Navy refines its IT-21 plans
SAN DIEGO—The Navy has drafted a message that will further define the standards for its Information Technology for the 21st Century initiative. To confirm its support for the IT-21 program, the Navy will spend $298.9 million this fiscal year and $476.9 million in 2000 to install IT-21 systems aboard ships, Navy officials said.
Air Force will expand systems support with BPAs worth up to $500 million
The Air Force has negotiated a series of blanket purchasing agreements to give its command and control programs a range of systems support services. The Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., the contracting agency for the Information Technology Services Program (ITSP), in October issued an open-ended invitation to vendors.
Military command purges sensitive data from Web sites after security evaluation
HONOLULU—U.S. Forces in Korea as well as the United Nations and Combined Forces commands are scrubbing their Web sites of any sensitive information that might prove useful to an enemy. "Our home page apparently was a wonderful source of intelligence for anybody that wanted to surf the Internet," said Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces Korea.
Control-system designers say newer version could have prevented LAN crash
If the USS Yorktown had been running the most recent version of an engineering control system, the Smart Ship probably would not have suffered a LAN failure that left it dead in the water for three hours last year, according to the system's designer. An early version of the Standard Monitoring and Control System (SMCS), developed by Canadian Aviation Electronics (CAE) Inc. of Toronto, is running aboard the Yorktown Smart Ship and the Navy's MHC-51 Osprey
Computers, bodies warm up DOD's cold mountain
The Cheyenne Mountain complex near Colorado Springs, Colo., the Defense Department's underground nerve center for detecting missile launches around the world, has a novel way of keeping its staff warm in the subterranean environment. Nestled in a cavern fortress safe from earthquakes and nuclear explosions, the 1,500 or so military and civilian employees who work in this hardened bunker are warmed by the heat generated by the complex's computers.
PCs that go into battle will be tougher, lighter, Army says
BEDFORD, Mass.—The Army plans to field a leaner, more cost-effective computer for the digitized battlefield of the 21st century. The Army will save a lot of money by equipping the service's first digital division with PCs running Microsoft Windows NT instead of expensive, high-end workstations running Unix, Brig. Gen. Steven Boutelle, the Army's program executive officer for command, control and communications systems, said at the Militray Communications '98 conference late last month.
IG tells Navy to conform with frequency regs
HONOLULU—The Pacific Command is one of the Defense Department's worst offenders in failing to coordinate frequency spectrum operations with allied nations, according to a recent DOD inspector general report. Because PACOM's systems do not conform with international agreements involving the frequency spectrum, its DOD systems may interfere with the systems of other foreign governments in the Pacific, the IG said in its report, Coordination of Electromagnetic Frequency Spectrum and International Telecommunications Agreements [GCN, Nov. 9. Page
DOD plans new Hawaiian HQ
HONOLULU—The Pacific Command is planning to build a state-of-the-art command and control headquarters at Camp Smith in Hawaii that command officials said will serve as a model for other Defense Department C2 centers in the 21st century. The command will break ground on the new headquarters in 2000 and move into the complex in 2003, said Army Brig. Gen. James Bryan, the command's director for command, control, communications and computer systems.
Clemins says a global intranet will help DOD achieve systems goals
HONOLULU—The De-fense Department next year should develop a global intranet to ensure the success of initiatives such as electronic commerce and paperless contracting, Adm. Archie Clemins urged this month. "You hear all these people talking about how we're going to electronic commerce, electronic budgeting and an electronic assignment policy," the Pacific Fleet commander said this month at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's TechNet Asia-Pacific '98 conference.
Nuclear systems could crash in 2000, study says
The Defense Department's nuclear arsenal may be at greater risk from date code problems than DOD has publicly acknowledged, according to a report from the British American Security Information Council, an independent research organization. The report, The Bug in the Bomb: The Impact of the Year 2000 Problem on Nuclear Weapons, concludes that the Pentagon has only recently recognized that the year 2000 problem could result in the crash of nuclear weapons and related command and
Army seeks A-76 waiver for logistics project
An A-76 review could delay modernization by up to two years, Gen. Johnnie Wilson says. Gen. Johnnie Wilson, commander of Army Materiel Command, has signed a waiver designed to bypass the formal A-76 process and let the service proceed with a controversial $1 billion logistics modernization program to outsource some Army software support functions.
Navy will install Xylan ATM switches aboard four ship groups
In its continuing effort to modernize its shipboard communications systems, the Navy will outfit two carrier battle groups and two amphibious-ready groups with asynchronous transfer mode LANs in the next year. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command this month negotiated an order with Electronic Data Systems Corp. under the company's PC LAN+ contract to provide ATM switches from Xylan Corp. of Calabasas, Calif., to serve as the communications backbones on the ships.
Air Force signs with Lockheed for Microsoft products
The Air Force has signed an agreement with Lockheed Martin Corp. to provide the service with Microsoft Corp. products at discounted prices over three years. More than 300,000 Air Force users are expected to benefit from the new volume discount agreement that will be a part of Lockheed Martin's Global Combat Support System–Air Force contract.
AF matches posts, personnel
The Air Force last month approved a system that could help it better assign the right officers to the right jobs. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan and the service's other top brass gave the new assignment system a final review early last month at Corona, the quarterly meeting of senior service leaders in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Navy: Calibration flaw crashed Yorktown LAN
PASCAGOULA, Miss.—Human error, not Microsoft Windows NT, was the cause of a LAN failure aboard the Aegis cruiser USS Yorktown that left the Smart Ship dead in the water for nearly three hours last fall during maneuvers near Cape Charles, Va., Navy officials said. The Yorktown last September suffered an engineering LAN casualty when a petty officer calibrating a fuel valve entered a zero into a shipboard database, officials said. The resulting database
DISN to award multibillion dollar Pacific transmission services IDIQ
HONOLULU—The Defense Information Systems Agency is on track to award a 10-year, multibillion dollar Defense Information Systems Network Transmission Services-Pacific (DTS-P) contract early next year. DISA's DISN program office last year expanded DTS-P areas of coverage outside of the Pacific to include places not covered by the DISN-Continental United States and DISN-Europe contracts. The coverage includes the Pacific Command's and Southern Command's areas of responsibilities, such as Alaska, Hawaii, Australia, Guam, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Central
DISA establishes portal for telecom satellite system
HONOLULU—The Defense Information Systems Agency has installed a dedicated ground station here at the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station-Pacific to act as a terrestrial gateway for Defense Department users of the $5 billion global Iridium cellular network. DISA bought the gateway from Iridium LLC, a consortium of international investors led by Motorola Inc. of Schaumburg, Ill., for about $15 million to handle nearly 2,000 simultaneous DOD users.
Cebrowski makes call for bottom-up IT
The federal government needs to take a more decentralized, bottom-up approach to information technology, according to Vice Adm. Arthur K. Cebrowski. Government takes a wholly integrated, control-oriented approach—something which many feel is generally inconsistent with the information age," he said last month in an acceptance speech at the GCN Awards Banquet in Washington.
Service readies RFP for $1 billion logistics systems modernization
After months of delay, the Army soon will release a $1 billion request for proposals for the modernization of its antiquated logistics systems. At stake are the jobs of more than 500 civilian employees at the Army's Industrial Logistics Support Center in Chambersburg, Pa., and its Logistics Systems Support Center in St. Louis. The centers support the service's logistics systems.
IG: Defense buying systems from vendors not certified 2000-ready
Military services are buying major weapons systems from vendors not required to deliver year 2000-ready products, the Defense Department inspector general reported last month. The IG reviewed 16 DOD weapons systems and found that nine programs had contracts or solicitations that did not include language about year 2000 readiness. The Federal Acquisition Regulation requires agencies buying hardware and software to ensure that contracts and solicitations demand that products be year 2000-ready.
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