FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Spear-Phishing. Oops, I did it again. With an onslaught of attacks, Editor Lindy Kyzer echoes the FBI and warns and informs: “In general, avoid following links sent in e-mails, especially when the sender is someone you do not know or appears to be from a business advising that your account information needs updated.” How was I supposed to know that something wasn’t right here?
2. Coast Guard might take Air Force hand-me-downs to help make ends meet. Contributor Marc Selinger highlights Capitol Hill’s concerns surround Coast Guard’s dwindling budget: “At a June 26 hearing of the House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee, key lawmakers expressed concern that the Coast Guard is not getting enough funding to replace its decades-old ships and other aging systems at an adequate pace. The Coast Guard intends to spend $5.1 billion on acquisition over the next five years, a 33 percent cut from its previous five-year plan.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. SecDef’s Independence Day Message: “Those who serve in our armed forces, and their families, have given much in the name of defending the ideals and free institutions we often take for granted. Today, as we celebrate our nation’s birth, let us honor their dutiful service and strive to be worthy of their tremendous sacrifices.”
2. Egyptian Independence (from radical fundamentalists) Day. Adly Mansour, Supreme Justice of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court sworn in as interim president. AP Hamza Hendawi reports from Cairo: “According to military decree, Mansour will serve as Egypt’s interim leader until a new president is elected. A date for that vote has yet to be set. Manosur’s assumption of office comes a day after the military deposed Morsi, who took office a year ago as Egypt’s first democratically elected president.”
3. More U.S. Navy Patrol Coastal (PC) Vessels gives destroyers breathing room. DefenseNews.Com’s Chris Cavas reports, “The growth in the PC force, combined with the reduction of land operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, is allowing the US to reduce the number of destroyer deployments to the region . . . . ‘I can’t speak to specific numbers,” [Capt. Joseph Naman, commander of Bahrain-based Destroyer Squadron 50 serving the Fifth Fleet] said, ‘but we’re going to try and reset with [the reduced] operational tempo. We’re going to stretch out [destroyer] deployments. There will be some amount fewer than what we had in the heyday of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are trying to get back to a more long-term sustainable pace of deployment.’”
4. I want you to want me. Karzai seeks reassurances from Administration. New York Times’ Matthew Rosenberg and Azam Ahmed report, “Mr. Karzai’s increasingly harsh response to American initiatives in recent years has struck some officials as verging on paranoia. But Afghans close to him say it is consistent with his view of the United States as an unreliable ally.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Lockheed International sales growth predicted. Anthony Osborne of AviationWeek.Com reports, “With its U.S. business in the throes of sequestration, Lockheed Martin is ramping up its efforts to increase its share of the international aerospace and defense market. As a result, the company is forming a new subsidiary, Lockheed Martin International (LMI), which will be charged with pushing the company’s products to the global market.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. So there’s good news? According to GovExec.Com contributor Josh Meyer, yes: “There Are 42% Fewer New Secrets for Future Edward Snowdens to Leak.” Meyer reports, “One of the reasons former NSA contractor Edward Snowden was able to get away with stealing top-secret documents about government surveillance programs is because Washington’s system of classifying national security information is badly broken. So many entire categories of data are classified—from how surveillance programs like PRISM work to the altitude at which US warplanes fly—that an astounding 4.9 million people are required to have “Top Secret” clearances just to do their jobs as government officials or, like Snowden, as private-sector contractors working on defense and intelligence matters.” So . . . what’s the bad news?
2. NASA goes UAS. AviationWeek.Com reports, “NASA and Rockwell Collins have completed the first phase of flight-testing on a new public-use airborne data link designed to safely and securely connect ground-based pilots to all types of civil unmanned aircraft in the U.S. national airspace system. The research, development and testing is part of a broader portfolio of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) work underway at NASA, including sense- and-avoid technologies.”
3. Airline of the Future. No kidding. Wired.Com’s Jason Paur makes flying sexy again: “The European airline industry has seen the future of aviation. It’s sleek and organic, carries a sextet of turbines, and its powertrain works a lot like the Chevrolet Volt. The European aerospace consortium EADS has recently shown everything from its largest airliner, the Airbus A380, to its latest electric airplane idea, the E-Fan. But tucked inside the company’s huge chalet at the Paris Air Show was a small model where the two concepts meet — in 2050.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. What now with Egypt? WaPo’s Glenn Kessler maps the traps of POTUS’ statement, “’The way we make decisions about assistance to Egypt is based on: Are they in fact following rule of law and democratic procedures? And we don’t make those decisions just by counting the number of heads in a protest march, but we do make decisions based on whether or not a government is listening to the opposition, maintaining a free press, maintaining freedom of assembly, not using violence or intimidation, conducting fair and free elections.’”
