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Jacobs Technology Inc., Lincoln, Mass., was awarded two cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-reimbursable contract for interim support of services to provide engineering and technology acquisition support services. The contracts are valued at $9,682,777 and $7,543,139. The types of services to be acquired under this contract includes but are not limited to: engineering services, engineering support, technical support, provisioning and logistics, modeling and simulation, configuration and data management, architectural support, test and evaluation, security engineering and certification, capability- based planning, commercial-off-the-shelf integration, integrated master plans and scheduling and technical review assistance to approximately 400 system/program activities. Work will be performed at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., with primary geographically separated units at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio, Maxwell AFB, Ala., Tinker AFB, Okla., Lackland AFB, Texas, Randolph AFB, Texas, Peterson AFB, Colo., and Offutt AFB, Neb., with an expected completion date of Nov. 19, 2013. This contract was a sole source acquisition and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Hanscom AFB, Mass., is the contracting activity.  Contract has an foreign military sales component as the contract requires company to travel overseas for host nation support.   

East: Joint Warfighting 2013 Online Show Daily, Day 3
East: Joint Warfighting 2013 at the Virginia Beach Convention Center, Virginia, wrapped up today with discussions about the challenges in counterinsurgency wars, rapid acquisition and fiscal crisis.
Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, USA (Ret.), author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, said that U.S. leaders turned away from the lessons that were learned in Vietnam when they began fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not until Gen. David Patraeus, USA (Ret.), former commander, U.S. Central Command, took over the mission that progress started to be seen in the region. “We can’t afford to get it so far wrong again,” Col. Nagl stated.
 
While some success has been seen in Iraq in terms of stability, the same cannot be said about Afghanistan, he added. Absent American support, the country could still be overtaken by insurgents, and it is yet to be determined if Afghanistan will end up like the Vietnam War or be an “untidy” success like Iraq. “The best we can hope for is an age of unsatisfying wars,” the colonel noted. “Counterinsurgency wars are long and messy, but they are the most likely type of wars we’ll fight in the future.”
 
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sorenson, USA (Ret.), former U.S. Army chief information officer (G-6), led the final panel of the conference. The topic was one that has been hot for some time and is now coming to a boil in light of tightening budgets: acquisition. However, members of the panel did not so much discuss less money as they did an aspect of the issue that has been the focus of numerous panels: how to speed delivery of solutions to warfighters.
 

East: Joint Warfighting 2013 Online Show Daily, Day 1

Adm. William E. Gortney, USN, commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, set the tone for East: Joint Warfighting 2013 taking place at the Virginia Beach Convention Center, Virginia, May 14-16, when he opened the conference by talking about changes and choices in today’s morning keynote address. Although the obvious change is the reduction in financial resources, the other is one that has been mentioned at previous AFCEA International conferences: the shift in focus from Southwest Asia to the entire Pacific region.

A government-wide task force led by NIST is out with the latest catalog of security and privacy controls for federal information systems, including some new thinking when it comes to addressing insider threats that go beyond technology.