March 28, 2024

The Navy’s Problem? Itself.

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 Mike Gilday blames the Navy’s major problems on a culture of poor self-assessment, reports USNI. The reluctance across the Navy to be self-critical and a tendency to hide mistakes and minimize flaws have resulted in systemic problems in the service and stalled efforts to improve, Gilday said. “We are not operating to our full potential. Over these last few years, I think we have learned some hard truths about ourselves.”

Navy cites “operator error” in the November fuel spill tainting drinking water around Pearl Harbor, HI, reports Navy Times. Navy officials also reported this week that the Navy will comply with the Hawaii Department of Health’s emergency order to drain the fuel tanks at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.

Quebec says it will tax those who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 without a medical reason, reports Business insider. Premier François Legault said 10% of Quebec’s adult population is unvaccinated. However, the unvaccinated make up half of all ICU beds in the province. He says they will be taxed a “significant” amount for the strain they put on the health care system.

The Pentagon’s independent inspector general is investigating whether the services are screening recruits for extremism, reports Military Times. Starting this month, the office will work with the military departments, as well as the defense under secretary for personnel and readiness, to study whether current recruit screening mirrors what’s written down in policy.

The US Space Force is considering purchasing weather data as a service, reports C4ISRNET, and may release an official solicitation later this year. The DoD has relied on its own electro-optical satellites to generate weather data for military operations, but those satellites are aging and the Space Force is interested in using commercial providers to supply some of that data instead.

On the frontline against China, the US Coast Guard is taking on missions the US Navy can’t do, reports Business Insider. Among those unique capabilities are law-enforcement authorities and expertise in search and rescue, marine environmental response, and humanitarian assistance.

USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker: January 10, 2022.

 

 

For nearly six weeks, the Maryland Department of Health and its 24 local government partners have struggled to recover from an attack on the agency’s computer system, undermining the sprawling agency’s day-to-day operations at perhaps the worst possible time. State officials have not described details of the impacts, but the problems are still far from resolved, reports Maryland Matters.

Cybersecurity firm Check Point Research finds 50% more cyber attacks occurred on corporate networks in 2021 than during 2020, reports DZNet. The report says the  Log4j vulnerability discovered in December only made things worse.

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials are hailing an “extraordinary” federal response to Log4j in widely used software, while also warning that remediation efforts are far from over in regard to the critical vulnerability, reports Federal News Network.

This weekend, the DoD coordinated with Health and Human Services to award contracts to Atlantic Trading LLC (Austin, TX) and Medea Inc. (Pleasanton, CA) to purchase a combined total of 27 million over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits, reports MilitarySpot.com. This effort supports the president’s plan to deliver 500 million free at-home COVID-19 tests to the nation in response to the Omicron variant.

The Air Force and Boeing haven’t yet fixed the troubled KC-46 Pegasus vision system, reports Defense News. They are still working on a problem with the tanker’s Remote Vision System; but that redesign — expected to have passed review by fall 2021 — still hasn’t been locked down.

Drones are headed underwater with the US, UK, China, and Russia developing and deploying unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs) to gain a strategic edge in the Pacific and beyond, reports Asia Times.

North Korea claims a successful test of hypersonic missile, reports Navy Times, which North Korea leader Kim Jong Un claimed would remarkably increase the country’s nuclear “war deterrent.” The report by North Korean state media on Wednesday came a day after the militaries of the US, South Korea, and Japan said they detected North Korea firing a suspected ballistic missile into its eastern sea.

An online survey finds hacking to be the number one concern of government IT workers, reports Federal Times. In a report released by SolarWinds — an IT management and software company who contracted Market Connections to conduct the survey — 56% of respondents said the general hacking community was one of the largest sources of security threats at public sector organizations, followed by careless or untrained insiders at 52% and foreign governments at 47%. Four hundred IT decision makers responded to the online survey conducted in October 2021 — 200 from the federal level, 100 from the state and local level, and 100 more from the educational sector.

Contracts:

Michelin North America Inc., Greenville, South Carolina (SPE7LX-22-D-0059, $39,462,788); and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Akron, Ohio (SPE7LX-22-D-0058, $28,611,589), have each been awarded a firm-fixed-price, requirements contract under solicitation SPE7LX-21-R- 0036 for aircraft tires. These were competitive acquisitions with two responses received. These are three-year contracts with no option periods. Locations of performance are Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, with a Jan. 11, 2025, performance completion date. Using military service is Air Force. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2022 through 2025 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Land and Maritime, Columbus, Ohio.

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