Daily Round-up 11/22/2008

• Microsoft FusionX solution for government

  Looks like Microsoft is getting into the intelligence software business. Let’s hope FusionX works better than Vista!

  tags: information sharing, intelligence, collaboration

• Pentagon Outmaneuvers Congress on F-22

  tags: F-22, procurement

  • “The defense bill is the defense bill, and you will obey what it says — period,” a moderately unhappy Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), chairman of the House Armed Services air-land panel, told Young.
  • Abercrombie and members of both parties made it very clear to Young that they thought the Pentagon had flouted both the spirit and the intent of the law, which directed that $140 million be spent on advanced procurement of Raptors. The money would make it possible to fund an additional 20 F-22s and, perhaps more importantly, to keep the production lines open.
  • The Pentagon countered with plans to buy four more F-22s in the next supplemental spending bill and Young announced that he has approved Air Force spending of as much as $50 million for advance procurement.
  • During the hearing, Young told Abercrombie and his colleagues that the Pentagon acted because it did not want to tie the hands of the Obama administration. But the effect of the decision, according to congressional aides, is to make any expansion of the F-22 buy highly unlikely.
  • But Congress appears to have been outfoxed.
  • By the time Congress could take any action to force the Pentagon to comply with the law — several months — the decision will already be in the hands of the new administration.

• Military update: Vice chairman: ‘Exquisite’ weapons are too expensive – Annotated

  tags: technology, procurement, military_reform

  • The military must end its quest for “exquisite” weapon systems that are too
    costly, take years to design and build, and don’t reach troops fast enough, or
    in quantities large enough, to address ever-changing threats.

    The critic here isn’t a Washington think tank or a beltway consultant but
    Marine Corps Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the
    U.S. military’s second highest ranking officer.

    • This is standard “reformer” rhetoric: Hi-tech weapons are inherently more expensive, less flexiblt, etc.; quantity is more important than quality. It is not suprising to hear this from a Marine. Marines were more influenced by “reformer” rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s than the other branches. – post by TransTracker
  • “Building platforms that can have multiple purposes, that can modify very
    quickly with software, that consume minimal amounts of energy for extended
    periods of time … are critical,” the vice chairman said.
    • This, however, is not like “reformer” rhetoric of the 1980s. “Reformers” at that time argued against multi-role technologies, instead advocating highly specialized, single-purpose systems like the F-16 and A-10. – post by TransTracker

• US panel warns of espionage by China – Annotated

  tags: intelligence, cyberwar

  • China has stepped up computer espionage attacks on the US government, defense contractors, and American businesses, a congressional advisory panel said yesterday.
    • There is a tension in the phrase “espionage attacks.” While “espionage” is an accurate description of what is happening, the term “attacks” is there as a result of a “cyberwar” discourse tradition that routinely portrays computer break ins, data theft or corruption, denial of service, defacements, and more, as “attacks” or acts of “warfare.” Thus, in this case, good old fashioned espionage, when carried out with/in a new technological medium, is elevated to a form of warfare in its own rite. – post by TransTracker
  • US-China Economic and Security Review Commission
  • its annual report to lawmakers
  • The commission of six Democrats and six Republicans said in the unanimously approved report that China’s massive military modernization and its “impressive but disturbing” space and computer warfare capabilities “suggest China is intent on expanding its sphere of control even at the expense of its Asian neighbors and the United States.”

• The Evolution of Preparing the NIC’s Global Trends 2025 Report

  An intersting and informative bit of quick, qualitative, longitudinal analysis here that gives good insight into the changes beginning to take place in the U.S. intelligence community. Ironically, enough, the emerging impacts of new media, information, and communication technologies for intelligence was the topic of the week in the “IT and Global Conflict” course I am teaching at U of U. As such, I forwarded this post to my students.

  tags: intelligence, collaboration

  • insular, stove-piped work is being replaced with barrier-busting exchanges of informed viewpoints across the globe. Here’s how the NIC authors break it down:

    Global Trends 2010: “… relied exclusively on expertise within the U.S. Intelligence Community.”

    Global Trends 2015: “…engaged more numerous and more varied groups of non-US Government experts, most of whom were American citizens.”

    Global Trends 2020: “…we greatly expanded the participation of non-American specialists by convening six seminars on five continents.”

    Global Trends 2025: “In addition to increasing still more the participation of non-USG experts from the United States and abroad to develop the framework for the current study, we shared several drafts with participants via the Internet and a series of discussion sessions across the US and in several other countries.”

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.