March 29, 2024

Gilday Gets First-Hand Look at Ship’s Fire Damage

Gilday

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.

Chief of Naval Operations ADM Michael Gilday was in San Diego over the weekend to inspect the USS Bonhomme Richard and push for answers in the wake of the fire that gutted the ship, reports Defense News. “The damage is extensive,” ADM Gilday said at a news briefing after walking through the ship, reports NBC7 San Diego.

US Navy officials said late Thursday that all of the fires on the Richard Bonhomme have been put out, reports Navy Times. The blaze on the amphibious assault ship began Sunday while it was in a San Diego shipyard being updated to carry F-35B jets. The ship was at the tail end of two years of upgrades. That means the Navy has fewer options to deploy the next-generation fighter in the Pacific region, reports Defense News.

Thousands of members of US Air Force space and space systems operations — 2,410 to be exact — have been selected to begin transfer to the Space Force, reports Air Force Times. More than 8,500 volunteered for transfer to the new service. Nearly 90 of this year’s approximately 1,000 Air Force Academy graduates became the first officers commissioned straight into the new organization, reports Science magazine. Some of those graduates were members of an academy group called the Institute for Applied Space Policy and Strategy.

The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee criticized the Space Force last week for not having a dedicated civilian leader in charge of acquisitions, reports Space News.

The liftoff of a United Arab Emirates’ Mars orbiter, postponed due to bad weather at the launch site in southern Japan, is now set for 6:58 am today, Monday, July 20, reports The Associated Press. Two other Mars missions are planned in coming days by the US and China. Japan has its own Martian moon mission planned in 2024.

The US Air Force Thunderbirds fighter jet demo team was scheduled to perform in Wyoming this week, but canceled because some of the team members have tested positive for the coronavirus, Air Force Times reports. Earlier this month, the Pensacola Beach Air Show featuring the Blue Angels was canceled due to the growing number of COVID-19 cases in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in Florida.

The head of US Central Command Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie said the US can get the job done in Iraq with fewer troops, reports Voice of America. There are currently between 5,000 and 6,000 troops in Iraq.

Members of Congress want changes in Veterans Affairs policies to ensure that sexual harassment claims are investigated and addressed instead of being overlooked, reports Military. This comes after a new report revealed that more than one-quarter of women working as VA employees experienced sexual harassment.

The US military has accused Russian mercenaries fighting on the side of eastern Libya forces of planting land mines and improvised explosive devices in and around the Libyan capital, Tripoli, reports Military Times.

 

 

The former Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, FL, will now be used for Lockheed Martin’s work on the NASA Orion spacecraft, reports Florida Today.

NASA’s inspector standard on Thursday introduced a report that investigates the time and dollars that NASA has spent to build its Orion spacecraft, reports aviationanalysis.net.

Coronavirus clusters at military bases in Okinawa are causing tension between Japan and the US, reports Bloomberg, with Tokyo questioning if American service personnel are not following the local rules and causing infections to spread.

Budget shortfalls at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services have caused the agency to issue furlough notices to approximately 75 percent of its staff, reports Federal Times.

Married US Army veterans in Texas allegedly used personal information stolen from soldiers to defraud the military out of as much as $11 million, reports The Associated Press. Federal agents have seized more than 20 vehicles and the money from 10 bank accounts belonging to the pair.

Chief Petty Officer Charles Briggs is facing charges that he gave classified information to a Russian he knew, reports The Virginian-Pilot. The Navy sailor stationed in Portsmouth, VA, is scheduled to be arraigned this week at a general court-martial.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan says the state has discovered unemployment insurance claims fraud, reports Maryland Matters. State labor officials say they have blocked payment to more than 47,500 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims after noticing an unusual increase in out-of-state claims.

A Newport Beach, CA, mother was sentenced to five weeks in prison for paying someone $9,000 to take an online course for her son at Georgetown University, reports The Associated Press.

Contracts:

Carahsoft Technology, Reston, Virginia, was awarded a $29,837,009 firm-fixed-price contract for movement of the logistics modernization program to the cloud. Bids were solicited via the internet with 11 received. Work will be performed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, with an estimated completion date of July 15, 2021. Fiscal 2020 other procurement (Army) funds in the amount of $29,837,009 were obligated at the time of the award. US Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is the contracting activity (W52P1J-20-F-0419).

Leidos Inc., Arlington, Virginia, has been awarded a ceiling $30,000,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for high speed attack munitions research. The first task order will be for a $341,500 award under task order FA8651-20-F-1011. The five-year contract will support research and development, advancing state of the art in weapons airframe research to explore the impacts of complex flight environments on advanced weapon systems. Work will be performed at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and is expected to be completed August 2021 for the initial task order. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $325,000 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Research Laboratory, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity (FA8651-20-D-0011).

Savi Technology Inc., Alexandria, Virginia, was awarded a $45,805,123 firm-fixed-price contract for active radio frequency identification transponder tags to track equipment worldwide. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of July 16, 2024. US Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is the contracting activity (W52P1J-20-D-0034).

Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. LLC, Oak Brook, Illinois, was awarded an $8,841,345 firm-fixed-price contract for maintenance dredging of the inland waterway C&D Canal federal navigation project. Bids were solicited via the internet with two received. Work will be performed in Chesapeake City, Maryland, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 29, 2021. Fiscal 2020 civil operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $8,841,345 were obligated at the time of the award. US Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (W912BU-20-C-0031).

Lockheed Martin Corp., Missiles and Fire Control, Grand Prairie, Texas, was awarded a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to support the Operational Fires Integrated Weapon System Phase 3 program. This modification exercises the Contract Line Item Number 0005 option (valued at $7,451,558) for the development, building, integration, assembly, testing and checkout of the propulsion components for the Stage 2 section of the missile. Fiscal 2020 research and development funds in the amount of $1,000,000 are being obligated at the time of award. Work will be performed in Camden, Arkansas (50%); Huntsville, Alabama (45%); and Orange, Virginia (5%), with an estimated completion date of January 2022. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (HR0011-20-C-0038). (Awarded Jan. 10, 2020)

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