Intercepts

DISA goes green.

'Tis fitting to report on St. Patrick's Day that Army Maj. Gen. David Kelley a truly lucky Irishman who gets to wear green all year will take over as DISA's director from Air Force Lt. Gen. Al Edmonds. According to tidbits picked up by my wee folk on the E-ring Kelley - currently DISA's deputy - landed the director's job almost by default. The Air Force passed on nominating anyone while the Navy put in JIEO director Rear Adm. John Gauss for the job - a move that would require an almost unheard-of two-star hop.

* DSSG dreamin'. My Gallows Road stealth antenna site has picked up off-the-meter signals that Boeing wants to turn its woefully underbid Defense Information Systems Network Support Services-Global pact into a real moneymaker with a scheme to add 300 new labor categories at premium rates. Guess Boeing found out the rates it bid for engineers did not even match up with the pay of fast food management in the Tysons Corner area. Don't look for DISA to bite on this one. The drastic changes proposed by Boeing would definitely bring a protest from the losing DSSG bidders. Besides I hear DISA has considered farming out much of the DISN integration work to the Defense Enterprise Integration Services II contractors. If Boeing gets too greedy DISA also has the option of recompeting DSSG.

* The big takeover. Speaking at last week's AFCEA Northern Virginia confab OMB IT guru Bruce McConnell found some interesting open-source intell on his badge - intell that could end the ASD/C3I race. The badge listed him as an OMB staffer but it also had "Department of Defense" underneath causing him to wonder if DOD plans to take over his agency.

* Force XXI follies? Every day it seems the Army dumps another 10 000 words of techno-hype about the digitized battlefield exercise scheduled for the end of this month at Fort Irwin Calif. into the Interceptor's e-mail bin. None of this addresses a question key not only to the exercise but also to the future of the digital Army: How easily can those digital systems be jammed intercepted or spoofed? Evidently the Army does not want to look at this too rigorously as I hear the Fort Irwin Opposition Force has been told not to use technologies and techniques readily available at any Radio Shack.

* Winging it to WesPac. I've packed my fly-away dish for a WesPac swing and will file Intercepts from Hawaii Guam Okinawa and South Korea for the next month.