Morning Coffee: MD House Passes Turbine Moratorium

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 necessarily reflect those of the Leader’s owners or staff.

The SOMD delegation prevailed in the Maryland House of Delegates with passage late last week of a year long moratorium on construction of wind turbines on the Eastern Shore. The proposed turbines would wreak havoc with radar and affiliated testing integral to the mission of NAS:Patuxent River, according to testimony accompanying the bill. Amendments added details allowing turbine heights to increase with increased distance from Pax River.  Here are links to the wind turbine bill and amendments added at the bill’s second reading in the House. The bill must now go to the Maryland Senate.

A lot of wide ranging cyber testimony has been presented to Congress surrounding recent confirmation hearings for VADM Admiral Michael Rogers, expected to soon replace retiring Gen. Keith Alexander as head of US Cyber Command and the NSA. Defense News notes that the cyber conversation has swung from its former “defense crouch” of US protection into broader discussions of integrating cyber and whether commanders will take advantage of the technology.

A guided missile destroyer, the USS Kidd and a P-8 Poseidon aircraft have joined the hunt for flight MH370, the  Boeing 777 that vanished more than a week ago after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, reports NDTV. The flight’s fate and that of the 239 people on board is a growing mystery. The Malaysian government announced Saturday that flight MH370 was deliberately diverted but the prime minister shied from declaring the aircraft’s disappearance a hijacking, reports Aviation Week. Military and commercial satellite pings prior to cessation of all transmitting technology aboard MH370 indicated the plane had left course which resulted in expanding the search area westward from the South China Sea. The P-8 is expected to search “the southern portion of the Bay of Bengal and the northern portion of the Indian Ocean,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said. Wired contributing editor Brendan I. Koerner, author of “The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking” gives a synopsis of how flight 370 could be a hijacking.

Fox News reports that China’s J-20 flaunts secrets stolen seven years ago from the JSF program. US defense officials pinpointed the loss of the data from Lockheed, maker of the JSF, to a broad, cyber-espionage program originated in China that targeted governments and industry in 2007.

Pentagon’s proposed FY15 budget includes $2.45 billion for unmanned aerial vehicles, a nearly 16 percent hike from this year’s levels, reports Avionics Intelligence. The funding is earmarked for the RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-9 Reaper, and the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance And Strike (UCLASS) system.

Flight Global reports that Australia will become the first foreign buyer of the MQ-4C Triton. The unmanned surveillance system is Northrop Grumman’s maritime variant of the Global Hawk.

CNN-ORC poll reports 69 percent of Americans see Russia as a threat, reports The Hill, the highest rate since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Defense Tech endorses the Pentagon denial of a Russian report of a US drone  in the Crimea, noting the age and inapproriate mission goal for the type of UAS Russia claimed to have found. DefSec Chuck Hagel says the Pentagon is reassessing use of Russian-built engines used on Atlas V rockets used by United Launch Alliance LLC, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to launch US military satelites. The owner of Space Exploration Technologies, which seeks the launching business, suggested the risk at a congressional hearing.

After expanding a sexual assault review from 10,000 to 20,000 sailors the Navy disqualified 151 from serving as sexual assault counselors, recruiters or instructors. The initial 10,000 sailor review disqualified five sailors, reports USA Today. Without specifying findings, the Navy indicated the majority of cases showed inadequate training, which would be addressed. The Army in its 20,000-soldier review found 588 soldiers were inappropriately placed and seeks to discharge 79.

Sequestered no more, the Blue Angels returned to the skies and opened their 2014 performance schedule Saturday at the Naval Air Facility El Centro, reports San Diego’s NBC News.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has taken to Facebook town meetings. His second such meeting drew an international conversation and was scheduled amid a day spent in budget hearings in Congress. He found the major topic at the Facebook town meeting was the same as in Congress, reports Defense.gov, the military budget.