Tag Archives: procurement

North Korean GPS jamming shows vulnerability of Army radios – Nextgov.com

While this is alarming, please bear in mind that this is a discussion of a military technology which, with respect to one feature (GPS), used a civilian-grade component. That the entire system can be easily jammed would, we think, be an unreasonable inference based on the data at hand. By Bob Brewin, writing on NextGov.com:

Korea’s jamming of Global Positioning System signals on the Korean Peninsula this week illustrates a “life-threatening” vulnerability of the Army’s Rifleman Radio, which is equipped with a nonmilitary GPS chip, a former top Defense Department official told Nextgov. The Army plans to test the hand-held radio this month at its semiannual Network Integration Evaluation exercise at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., which began Tuesday.

GPS satellites broadcast jam-resistant military signals as well as civil signals susceptible to blocking. Jules McNeff, who spent 20 years in the Air Force working on GPS, said the Army evidently decided to use a chip that receives only civil GPS signals as a “cheap and expedient” way to incorporate location information into the Rifleman Radio.

McNeff, now vice president for strategies and programs at Overlook Systems Technologies Inc., a GPS engineering firm in Vienna, Va., said any time a jamming incident occurs, “it calls into question why we are using [civil chips] in the Rifleman Radio.”

The Army plans to field 5,900 short range Rifleman Radios to infantry squads in seven brigade combat teams over the next year.

Army Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess Jr., director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee in February that North Korea has mounted high-powered Russian-made jamming devices on vehicles near the border — 40 miles north of Seoul, the South Korean capital — which can disrupt GPS signals within a 30-to-60 mile range. He added North Korea has started to develop its own GPS jammer with a greater range.

John Merrill, position, navigation and timing program manager for the Homeland Security Department, said small, inexpensive GPS jammers widely sold on the Web have proved difficult to locate. In a presentation to attendees at a National Institute of Standards conference in March, Merrill said it took DHS, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration from November 2009 to April 2011 to locate one GPS jammer in a truck traveling the New Jersey Turnpike and knocking out GPS signals at the Newark, N.J., airport. [emphasis added]

The Army has billed the Network Integration Evaluation, which runs through June, as a “real-world” exercise and McNeff said the service should include “navigation warfare” maneuvers to test the vulnerability of the Rifleman Radio and other systems to jamming.

via North Korean GPS jamming shows vulnerability of Army radios – Defense – Nextgov – Nextgov.com.

U.S. settles with whistleblower Bunny Greenhouse

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 Below is an excerpt from Erik Eckholm’s piece in the Times, noting the settlement of litigation between Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse and DOD for retaliatory action after her objections, in 2005, to the Halliburton/KBR no-bid contract for logistical support in Iraq. Greenhouse had been the Chief Contracting Officer for the Army Corps of Engineers. She’d previously had a perfect record of performance ratings.

More here

Her primary objections:

  • the study rationalizing the sole-source KBR contract was itself outsourced – to Halliburton/KBR, which recommended itself as the sole source;
  • Even if the contract’s premise was justified for the first few months on emergency grounds, it didn’t make sense for a multiyear, potentially indefinite contract.

Which raises the question of how much work KBR/Halliburton are doing now in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for DOD, CIA, et cet.  We note the it’s KBR’s former CEO, and later the United States Vice President, who made famous the phrase “undisclosed location.” (For readers from Brooklyn, “undisclosed location” roughly translates to “going to the mattresses.”) KBR is currently, publicly, one of two logistics contractors in Iraq – but classified contracts are, by definition, outside the scope of public review – and for practical purposes – outside the scope of Congressional review.

Continue reading →

BBC investigation demonstrates that Iraq purchased fraudulent bomb detection devices

Via BBC News:

The BBC has conducted an investigation which demonstrated that Iraq purchased bomb detection devices in which the component purported to detect trace amounts of TNT was, in fact, “nothing but the type of anti-theft tag used to prevent stealing in high street stores.” Iraqi Interior ministry still backing ‘bomb detector’

According to the BBC,

Some Iraqi officials are insisting that a controversial bomb detection device works, despite a BBC inquiry in which experts said the item was useless.

Britain has banned exports of the ADE-651 and the director of the company selling them was arrested and bailed.(emphasis supplied)

But the device is still being used at checkpoints all over Baghdad. Continue reading →

French army sides with Mozilla in Microsoft email war (Reuters via Open Source Pixels

French army sides with Mozilla in Microsoft email war (Reuters) – via Open Source Pixels.

Reuters takes a look at the use of Thunderbird by the French military. “The military found Mozilla’s open source design permitted France to build security extensions, while Microsoft’s secret, proprietary software allowed no tinkering. “We started with a military project, but quickly generalized it,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Suel of the Ministry of Defense and one of those in charge of the project.”

Reuters article here.

Does anyone know how much the United States government spends, let’s say, on Microsoft Outlook licenses per year? We’ll try to find out.




Sierra Trading Post one-day sale

Sierra Trading Post, on any given day a place to find high-end gear and clothing at low-end prices, is having a one-day sale with an additional 40% off of 4,000 items. Sierra Trading Post’s stock – from my viewing of it – is usually very high-end outdoors Sierra Trading Post Homepage_Logo

gear and clothing, sometimes in last years colors, occasionally slight seconds, or perfectly fine discontinued items. In addition to outdoors gear (from the United States and elsewhere), they carry overstocks on very high-end European clothing. Precisely how a company based in Cheyenne, Wyoming ends up selling very-high-grade European dress clothing and outdoors gear is one of those market mysteries whose answer is not apparent on the face of things.

That said (that I don’t understand their business model), they carry a lot of products which should be in a go-bag or worn during an emergency – or to prevent one. Since – having been through it – I’ve learned that dogs can be even more vulnerable than children to being hit by cars, Sierra Trading Post’s deals on the OllyDog reflective vest for $17.95 (medium, large and extra-large available; but if you’re dog’s small – these can end up doubling as raincoats) may save you and your dog from heartbreak:

Olly Dog reflective vest medium - at Sierra Trading Post

Olly Dog reflective vest medium - at Sierra Trading Post

There’s more, of course – check out Sierra Trading Post’s front page – and I believe that will bring you to the additional 40% one-day sale on 4,000 items, including the dog vest above.