Furlough Fuel. A Democratic congressman offers two bills to stop the furloughs of civilian Pentagon employees, though there is no indication the legislation will gain any traction. One of the bills from Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) would exempt all civilian personnel in the Pentagon from the forced unpaid leave triggered by the sequestration budget cuts. It would require the savings that would be reaped by the furloughs come from other parts of the Pentagon budget. “I’m not waiting around while congressional leaders spend all their time blaming each other,” Barrow says in a July 9 statement. “My legislation keeps civilian employees on the job, and forces the (Department of Defense) DoD to find cuts elsewhere in the budget.” Barrow’s second, more-limited bill would exempt from furloughs just those civilian Pentagon employees who served on active duty since the Budget Control Act of 2011 was passed.
Sequester Stance. Aerospace Industries Association President and CEO Marion Blakey says she is “gravely concerned” about the information in the sequestration contingency plan Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sends SASC leaders on July 10. Hagel describes how the Pentagon would cut $52 billion in FY ’14 if lawmakers can’t agree on a plan to stop the $500 billion in decade-long cuts. “Like Secretary Hagel, our members support President Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget and strongly oppose further cuts of the magnitude required under the Budget Control Act,” Blakey says in a July 12 statement. Obama’s budget would stop sequestration through steps Republicans reject, including increasing taxes, and then would replace the $500 billion cut with $150 billion in defense reductions that would fall mainly in later years. Blakey says AIA urges Congress and Obama “to repeal sequestration before the end of the current fiscal year and work together with industry to find bipartisan strategic solutions that yield greater cost savings and operational efficiencies over 10 years that can exceed those gained through sequestration.”
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Dempsey’s Take. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey says on July 9 that it is “discouraging and disappointing” that civilian Pentagon personnel are being forced to take furlough days, which started last week. In a video message on his Facebook page, Dempsey says sequestration’s effects have been delayed since the cuts started in March, though they are now becoming apparent in readiness. “Those effects will deepen, they’ll be difficult to overcome,” he says. “Once again though, it will take solid leadership and communications as we try to understand what we can accomplish and what we cannot.” He calls sequestration “illogical,” saying Pentagon leaders will “articulate the consequences and…work our way, hopefully, toward a better outcome.”
Syrian Concerns. SASC Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) says the United States needs to “do more to increase the military pressure” on Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has started using chemical weapons against his own people. Addressing the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on July 10, Levin notes a report that the CIA plans to arm small groups of Syrian opposition fighters with light weapons and possibly anti-tank missiles, and calls for expanding those efforts to help the Syrian people wage a successful insurgency. Levin wants the United States to join with other countries in the region who oppose the Assad regime to “comprehensively plan additional steps to up the military pressure on the Assad regime.” The United States “can and should support the Syrian people’s struggle by helping train and equip them and by helping establish a broad international coalition to increase the military pressure on the Assad regime,” the SASC chairman says.
Political Correctness. The failure to acknowledge the common thread behind terrorist attacks within and without the United States makes it harder to “identify and stop attacks in advance,” Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor of New York City during the 9/11 attacks, tells the House Homeland Security Committee. That “common cause” is “to advance the goals of Islamic extremism,” yet “the message being conveyed from the top is that it is inappropriate to label someone an ‘Islamic extremist’ no matter how compelling the suspicions,” he says during a hearing to assess attacks on the homeland the last four years. Without properly labeling the enemy, the “bureaucracies” charged with identifying and stopping the terrorists are “paralyzed by the fear of incorrectly identifying someone as an Islamic extremist terrorist,” he says. Political correctness led the failure to identify Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, as a suspected terrorist, he says.
…Not a Factor. Michael Leiter, who directed the National Counterterrorism Center between 2007 and 2011, disagrees with Giuliani’s assessment. Leiter, who is now the senior counselor at Palantir Technologies, tells the committee that based on his six-plus years working in the intelligence community for two presidents, “the idea that political correctness, in any systematic way affected our efforts to find, locate and either kill or arrest terrorists is simply beyond me. “ He agrees, though, that the U.S. needs to do a better job of recognizing radicalized individuals and for intelligence and law enforcement agencies to have better training to understand radicalization.
Iraqi boats. The Navy has delivered the final of 12 patrol boats to the Iraqi government as part of a program to replenish the country’s ability to enforce security in the northern Persian Gulf. The 35-meter patrol boat (PB-312) was turned over to the Iraqis earlier this month after it completed reactivation in Bahrain, home to the U.S. 5th Fleet. “The team successfully delivered all 12 important assets to the Iraqi navy, supporting Iraq’s security requirements,” says Frank McCarthey, program manager for support ships, boats and craft. The boats are armed with a 30mm gun weapon system, can carry a crew of 25, and are capable of reaching 30 knots. The Navy partnered with Swiftships Shipbuilders of Morgan City, La., in supplying the vessels.
NG’s HRG. Northrop Grumman’s patented hemispherical resonator gyro (HRG) technology recently achieves a major milestone of 25 million hours of continuous operation without a single mission failure, according to a company statement. HRG, since 1996, has been a vital component of Northrop Grumman’s Scalable Space Inertial Reference Unit (Scalable SIRU) and its predecessor, the Space Inertial Reference Unit (SIRU), which enable the stabilization, tracking and attitude control of spacecraft and satellites. The HRG’s construction from three pieces of machined quartz, including a thin-walled quartz shell sensing element, makes it highly reliable and naturally radiation-hardened in any space environment. HRG has been launched aboard more than 125 spacecraft.
AEHF-3 Arrives. The Air Force and Lockheed Martin successfully deliver the third Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) communications satellite to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., in preparation for its fall launch, according to a service statement. AEHF-3 completed its California to Florida journey July 10 aboard a C-5 aircraft operated out of Travis AFB, Calif. Over the next several months, the satellite will undergo final launch preparations, including encapsulation in the rocket’s payload fairing, and transport to Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral for integration with one of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V launch vehicles. ULA is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
NASA and Japan. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) President Naoki Okumura meet July 10 in Washington to discuss the importance of international cooperation in space, especially the continued support for the International Space Station (ISS), according to a NASA statement. Both Bolden and Okumura discussed NASA’s plans for a new asteroid initiative and Okumura welcomed the opportunity to discuss JAXA’s potential contribution based on experience through its Hayabusa asteroid sample return mission. This is Okumura’s first bilateral meeting with NASA since being named JAXA’s president in April.
Digital Video Lab III. The Air Force July 10 awards SRI International a $230 million contract for hardware, software, prototype systems, spiral software enhancements and installation training support for the Digital Video Laboratory III (DVL III), according to a service statement. The basic contract is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract with work expected to be completed by July 2014. DVL III is to provide sharing of data between customer databases and the Digital Multimedia Management System (DMMS), advanced search techniques, motion imagery compression, image fusion from out-of-band imaging sensors, real-time motion image encryption phenomena formulation, motion image forensic analysis and algorithm and formulation of unexpected imaging phenomena, among others, according to a notice posted on Federal Business Opportunities.
DEAMS Award. The Air Force awards Accenture a $42 million contract to support the second phase of continued development activities for the Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System (DEAMS), according to a company statement. DEAMS, the Air Force’s principal financial transformation initiative, integrates data and processes across the service, U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS). DEAMS has a rocky history, as it is 7.5 years behind schedule and its original lifecycle cost estimate has more than quintupled to over $2 billion, according to the Defense Department’s director, operational test & evaluation (DOT&E) office.
Rolls-Royce HEETE. Rolls-Royce completes testing on a new, advanced technology focusing on reduced fuel consumption, according to a company statement. Rolls-Royce’s Highly Energy Efficient Turbine Engine (HEETE) compressor successfully demonstrates its ultra-high pressure ratio performance goal and an ability to manage component temperatures at ultra-high ratio design conditions through advanced thermal management. During testing at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the HEETE compressor achieves the highest pressure ever demonstrated at AFRL’s compression research facility, located at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. While this initial HEETE testing was focused on an advanced compressor demonstration, the goal is to define the next generation engine architecture for subsonic missions such as transports; tankers; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and subsonic strike vehicles.
EPS CAPS PDR. Northrop Grumman conducts the Enhanced Polar System (EPS) Control and Planning Segment (CAPS) preliminary design review (PDR) and software requirements and architecture review, according to a company statement. The EPS system provides space-enabled, secure communications capabilities to polar users in support of national objectives. EPS CAPS supplies telemetry and control, mission planning and cryptographic planning for the EPS payload. The design reviews concentrate on ensuring that all CAPS requirements have been allocated and reviews plans for the software architecture development to include segment and element designs, specialty engineering analysis, plans for verification and validation as well as program risk updates.
New Galactic Prez. Steven Isakowitz becomes president of Virgin Galactic LLC, according to a company statement. Isakowitz has served as executive vice president and chief technology officer (CTO) since he joined the company in 2011 and will continue to report directly to Virgin Galactic and Spaceship Company CEO George Whitesides. Isakowitz has also served in several senior positions in the federal government, including NASA, where he served as deputy associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate and received the agency’s outstanding leadership medal.
Future ISS Members. NASA and its international partners appoint three ISS crew members to round out future expeditions, according to an agency statement. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko are scheduled to launch in June 2015. They will join three Expedition 44 crew members in orbit and will remain aboard as part of Expedition 45. The Expedition 45 crew will also include NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov.
Serco Receives Award. Serco Inc. says it has won the 2013 James S. Cogswell Outstanding Industrial Achievement Award from the DoD Defense Security Services. Serco is one of 24 recipients, chosen from more than 13,500 defense contractors. The award recognizes a cleared defense contractor that demonstrates industrial security excellence. “We are honored to receive the Cogswell Award in recognition of our dedication and focus on security excellence,” says Ed Casey, Serco’s chairman and CEO. “Our team here at Serco recognizes that national security impacts the safety of our warfighters and our Nation. We are committed to protecting national security, while providing best-in-class services to our customers.”
New Job. Thomas Donilon, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, is joining the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) this month as a distinguished fellow. Donilon, who became a CFR member nearly two decades ago, will be based at the organization’s Washington office. “Tom Donilon has been at the center of consequential national security decisions over the last four and a half years, including winding down U.S. military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasing the U.S. profile in the Asia-Pacific region, and balancing the requirement for intelligence with the need to protect privacy,” says CFR President Richard Haass. “We are thrilled to have someone with his experience and record of service to the country at the Council on Foreign Relations.”
Army Test Data Aids France. The Army Research Development and Engineering Command and U.S. Army Europe’s Office of Defense Cooperation expedite technical test data on an RPG defense system, Q-Nets II, so the French could make a procurement decision. They already have an earlier version, Q-Nets I. However, fighting in Mali make it an urgent requirement to provide increased protection for French troops. Data was transferred to the French under an established agreement.