* Procurement data crunched by Bloomberg Government shows a surge of federal contract cancellations with 13,579 contracts worth $2.15B cancelled during the current – and almost finished – fiscal year. Some of these cancellations may be recompeted and are thus really postponed rather than terminated.
* US Army TACOM Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC) issued draft RFP W56HZV-12-R-0034 [PDF] for Joint Logistics Integrator (JLI) services for MRAP vehicles. The idea is to pool needs from all US and foreign MRAP users with a 1-year contract (extendable to 3) involving 2.1 million man hours of service to support operational readiness. The formal RFP is planned for mid-October 2012 will proposals due the next month and an award made by the end of May 2013. The document notes an organizational conflict of interest with ManTech, the prime contractor of Contractor Logistics Sustainment and Support (CLSS) as the JLI will have to monitor them.
* The latest Defense AT&L [PDF] features an article that channels Nassim Nicholas Taleb and pushes back against bogus quantitative risk assessment methodologies. Also: how to form an integrated product team (IPT), and an interesting question: why is DoD not making money off commercial use of GPS?
* The US Air Force is working on its doctrine for the use of UAVs in airspace defended by a military peer, rather than the relatively permissive skies where they have been used so far.
* According to the WaPo, a group suspected of al-Qaeda links is growing its footprint in Syria.
* US Senator Jim Webb [D-VA] calls attention to the South China Sea’s gathering storm. He has been pushing since last year for the Senate to voice its opposition to the way China is handling itself in the region. Earlier this year the upper chamber passed resolution S.Res. 524 “reaffirming the strong support of the United States for the 2002 declaration of conduct of parties in the South China Sea among the member states of ASEAN and the People’s Republic of China.” An editorial in the NYT also called for diplomatic but firm involvement from the US.
* New Zealand will probably withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in early 2013 rather than at the end of that year, announced their Prime Minister John Key.