FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
Joint Personnel Adjudication System (JPAS) advice. “The JPAS incident reporting system is a broken one ripe for abuse. It needlessly impacts careers. The bureaucracy involved is mind-boggling. . . . In other words, there is nothing that we, you, your employer, or your FSO can do to force the resolution of a JPAS incident report. To explain why, here are answers to some of your most frequently asked questions.”
Smart cleared social networking. “By now, you’ve probably heard that your social media presence has the potential to affect your security clearance and consequently, your job. What exactly does that mean for you? It means the days of carefree posting are gone and it’s time to make your social media sites look professional. If you’re unsure if you should take down those bachelor party photos (you should) or how to restrict your posts to friends only, read on.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
Operational in Romania—the SM-3 ballistic missile interceptor. “The building at Devesulu, which houses radar and 12 interceptor missile tubes, appears remarkably similar to the ‘sensors and shooters’ that have already been placed on US Aegis warships. . . . Devesulu is the first land-based ballistic interceptor system to be set up in Europe.” (BBC News)
Navy commander fired over Gulf incident. “The U.S. Navy said on Thursday that it had fired the commander of the 10 American sailors who wandered into Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf in January and were briefly held by Iran in an incident that risked becoming an international crisis. The Navy said in a statement that it had lost confidence in Commander Eric Rasch, who was the executive officer of the coastal riverine squadron that included the 10 sailors. (Reuters)
SecDef’s commitments of leadership. “Defense Secretary Ash Carter today shared four commitments that guide him and asked the cadets of the U.S. Air Force Academy to adapt them to their circumstances. Carter spoke to the about half of the cadets who attend the academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The first commitment, the secretary said, is ‘to ground all of your training, all of your thinking and all of your actions in our core mission of the Department of Defense.’” (Defense Media Activity)
CONTRACT WATCH
Danes pick F-35. “The Danish Prime minister and defense minister Denmark confirmed today the Danish government recommendation to buy 27 F-35A Lightning II aircraft for the F-16A/B Fighter Replacement Program (FRP). The three competitors have submitted bids for 24, 30 and 36 aircraft to the Danish ministry of defense Project Office. Denmark had originally sought bids for up to 48 aircraft to replace the Danish Air Force’s aging F-16s, acquired in the 1980s. The program is expected to cost $4.5 billion.” (Defense Update)
Sunset for F-16, F-15, and F/A-18. “Without more orders by the U.S. military or its allies, production of these three planes which gave America supremacy of the skies for more than four decades, will halt by 2020. Lockheed and Boeing, the firms that build these warplanes, are actively seeking customers for these jets, but they’re in far different predicaments. Lockheed is about to quadruple production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a plane that it plans to sell to the U.S. and its allies for 30 years or longer.” (Defense One)
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
NSA’s Trailblazer & How Contracting Changed the World. “On September 12, 2001, Bill Binney snuck back into work at the NSA dressed like cleaning staff so he could try to help understand who had attacked the United States. A top NSA mathematician, Binney had rolled out a sophisticated metadata analysis system called ThinThread, only to have it canceled less than a month before 9/11. Top executives at the agency had decided a clunky program called Trailblazer, contracted out to the intelligence contractor giant SAIC, would be NSA’s future, not the cheaper, more effective and privacy-protective ThinThread.” (Salon)
OPM shores up cybersecurity. “Earlier this year, red-team hackers at the Homeland Security Department, tasked with purposefully probing weak spots in agency security, ran into an unexpected problem at the Office of Personnel Management. The security of the notoriously hacked agency was actually too strong. . . . That’s a far cry from a year ago when OPM announced hackers had surreptitiously broken into the agency’s networks going back years, and copied massive amounts of data . . . .” (Nextgov)
