March 29, 2024

F-35 Dominates Mock Combat Exercise

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.

At the recent Red Flag mock combat exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, the service put the F-35 up against “the most advanced weapons systems out there,” reports Task & Purpose, and the stealth fighters apparently dominated — so much so that even the rookie pilots were crushing it.

The National Interest writes about how the F-35 was born and asks just how did the F-35 go from being a glimmer in the eye of officials at the Pentagon to the most expensive weapon system in history?

Investigative reporting by Reuters has revealed atrocious conditions for military families nationwide, including pervasive lead poisoning risks for children and houses with mice and mold spores. On Saturday, Navy leaders ordered subordinates to start fixing problems, Navy Times reports.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will review water contamination at military bases, reports Military Times. The study will specifically look at the levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in people in the affected communities.

A recent UN report says more civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year than in any of the previous nine years of the conflict, reports Air Force Times. The spike in deaths is blamed on increased suicide bombings by ISIS and stepped up aerial attacks by US-led coalition forces.

Military communities whose local construction projects weren’t scheduled to begin until later this year are among the most likely to be cut to fund the border wall, reports Military Times. The Pentagon must determine what funds will go to the border wall, from both the military’s $3.6 billion military construction account and a $2.5 billion counter-drug account.

Vietnamese officials ensured there will be top-level security for this week’s summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which will take place Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi, reports The Hill.

NASA has identified 12 projects that would undergo experiments and demonstrations on the moon by the end of 2019, reports ExecutiveGov.com.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch sent an Israeli spacecraft toward the moon for that country’s first attempted lunar landing as well as a communications satellite for Indonesia, reports The Associated Press. Israel seeks to become only the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, after Russia, the US, and China.

NASA and SpaceX have approved a test flight later this week of the new Dragon capsule designed for crew, reports The Washington Post. The liftoff is planned March 2 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

A BEI Maritime training center will be built in North Carolina, reports The Virginian-Pilot. The center will have a pool big enough to hold a small ship and simulate hurricane conditions. It will serve to train groups such as special forces, law enforcement, and offshore wind crews.

Contracts:

Leidos Corp., Reston, Virginia, is awarded an $11,560,339 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to procure non-recurring engineering efforts to analyze, define and document system and subsystem requirements for capability enhancements to integrate the adaptive radar countermeasures program on the F/A-18 aircraft. Work will be performed in Arlington, Virginia (50 percent); Clifton, New Jersey (25 percent); Goleta, California (10 percent); St. Louis, Missouri (10 percent); Raleigh, North Carolina (3 percent); and Huntsville, Alabama (2 percent), and is expected to be completed in June 2020. Fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $11,560,339 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant 10 US Code 2304(c)(1). The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity (N00019-19-C-0051).

Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., McLean, Virginia, has been awarded a $24,968,022 modification (P00031) to previously awarded contract HR0011-16-F-0005 for Enterprise Support Services. The modification brings the total cumulative face value of the contract to $95,553,943 from $70,585,921. Work will be performed in Arlington, Virginia, with an expected completion date of May 2020. Fiscal 2019 research and development funds in the amount of $24,632,633 are being obligated at time of award. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity.

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