SDFM The Business of Defense
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Al Qaida\'s affiliate in Iraq is promising more attacks after 58 people were killed in an attck on a church this week. The Islamic State of Iraq launched an attack on a Catholic church during Mass in downtown Baghdad last Sunday said its deadline for Egypt\'s Coptic chruch, which allegedly is holding women hostage for converting to Islam must be released before the attacks stop. This attack was the deadliest ever recorded against Iraq\'s Christians, whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003.
November 04, 2010 -
Yemen has been a trouble spot for more than a decade and explosives have always been the problem and they\'ve always been relatively small. It was in 1998 that the U.S.S. Cole, a Navy Destroyer was attack while in Yemen. 17 sailors were killed and 39 were injured. A small craft approached the port side of the destroyer, and an explosion occurred, leaving a 40-by-40-foot gash in the ship\'s port side. The toner cartridges with the explosive PETN in them that were discovered aboard planes in the UK and Dubai last week contained only a small amount, but had they gone off, they would\'ve inflicted maximum damage.
November 04, 2010 -
Former U.S. Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Pa.) President & CEO, Common Cause Deborah Simmons Senior Correspondent, The Washington Times Admiral Thad Allen (Ret.) Former Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard Perry Hooks President, Hooks Book Events Dan Pink Chief Speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore (1995 - 1997)
November 04, 2010 -
Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado say vegetation likely plays a bigger role in cleaning the atmosphere than was even previously thought. They used genetic studies, and computer modeling to show that deciduous plants absorb about a third more of a common class of air-polluting chemicals than past studies showed. The new study was supported in part by the National Science Foundation. Plants can produce a particular class of oxygenated chemicals to protect themselves from irritants and repel invaders such as insects, similar to the human body\'s production of white blood cells due to an infection. It turns out the chemicals have long-term impacts on the environment and human health. Their research also shows plants can actually adjust their metabolism - absorbing more of the chemicals - as a response to various types of stress.
November 01, 2010 -
The Federal Aviation Administration is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop alternatives to jet fuel. The agencies will examine the availability of different kinds of feedstocks that could be processed by bio-refineries. Officials say, the development and deployment of alternative fuels is critical to achieving carbon neutral aviation growth by the year 2020. As part of the effort, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced the implementation of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (or BCAP). That program reimburses farmers or other producers for the cost of planting and producing eligible renewable biomass crops - up to 75 percent - within specified areas. To further stabilize the cost of jet fuel, the agencies have also entered a five year agreement to develop aviation fuel from forest and crop residues and other \"green\" feedstocks.
November 01, 2010 -
As part of its Deep Learning program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA) is exploring recent breakthroughs in the ability of machines to learn and assess places and objects. The need for such research is being driven by the vast amount of data that\'s become available to Defense commanders and analysts from new types of sensors. For warfighters, the data has to be quickly and correctly analyzed. Currently, that\'s done by highly trained human operators. But as sensor capabilities expand, DARPA says sophisticated, powerful machines with the ability to imitate, and even surpass, human perceptual capabilities will be needed. They\'re building applications that will allow computers to detect and classify objects and activities. So far, the results hold promise for achieving human-level-or-better analysis.
November 01, 2010 -
SPECIAL REBROADCAST! I think about performance every day. How are we performing as a utility? How do we define success across the agency? It\'s really important to define what success means, and then measure it.
November 01, 2010 -
Faster, smaller, hipper, and even more efficient, teleworkers are morphing into mobile workers.
November 01, 2010 -
October 27th, 2010 Representative Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and the Honorable Tom Davis discuss the reform of the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and the pending Congressional Cybersecurity bills.
October 29, 2010 -
Take down the websites used by extremists. British Minister of Security Pauline Neville-Jones called on the the U.S. to do that during a speech at the Brookings Institution. She also urged the U.S. to do more to stop militant threats without going to war. Neville-Jones pointed about Al Qaeda\'s leaders in Pakistan have shown \"startling resilience\" and their affiliates have both the intent and the capability to strike the West.
October 29, 2010 -
The remains of two servicemen, missing in action from World War II, including one from Maryland were laid to rest yesterday. Army Air Forces Staff Sgts. Claude G. Tyler of Landover, Md. and Claude A. Ray of Coffeyville, Kan were both 24. Tyler was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and Ray was buried in Fallbrook, Calif. They took off from an airfield near New Guinea on Oct. 27, 1943. They were to land near the Bismarck Sea, but the craft was lost. In August 2003 a Defense Department team received information on a crash site from a citizen in Papua New Guinea. That led to the identification of Tyler and Ray.
October 28, 2010 -
USMC recruiters in Chantilly discovered in the early morning hours yesterday that their office had been hit by gunfire overnight while the building was being renovated. The recruiters had been working out of their Sterling, Virginia office. This was the third military facility that had been shot at in the same two week time frame. The Pentagon and the Marine Corp Museum had been hit by gunfire from the same weapon. Authorities in an Illinois suburb are also looking into the stabbing of a Marine recruiter that happened within that time period.
October 27, 2010 -
Did the cancellation of joint military exercises between the U.S. and S. Korea in the Yellow Sea have anything to do with China. Not according to the Pentagon. A spokesman said the two navies couldn\'t agree on a timetable. He also said the exercises in international water should pose no problems for neither China nor North Korea The South Korean media reported the drills had been cancelled because of complaints from China.
October 25, 2010 -
When the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency says it\'s ramping up a new Transformer program, they\'re not talking about transferring AC to DC.... They mean transformers, like the toys, turned movie heroes. Only in the case of DARPA, it\'s flying cars. DARPA says their Transformer program will attempt to combine the advantages of ground vehicles and helicopters into a single vehicle. Six vendors will participate in a 12-month effort to develop a robust ground vehicle that can transform into an air vehicle that can take-off and land vertically. It should be able to efficiently travel 250 nautical miles on land and in the air, or any combination, without a dedicated pilot, while carrying up to 1,000 pounds. The benefits to warfighters would be numerous, including better resupply operations and quicker medical evacuations.
October 25, 2010 -
Through recently developed advanced methods of measuring carbon sequestration, the U.S. Forest Service now estimates 41-point-four billion metric tons of carbon is currently stored in the nation\'s forests, while an additional 192 million metric tons is sequestered each year. They report the increase is due to both increases in the total area of forest land, and in the amount of carbon stored per acre. The new information highlights the important role America\'s forests play in the fight against climate change. The additional carbon sequestered offsets roughly 11-percent of the country\'s industrial greenhouse gas emissions every year. National forests contain an average of 77-point-8 metric tons of carbon per acre: a greater density than on private or other public forest lands, due to differing management priorities in national forest than on private lands.
October 25, 2010