Apocalypse ISIS, DARPA’s Spaceplane, and Collaborative Intel

Friday Follies & Friday Read—Last True Hermit

FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM

1. Classification issues. Contributor Charles Simmins reports, “Security classification issues have been making news for some time now. Congress is making some modest attempts to improve the system, despite pushback from the Administration. Still, large numbers of documents, particularly those produced by Congress itself, remain untouched by any reforms.”

2. Clearance—private processes. Also from Charles Simmins, “Private contractors are subject to the same clearance procedures as direct government employees. While the process is the same, you may notice some minor differences in procedure, if you’ve worked directly for the Federal Government in the past. Before moving your security clearance forward, the contractor must inform their government customer – the sponsoring agency of the security clearance – that you require access to classified materials. Once the contractor receives the final determination, the security clearance process can be formally initiated.”

THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT

1. Apocalypse ISIS. New York Times’ Helen Cooper and Michael Gordon report, “The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria cannot be defeated unless the United States or its allies take on the Sunni militancy in Syria, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday afternoon. ‘This is an organization that has an apocalyptic end-of-days strategic vision that will eventually have to be defeated,’ the chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey said . . . . ‘can they be defeated without addressing that part of the organization that resides in Syria? The answer is no.’ . . . Pressed about whether the United States would attempt airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria, Mr. Hagel said, ‘We’re looking at all options.’” See also, Congressional views on ISIS, “Commanders Want To Expand Iraq Airstrikes,” “ISIS developing means to ‘blow up’ a US city,”

2. Tunneling to Egypt. Reuters reports, “A third of the houses on the main street of this Bedouin town near Egypt’s border with Gaza look derelict, but inside they buzz with the activity of tunnel smugglers scrambling to survive a security crackdown by the Egyptian army. Smugglers and tunnel owners, who once publicly advertised their services, have taken over the nearly two dozen single-story concrete structures and boarded up their doors and windows to avoid the attention of the authorities. While tunnels used by Gaza’s dominant Hamas militants to infiltrate Israel were a priority target of an Israeli offensive in the Palestinian enclave this summer, many smuggling conduits into Egypt have skirted detection.”

3. Japan—BYOF (build your own fighter). DefenseNews.Com reports, “Japan is considering building its own fighter jets after years of playing second fiddle in a US construction partnership . . . in a move likely to stoke fears of its military resurgence among Asian neighbors. Japan’s attempt in the 1980s to build its first purely domestic fighters since World War II faced US resistance and resulted in joint US-Japan development and production of the F-2 . . . . The defense ministry plans to seek about ¥40 billion ($387 million) in state funding for the next year starting in April 2015 to test experimental engines and radar-dodging stealth airframe designs for a purely Japanese fighter . . . .”

CONTRACT WATCH

1. Northrop Grumman’s spaceplane. AviationWeek.Com’s Graham Warwick reports, “Northrop Grumman has unveiled its vertical-launch, horizontal-landing reusable booster design for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (Darpa) XS-1 experimental spaceplane program. Northrop, teamed with subsidiary Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic, is working under a 13-month, $3.9 million Phase 1 preliminary-design contract, awarded in July. Contracts also went to Boeing with Blue Origin, and Masten Space Systems with XCOR Aerospace.”

2. Innovative contracting of the future. NextGov.Com’s Jack Moore reports, “With no plans to return to the moon anytime soon in NASA’s future, the space agency decided to challenge private sector teams, including small startups and academia, to come up with ways to safely land commercial lunar landers on the moon’s surface and transmit data back to Earth. None of the six teams selected by NASA to compete for the Google Lunar X PRIZE—which carries total prize winnings of $30 million and a Dec. 31, 2015, deadline—is a ‘traditional’ government contractor.”

TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY

1. Collaborative intel. Reuters’ David Axe and Robert Beckhusen report, “In a fast-moving war with an elusive foe like the Islamic State militants, information is as important as guns, jet fighters and bombs. . . . The Pentagon’s escalating campaign against Islamic State fighters in Iraq depends completely on reliable information. It’s about collecting as much intelligence as possible and piecing it together. Two schools of intelligence have often vied for primacy—signals intelligence from electronic eavesdropping and aerial surveillance versus human intelligence. Yet the most effective military attacks call on all sources of information.”

2. Smarter IT. FederalTimes.Com’s Beth Cobert, et. al., report, “As technology changes, government must change with it to address new challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. This Administration has made important strides in modernizing government so that it serves its constituents more effectively and efficiently, but we know there is much more to do. . . . This effort also reminded us why the President’s commitment to bringing more of the nation’s top information technology (IT) talent into government is so critical to delivering the best possible results for our customers—the American people.” See also, “White House Gives Up on Making Coders Dress Like Adults.”

3. Smart surveillance. NextGov.Com’s Zach Wener-Fligner reports, “When a criminal duo labeled the ‘High Country Bandits’ robbed a series of Arizona and Colorado banks in 2009 and 2010, FBI investigators turned to the owners of local cell phone towers. A federal judge signed a court order authorizing a ‘tower dump’ of call metadata from towers nearby the robbery sites. . . . The metadata received by investigators contained 150,000 numbers in plain text. Only two phone numbers were present at every crime scene. Investigators traced these back to their owners, the bank robbers, who were arrested and later convicted.”

POTOMAC TWO-STEP

1. He’s on VACATION! “President Obama was slammed by some critics on Wednesday for hitting the golf course a short time after making a solemn statement on the execution of an American journalist. But if Obama is concerned about the optics of his golf outings, he sure didn’t seem to show it when he hit the links once again on Thursday. The president—on a nearly two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.—took in some time on the course Thursday afternoon . . . . It is the 8th round of golf for Obama during his summer vacation. Critics including Karl Rove, the former Bush adviser, blamed Obama for being unconcerned with the optics of his golf outing after denouncing the execution of James Foley, the American journalist.”

2. Smoke on the Boehner: “Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) declared his distaste for the smoking habit of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in an interview published Thursday. ‘I try to sit as far away from him as I can in meetings that I know are going to be stressful,’ Ryan told Time magazine. ‘I just hate getting that smell in my clothes,’ he added. Most of the Q&A is behind a paywall, but Political Wire highlighted Ryan’s dig at the speaker’s well-publicized habit.”

OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS

1. “Why America Should Declare War on the Islamic State.” DefenseOne.Com contributor James Kitfield argues, “Congress balked at authorizing military force in Syria, and there’s a risk it could do so again with Iraq. Given the much higher stakes involved and the growing threat posed by ISIS—and the alternative of the White House continuing to act alone, tentative about overstepping its own limited objectives—that’s a risk worth taking.”

2. “Was Iraq Worth It? It Was for Me.” Wall Street Journal contributor Brian Welke argues, “There was justice in an unjust land. All those who served in Iraq, and especially the families of those who fell there, should take pride in the fact that we stood for something larger than ourselves.”

3. “How to Save the Net: Break Up the NSA.” Wired.Com contributor Bruce Schneier argues that “separating the current functions of the NSA along legal lines rather than technical capabilities is how we can protect ourselves from an overly aggressive agency. Breaking up the NSA would ensure that security trumps surveillance, and openness trumps secrecy. It’s how we regain the trust we’ve lost.”