The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to know in detail how the Pentagon plans to convert about 226,000 employees from the National Security Personnel System back to the General Schedule or other pay system. The request for an action plan on conversions is part of the Senate 2011 Defense Authorization Act, which the committee finished marking up today. The bill also: Clarifies that the repeal of NSPS has no effect on the direct hiring authority of defense laboratories, and increases the number of positions for which that authority can be used, Temporarily authorizes overtime pay for Navy civilian employees working…
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Wired Magazine’s Danger Room blog has an interesting post today about the McLean, Va.-based consulting behemoth Booz Allen Hamilton. Danger Room’s editor, Noah Shachtman, essentially accuses Booz Allen executive vice president Mike McConnell of over-hyping cybersecurity threats so his firm can win government contracts to combat the dangers that he invented. Shachtman calls Booz “cyberwar Cassandras.” Now, I can’t speak to the motivations of Mr. McConnell or anyone else at the firm. However, the evidence Shachtman presents on Booz Allen’s supposed recent windfall in government contract spending seems a little thin. Booz Allen has raked in $400 million in deals…
Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a tough message earlier today for his department’s bureaucracy (not to mention its contractors): The spending spree is over. Read an account of his Kansas speech and some of his planned changes at our sister publication, Military Times, here. And the Washington Post’s article has this interesting detail on contracting: Among Gates’s apparent targets for major cuts are the private contractors the Pentagon has hired in large numbers over the past decade to take on administrative tasks that the military used to handle. The defense secretary estimated that this portion of the Pentagon budget has…
Tuesday’s meeting of the House Armed Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations started to resemble an episode of “Seinfeld” after a while, as Congressmen became obsessed with parsing the difference between a “continental breakfast” and a “light snack.” David Fisher, head of DoD’s Business Transformation Agency, offered a convoluted distinction between the two from the rules that govern defense travel, to illustrate the complexity of those regulations. Committe chairman Vic Snyder, an Arkansas Democrat, came up with his own definition. “I think if you stay on your feet it’s light refreshments, if you sit down it’s a continental breakfast,” he…
This is, hands down, the best solicitation I’ve seen in a long time: The mad scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are moving forward with their plans to develop a flying car. Seriously. This $55 million flying car will need to seat four troops and their gear, operate like a regular SUV on land, and be able to turn into a vertical-take-off-and-landing aircraft that can fly 250 miles, at up to 10,000 feet above sea level, on a single tank of fuel. “This presents unprecedented capability to avoid traditional and asymmetrical threats while avoiding road obstructions,” DARPA said in its…
The White House was on to something last year when it asked federal employees for their ideas on improving the government, but sometimes opening the floor to suggestions can backfire. Stars and Stripes has a fun story today about some of the wackier ideas the public has submitted online to the Defense Department. The most awesome proposal is to airdrop a platoon of GPS-equipped bears — which have a better sense of smell than even bloodhounds — into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden. This helpful person (possibly Stephen Colbert) really thought through the logistics involved in such an operation, and…
Tune into News Channel 8’s Federal News Tonight this evening to catch an interview with yours truly. I’ll be speaking about the Pentagon’s plans to end the controversial National Security Personnel System and how some Defense Department employees could end up getting hurt in the process. Federal News Tonight is on at at 7:30 p.m. in the Washington area. My segment will air sometime between 7:40 and 7:55 p.m.
A hat tip to Ed O’Keefe over at the Washington Post for following up on this Missile Defense Agency logo foofarah. Conservative bloggers got all worked up because a new MDA logo’s color scheme and apparent “O” shape resembled the Obama campaign logo. Some of the loonier commenters online thought it was patterned after the Islamic star and crescent, echoing the “Obama is a Muslim” smear from 2008. One blogger, Frank Gaffney, made the especially silly claim that the logo proves Obama’s decision to kill the highly flawed and, according to the Air Force chief of staff, “not … operationally viable”…
Slate.com is running a remarkable series this week on the hunt for Saddam Hussein, and how enterprising soldiers used their passion for social networking theory to track down the fugitive Iraqi dictator. According to Slate, the US Army didn’t start making progress on the mission until they stopped looking for the high-ranking Ba’ath party bureaucrats on the infamous deck of cards and started hunting for cousins, in-laws, and fishing buddies of the people who were hiding Hussein: The reason social network diagrams are essential to counterinsurgency, [Army interrogator Staff Sgt. Eric] Maddox says, is that they help you predict what will…
The Army is at the forefront of social networking, offering Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages to connect the public with soldiers in uniform. And while the military enjoys broad support online — the Army’s Facebook page has 173,000 fans — that doesn’t mean it’s immune from inappropriate posts from those who take issue with the military or politics. Policing racist, sexist or harassing comments is important to maintaining the military’s integrity, but deleting too many comments may make users suspicious of censorship, said Staff Sgt. Josh Salmons, emerging media coordinator at Fort Meade’s Defense Information School during a Feb. 24…