Nationals Take Fans on a Wild Ride

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.

The Washington Nationals win the World Series beating the Houston Astros 6-2 in Game 7 of one of the most improbable seasons in the 100-year history of the championship series. This is the Nationals’ first World Series Championship and the first time the Washington, DC, major league baseball franchise has brought the championship home in 86 years, reports The Washington Post.

The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin have finalized a $34 billion deal, dropping the F-35 price to $78 million apiece for the next three lots of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, reports Defense News.

Stalled negotiations over the annual defense authorization bill prompted the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled plans for his backup emergency defense policy bill  to ensure critical military programs continue uninterrupted into next year, reports Defense News.

Veterans question exposure to toxic environments and a spike in some cancers, reports McClatchy. Veterans saw a spike in urinary, prostate, liver, and blood cancers during nearly two decades of war, and some military families are asking if exposure to toxic environments is to blame.

Purple Heart, Ranger tab, FAO: Meet the Army officer who testified about Trump’s Ukraine call, reports Army Times. The Army officer testifying before House impeachment investigators on Tuesday was wounded in Iraq leading infantrymen in 2004 before becoming a foreign area officer specializing in Eurasia. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WI) slammed those questioning the patriotism of witnesses for the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, reports National Review.

Japanese authorities on the island of Okinawa busted four sailors for allegedly boozy and boorish behavior, reports Navy Times, another scandal to roil California-based Naval Special Warfare Command. According to the Okinawa Times, sailors entered a tavern in the coastal resort town Onna around 9 pm local time Sunday and demanded info about a “strip bar.”

The grades are in for America’s military strength, reports Defense News. Investments in readiness are improving, but the US can only fight one large war at a time, according to The Heritage Foundation. Read the report, US Index of Military Strength, here.

Bipartisan House bill hitting Turkey for Syria incursion sails through, reports Military Times, illustrating both parties’ dismay with Trump’s retreat from the region. The bill marks both parties’ latest show of disapproval for Trump’s decision this month to abandon the United States’ longtime Kurdish allies against Islamic State fighters by pulling American forces away from northern Syria.

The Pentagon is preparing its first electronic warfare report for Congress, reports C4ISRNET.  Mandated by the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, a task force must deliver a report to Congress every 180 days. It also must provide an update on the DoD strategy’s electronic warfare strategy.

Testimony by Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s top IT official on Capitol Hill, highlighted the Pentagon’s struggles to explain its massive cloud contract, reports Federal Times. “I feel very confident that at no time were team members, that actually [made] the source selection, influenced with any external [pressures], including the White House,” Deasy said before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

When accused SEAL war criminal Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher was sentenced to the brig, he automatically was reduced to E-1, an outcome his attorney argued the military jury never anticipated in their sentence. The CNO seems to have partly agreed and allowed Gallagher to retire as a petty officer first class, convicted only of posing for a photo with a dead detainee, reports Navy Times. The estimated value of his pension will remain pegged at about $1.5 million before he dies, not the $654,135 he would’ve earned as an E-1 or the $1.7 million he would’ve earned as a chief.

Assault on Islamic State leadership is not over, reports Voice of America. Senior Islamic State leaders in Syria are coming under fire, part of what appears to be an urgent campaign to gut the terror group’s brain trust. The US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces – credited with helping to take out IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir – said it had carried out a series of raids aimed at getting the terror group’s key players dead or alive.

Syrian women helped find Baghdadi, beat ISIS, will face ‘tough time’ ahead, leader says. For the women who have given more than five years of their lives and lost close to 1,000 of their friends to the fight against the Islamic State, the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi meant a great deal — and marked a truly historic moment, reports Defense One.

Contracts:

BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Services Inc., Rockville, Maryland, is awarded a $69,247,177 cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for up to 931,200 man hours of installation and certification technical support to the Combat Integration and Identification Systems Division, Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) Webster Outlying Field and Patuxent River in support of the Navy and the governments of Japan, South Korea and Australia. Work will be performed in St. Inigoes, Maryland (80%); and Rockville, Maryland (20%), and is expected to be completed in April 2025. No funds will be obligated at time of award; funds will be obligated on individual task orders as they are issued. This contract was competitively procured via an electronic request for proposals; one offer was received. The NAWCAD, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity (N00421-20-D-0003).