finance watchdog groups to file suit against the IRS to require the agency to follow the law that says tax-exempt status can be granted to groups ‘exclusively’ engaged in social welfare, striking a 1959 IRS regulation that allows groups ‘primarily’ engaged in these activities to gain favorable tax status. ‘You don’t have to be an English major to know they have entirely different meanings,’ Van Hollen told The Daily Beast. ‘The law had a very bright line test. The IRS would never have been in this mess if the IRS had properly interpreted the law.’”
THE FUNNIES
1. Taliban poker.
2. Some thanks.
3. Malala Yousafzai.
