Doing the DSSG. Signals from my East St. Louis antenna site correlated with intell picked up by my Courthouse Road stealth unit indicate Government Systems Inc. has quietly dropped its protest and suit against the $3 billion DISN support pact awarded to Boeing by DISA. This clears the way for B
Doing the DSSG. Signals from my East St. Louis antenna site - correlated with intell picked up by my Courthouse Road stealth unit - indicate Government Systems Inc. has quietly dropped its protest and suit against the $3 billion DISN support pact awarded to Boeing by DISA. This clears the way for Boeing to start performance including support for DISA sites and operations in Bosnia as well as operating the postage machines at DISA HQ.
* DISN Round Two. Look for DISA to award the $400 million DISN Switched/Bandwidth Manger Services contract just before the Labor Day weekend. All the bidders - AT&T EDS/Sprint and MCI - hope that Peter Smingler the DISN CO will take pity and make the award on the Thursday not the Friday before the three-day weekend. It's hard enough to fight beach traffic without being drunk with euphoria or despair.
* Fields redux. Craig Fields the legendary DARPA chief is running two key "Summer Studies" in his new role as chairman of the Defense Science Board. DSB is examining tactics and technology for 21st century warfare with information warfare an important component as well as a study on "innovative support structures" for the next century which takes a hard look at outsourcing. I'm picking up medium-strength signals that the DSB study will come down solidly for outsourcing practically everything but getting wounded.
* Clean that cookies jar. That's the advice of Deborah Balducci head of DISA's ASSIST team when asked how users should handle the "cookies" text strings dumped into a user's hard drive by some World Wide Web sites. Balducci suggests routinely checking your hard drive for the "cookies.txt" file and then deleting the unasked-for goodies. She also suggested that making the file a "read-only" could stop the problem before it starts.
* Intergraph goes Hollywood. Jim Meadlock the company's hands-on CEO hosted a dazzling demonstration for federal users last week in Reston Va. for the company's new line of high-powered graphics workstations which have found broad acceptance in Hollywood for their animation capabilities. The stuff that has wowed filmland will also play well in the Defense simulation arena bringing low-priced (less than $21 000) workstations to a market where the price of a hardware seat used to start at $50 000. Bill Salter president of Intergraph Federal Systems expects the new line to end up on the Navy's CAD-2 contracts.
* Fly JWID. Pentagon pooh-bahs planning to attend the Joint Warfighting Interoperability Demonstration next week (Aug. 26-Aug. 30) don't have to join the seething mobs at the USAir terminal at Washington National Airport. The JWID Air Force will operate daily from Andrews AFB to the main demo site at Fort Bragg N.C. as well as to sites in Florida and Norfolk. Pack breakfast. This could be a peanuts flight.
* Going mobile. The Interceptor will have his deployable rig all this week at Fort Bragg reporting on JWID. Next week I'll haul the mobile unit out to San Diego for the AFCEA Database confab.
NEXT STORY: GATEC: A view from the front line