BIG FISH, SMALL POND. Kevin Carroll, former Army CACW[OO] chief and now an acquisition poohbah at the Army Materiel Command, has decided to leave his AMC HQ post for a new job as program executive officer for Standard Army Management Information Systems. His departure is imminent, according to re
BIG FISH, SMALL POND. Kevin Carroll, former Army CAC-W[OO] chief and now an acquisition pooh-bah at the Army Materiel Command, has decided to leave his AMC HQ post for a new job as program executive officer for Standard Army Management Information Systems. His departure is imminent, according to reports picked up by my stealth, mobile units. Although I'm told Carroll subscribes to the "big SES fish, small pond" theory, the last fish who swam in that particular pond, Tony Valletta, managed to use it as a springboard to a very big office on the Pentagon's
E-ring as deputy and then acting ASD/C3I.
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LOVE TO TESTIFY? Any Army four-star who has not seen enough combat can apply for one of the toughest jobs in all of DOD - head of the AMC - now that Gen. Johnnie Wilson has announced plans to retire in April. Because AMC operates in 70 congressional districts, any general who draws the AMC slot might as well sub-lease an apartment on Capitol Hill. The command will bear the brunt of outsourcing and A-76 efforts, which everyone on the Hill endorses - if it happens in another district.
Wilson handled this job with diplomatic skill he needed to make it all the way from private to four-star general, the only African American ever to do so. (Gen. Colin Powell started out as a second lieutenant.) Wilson always was willing to carry the message of his success to the community. He recently spent a morning at the fourth-grade class taught by Mrs. Interceptor at Mount Rainier (Md.) Elementary School.
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BAD TIMING. Shortly after Spawar kicked off a procurement valued at $145 million to acquire 64 kilobits/sec Inmarsat service to provide IT-21 connectivity for the "small decks" in the fleet, the Justice Department announced it had joined a whistle-blower suit filed against Comsat Corp., one of the potential bidders on the key Navy job.
The suit, filed by former employees of Electromechanical Systems Inc., charged that EMS shifted costs from commercial contracts to Navy contracts. Susan Lewis Sallett, Comsat's corporate communications veep, said the company "vigorously denied accusations" from DOJ that the company sought to cover up the alleged wrong-doing. Stratos Communications holds the interim Spawar 64 kilobits/sec Inmarsat contract and plans to bid on the new business.
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CREDIT GIVEN. Robert Lang, one of the cranky former Marines at Logicon who loves to send me e-mail (I guess because I'm also, at times, a cranky ex-Marine), says we should give credit for the Marines' new common computer strategy not to the current CIO, Deborah Fillippi, but to "C4I visionaries" retired colonels Steve D'Lugos and David Chadwick.
Done.
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ACRONYM SOUP. Eleven years of decrypting acronyms takes a horrible toll on the mind. I inadvertently mixed up the name and initials of the effort to re-examine DOD network strategy, which is headed by DOD deputy CIO Marv Langston, as GINIE, Global Information Network Enterprise. But, as John Whittenton at Mitre informed me, the name should be Global Networked Information Enterprise (GNIE). Be thankful it's not an OIPT.
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GULF-BOUND. The Interceptor and his famed fly-away mobile unit will be reporting from Bahrain, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait through Feb. 22. I'll be starting with the USS Belleau Wood ARG and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit today - Feb. 8, my 55th birthday. The pooh-bahs here at FCW took pity on me and decided I did not need to spend a third birthday in Bosnia.