March 28, 2024

Aging IT: Stop Throwing Good Money After Bad

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

Over the next three years, $3 billion worth of federal IT will go out of support, FCW reports. Federal CIO Tony Scott says that feds spend more than three-quarters of their IT budgets keeping old systems running. He indicated that spending extra for out-of-lifecycle support will only exacerbate the problem – and further hamstring agencies’ ability to ever upgrade. He’s supporting a $3.1 billion IT modernization fund to break the cycle.

AWACS, the airborne radar/command post aircraft that forms the backbone of a modern air campaign, and the planes and the crews managing the airspace over Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, are getting worn out flying day after day, Breaking Defense reports. NATO is expected to pitch in and ease the crunch with planes and training of Iraqi officers by the time of the Warsaw Summit July 8 and 9.

The Federal Reserve held its benchmark lending rate steady on Wednesday, and officials lowered projections of how much they expect to raise short-term interest rates in the coming years, signs that persistently slow economic growth and low inflation are forcing the central bank to rethink how fast it can move rates higher, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Fed didn’t take the possibility of a rate increase in July off the table, but WSJ interprets the tone of its statement and its projections to suggest that officials will need to see a quick turnaround in economic data and evidence of market resilience if they are to move promptly on interest rates

Warships from China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy have begun to routinely shadow US Navy ships through much of the region, USA Today reports. US commanders said Wednesday Chinese warships closely followed the USS John C. Stennis carrier strike group from nearly the minute it entered the disputed South China Sea on a regular patrol in early March — further evidence of China’s increasingly assertive behavior in the region.

Russian hackers that stole the Democratic National Committee’s secret e-files on Donald Trump and other information also were involved in a 2015 hack of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s non-classified email system, NextGov reports. Russia has denied any role in either hack. The Washington Post has a video that explains how the hackers breached the DNC.

SpaceX successfully launched into orbit two commercial satellites Wednesday morning but lost its rocket during the mission, CNN reports (with video of satellite deployment). The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:29 am. The space exploration company attempted to bring its rocket back to Earth, but the rocket was lost before it could stick another historic landing on a drone ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The company has made three successful ocean landings.

Arms limitation treaties signed by Russia and the US since 1991 and unilateral decisions have resulted in the reduction of the superpowers’ nuclear arsenal in favor of modernizing their capacities, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said on Monday, but noted that the pace of the reductions seems to be slowing, said an Agence France-Press report in DefenceTalk.

Gen. Mark Welsh, the outgoing Air Force chief of staff, is confident the F-35A joint strike fighter will be declared operational before the end of the year, but remains “disappointed” that Boeing has been unable to develop the KC-46 tanker on time, Defense News reports.  Boeing has had to absorb cost overruns and penalties are being considered, according to Aviation Week. Gen. Welsh also described the idea of new F-22 production as “cost prohibitive,” throwing water on the idea of a Raptor restart.

Problems delivering the KC-46 tanker notwithstanding, Boeing anticipates an extension of its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler production lines as a result of an increased operational tempo by the US Navy and strong international interest in procuring the platform, IHS Jane’s 360 reports. A company official said the company is confident of extending production from the current mid-2018 cut-off point through into the next decade.

Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have been awarded contracts by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the next phase of a project to develop collaborative control technology for unmanned air systems, FlightGlobal says. Under the Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment program, the two prime contractors will build on previous work to develop algorithms that will allow a single operator to control multiple UAS, and specifically in environments where communications are limited.

Leveraging commercial technologies for military applications is going more slowly than desired, as many are not necessarily built to the same national security and durability standards the government requires, Defense Systems reports. An area of high interest is wearable electronics, anything from wrist wearables to chest-worn harnesses. However, two of the biggest challenges is ensuring the devices work as advertised and extracting actionable data from them.

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