• The Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs released a report [PDF] on the Chinese Navy’s capabilities and roles that concludes the PLAN is extending its reach and has initiated a serious C4ISR effort.

• An MQ-9 Reaper operated by the USAF in the Seychelles crashed while it was landing.

• Speaking of which, China is considering using the Indian Ocean island as a resupply port for its ships involved in anti-piracy operations.

• The US Air Force will lift tomorrow the hiring freeze it put in place last August.

• The Naval Research Laboratory Vehicle Research Section said it completed flight tests for its Autonomous Deployment Demonstration (ADD) back in September. The tests involve lightweight unmanned gliders loaded with sensors and launched from other airborne vehicles such as balloons.

• The US Army Contracting Command (ACC) is sharing with interested parties the updated JLTV draft purchase description as a Telelogic DOORS database.

• The US Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) is deploying a new automated task management system creatively dubbed Task Management Tracker (TMT) by Microsoft. The software was already in use in the Air Force.

• Here’s the F-35 concurrency quick look review report [leaked FOUO PDF] that has been reported about in the past few days.

• Booz Allen Hamilton is open to making acquisitions. The broader business context next year is that primes may rely less on subcontracting.

• An IAF Sukhoi-30 MKI crashed yesterday. The crew of 2 ejected safely.

• Harris Corporation opens a 573,000 square-foot plant in Henrietta near Rochester, NY in to consolidate production of tactical radios and other communication systems. About 1,100 people will work there.

• DFARS clarification: a Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) must be an employee, military or civilian, of the U.S. Government, a foreign government, or a NATO/coalition partner, in other words private contractors cannot serve as a COR. This rule denies a request from Headquarters NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A) to permit the designation of non-U.S. Government employees as CORs in support of the NTM-A’s efforts to train the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF).

• US Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command (MICC) tweaks its acquisition process by introducing the Acquisition Milestone Agreement (AMA) to replace the Milestone Tracking Report by January next year. This change is meant to reduce the number of missed milestones by making contracting officers team with their requiring counterparts earlier. MICC plans, awards and administers contracts for Army Commands, Direct Reporting Units and other organizations.

• If Taiwan is confirmed not to get F-16C/Ds but merely upgrades to older planes, then they might ask for F-35s. Come again? Defense News saw a Letter of Intent showing interest going back to 2002 with a focus on short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL), in case conventional runways were destroyed by Chinese missiles.

• Chairman of the US House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon (R-CA) told Fox News that were the supercommittee unable to reach a deal, deep defense spending cuts could mean an it would be tough to stick to an all-volunteer force. AviationWeek says the Pentagon and the defense industry “are joined at the hip” in defending the DoD budget from cuts.

• But if large cuts happen anyway, expect another round of consolidation as well as efforts to increase civilian sales among prime contractors.

• The House of Representatives will vote today on a Continuing Resolution since the FY12 budget has not been wrapped up yet and the new fiscal year is about to begin.

• This morning the House Technology and Innovation Subcommittee is having a hearing on cloud computing with testimonies from VCE (a joint venture between Cisco, EMC, VMware and Intel), EMC and Microsoft.

• About-to-retire Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the video embedded below:
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Cloud Computing Diagram

The term “cloud computing” has been floating around the commercial IT sector for a number of years. It describes how large-scale computer infrastructure can tap the power of the Internet to perform complex tasks. Cloud computing allows organizations to save money and increase flexibility by using shared IT resources, such as applications, storage devices, and servers.

The DoD wants to tap into those benefits. In May 5/09 testimony [pdf] before a US House panel, Pentagon cybersecurity official Robert Lentz offered the following prediction about the benefits of cloud computing for DoD:

“A cloud is…an ideal place from which to make capabilities available to the whole enterprise. While, in the DoD, we have encountered challenges moving towards a service-oriented architecture (SOA), in the private sector, companies like Google and Salesforce are basing their business models on an insatiable public hunger for software and applications as a service. Emulating their delivery mechanisms within our own private cloud may be key to how we realize the true potential of net-centricity.”

This free-to-view DID Spotlight article examines the development of cloud computing and how DoD is tapping into that technology for its computer networks, as well as the challenges faced by DoD in its effort.

• Cloud Computing: The Basics
• Service with a Smile: Cloud Service Types
• DISA’s RACE to the Cloud
• There’s an App for That: DoD’s Storefront
• Storm Clouds Ahead: Top Security Threats
• Weather Forecast: Partly Cloudy
• Additional Readings and Sources
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The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded a $31 million contract to a team lead by Lockheed Martin to develop a network protocol to improve the confidentiality, integrity, and security of US military networks.

In developing this new protocol, Lockheed Martin’s team will develop router technologies that include strong authentication and self-configuration capabilities to improve security and bandwidth allocation and lower overall life cycle costs for network management.

Lockheed Martin’s team includes Microsoft, Juniper Networks, Anagran, Stanford University, and LGS Innovations, which has been quite active in securing military IT business on its own…

The Defense Security Assistance Management System (and see DISAM Journal 2000 review) is a worldwide automated information system that is used for managing the USA’s multi-billion Foreign Military Sales Program. Legal restrictions concerning military technology transfers force all purchases to be managed as FMS purchases, and DSAMS was designed to replace 13 automated information systems used by US agencies to perform this role. It is currently programmed using Sun Microsystems’ Unified Development Server environment, formerly known as Forte.

Now Softsol Technologies Inc. has received a firm-fixed-price contract for $11 million to transform the business application software using Transactional Object-Oriented Language, to Microsoft’s .NET programming framework. At this time, all funds have been obligated (HQ0013-08-C-0002). For more information please call (703) 604-6566. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), Defense Contracting, DBO-CON, in Arlington VA.

EST Program

On August 4, 2005, DefenseLINK announced that ITT Industries Inc., DBA Advanced Engineering & Sciences in Reston, VA won a 10-year, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract with the Defense Information Systems Agency, Joint Spectrum Center. This contract “will provide the Joint Spectrum Center with electromagnetic spectrum engineering services, to include engineering and analysis; information management; standards development and application; measurement, testing, and evaluation; modeling and simulation; research and evaluation of emerging technologies; interference resolution; and ordnance risk assessment.”

What does that mean, why is this award to an ITT-led team important, and who is on the team?

Government Technology Services Inc. in Chantilly, VA received a delivery order amount of $24 million as part of a $126.9 million firm-fixed-price contract for Microsoft select variable software license for the family of existing Microsoft products. Work will be performed in Falls Church, VA and is expected to be complete by May 31, 2008. This was a sole source contract initiated on April 17, 2002 by the Defense Contracting Command in Arlington, VA (DASW01-02-F-1062).

ProSight
(click to expand)

The Army Small Computer Program spent $5 million to purchase 5,000 licenses of ProSight Portfolios and ProSight Fast Track software on April 21, 2005, in order to help implement project portfolio management servicewide. ProSight is compatible with Microsoft Project.

Army Chief Information Officer Lt. Gen. Steve Boutelle said he believes the products will help better track the service’s 4,500 systems and better spend its annual IT budget ($6.1 billion requested for FY 2006), becoming the U.S. Army’s system of record for IT investments and systems and helping the service identify inefficient or redundant IT systems or investments.

The U.S. National Science Foundation expects to provide almost $19 million in funding over five years to the TRUST (Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology) consortium. The aim of TRUST’s research is to create new technologies – and perhaps even new social institutions – that will make it possible to build computer software and networks that are inherently secure. “Security” here means not only protection against outside attacks, but also reliability of service and preservation of data.

Academic institutions involved are Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, Mills College, San Jose State University, Smith College, Stanford University and Vanderbilt University. Industrial and other partners are Bellsouth, Cisco Systems, ESCHER (a research consortium that includes Boeing, General Motors and Raytheon), Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Qualcomm, Sun Microsystems and Symantec.

They are coming

A couple of weeks ago, DID noted that Microsoft may be making a push for a larger share of the defense market in the area of interoperability and collaboration. It would appear that those predictions are beginning to come true.

Microsoft has just launched a public relations campaign to highlight the role of the company’s products in the military’s data-sharing and network-centric warfare operations. This push is apparently part of their determination to pursue new work in major military programs, including the $10 billion dollar Net-Centric Enterprise Services contract and $2 billion Space Operations Center Weapon System Integrator contract.