Turkey Strikes Border, Thwarting Kurdish Fighters

Photo by Kurdishstruggle.

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.

Turkey’s military struck at the Syrian-Iraqi border to prevent Kurdish forces from reinforcing northeast Syria, reports Reuters. The attack followed a surprise US troop pullback announced Sunday by President Donald Trump which was widely criticized in Washington as a betrayal of the Kurds, an America’s ally.

President Trump’s announcement to withdraw troops from Syria drew rebukes from key Republicans and Democrats, who joined others as seeing a withdrawal as clearing the path for a Turkish military invasion of the region, reports Defense News. The Pentagon said the US withdrawal in Syria is only a small number of special operators, that US troops would not support or be involved in a Turkish operation in northern Syria, reports Military Times. However, according to Task & Purpose, US troops won’t try to stop a Turkish invasion of northeast Syria.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) became the highest-ranking Republican to criticize Trump’s decision to remove US troops from the multi-national coalition fighting terrorism in Syria, reminding the president, according to Washington Examiner, that a supermajority of lawmakers — more than two-thirds of the full Senate — voted in January to express support for “continued military presence in northeastern Syria.”

President Trump’s decision to take $3.6 billion from military construction to build a wall along the US-Mexico border probably killed the chances for a defense spending bill, says Breaking Defense, but the impeachment process makes it even more likely a series of continuing resolutions will occur without a final defense authorization bill achieved.

House Democrats issue subpoenas to DefSec Mark Esper and White House acting budget chief, Military Times reports, in an impeachment inquiry of President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

The chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee expressed alarm to the US national security adviser, at reports that the White House was considering withdrawing from a vital treaty with Russia, reports Business Insider. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) described the Open Skies Treaty as “particularly important as a check against further Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

The final F/A-18C Hornet has officially retired from active duty, reports Military.com, after 31 years in service. The F-18 will be stripped of its usable parts, which will be repurposed elsewhere.

As the services struggle to get warfighter needs into the field more quickly, the Air Force now offers an extra injection of capital via matching funds that start at $3 million for companies already holding Phase II SBIR awards that show promise, reports Breaking Defense.

Ships and aircraft from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group and the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group staged joint “high-end warfighting exercises” in the South China Sea, reports Navy Times.

A botched program to train Saudi pilots for war in Yemen cost a US Army aviator his life, reports Army Times.

Military Times alerts military spouses to hundreds of thousands of temporary job opportunities nationwide with the 2020 census.

More than half of Army spouses in survey say they are stressed, overwhelmed, and tired, reports Army Times out of a new Rand Corps study evaluating challenges facing Army spouses.

Navy SEAL Gallagher’s clemency package on CNO’s desk, reports Navy Times, claiming Special Warfare Operator Chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher deserves to retire with dignity after the Navy bungled his investigation and prosecution for war crimes.

Former Drexel University professor Chika Nwankpa spent Navy, Dept. of Energy, and NSF grant money at strip clubs and for other personal expenses, for more than 10 years, reports Defense News. The university discovered the alleged fraud in 2017 during an internal audit and alerted the government.

Contracts:

HPI Federal LLC, Washington, District of Columbia, is awarded a $358,473,450 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the procurement of Department of Navy (DON) end user hardware (EUHW) used on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the outside continental US Naval Enterprise Network and the Marine Corps Enterprise Network. EUHW includes: laptops, desktops, tablets, virtual desktops, zero/thin client devices and associated peripherals such as keyboards, mice, monitors and docking stations. Under this contract, EUHW can either be purchased or obtained as a service and may include provisioning, configuration, hardware maintenance, break/fix support and disposition of user devices and associated peripherals. This contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value to an estimated $1,382,739,488. Work will be performed across the DON and is expected to be completed in October 2022. If all options are exercised, work could continue until April 2029. The first task order will be awarded with the basic contract and fulfills the minimum guarantee with fiscal 2020 operation and maintenance (Navy) funds. Contract funds for the initial task order will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This requirement was solicited using full and open competition via the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWARSYSCOM) E-Commerce Central website and the Federal Business Opportunities website, with three offers received. NAVWARSYSCOM, San Diego, California, is the contracting activity (N00039-20-D-0020) and awarded the contract on behalf of the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems.