Tactical clouds, techie politicians and better bandwidth for the troops

Navy explores potential of a 'tactical cloud'

The Office of Naval Research wants to take full advantage of all available data in expeditionary warfare by developing the Expeditionary Warfare Naval Tactical Cloud.

Defense Systems reports that ONR is soliciting white papers and full proposals on ways to maximize the use of the data generated by airborne, shipboard and other deployed systems. The goal is for the tactical cloud to contribute to planning and executing expeditionary missions without requiring new "infrastructure, systems, tools or middleware."

Net neutrality champion gets NYT endorsement

Political candidates don't get much more techie than Tim Wu, who is running for lieutenant governor in New York. Wu, who coined the term "net neutrality," teaches Internet law and policy at Columbia Law School, has been a Google fellow and a senior adviser to the Federal Trade Commission, and wrote a book, "The Master Switch," on the history of communications technology. (Full disclosure: He is also a former colleague of FCW's editor-in-chief.)

And now Wu is the New York Times' pick in the state's Sept. 9 Democratic primary. The paper endorsed Wu over former congresswoman Kathy Hochul, saying that he could offer "a fresh perspective and a new voice to counter Albany's entrenched players."

Admittedly, Albany doesn't much affect federal IT -- and recent bids by former federal U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra (Virginia lieutenant governor) and former White House senior technology adviser Dave Cole (New Jersey congressional seat) failed to make it past the party primaries. But would-be elected officials who truly understand tech are a trend worth watching.

LGS Innovations to lay fiber optics at northwest military base

LGS Innovations will lay fiber optics at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord network in Fort Lewis, Wash., as part of a $7.3 million contract, the communications technology firm announced Aug. 28. The main work to improve network resiliency at the base began in May and will last through April 2016.

The fiber-optic overhaul will create a "cost-effective foundation for potential future upgrades to a 40- or 100-gigabit network," LGS Innovations CEO Kevin Kelly said in a statement. "It will provide higher connectivity speeds to Joint Base Lewis-McChord locally and allows the base to expand its services regionally."

The base is one of the largest on the West Coast, and it supports about 40,000 active-duty, National Guard and reserve service members, and about 15,000 civilian workers.

NSF plans cloud computing test beds

The National Science Foundation recently announced two $10 million projects to create cloud computing test beds, GCN reports. The projects, to be called Chameleon and CloudLab, are part of the NSFCloud program that supports research into novel cloud architectures to address emerging challenges, including real-time and high-confidence systems.