Intercepts

THE THREE-STAR DANCE. Army Lt. Gen. Dave Kelley plans to stay another year at DISA, according to an incoming piece of ALL CAPS rocket mail from Emmett Paige Jr., former ASD/C3I. It sure made me nostalgic for the days when Paige launched rocket mails this way on a weekly basis.

Because Kelley has decided to stay for a third year at DISA (for a total of two serving as director and one as deputy director), this means other Army communications and computer flag officers, such as Lt. Gen. William Campbell (DISC4) and Maj. Gen. Charles Sutten, head of the Army Signal Command, may have to cha-cha in place for another year.

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CIO WEED KILLER. The 1999 Conference Report on the DOD authorization bill hands some potent new authority to Pentagon CIO Art Money and his deputy, Marv Langston. Under the heading of "additional responsibilities'' the CIO is authorized to eliminate "duplicate information technology and national security systems within and between the military departments and agencies.'' If this trend toward eliminating duplication spreads, the United States might wind up with one Air Force, not one per service.

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LOVE THOSE PALMS. My Wahiawa, Oahu, Hawaii, antenna site has picked up strong signals that the DISA-Pacific Fleet commander, Army Col. Mike Harvey, has wrangled another tough tour out there at Wheeler Army Air Field. That will give him plenty of time to stop the Hawaii Information Transfer System from hiccuping.

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THREAT BIZ BOOM? Secretary of Defense William Cohen established the Defense Threat Reduction Agency last week, which starts out with a Pentagon-size budget of $1.9 billion and 2,089 personnel headed by Jay Davis. DTRA, created as a result of the Defense Reform Initiative, consolidates missions previously performed by several agencies, including the Defense Technology Security Administration, the Special Weapons Agency and the On-site Inspection Agency. Only DOD could reform something and still have it cost $1.9 billion a year to operate.

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DISHING IT UP A SPAWAR. Rear Adm. John Gauss and his folks out at Spawar in San Diego have picked up a juicy assignment as the lead for all DOD Ka-band satellite service in partnership with Gauss' former colleagues on Courthouse Road in Virginia. Ka-band satellite service holds out the promise of providing high-bandwidth service to small Navy vessels that cannot accommodate larger C- or Ku-band dishes because the higher frequencies require smaller antennas. There is the slight problem of pointing at a satellite a yarmulke-size dish that is positioned on a rolling ship, but that's why Spawar has all those Bunsen burners in its labs.

Linchpin Alert. I've been keeping track of Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre's love of the word "overarching"— and its subsequent spread through the bureaucracy— and asked readers to send in any and all overarching sightings. Owen Ambur, a classmate of Hamre's at Augustana College in 1972, sent an e-mail warning us of another Hamre favorite: the word "linchpin.'' Linchpin, Ambur said, "is a word I will always associate'' with the deputy secretary of Defense. Keep your eyes and ears open for a Hamre speech about overarching linchpins.

Overarching Update. Michael Shapiro, one of those Spawar Bunsen burner operators, has decided to help me in my overarching mission. He reported that an Alta Vista Web search for the word resulted in 18,337 hits, while Hot Bot reported only 11,167 hits.

The first result of both searches was something called "The Air Force CIO Overarching Integrated Process Team." This definitely makes all of us here at Intercept Central yearn for a less sesquipedalian DOD secretariat.