McCain: Amp Up Defense Spending to Counter Threats

Morning Coffee is a robust blend of links to news around the Internet concerning the Naval Air Station Patuxent River economic community. The opinions expressed here do not reflect opinions of the Leader’s owners or staff.

Sen. John McCain is making his opening pitch to increase defense spending levels as the Senate turns to debate of an annual policy bill, The Hill reports. The Arizona Republican sent a “dear colleague” letter about “the dangerous mismatch between growing worldwide threats … and arbitrary limits on defense spending in current law.” The letter, released Friday, comes after McCain said at the Brookings Institution on Thursday evening that he plans to offer an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act this week to provide for at least an extra $17 billion in spending.

The Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security have committed to buy 100 DroneDefender systems, touted as a solution to the threat of malicious flyers using drones to spy, deliver bombs, or drop drugs into prisons, Fortune magazine reports. The DroneDefenders can interrupt either the control frequencies of a drone, or its access to GPS coordinates. Fortune says these tools seem more like the first move in what is sure to be a constantly-evolving game of cat and mouse between the makers and users of drones, and those who want to bring them down.

Pakistan on Sunday accused the US of violating its sovereignty with a drone strike against the leader of the Afghan Taliban in a remote border area just inside Pakistan, Reuters reports. Afghanistan said the attack killed Mullah Akhtar Mansour. But a Pakistani passport found at the site bears the name Wali Muhammad and the passport holder was believed to have traveled to Pakistan from Iran on the day of the attack, according to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.

Two top Democrats on a Senate panel with oversight of government management want the Office of Personnel Management to hand over “detailed” planning documents related to the standing up of a new agency responsible for conducting federal background investigations, NextGov reports. In particular, the senators want more specifics on IT development and contracting plans. In a May 18 letter to acting OPM Director Beth Cobert, Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Jon Tester (D-MT) said they are concerned the transition “is moving forward without firm plans in place” and that the new bureau will simply be a copycat of the old one.

The Navy is struggling to recruit and retain cyber talent, especially when salaries aren’t competitive with the private sector, according to Deputy CIO Janice Haith, NextGov reports. Her team is trying to take advantage of Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s tech programs in Silicon Valley, especially by sending employees for training there, Haith said at a panel May 19 in Washington, DC. But “when we put people in Silicon Valley … we lose them, we can’t always get them back,” she added.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has made significant additions to the service’s cybersecurity policy by requiring the implementation of a layered approach to cyber defense and the establishment of a departmentwide program to tackle insider threats, FCW reports. Defense Department officials have long espoused a defense-in-depth approach to cybersecurity that mirrors the multiple barriers an assailant often faces in attacking a government building, for example. Mabus is trying to drive home the point by reminding commanders that they will be accountable for implementing defense-in-depth.

The Federal Aviation Administration has made a large database of the cities, states, and ZIP codes of small private drone owners more widely available to the public in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, FCW reports. In a May 18 statement, the agency said that it would not release owners’ names and street addresses because of FOIA privacy protections. Many of the 461,433 registrants are minors, hobbyists, or recreational users. The FAA has been collecting the data through the registration system it launched last December for small hobbyist and recreational drones that weigh a half-pound to 55 pounds.

The Air Force’s chief scientist Greg Zacharias said F-35 fighter jet pilots will someday control a swarm of drones flying alongside the fighter jet to boost sensing, reconnaissance, and targeting functions, Scout Warrior reports. Today, the flight path, sensor payload, and weapons disposal of aerial drones such as the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper are coordinated from ground crew ground control stations.

NAVAIR has been talking to Air National Guard units about utilizing the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor transport as a search and rescue aircraft, Breaking Defense reports.  Sticker shock is reportedly an issue.

Concerned over increasingly reckless Chinese and Russian intercepts of US aircraft, Pacific Command says it urgently needs cameras on its planes to provide irrefutable proof of their misbehavior, Breaking Defense says. The problem: reconnaissance planes like the propeller-driven P-3 Orion and the new jet-powered P-8 Poseidon are designed to take photos of the land and sea far below, not of fighters flying 50 feet away.

The UK is planning to build a future force of four front-line F-35 squadrons, now that the country has committed to a fleet of 138 aircraft, Aerospace Daily reports.

The Royal Air Force’s Airbus A330 Voyager will become the fourth non-US aerial refueling tanker to be certified to fill up the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II following recent tests with an F-35B at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, FlightGlobal reports.

The Patuxent Partnership has awarded two more student scholarships, bringing the total to seven engineering students living, learning, and eventually working in Southern Maryland. The 2016 TPP Pathways to Engineering scholarship recipients are James Grizzle of Chopticon High School and Allan Li of Great Mills High School.

Contract:

L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace LLC, Madison, MS, is being awarded a $79,895,466 modification to a previously awarded indefinite-delivery requirements contract (N00019-13-D-0007) to exercise an option for the organizational and depot level logistics services required to support and maintain the TH-57 fleet. Work will be performed at the Naval Air Station Whiting Field, Milton, FL (98 percent); and NAS Patuxent River, Patuxent River, MD, and is expected to be completed in May 2017. No funds are being obligated at time of award; funds will be obligated against individual delivery orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, MD, is the contracting activity.