DTN News - JAPAN DEFENSE NEWS: Japan Proceed To Order Initial Four F-35 JSF With Option Of 38 From Lockheed Martin

DTN News - JAPAN DEFENSE NEWS: Japan Proceed To Order Initial Four F-35 JSF With Option Of 38 From Lockheed Martin
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Defense Security Cooperation Agency ~ Transmittal No. 12-15
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - May 3, 2012: The Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress April 30 of a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Japan for a possible sale of an initial four F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Conventional Take-Off and Landing (CTOL) aircraft with an option to purchase an additional 38 F-35 CTOL aircraft. The estimated cost is $10 billion.

All aircraft will be configured with the Pratt and Whitney F-135 engines, and 5 spare Pratt and Whitney F-135 engines.  Other Aircraft Equipment includes:  Electronic Warfare Systems, Command, Control, Communication, Computers and Intelligence/Communication, Navigational and Identifications (C4I/CNI), Autonomic Logistics Global Support System (ALGS), Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), Flight Mission Trainer, Weapons Employment Capability, and other Subsystems, Features, and Capabilities, F-35 unique infrared flares, reprogramming center, and F-35 Performance Based Logistics.  Also included:  software development/integration, flight test instrumentation, aircraft ferry and tanker support, spare and repair parts, support equipment, tools and test equipment, technical data and publications, personnel training and training equipment, U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services, and other related elements of logistics support.  The estimated cost is $10 billion.  

Japan is one of the major political and economic powers in East Asia and the Western Pacific and a key ally of the United States in ensuring the peace and stability of this region.  The U.S. Government shares bases and facilities in Japan.  This proposed sale is consistent with these U.S. objectives and with the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security.

The proposed sale of aircraft and support will augment Japan’s operational aircraft inventory and enhance its air-to-air and air-to-ground self-defense capability.  The Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s F-4 aircraft will be decommissioned as F-35’s are added to the inventory.  Japan will have no difficulty absorbing these aircraft into its armed forces.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.

The prime contractors will be Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Fort Worth, Texas, and Pratt and Whitney Military Engines in East Hartford, Connecticut.  There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale.

Implementation of this proposed sale will require multiple trips to Japan involving U.S. Government and contractor representatives for technical reviews/support, programs management, and training over a period of 15 years.  

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Defense Security Cooperation Agency ~ Transmittal No. 12-15
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DTN News - SINGAPORE DEFENSE NEWS: Singapore Seeks F-15SG Pilot Training In U.S. At Mountain Home Air Force Base (AFB) - Worth $435 Million

DTN News - SINGAPORE DEFENSE NEWS: Singapore Seeks F-15SG Pilot Training In U.S. At Mountain Home Air Force Base (AFB) - Worth $435 Million 
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Defense Security Cooperation Agency ~ Transmittal No. 12-16
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - May 3, 2012: The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) notified U.S. Congress April 30 of a possible Foreign Military Sale (FMS) to the Government of Singapore of a possible sale of follow-on support and services for Singapore’s Continental United States (CONUS) detachment PEACE CARVIN V (F-15SG) based at Mountain Home Air Force Base (AFB) for a five-year period. The estimated cost is $435 million. 

The Government of Singapore has requested a possible sale of follow-on support and services for Singapore’s Continental United States (CONUS) detachment PEACE CARVIN V (F-15SG) based at Mountain Home Air Force Base (AFB) for a five-year period. MDE includes: 40 GBU-10 PAVEWAY II Laser Guided Bomb Units, 40 MXU-651/B Air Foil Groups, 84 GBU-12 PAVEWAY II Laser Guided Bomb Units, 84 MXU-650/Bs Air Foil Groups, 124 MAU-169L/Bs Guidance Control Units, and 3 P5 Combat Training System Pods. Also included: commercial vehicles, publications and technical documentation, tactics manuals and academic instruction, clothing and individual equipment, execution and support of CONUS exercise deployments, airlift and aerial refueling, support equipment, spare and repair parts, repair and return, personnel training and training equipment, U.S. Government and contractor technical and logistics support services, and other related elements of logistical and program support. The estimated cost is $435 million. 

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that has been, and continues to be, an important force for economic progress in Southeast Asia. 

Singapore needs this training and munitions to support its F-15 aircraft. This program will enable Singapore to develop mission-ready and experienced pilots to support its current and future F-15 aircraft inventory. The well-established pilot proficiency training program at Mountain Home Air Force Base will support professional interaction and enhance operational interoperability with U.S. forces.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region. 

There is no prime contractor involved in this proposed sale. There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale. Implementation of this proposed sale will not require the assignment of any additional U.S. Government and contractor representatives to Singapore. 

There will be no adverse impact on the U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale. This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded. 

Media/Public Contact:   
Charles Taylor (703) 601-3859 
Paul Ebner (703) 601-3670 

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Defense Security Cooperation Agency ~ Transmittal No. 12-16
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DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Canada May Re-Think Acquisition Of F-35 JSF On Damning Report By Auditor General

DTN News - CANADA DEFENSE NEWS: Canada May Re-Think Acquisition Of F-35 JSF On Damning Report By Auditor General 
*DND's buying power curbed after AG says military kept Parliament in dark on F35
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - April 4, 2012: The Harper government froze spending Tuesday on the multi-billion-dollar plan to buy new jet fighters minutes after the auditor general produced a withering report accusing the Department of National Defence of keeping Parliament in the dark about spiralling problems with the F-35 purchase.

The government also announced it would take away DND's ability to buy new weapons systems and hand it to Public Works — all in an effort to shield itself from the ensuing assault in the House of Commons that followed the release of the report by new Auditor General Michael Ferguson.

The Defence Department faced wide-ranging scorn over its management of the a plan to buy 65 new F-35 radar-evading stealth fighters for what the military initially insisted would cost $9 billion. The cost of the purchase, which is already the largest single purchase of military hardware in Canadian history, will almost certainly be far higher than originally budgeted, Ferguson said.

He added that Public Works should have done a better job of overseeing the purchase, but Ferguson was particularly scathing about DND's failure to come clean on potential problems with buying the F-35.

“Briefing material did not inform senior decision makers, central agencies, and the Minister of the problems and associated risks of relying on the F-35 to replace the CF-18," Ferguson said in his report. "Nor did National Defence provide complete cost information to parliamentarians."

DND pointedly rejected criticism that it did not exercise due diligence in managing the project.

The auditor general's criticism does not mean the government will scrap the F-35 purchase or even consider opening up the sole-source procurement to other competitive bids.

Ferguson's mandate limits his criticism to the conduct of bureaucrats, but his findings could be incendiary for the Harper government. The audit came just one week after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced $5.2 billion in cuts to public spending in his deficit-fighting budget.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said the report raised ethical questions with its "litany of poor public administration, bad decision making and lack of accountability by Conservative ministers.

"But the key question to the prime minister is: how could he allow Parliament to be intentionally misled on the F-35s? Either he knew, and it's unconscionable, or he didn't know and it's incompetence. Which is it?"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that was a misrepresentation of Ferguson's findings.

"The government has not yet purchased this airplane, and has not yet signed a contract. The auditor general has identified a need for greater independence and supervision over some of the activities of the Department of National Defence. in this regard, the government will put that supervision in place before we proceed."

Harper left the remaining barrage of questions from the NDP and Liberals to two of his ministers, Associate Defence Minister Julian Fantino and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose. Both ministers stuck closely to the government's earlier talking points — the freezing of funding and the creation of a new secretariat of top bureaucrats to shepherd the jet purchase from now on. Defence Minister Peter MacKay did not respond to any queries on the auditor general's report.

The Conservatives steadfastly defended the F-35 purchase during last year's election campaign that gave them a majority despite a growing body of evidence that suggested the project could never be kept on budget. The program is designed to replace the country's aging fleet of CF-18 jet fighters.

The late NDP leader Jack Layton, as well as ex-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, repeatedly attacked the F-35 purchase during last year's election campaign.

At one campaign event, Harper affirmed his support for the F-35 purchase, and said "latitude" had been built into the government's cost estimates.

"I think it's in a way sad that the new jets have become an issue in this campaign," the prime minister said during an April 8, 2011, stop in British Columbia.

"We've got our men and women in uniform up there flying airplanes that we know at the end of this decade are going to have to be replaced, and the thing we owe to them is to replace those airplanes.''

Ferguson's report vindicates parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, who became embroiled in a heated public battle with the Defence Department in March 2011 when he released a report that said the cost of the F-35 could reach $30 billion over three decades.

An assistant deputy minister at Defence told an elaborate briefing for journalists that Page made a "mathematical error'' in calculating the unit cost of the planes, and that his estimates on long-term maintenance were erroneous as well.

Ferguson said Tuesday that Defence should have come clean with the real figures at that time. He pegged the projected 20-year cost of the program, including maintenance, at $25 billion.

"As a response to what the Parliamentary Budget Office did, that's when National Defence should have brought forward that full costing," Ferguson said.

Liberal defence critic John McKay accused the government Tuesday of trying to hide the true cost of the program from Canadians.

"Now they appear ready to throw bureaucrats and our armed forces under yet another bus, but Canadians won't be fooled. Responsibility for this fiasco lies squarely on the prime minister's desk."

The United States oversees the nine-country Joint Strike Fighter Program. The planes would be built by the U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin, but the rollout of the plane has been plagued by delays, technical problems and a 64-per-cent cost increase. Those problems have been well-documented in reports by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an investigative branch of Congress.

Harper and his government were briefed in advance on the criticisms in the auditor general's report, allowing them to prepare their response in advance. Along with a freeze on spending above $9 billion, the government created a new oversight mechanism for the F-35 procurement — an inter-departmental secretariat of deputy ministers to oversee the project.

The Tories received accolades for establishing such a secretariat to administer its recently announced $33-billion National Shipbuilding Program.

The Harper government has said it expects to pay US$75 million dollars for each of the F-35s. But others — including Canada's parliamentary budget officer — have said the actual cost could be close to double that figure.

The government has not signed a contract with the U.S. to buy the F-35s. But it has invested $335 million so far to meet various commitments over the 15-year history of the U.S.-led JSF initiative.

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press
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DTN News - BOEING DEFENSE NEWS: Boeing Awarded US Army Contract For 14 Additional CH-47F Chinook Helicopters

DTN News - BOEING DEFENSE NEWS: Boeing Awarded US Army Contract For 14 Additional CH-47F Chinook Helicopters

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Boeing
 (NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada  / RIDLEY TOWNSHIP, Pa.,- January 11, 2012:  The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] has received a U.S. Army contract valued at approximately $370 million for 14 CH-47F Chinook helicopters to support Foreign Military Sales efforts. The aircraft will be delivered to the U.S. Army beginning in 2014; all but one are intended for Australia and the United Arab Emirates. 

“This new aircraft sale brings our Chinook backlog to more than 200 aircraft for both domestic and international customers worldwide,” said Leanne Caret, H-47 Programs vice president. “Boeing’s recent $130 million investment to create a world-class Chinook manufacturing facility near Philadelphia means we are well positioned to respond to this demand.”

Seven of the new Chinooks will be delivered to the Australian Defence Force and six aircraft will be delivered to the United Arab Emirates under the terms of a previously announced Foreign Military Sales agreement between the U.S. government and the two countries. One additional aircraft is to be delivered to the U.S. Army to fulfill its own requirements.

“This sale is indicative of the tremendous interest from customers around the world who need best-in-class, multirole heavy-lift capabilities for military and humanitarian missions,” Caret added.

The H-47 program is at the midpoint of executing a multiyear contract for 191 CH-47F Chinook aircraft that was awarded in August 2008 and originally valued at $4.3 billion. In November, Boeing submitted a proposal to the U.S. government for a second multiyear contract for 155 Chinooks for the U.S. Army. This second five-year, firm fixed-price proposal would provide the Army with close to the full complement of 464 Chinooks outlined in the Department of Defense program of record and would yield double-digit percentage savings over a single-year procurement strategy. A decision is expected early next year.

Since completing the first CH-47F production aircraft in August 2006, Boeing has trained and equipped eight U.S. Army units and is in the process of equipping the ninth. Six units have completed deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the helicopter has logged nearly 70,000 flight hours and maintained an operational readiness rate of more than 85 percent conducting air assault, transport, medical evacuation and support operations.

There are more than 450 Chinooks in operation with military forces in 17 countries around the world. International operators include Japan, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Taiwan, Greece, Korea and Spain.

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world's largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $32 billion business with 63,000 employees worldwide. 

Contact:

Tom Marinucci
Mobility Communications
Boeing Defense, Space & Security
610-591-7057
thomas.g.marinucci@boeing.com

Hal Klopper
International Communications
Boeing Defense, Space & Security
602-391-7489
hal.g.klopper@boeing.com

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Boeing
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DTN News - BULGARIA DEFENSE NEWS: Bulgaria To Spend $1.5 billion On Military Equipment

DTN News - BULGARIA DEFENSE NEWS: Bulgaria To Spend $1.5 billion On Military Equipment

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources Reuters / ForexPros.com

(NSI News Source Info) SOFIA, Bulgaria - April 22, 2011:

Bulgaria plans to spend up to 2 billion levs ($1.5 billion) on buying and maintaining military equipment by 2020, Defence Minister Anyo Angelov said on Thursday.

Bulgaria -- a NATO and European Union member -- envisages buying fighter aircraft so it can secure its airspace within the alliance's integrated system for anti-missile defence.

The ministry, which has sent letters of interest to the U.S., France, Germany and Sweden about the purchase of eight new or used fighter aircraft, has already received an offer from Saab for its Gripen jets.

Next week, the Defence Ministry will meet representatives of European aerospace and defence group EADS and the U.S. government, Angelov said.

It also expects to receive a response from France's Dassault Aviation and Lockheed Martin Corp.

Angelov has previously said the tender for the fighter jet purchase will take place in 2012.

The Defence Ministry plans to allocate 1.5 percent of annual gross domestic product from its budget to fund the programme, which also envisages the modernisation of its MiG-29 fighters.

(Reporting by Irina Ivanova; Editing by Sophie Hares)

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources

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DTN News: U.S. Arms Sales To Return To Normal Track: Taiwan Official

DTN News: U.S. Arms Sales To Return To Normal Track: Taiwan Official

Source: DTN News / Taiwan News Central News Agency 2010-08-26 11:36 AM

(NSI News Source Info) WASHINGTON- August 31, 2010: A senior Taiwan official posted in Washington expressed welcome Wednesday to the U.S. government's recent decision to allow U.S. companies to sell Taiwan defense articles and services directly without having to create "arms packages." The U.S. Department of State confirmed Tuesday that it had notified Congress of its decision to allow U.S. companies to make commercial exports to Taiwan of defense services and articles to support and upgrade the island's existing air defense radar systems. The latest sales, worth over US$100 million, will be carried out under a direct commercial sales (DCS) program between Taiwan and private U.S. companies, said the Taiwan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The new practice is poised to put U.S. arms sales to Taiwan back on their normal track," the official said. He attributed the adoption of the DCS -- for the sales of items to support Taiwan's air defense radar system and improve existing radar used in the Ching-kuo indigenous defense fighter aircraft -- mainly to the fact that Taiwan's Air Force "is already familiar with the systems." The U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, which groups U.S. companies with interests in Taiwan, also said Tuesday that it believes the latest State Department decision will contribute to returning U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to normal. In the past, the United States usually sold arms to Taiwan under a more time-consuming Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system, with the U.S. government supervising bidding, production and delivery of the defense articles, services and technological data. Under the FMS system, the U.S. government is responsible for enforcing the sales contracts. The model operates as if it is the U.S. government procuring the items from private contractors and reselling them to the foreign customer. The FMS system is more costly for the procuring countries because they have to pay the U.S. government's administrative bill, but the deal is less risky and offers greater guarantee of success. The Taiwan official also attributed the U.S. decision to the fact that "package" sales and relevant announcements tend to make the matter "too high-profile, " triggering political implications.

*Link to this article - "U.S. Arms Sales To Return To Normal Track: Taiwan Official - Taiwan News Central News Agency 2010-08-26 11:36 AM ". *This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News, contact: dtnnews@ymail.com

DTN News: Boeing To Build Additional Military Hosted Payload For Intelsat Satellite Series

DTN News: Boeing To Build Additional Military Hosted Payload For Intelsat Satellite Series

Source: DTN News / Boeing

(NSI News Source Info) EL SEGUNDO, Calif., - August 24, 2010: Boeing [NYSE: BA] today announced it has received a contract from Intelsat S.A. to provide a second ultra-high frequency (UHF) hosted payload on another of the four commercial communications satellites that Intelsat ordered from Boeing last year. Financial details were not disclosed. The second UHF hosted payload will be installed on the IS-27 satellite. The payload will offer 20 25-KHz UHF channels capable of serving the U.S. government and other Intelsat General clients around the world. The second payload will be identical to the UHF payload for the Australian Defence Force that will be hosted on the IS-22 satellite and launched in 2012. "Providing a second military hosted payload for Intelsat demonstrates our ability to rapidly respond to provide capability to augment government customers' needs," said Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems. "Boeing has been a leading government payload provider for more than 40 years, and we are well qualified to equip commercial satellites with operationally responsive space solutions for military customers around the world." The modular design of the Boeing 702MP satellites in the Intelsat series allows the UHF and other hosted payloads to be accommodated easily, with no impact to the assembly or delivery schedules. Boeing is a long-time provider of UHF payloads to the U.S. Navy. The company built 11 satellites for the Navy’s UHF Follow-On system, which provides secure global communications for the U.S. military worldwide. Boeing also is under contract to deliver three UHF payloads to prime contractor Lockheed Martin for the Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) communications system. Boeing is building the four Intelsat satellites and the two hosted payloads at its satellite factory in El Segundo. IS-27 is planned to operate over the Atlantic Ocean region at 55 degrees west longitude and will provide simultaneous operation of 39 C- and Ku-band transponders that deliver optimized video, network and voice services to the Americas and Europe. A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world's largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $34 billion business with 68,000 employees worldwide.

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Contact: Angie Yoshimura

Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems

Office: 310-364-6708

Mobile: 310-227-6568

angie.e.yoshimura@boeing.com Bob Pickard

Boeing Space & Intelligence Systems

Office: 310-364-6125

Mobile: 310-343-1211

robert.pickard3@boeing.com

Boeing Press Releases

*Aug. 24, 2010 Boeing CFO Bell to Speak at Morgan Stanley Conference on August 31 *Aug. 24, 2010 Boeing to Build Additional Military Hosted Payload for Intelsat Satellite Series *Aug. 23, 2010 Boeing Joins ProActive Technologies Team in Bid for B-52 Aircrew Training System *Aug. 23, 2010 Boeing Awarded Follow-on Contract for US Air Force Wideband Global SATCOM Program

DTN News: Plugging The WikiLeak: What Can US government Do?

DTN News: Plugging The WikiLeak: What Can US government Do?

Source: DTN News / The Sydney Morning Herald By Lolita C. Baldor

(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - August 7, 2010: An online whistle-blower's threat to release more classified Pentagon and State Department documents is raising hard questions of what the U.S. government can or would do, legally, technically or even militarily to stop it. Constrained by the massive reach of the Internet, sophisticated encryption software and the domestic legal system, the answer seems to be: Not much. If the U.S. government believes that the classified documents that WikiLeaks is preparing to disclose will threaten national security or put lives at risk, however, cyber and legal experts say the options could expand to include cyber strikes to take down the WikiLeaks web site and destroy its files or covert operations to steal or disable the files.

It all sounds, at times, like a spy movie, where the possibilities extend as far as the imagination can reach. But, most outsiders agree that reality is likely to be far less dramatic. At the center of the drama is the posting last week of a massive 1.4 gigabyte mystery file named "Insurance" on the WikiLeaks web site. The "Insurance" file is encrypted, nearly impossible to open until WikiLeaks provides the passwords. But experts suggest that if anyone can crack it, it would be the secretive National Security Agency. That file, coupled with WikiLeaks' release of more than 77,000 secret military documents last month, prompted the Pentagon to "demand" that the web site's editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, cancel any new document dumps and pull back the Afghan war data he already posted. WikiLeaks slammed the demand as an obnoxious threat, and Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell declined to detail what, if any, actions the Defense Department may be ready to take. Few people involved in the case, for the Pentagon and other agencies, would talk openly about what the Pentagon or America's clandestine NSA could or would do to stop the expected document dump. It is not even clear whether U.S. officials know what WikiLeaks has. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley answered it this way: "Do we believe that WikiLeaks has additional cables? We do. Do we believe that those cables are classified? We do. And are they State Department cables? Yes." Officials say the data may also include up to 15,000 military documents related to the Afghan war that were not made public in the initial release. Assuming the documents contain highly sensitive information that, if made public, might threaten national security, the United States must weigh a number of options, experts say. First, from a legal standpoint, there probably is little the U.S. government can do to stop WikiLeaks from posting the files. It is against federal law knowingly and willfully to disclose or transmit classified information. Assange, an Australian who has no permanent address and travels frequently, is not a U.S. citizen. Since Assange is a foreign national living in a foreign country, it is not clear that U.S. law would apply, said Marc Zwillinger, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and former federal cyber crimes prosecutor. He said prosecutors would have to figure out what crime to charge Assange with, and then face the daunting task of trying to indict him or persuade other authorities to extradite him. It would be equally difficult, Zwillinger said, to use an injunction effectively to prevent users from getting access to the data. "Could the U.S. get an injunction to force U.S. Internet providers to block traffic to and from WikiLeaks such that people couldn't access the website?" Zwillinger said. "It's an irrelevant question. There would be thousands of paths to get to it. So it wouldn't really stop people from getting to the site. They would be pushing the legal envelope without any real benefit." Legal questions aside, the encrypted file conjures visions of secret codebreakers hunched over their laptops, tearing open secret, protected files in seconds with a few keystrokes. Reality is not that simple, particularly if, as the file name suggests, the documents are encrypted. It appears WikiLeaks used state-of-the-art software requiring a sophisticated electronic sequence of numbers, called a 256 bit key, to open them. The main way to break such an encrypted file is by what is called a "brute force attack", which means trying every possible key, or password, said Herbert Lin, a senior computer science and cryptology expert at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Unlike a regular six or eight character password that most people use every day, a 256 bit key would equal a 40-50 character password, he said. If, said Lin, it takes 0.1 nanosecond to test one possible key, and you used 100 billion computers to test the possible number variations, "it would take this massive array of computers 10 to the 56 power seconds _ the number 1, followed by 56 zeros" to plow through all the possibilities. How long is that? "The age of the universe is 10 to the 17th power seconds," said Lin. "We will wait a long time for the U.S. government or anyone else to decrypt that file by brute force." Could the NSA, which is known for its supercomputing and massive electronic eavesdropping abilities abroad, crack such an impregnable code? It depends on how much time and effort they want to put into it, said James Bamford, who has written two books on the NSA. The NSA has the largest collection of supercomputers in the world. And officials have known for some time that WikiLeaks has classified files in its possession. The agency, he speculated, has probably been looking for a vulnerability or gap in the code, or a back door into the commercial encryption program protecting the file. At the more extreme end, the NSA, the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies, to include the newly created Cyber Command, probably have reviewed options for using a cyber attack against the website, which could disrupt networks, files, electricity and so on. "This is the kind of thing that they are geared for," said Bamford, "since this is the type of thing a terrorist organization might have _ a website that has damaging information on it. They would want to break into it, see what's there and then try to destroy it." The vast nature of the Internet, however, makes it essentially impossible to stop something, or take it down, once it has gone out over multiple servers. In the end, U.S. officials will have to weigh whether a more aggressive response is worth the public outrage it probably would bring. Most experts predict that, despite the uproar, the government probably will do little other than bluster, and the documents will come out anyway. "Once you start messing with Internet, taking things down, and going to the maximum extent to hide everything from coming out, it doesn't necessarily serve your purpose," said Bamford. "It makes the story bigger than it would have been had the documents been released in the first place." He and others pointed to the Pentagon Papers saga in 1971, when The New York Times published a top-secret Pentagon study of the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. "It wasn't Pentagon papers that took down Richard Nixon," said Bamford. "It was his attempt to stop the papers that brought him down." ___ AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this story. ___

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DTN News: U. S. Government Has $114 Billion To Spend On Contractors Before September 30

DTN News: U. S. Government Has $114 Billion To Spend On Contractors Before September 30

* New Report Reveals Which Agencies Have “Obligated” Funds to Spend before the End of the Government Fiscal Year, and How Much Must Be Spent

Source: DTN News / FedSources

(NSI News Source Info) MCLEAN, Va. - August 3, 2010: FedSources, a Washington Management Group company and the recognized leader in government market intelligence, today released a new report that maps out predicted government spending between now and September 30, 2010 – the end of the government fiscal year. FedSources' “Identifying & Capturing Fiscal Year-end Dollars” report identifies which agencies have the most to spend, and which services and product areas are likely to get the most buying attention from these agencies. For example, the U.S. Army still has $40 billion to spend. And, most of the overall spending in the fourth quarter is likely to be on commodity items. “End-of-year spending is highly commodity oriented,” said Ray Bjorklund, FedSources Senior Vice President and Chief Knowledge Officer, and author of the report. “If you’re selling to the government in Q4, it’s usually a commodity play.” The report also provides an overview of government spending cycles to help contractors more effectively target their offerings according to when the government is most likely to buy their particular services or products. To access the complete FedSources report at no cost, click here. To find out how to become a FedSources client, call 703-610-8700 or visit www.fedsources.com and visit the “Free Trial Offer”. About FedSources FedSources Market Intelligence Services combines human analysis with government intelligence to drive growth within your company. Our strength is in our people. As a client, you’ll get unlimited access to our team of government experts who will answer any question at any time. FedSources provides a depth and breadth of government intelligence unmatched in the industry. We do the research and analysis for you. We deliver detailed intelligence – from agency spending priorities to targeted opportunities to specific government contacts – along with the “human touch” necessary to align that intelligence with your company’s objectives. At FedSources, your business growth goals are our measures of success. For more information visit: www.fedsources.com.

Contact: FedSources

Caryn Fox, 703-610-8749

FoxC@FedSources.com