Carter Carefully Defends Outgoing Policies

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.

With Inauguration Day more than two months away, Breaking Defense says DefSec Ash Carter is walking a tightrope, defending his Islamic State, NATO, and Russia policies without explicitly disagreeing with a president-elect.

President-elect Donald Trump is seeking top secret clearances for his grown children, Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr., establishing an unprecedented relationship between a president and members of his immediate family, reports The Washington Examiner.

FCW reports on the immediate cyber needs facing the president-elect and his campaign promise to make cybersecurity “an immediate and top priority,” but didn’t mention infrastructure threats which some experts consider the most pressing cybersecurity issue.

PilotOnLine.com: Donald Trump’s military expansion plans could be massive boost to Hampton Roads. Trump’s ambitious proposal to expand the Navy and other branches of the military would be a massive boost to Hampton Roads should it come to pass.

The International Criminal Court, The Hague, in the Netherlands announced that US armed forces and the CIA may have committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan, reports Military Times. Although Washington has not joined the global court, the announcement raises the possibility that American citizens could be indicted.

Republicans are divided on repeal of ObamaCare, reports The Hill.com. Internal divisions over a top p0litical priority for six years consider how to not disrupt the lives of millions of Americans.

Google and Facebook adjust their policies on fake news sites, reports The New York Times, in the wake of accusations that fake news influenced the outcome of the recent presidential election.

Most female vets feel their service isn’t valued by the public. Military.com reports on a new survey showing most female military veterans and service members believe the public doesn’t recognize or value their service the way it does their male counterparts, and their contribution isn’t adequately portrayed in the news and entertainment media.

A Russian fighter jet crashes near its aircraft carrier in Mediterranean, reports Fox News. Three Russian MiG-29 fighter jets took off from a Soviet-era aircraft carrier and flew toward Syria, one appeared to have mechanical difficulties and turned back toward the carrier, but splashed down in the water while attempting to land.

More than 400 million accounts on adult websites — including 350 million from Adult FriendFinder, the self-proclaimed “world’s largest sex and swinger community” — appear to have been breached, reports The Hill. The Washington Examiner.com reports that 78,000 military email accounts were found in this website hack.

The Department of Labor awards a $4.3M National Emergency Grant to assist transitioning service members, reports dvidshub.net.

F-35B completes first power module, engine swap, reports Executive Gov, quoting Mark Schroeder, maintenance and logistics department head for the F-35 Patuxent River Integrated Test Force, “Any time [the Navy or Marine Corps] acquire new aircraft, they are concurrently going to acquire the training resources that it takes to operate and maintain the jet.”

Contracts:

Compass Systems Inc., Lexington Park, Maryland, is being awarded a $9,689,027 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for research, development, and testing of new radar algorithms in support of the APY-10 and APG-79 radars. This effort includes research of emerging technologies including correlation with other sensor systems to improve target identification and classification. Work will be performed in Lexington Park, Maryland, and is expected to be completed in November 2019. Fiscal 2016 research, development, test, and evaluation funds in the amount of $50,000 are being obligated at time of award, all of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircrafts Division, Lakehurst, New Jersey, is the contracting activity (N68335-17-C-0109).