WASHINGTON: The persistent grumbles from the CIA and other bastions of the Intelligence Community that the Director of National Intelligence is just an unneeded layer of bureaucracy has caught the ear of House Intelligence chairman Rep. Devin Nunes. He promised to try and pass legislation to change this but admitted it would be “tough” to get…
By Colin ClarkEnterprise-wide training: the Army’s $3.5B program for multi-service combat readiness
The competition for Warfighter Training and Readiness Solutions will bring together training networks, combat training centers and live ranges across the DoD enterprise.
WASHINGTON: In the face of a lot of what he called “catastrophizing” about the “very volatile time for the country” known as the presidential transition, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper offers a simple message: “It’ll be OK.” Of course, that reassurance came after Clapper outlined the dark precautions that are taken on Inauguration Day, including the designation of…
By Colin Clark
SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE: Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who spent five years pushing the National Reconnaissance Office and the military to work more closely together, saw the effects today during a tour of the JICSPOC, the experimental effort to improve battle management of America’s satellites. Inside the heavily guarded secure facility where most of America’s satellites are flown and…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: Hacks are hard to do damage assessments on. Just ask Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper about the Chinese theft of data from the Office of Personnel Management. “We don’t actually know what was actually exfiltrated,” Clapper told several hundred people at Georgetown University’s Healy Hall today. Why don’t we really know if 5.6 million fingerprints — or…
By Colin ClarkORLANDO: (Story Delayed Due to Software Problems) A study by the intelligence community raised industrial base “concerns” about the merger between commercial spy satellite companies GeoEye and DigitalGlobe but found no showstoppers. That’s the word from Letitia Long, director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). I asked Long today if industrial base issues had…
By Colin ClarkORLANDO: The terrorists who attacked the Benghazi consulate, killing US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and four others, apparently maintained web, cell and radio silence before they acted, giving the US no hint an attack was imminent. “If people do not emit or discuss their behavior, it’s hard to find out what they are going…
By Colin Clark
GA-ASI’s MQ-9B: The right UAV for persistence, power, and performance
When assessing the state of the art of unmanned aerial systems, it’s critical to be very clear about what various aircraft can and can’t do – and could never do.
WASHINGTON: The commercial imagery company, GeoEye, has made its play to buy competitor DigitalGlobe. UPDATED: DigitalGlobe Rejects GeoEye Bid (Monday 10 a.m.) The two companies built and operate satellites that provide unclassified overhead imagery used extensively by allies and the intelligence community. The companies had to act, faced as they are with deep cuts to…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: Jim Clapper, the first Director of National Intelligence to order budget cuts across the intelligence community, may be leaving his post this fall. Or, then again, he may not. At this stage, all is rumor. So far, we’ve got three people with good intelligence connections saying Clapper is likely on the way out. We’ve…
By Colin ClarkUPDATED San Antonio: After a decade of enormous budget increases the American intelligence community’s budget will probably decline by billions of dollars, Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said here. Clapper told more than 3,000 people at the annual Geoint conference that the intelligence community’s budget had been handed in to the White House’s Office…
By Colin ClarkWashington: They spend most of their time analyzing maps for buried bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq or looking at what turned out to Osama bin Laden’s last residence, but intelligence analysts sometimes help out on the home front as well. As Hurricane Irene sends the East Coast scrambling to find shelter, clear out its drains…
By Colin Clark
Obama’s Cuts To Commercial Space Imagery A ‘Hegemonic’ Mistake
At last year’s Geoint conference, Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper made it clear that a significant amount of the savings needed by the intelligence community over the next five years would come from cutting the budget to buy commercial space imagery. Despite opposition within the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and quiet panic on the…
By Robbin Laird