Intercepts

* The end of the DT V tunnel. I'm picking up strong signals from my downtown D.C. Small Business Administration mobile unit as well as from my permanent site in Montgomery Ala. that indicate an "everybody wins" resolution to the Desktop V 8(a) fracas that is in the air.

Originally awarded to International Data Products Corp. the award was then protested by Dynamic Decisions Inc.

I hear the Air Force's Standard Systems Group has decided to make awards to DDI and IDP in order to resolve the litigation hopefully before the Nov. 25 one-year anniversary of the original award. Lawyer-driven delays on IDIQs such as this are why more and more commands have decided to bypass traditional acquisition methods and award BPAs.

IDP president George Fuster declined to comment on the possibility of a settlement but he did praise SSG's "incredible patience." Despite the Desktop V hassle IDP will have a strong presence at the Air Force Information Technology Conference this week in Montgomery moving iron off BPAs.

* Sands of the Gobi II. The Army Signal Command (ASC) routinely has personnel operating around the globe but Dave Laida a Fort Huachuca Ariz.-based civilian microwave technician recently returned from the most exotic posting to date: the Gobi Desert.

Laida who most likely holds the distinction of being the first U.S. military employee to operate in the Gobi since the Navy weather team portrayed in the great black-and-white movie classic "Sands of the Gobi " recently spent a week helping Russian Mongolian Border Troops to devise a new architecture to replace outmoded radios and switchboards.

No word from ASC if it plans to dispatch a legal team to help the Mongolians manage the inevitable protests that will result from the competition for the new Gobi comm system. But I am picking up signals from my Thomas Jefferson Street antenna site in D.C. that Dave Cohen plans to open an office in Ulaanbaatar.

* De-WOOed. The Army's major IT acquisition organization finally has shed the ungainly CACWOO acronym it picked up last year when it moved under the Communications-Electronics Command Acquisition Center (CAC) and became the Washington Operations Office (WOO). In one of those executive decisions that he gets those big bucks for CACWOO director Kevin Carroll has shortened it to CAC-W. Ah the thrill of command.

Carroll is spending the fall at Cecom HQ in Fort Monmouth N.J. as acting CAC director filling in for Edward Elgart who shuffled off to the E-ring for a temporary gig as acting deputy assistant secretary of the Army for procurement.

* No sweat. That's what the aptly named Lt. Scott Sweat the SSG info tech promised the Interceptor as he contemplated spending the week of Sept. 8-12 in usually baking Montgomery. "No" Sweat promised temperatures of 75 degrees all week so if you have any complaints about the climate you know who to talk to.