New Commandant at Naval Academy

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.

COL James “J.P.” McDonough III will be the next commandant at the US Naval Academy, reports Navy Times. The Marine Corps artillery officer was a 1994 graduate of the academy.

China responded to a USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier group entering the South China Sea, reports The Hill, saying the action was not “conducive to peace and stability.” The US says the carrier strike group was in the South China Sea to conduct routine operations, reports Reuters.

US DefSec Lloyd Austin has called on key Asian allies to work with the US in the Indo-Pacific, reports South China Morning Post, part of efforts to boost defense ties in the region as its rivalry with China looks likely to continue.

The DefSec’s first overseas phone call after taking charge at the Pentagon on Friday went to the head of NATO, reports Military.com, a sign that the Biden administration wants to repair and strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance.

GEN John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes the new US Space Force is “on solid ground” despite uncertainty that surrounds the service championed by the Trump administration, reports Space News.

The future of the US Air Force’s tactical aircraft fleet is under review, with some radical ideas under discussion, reports The Drive, including using drones equipped with artificial intelligence-driven systems.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order last week reversing former President Donald Trump’s order to restrict diversity training in the federal government that focuses on white privilege and race theory, reports Federal Times. Another order signed boosts the minimum wage for federal employees and contractors to $15 an hour.

President Biden has reversed the Trump-era ban on transgender people serving in the US military, reports Newsweek.

 

 

Rob Joyce is replacing Anne Neuberger as the chief of the National Security Agency cybersecurity directorate, reports Defense Systems.

The US Army is studying its network security and how to bring the Internet Of Things and Smart Cities technology to its bases without opening new avenues for cyber attacks, reports Breaking Defense. The service’s first civilian CIO Raj Iyer outlined priorities for reforming the Army’s approach to IT, reports C4ISRNET.

The Russian hackers who gained access to federal agencies’ computer systems last year didn’t bother trying to break one by one into the networks of each department, reports PBS News Hour. Instead, they got inside by sneaking malicious code into a software update pushed out to thousands of government agencies and private companies, exploiting vulnerabilities in what’s known as the supply chain.

Cybersecurity company FireEye, credited with first discovering the SolarWinds Orion hack, acknowledges that the hackers being Russian is plausible, but says there isn’t “sufficient evidence to support naming a specific sponsor,” reports Defense Systems.

Thousands of National Guard troops will likely stay in the nation’s capital as threats target lawmakers ahead of former-President Trump impeachment trial in the Senate, reports Military Times

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket boosted a record 143 small satellites into orbit over the weekend in the company’s first dedicated “rideshare” mission, a response to the growing demand for low-cost access to space by smaller, non-traditional companies and institutions, reports CBS News.

Mars 2020 Perseverance will land Feb. 18, carrying new science instruments and technologies, including the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on its belly, NASA reports. Perseverance will use a drill on the end of its robotic arm to capture rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) samples in metal tubes, which will be deposited on the surface of Mars for a future mission to collect and return to Earth. A media briefing will be held at 4:30 pm Wednesday, Jan. 27.

Astronaut Jim Buchli, the first North Dakotan to fly in space, served as a Marine pilot before joining NASA, reports The Dickinson Press. Among his many accomplishments: attending the US Naval Test Pilot School at NAS Patuxent River in 1977.

Billions of 17-year cicadas — the Great Eastern Brood — will emerge this spring in several mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, reports Patch.com.

The stage has been set for Super Bowl LV as the Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, reports ESPN. The game will be played Feb. 7 in Tampa Bay, FL.

CNN Business reports this year will be the first time in nearly 40 years that Budweiser will not advertise during the Super Bowl. The beer company says it will shift the money that would have been spent on the commercial slot — a reported $5.6 million — to support COVID-19 vaccine awareness with donations and future ad campaigns.

Contracts:

Progeny Systems Corp., Manassas, Virginia, is awarded a $15,480,788 cost-plus-fixed fee and cost-only modification to previously awarded contract N00024-19-C-6204 to exercise options for engineering and technical services for Navy submarines and aircraft carriers. This option exercise is under Small Business Innovation Research Topic N05-051, for software build production, engineering and technical services and includes all material travel, subsistence and incidental material in support of the related production orders and services. Work will be performed in Manassas, Virginia (30%); Groton, Connecticut (25%); Bremerton, Washington (15%); Las Vegas, Nevada (10%); Cleveland, Ohio (10%); Chesapeake, Virginia (4%); Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (2%); San Diego, California (2%); and Kings Bay, Georgia (2%), and is expected to be completed by January 2022. Fiscal 2017 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) $1,900,000 funding will be obligated at the time of award and will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC, is the contracting activity.