Intercepts

Harvey held up

Don't expect the nomination of Francis Harvey as secretary of the Army to go anywhere anytime soon. Previously tapped as DOD's CIO, Harvey appears to have mightily irritated Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Reed posted a statement on his Web site calling it unacceptable that Harvey would not answer questions at an Oct. 6 hearing about increasing active-duty Army personnel by 20,000 to 40,000 soldiers. You can read a transcript of the Reed/Harvey exchange at FCW.com Download's Data Call, www.fcw.com/download.

Harvey should not expect much help from Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, served as staff director of the committee under Warner, and a statement on Reed's Web site says, "Following the hearing, Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed with Reed that there was no need to rush the nomination."

Musical chairs

We usually run into Army Maj. Gen. Dave Bryan, who until recently headed Joint Task Force–Global Network Operations, at the must-attend AFCEA International Technet Asia-Pacific Conference, and we did so again this year — but with a key difference. Instead of wearing Army green, Bryan was spotted hanging around the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in civvies and his new veep stripes from Northrop Grumman.

Bryan's newly minted business card says he's Northrop Grumman's vice president of DOD Transformation and Defense Enterprise Solutions. If you want to buy some transformation from Bryan, let us know. We can tell you how to reach him.

Meanwhile, Jim Orefice of Lucent has not gone anywhere, but when we spotted him at the Sheraton Waikiki, we couldn't help noticing his shiny new veep pips. He told us he's now a vice president of defense in the Lucent government markets unit.

Orefice started with AT&T way back in the last century when it was Ma Bell, and he has been a vice president of practically every AT&T spinoff or acquisition — including the company's NCR division — with the possible exception of Bell Labs and Western Electric.

We have Orefice's new phone number, too.

Ask and you shall receive

We reported last week that National Security Agency officials are looking for some high-speed encryption gizmos to handle traffic on the Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE), and are happy to tell you that Cindy Provin, president of Thales eSecurity, has the solution.

Provin told us over a round of 7-Ups at the Royal Hawaiian beach bar that Thales has a line of bulk encryption devices that are just dandy for GIG-BE.

Thales officials priced the bulk encryption gizmos from $30,000 to $75,000 for digital traffic speeds ranging from OC-3 to OC-48 — and they're available now. Next year, Thales will have an OC-192 encryption widget priced in the $100,000 range.

GIG or DIG?

Hanging around the AFCEA luau at the Royal Hawaiian, we picked up strong signals that Defense Information Systems Agency officials have once again delayed award of the trans-Atlantic and trans- Pacific extensions of GIG-BE, for reasons not even the most practiced DISA tea leaf readers can surmise.

Without these extensions, GIG-BE is hardly global, so maybe it should be renamed DIG-BE for domestic.

Packed in at PACOM

Pacific Command officials dedicated a spanking new headquarters at Camp Smith in Oahu this March. It replaced an aging World War II structure. But the new building houses so many people and is so tight on space that a command general told us the worker bees refer to the new HQ as the cubicle farm.

That's the buzz.

Intercept something? Send it to bbrewin@fcw.com or ftiboni@fcw.com.