Computer Sciences Corp. is America’s third-largest IT outsourcing company, with billions of dollars in defense-related contracts. InformationWeek reports that sources close to New York City-based Blackstone Group list the firm among possible buyers, while the Wall Street Journal has reported that Warburg Pincus, Texas Pacific Group and Lockheed Martin also are looking at CSC.
Still, any buyer is likely to face heavy scrutiny from both the Pentagon and private industry, from security checks on key investors to contract cancellation threats and close attention to debt rating changes. InformationWeek has more.
DID has covered the Aerospace Industries Association’s recent report showing the US aerospace industry’s global trade surplus, and testimony re: defense procurement improvvements. AIA also notes that the average American aerospace employee is in his or her 50s, far older than the levels that prevail in other high-technology sectors. Fully 27% of aerospace workers will become eligible for retirement by 2008.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed an AIA-supported bill to create a federal inter-agency task force on aerospace workforce revitalization, which charges 11 executive branch agencies, including NASA and the Defense and Homeland Security departments, to identify new aerospace workforce opportunities through a variety of scholarship, training, and recruitment programs in partnership with the private sector and state governments.
House and Senate conferees working to resolve differences in the FY 2006 appropriations bill have eliminated research funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) weapon during the reconciliation process. The funding had been present in the Senate bill, but not in the House bill. Senator Pete Domenici [R-NM] said that “The focus will now be with the Defense Department and its research to earth penetrating technology using conventional weaponry…”
“Boeing’s heritage building UFO spacecraft is a key component of the MUOS program. “Successful completion of the PDR phase demonstrates that the design of the Boeing-built payload will deliver enhanced narrowband connectivity to the U.S. Navy. We are proud of our role in providing ubiquitous voice, video and data to warfighters on the ground, in the air, and on the seas,” said Michael Gianelli, Boeing’s vice president of national security communications programs.”
You know, we had always wondered about those rumors…
Lockheed Martin Systems Integration-Oswego in Oswego, NY received a $76.6 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract in support of Phase II of the MH-60S‘ Airborne Mine Countermeasures System’s (AMCM) Development and Demonstration process. This initiative involves the use of the new MH-60 Seahawk helicopter outfitted with new AMCM systems:
Biometrics (identification via unique body elements like fingerprints, retina profiles, etc.) is a hot field, but good security always depends on overlapping modes. The 9/11 attacks highlighted the need to improve accurate personal identification in large scale, high volume environments, and so the US government initiated a number of related research activities. Multimodal biometric-based recognition emerged as one of the most promising technologies.
In an effort to develop an advanced multimodal biometric recognition system that will improve positive identification while reducing misidentification and avoiding processing delays, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory has awarded Ultra-Scan Corporation a Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) Phase II contract aimed at creating an Automatic Multimodal Biometric Identification System suitable for large-scale, high-traffic identification points, such as airports and border crossings.
On Tuesday, DID covered the creation of the Pentagon’s new Business Transformation Agency, which aims to move dozens of its most extensive business modernization programs under a single roof. Now Army Major Gen. Carlos “Butch” Pair has been selected to serve as business systems acquisition executive, managing all projects that extend across the military services. Meanwhile, Defense Deputy Undersecretary for Business Transformation Paul Brinkley and Defense Deputy Undersecretary for Financial Management Thomas Modly will continue to lead the BTA overall until a director is appointed.
GovExec.com reports on this latest move, and also notes that the US Defense Department has budgeted $4.2 billion in FY 2006 for business transformation efforts. $777.7 million of those funds are slated to go to departmentwide projects. The FY 2007 budget numbers are projected at $4.19 billion overall, with $739.5 million allocated for departmentwide efforts.
