AF will get 64-bit computing on Sun, Digital workstations
The Air Force last month awarded contracts worth up to a total $956 million to Hughes Data Systems Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. for an estimated 37,000 workstations. Over its five-year life, the Air Force Workstations (AFWS) contract is expected to pull 64-bit computing off its pedestal and push it onto ordinary Air Force desktops supporting everything from battle management and scientific research to mundane logistics applications.
Bosnia to base: Stop shipping computers!
Two months into Operation Joint Endeavor, U.S. troops in Eastern Europe are struggling with a severe case of computer overload. "Don't send us any more boxes!" one harassed field commander recently told his superiors at the Pentagon. PCs and workstations are piling up inside U.S. command centers in Bosnia, Croatia and Hungary, according to field reports.
Web traffic invades, occupies DOD's NIPRnet
World Wide Web traffic has commandeered Defense Department data networks over the past year, pushing once-reclusive organizations into the Internet limelight and gobbling up bandwidth. In late 1994 there were only a few dozen DOD servers hosting Web sites and home pages. Today, more than 1,000 military organizations have established home pages.
Direct satelline TV technology boosts Bosnia communications
The Defense Department last month unveiled plans to deploy a powerful new communications technology for U.S. troops in Bosnia, and you could find most of the parts at your local Radio Shack or Circuit City. Most consumer electronics outlets stock the TV decoder boxes and pizza-size satellite dishes that the Pentagon will field, with some modifications, to command-and-control units in Europe and the former Yugoslavia this spring.
DOD moves to rein in NIPRnet's high user fees
By fielding an interim 10-node asynchronous transfer mode backbone, the Defense Department expects to cut usage fees for its unclassified global data network by as much as 29 percent beginning in October. Rear Adm. John Gauss, deputy director for interoperability engineering at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the new plan recognizes that the Non-Classified IP Router Network (NIPRnet) is too expensive and slow for many service organizations.
DMS product delays threaten July rollout
Waiting for DMS? You'd better exhale. The Pentagon's long-anticipated Defense Message System is emerging from its vaporware stage, but it will be at least another year before the average user can rip the shrink-wrap off a package of DMS-compliant messaging and security services. At the first DMS Expo last October and in numerous interviews and speeches, senior Defense Department systems officials have set July 1996 as the target for initial operational capability, or IOC, for
Pentagon to services: Ante up more for your BPR programs
Military IRM managers interested in business process re-engineering (BPR) can call on central Defense Department funding now, but starting in 1997 they'll have to reach into their own pockets. In the five years since DOD's Corporate Information Management initiative was launched, the services and agencies have been able to tap the CIM Central Fund, managed by the assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and computers. The contributions have been modest--the fund averaged around
Hot-potato report advises DOD to outsource all its processing
T he Defense Department would save at least $1 billion over 10 years by consolidating its data processing at six industry-run megacenters, according to drafts of an independent study now circulating among senior Pentagon systems officials. The study, conducted by Coopers & Lybrand, was commissioned last May by Emmett Paige Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and computers. He asked for the study after suggesting to Congress that DOD would consider outsourcing
Contract award for Desktop V is off fast track
The Air Force has given up trying to award the billion-dollar Desktop V contract without entering into discussions with bidders. The change of plan will delay the award by at least three months. Vendors said the move also renews doubts about the feasibility of awarding large PC buys using the so-called fast-track approach. After delays in planning the buy, the service set a bid deadline for last July and promised to award in December without
Intelligence systems designers combat wartime snafus
If the Defense Department had a better intelligence data network, Capt. Scott O'Grady might not have been shot down over Bosnia. That was the implication of reports, leaked in the days following O'Grady's rescue, indicating that a U.S. intelligence agency had detected anti-aircraft missile batteries in the area O'Grady was scheduled to fly over before he ever took off. For reasons unknown, that information failed to reach him in time.
Defense drops bomb on lofty I-CASE plan
The Defense Department is abandoning any plans to make the Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering environment a mandatory DODwide standard for software development. Instead, the $670 million I-CASE contract held by Logicon Inc. will become an indefinite-quantity contract for individual CASE tools and products, senior DOD and industry officials said.
DISA set to site-license software
Before year's end, the Defense Information Systems Agency expects to sign enterprise licensing agreements with several software vendors that would let Defense users buy licenses and download programs in less than a week. "We are optimistic that several agreements will be in place by late December," said Don Black, DISA's program manager for enterprise licensing and the Electronic Shopping System. DISA staff first began working on the enterprise licensing project more than two years ago
AF Abandons rigid specs for base upgrades
The Air Force has scrapped its original strategy for the 10-year Base-Level Systems Modernization II contract and asked industry to provide the specifics on how the program should work. Why? Because the service wants to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued many of the Defense Department's complex systems modernization and integration projects, Air Force officials said.
DISA pushes back deadlines on $5.65b in DISN contracts
The Defense Department last week pushed back the bid deadlines for its three main Defense Information Systems Network buys. The Defense Information Systems Agency moved the bid deadline for the $400 million DISN Switched Bandwidth Management contract from Oct. 31 to Nov. 30. Bidders had asked for more time after DISA released amendments that changed 175 pages of the solicitation.
Just 1 DOD megacenter has an acceptable disaster plan
Should a disaster strike one of the Defense Department's data processing megacenters tomorrow, chances are good that its customers would suffer serious disruptions in computer service. The 16 megacenters, which process administrative applications such as payroll, accounting and logistics for all of DOD, are supposed to have disaster recovery plans, or DRPs, that ensure seamless continuity of service through backup facilities in the event of massive system failure.
$9 billion DOD IT budget eludes knives on Hill
The House and the Senate have agreed to spare the knife on nearly all the items in the Pentagon's $9 billion information technology budget request for fiscal 1996, while throwing in close to $100 million in unrequested funds for good measure. In their final conference report on the 1996 Defense appropriations bill, the two houses of Congress bucked the prevailing budget-cutting trend and stuck by the generous tone set this summer during authorization and appropriations
DOD gets ready to abandon old WWMCCS
The Defense Department is planning the mother of all system cutovers for December. ^^DOD will pull the plug on its most critical joint-services data network, the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS), and replace it with the Global Command and Control System (GCCS). The transition is so sensitive that DOD won't disclose the exact date of the switch, lest an opportunistic foe try to exploit any hitches.
Pentagon Nixes program that favored SDBs for telecon work
In an anticlimactic end to one of the most bitterly opposed contracting policies in recent years, last month the Pentagon eliminated its 10 percent evaluation preference program for small, disadvantaged businesses (SDBs) that provide DOD with long-distance telephone lines and circuits. Eleanor Spector, director of Defense procurement, issued the final rule. The decision was not a surprise. Spector said this spring she probably would cancel the preference for long-haul telecom buys handled by the Defense Information
Troubled AF systems are kept alive by 'generous' lawmakers
Congressional meddling and slow Air Force progress on a new aircraft maintenance system have left the service's wing units with a trio of old, unreliable systems that will not be replaced before 1997. Evidence of the ongoing support for the problem-plagued systems is buried in the House and Senate fiscal 1996 Defense appropriations bills. Both the House and Senate added roughly $28 million in unrequested funds to the bills for the three old systems and
C2 rating aside, NT isn't secure
Even as Microsoft Corp. begins capitalizing on the National Security Agency's recent C2 certification of Windows NT, computer security experts warn that NT can be penetrated easily by unauthorized users with basic programming skills. Industry sources say the vulnerabilities in Windows NT and other C2 operating systems create a golden opportunity for computer-literate moles throughout the Defense Department.
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