From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Dec 1 11:43:21 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 06:43:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] US: The Booming Business for Psy/Ops Message-ID: <20051201064110.C3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 30 November 2005 ; CorpWatch US: The Booming Business for Psy/Ops http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12841 ---- by Jason Vest, Government Executive November 30th, 2005 >From the State Department to the Pentagon, winning hearts and minds is an increasingly important element of U.S. national security strategy. But while Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes has been the highest-profile example of U.S. public relations in action, the Defense Department quietly has been tinkering with its own systems of overseas influence. Among these are psychological operations, or PSYOPS. But after-action reports on the invasion of Iraq are skeptical about PSYOPS' success, and a psychological operations unit in Afghanistan recently tried to "demoralize" the enemy by desecrating Islamic corpses. Questions about these matters have led some policymakers to wonder how enhancing PSYOPS will complement other elements of military information operations, such as public diplomacy and public affairs. In addition, increasing reliance on contractors to conduct these operations is raising eyebrows, especially because the contract prices aren't small and some firms hired have murky pasts. Psychological operations, defined by the military as the "systematic process of conveying messages to selected foreign groups to promote particular themes that result in desired foreign attitudes and behaviors," traditionally have been the nearly exclusive purview of the 4th PSYOPS Group (Airborne) of the Army's Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the military services have shown renewed interest in mass persuasion. For example, two-and-a-half years ago at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army unveiled its Special Operations Forces Media Operations Complex, a 51,756-square-foot facility replete with all the tools 4th PSYOPS requires - printing presses, studios and digital audiovisual production facilities - in the service of producing materials to win hearts and minds wherever the U.S. military finds itself in the world. Col. James A. Treadwell, the 4th's commander, said at the time that the facility's opening "marks PSYOPS as a growth field." But PSYOPS had entered a boom phase well before the new complex's ribbon was cut. From the post-9/11 involvement in Afghanistan to the end of what have been termed "major combat operations" in Iraq, Army PSYOPS units produced a deluge of media, including but not limited to 150 million flyers and leaflets and more than 20,000 radio broadcasts in Afghanistan and Iraq. And in the wake of Baghdad's collapse, there was a tremendous sense of satisfaction that a virtually uninterrupted flow of PSYOPS material had played a critical role in hastening the almost anticlimactic end of Iraq's military. But when the Army's mammoth Operation Iraqi Freedom lessons-learned report was published in 2004, it revealed that PSYOPS weren't all they were cracked up to be. Part of this had nothing to do with quality; some PSYOPS units had been incredibly useful, but failed in their duty as "force multipliers" simply because there weren't enough of them. This was hardly surprising, as PSYOPS accounts for only 4,800 soldiers, 76 percent of whom are reservists. But the report also concluded that, for reasons that had nothing to do with numbers, PSYOPS simply hadn't had as profound an effect as some had thought. Not long after the lessons-learned report, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board - echoing an earlier Defense Planning Guidance report and a somewhat neglected 2003 Pentagon "Information Operations Roadmap" - concluded that when it came to conception and coordination of strategic communications, including PSYOPS, the military's efforts had languished. The board strongly endorsed a number of nascent structural and philosophical efforts at Defense and elsewhere to win a global battle of ideas. So about two years ago, Treadwell was ordered from piney Fort Bragg to subtropical Tampa, Fla., where, from MacDill Air Force Base, he now commands one of the newest and perhaps least known elements of Special Operations Command: the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element (JPSE, or more colloquially, "gypsy"). Described in official literature as a unit comprising "more than 50 senior military and civilians with a deep knowledge of psychological operations," JPSE's raison d'tre isn't to horn in on the Army's PSYOPS turf, but rather to spare commanders across services and commands the agony of going through multiple layers of bureaucracy for support. And, according to a press release earlier this year, JPSE is devoting itself not to the darker aspects of psychological warfare but to propagating truthful messages. In addition to facilitating more agile PSYOPS support, JPSE also is beginning to do something psychological operations traditionally hasn't: consider the big picture, according to Professor Philip M. Taylor of England's University of Leeds. "PSYOPS has really only worked in tactical/operations contexts, but in today's global infosphere, there's no longer any such thing as tactical information - everything has a strategic capability. This is where PSYOPS has traditionally been weak," says Taylor, one of the world's leading experts on psychological operations, public diplomacy and propaganda, and a consultant to the American and British governments. "JPSE is a recognition that 4th PSYOPS has been quite effective at the tactical/operational levels but less so at the strategic, and is part of the roadmap by which all components of information operations are to become more closely coordinated than they have thus far." Policymakers have realized, he adds, that mechanisms of delivery and the messages themselves have to be integrated. Nancy Snow, senior research fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and adjunct assistant professor with USC's Annenberg School for Communication, adds that when it comes to trying to create a unified front in the practice of strategic communications, it's not uncommon for each tactical element to see itself as holding the magic strategic bullet. Thus, it's devilishly difficult to bring order to communications chaos, leading Taylor to wonder whether such integration, including that of PSYOPS, can be accomplished. A Mixed Bag PSYOPS have been a part of American military and intelligence endeavors since World War II. They range from above-board and even earnest to devious and mendacious. One of the problems with persuasion and perception manipulation is that success is not always easy to gauge and can become the subject of fierce debates. Policymakers and practitioners alike are grappling with this reality as they seek to figure out the PSYOPS part of a larger strategic communications equation. Pre-invasion airdropped leaflets, for example, historically have been intended to affect a population by countering disinformation, promoting ideology and image, and appealing to the survival instincts of soldiers and civilians. Studying the leafleting efforts of the Army's 4th Psychological Warfare Group in 2002-2003, two University of Texas professors found that the majority of leaflets dropped on Iraq were of the survival motif, exhorting Iraqi soldiers to quickly surrender and imploring Iraqi civilians to shelter in place during the invasion, as well as to preserve their oil facilities. Given the quick collapse of the Iraqi military and the lack of refugee crisis that certain Pentagon planners were convinced was inevitable, some observers, including the Texas professors, posited that the 4th's leafleting efforts played a key role in the successful invasion. Yet as some in the military noted then and later, there was no metric for objectively determining this. "In retrospect, [the leaflets] did seem to have the effect intended," wrote Lt. Col. Steven Collins in "Mind Games," a paper published in the summer 2003 issue of NATO Review. But, he added, just as PSYOPS is geared to slant perceptions, so too, can perceptions slant the analysis of psychological operations. The problem with the leathe Iraqi military melt away primarily as a result of PSYOPS, or of bombing by coalition aircraft, or of lack of logistical support, or a combination of all three?" At best, Collins concluded, PSYOPS' role "remains an important variable to determine." In early 2004, the Army Command General and Staff College's Combined Aconclusion: PSYOPS were at best a mixed bag. "PSYOPS units can point with satisfaction to success in minimizing damage to the oil fields and keeping civilians off roads," it said. "However, they do so with risk since there is very little evidence available yet to support that contention. . . . Moreover, the PSYOPS effort enjoyed far less success in encouraging Iraqi units to surrender. . . . PSYOPS produced much less than expected and perhaps less than claimed." Such considerations have led some to wonder whether military efforts such as JPSE are neglecting ways to improve PSYOPS in its strongest areas, tactical and operational, by beginning to dabble in the strategic. In a 2004 briefing, Marine Col. G.I. Wilson and two retired military officers observed that the problem with PSYOPS has less to do with the operations themselves and more to do with how they are, or are not, integrated into existing combat forces. Holding that psychological and information operations should be incorporated into every basic military consideration, Wilson and his colleagues suggested that in places such as Iraq, "regional fusion centers" should be established where the tactical and strategic mission specialists could work together to help frame and guide ongoing operations. Similarly, a recent National Defense University study held that the priority for PSYOPS should be doctrinal and structural reforms focused on the tactical level, because it's impossible for military PSYOPS to adequately compensate for a weak national strategic communications program. And, says Taylor, even the most ambitious and effective PSYOPS reform can be easily undermined by soldiers' actions, for example, desecrating Afghan bodies or the Koran. "Democracies are their own worst enemies in this field," he says. "It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment," even over U.S. soldiers. 'Sorry, It Wasn't Us' Further, Taylor adds, groups contracted by the government to do PSYOPS or related work and analysis also can do damage. "There are plenty who have messed up and been fired; there are risks," he says. "But if the attitude is 'Something has to be done,' who is going to do it? There are so many PR firms willing to take bucks from the U.S. government. "Outsourcing is either a sign of recognition that the military is not terribly good at certain types of persuasion, or a way of distancing the U.S. government from the messages. If that company then does something which is controversial, the government can say, 'Sorry, it wasn't us, but we'll fire the company that did this supposedly in our name.' " Those concerned about the state of both PSYOPS and contracting paid close attention to JPSE's June announcement that it was giving indefinite delivery/ indefinite quantity contracts to three contractors for media approach planning, prototype product development, commercial quality product development, product distribution and dissemination, and media effects analysis. While JPSE commander Treadwell said the initial contracts were likely to be in the $250,000 range, the potential maximum value of each tender, $100 million, stirred great interest as did the choice of contractors. It wasn't necessarily surprising that Arlington, Va.-based defense contractor SYColeman got one of the JPSE tenders, based on its formidable number of existing contracts with the Pentagon; media work, however, is not something the company lists among its core competencies. Similarly, while San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. has dozens of offices worldwide devoted to administering its Pentagon contracts, most of SAIC's work has been in the areas of engineering, systems and quantitative analysis, not media. Indeed, the last time it won a contract for media work - specifically, setting up post-Saddam television operations in Iraq - it performed with such ineptitude that the company was excoriated not just by the Pentagon inspector general and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., but also by its former project manager. SAIC ultimately lost that contract. Also inviting curiosity has been Lincoln Group, which despite having virtually no public profile and no demonstrable history in strategic communications - and having gone through multiple changes in name and orientation in less than three years - has landed two major media contracts with the U.S. military in the past year. "A lot of these things go on if not in secret, [then] kind of out of view with very little tracking or public accountability, and as such, we don't really know when things go wrong," says USC's Snow. "But none of it really addresses whether any of this will have any impact if the people they're trying to reach just won't have any of it because we have unpopular policies." From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Dec 1 20:47:27 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 15:47:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Analex Names Joseph Broadwater Senior Vice President, National Security Group Message-ID: <20051201154524.B3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 1 December 2005 ; PR Newswire Analex Names Joseph Broadwater Senior Vice President, National Security Group http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-01-2005/0004225849 --- ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Analex Corporation (Amex: NLX), a leading provider of mission-critical professional services to Federal government clients, today announced that V. Joseph Broadwater, Jr. has been named Senior Vice President, National Security Group. In this newly created position, Mr. Broadwater will provide executive leadership for all Washington Metropolitan Area and central U.S.-based Analex operations, which includes major programs for the U.S. intelligence community, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and the U.S. Army. "Joe Broadwater's extensive experience as a senior executive in the intelligence community, combined with his experience leading business units for SAIC and IBM, make him uniquely qualified to lead national security programs for Analex," said Sterling Phillips, Analex's Chairman and Chief Executive officer. "We believe that this combination of business development, operations and government experience will contribute to successful execution of Analex's growth plans." "I am pleased to be joining Analex at this time," stated Mr. Broadwater. "Analex has the reputation and capabilities to be a valuable contributor to national security programs and this positions us well for growth." During a distinguished 25-year career, Mr. Broadwater has held senior management positions within the U.S. intelligence community and large Federal contractors. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President & General Manager, National Security & Space for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Previously, he worked with IBM Corporation as Director, National Security & Justice Business Area and as Director, Intelligence Community Programs. Within the Federal government, Mr Broadwater served in several positions with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), including Chief System Engineer, Director, Ground Systems Program Office, Director Systems Operations and Chief, Command & Control. In recent years, Mr. Broadwater has been the recipient of NRO's Distinguished Service Medal, the Director's Circle Award and the Silver Medal for Sustained Superior Performance. Mr. Broadwater holds an MS degree in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and earned his undergraduate degrees at the University of Maryland, College Park. He resides in Centreville, Virginia. About Analex Analex (http://www.analex.com) specializes in providing intelligence, systems engineering and security services in support of our nation's security. Analex focuses on developing innovative technical approaches for the intelligence community, analyzing and supporting defense systems, designing, developing and testing aerospace systems and providing a full range of security support services to the U.S. government. The Company's stock trades on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol NLX. Analex investor and media relations can be reached at amber.gordon at analex.com or 703-329-9400 x311. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Dec 1 21:05:55 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 16:05:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC Inaugurates Rapid Prototyping Facility in Kent Message-ID: <20051201160546.X3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 1 December 2005 ; SAIC News SAIC Inaugurates Rapid Prototyping Facility in Kent http://www.saic.com/news/2005/dec/01.html --- (SAN DIEGO and MCLEAN, VA) - Science Applications International Corporation's (SAIC) Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Group announced today the opening of a new engineering facility in Washington state. The office will focus on the rapid design and building of prototypes of radio-based technology used in aerospace, defense and commercial applications. The new office and laboratory facility is located in the Centerpoint Corporate Park in Kent, just north of the 212th Street corridor, eight minutes from Sea-Tac airport. "This investment is an emphatic statement of our commitment to our aerospace and national defense customers, both here in the Puget Sound area as well as nationwide," said Jurgen Gobien, SAIC senior vice president and general manager of the Technology Research and Integration Business Unit. "This talented and highly experienced team works together to significantly reduce the time required to take technology from a white paper to working devices with obvious benefits for the customer." The multi-disciplinary core team members have proven experience in the very rapid development of low-power/high-reliability electronic hardware, space and terrestrial communications, radar, digital television, and technology to support special operations. "All together, our core team has more than two centuries of advanced engineering experience, working in both aerospace as well as commercial ventures," said Chris Long, the team's technical director at SAIC. "We are very pleased to get this opportunity to work together again, particularly at a company that shares our values of customer service, integrity and ethics." From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Fri Dec 2 14:20:49 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 09:20:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] HOVERING CAMERAS: The Future of Surveillance Message-ID: <20051202091810.J3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 2 December 2005 ; Military.com HOVERING CAMERAS: The Future of Surveillance http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_MAV,,00.html --- We've all seen them in science fiction movies: cameras hovering around and taking surveillance images for the police. But really, how realistic are they? Well, they're already here. By David Crane Editor, DefenseReview.com [Photo][1] Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have already proven their unique capabilities and importance in the U.S. military's prosecution of the war on terror. Large tactical reconnaissance/targeting UAVs like the now-famous weaponized Predator UAVs (a.k.a. Predator drones), including the RQ/MQ-1 Predator, YMQ-9A Predator (also referred to as MQ-9A Predator), and MQ-9B (a.k.a. Predator B) Hunter/Killer UAV/drones, all made by General Atomics, have already been used to successfully terminate/liquidate enemy combatants. The Predator B series UAV/drone can carry up to 14 AGM-114 Hellfire series and Hellfire II anti-armor missiles, and is thus a formidable anti-armor/anti-personnel weapons platform that represents the future of mobile air lethality. However, Hunter/Killer operations are just part of the equation for the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. FCS also needs small, lightweight, and affordable man-portable/backpackable UAVs that can be used by dismounted infantry soldiers, Marines, and Special Operations personnel for reconnaissance, security, and target acquisition operations in open, rolling, mountain, desert, and urban warfare (a.k.a. restricted warfare) environments, and that's where the new Honeywell Micro Air Vehicle (or, Ducted Fan Micro Air Vehicle) comes in. Developed under a two-phased Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTD) program and described by Honeywell as a "modular, scaleable family of systems supporting soldiers in both urban and open terrain", the Honeywell MAV goes a step further than conventional Small UAV systems (a.k.a. Mini-UAV systems) like the AeroVironment (AV) Raven and Dragon Eye SUAV systems (just two examples) in that it features both "hover and stare" and "perch and stare" capabilities, so it can provide real-time combat information (or recorded information) while in the air or on the ground. This operational versatility is made possible by the MAV's lift-augmented ducted fan propulsion system which gives the MAV VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) capability and allows it to operate virtually anywhere, even in confined spaces. And, once it gets there it can loiter in one spot, either in the air (hover and stare mode) or on the ground (perch and stare mode). While operating in the latter mode, the MAV essentially becomes an unattended ground sensor and continues to collect data. In this ground sensor mode, the MAV uses much less fuel. When the MAV needs to move to a different location or follow a moving target of interest, in can just take off and go. [Photo][2] According to Vaughn Fulton, Honeywell's program manager for unmanned aerial systems, the MAV "is designed to fly between ground level and 500 feet, but it could go up to 10,500 feet. it is a scout and reconnaissance type of vehicle. It allows people to see over a hill or around a building." Vaughn explains the MAV's ducted-fan method of propulsion this way, "The fan is not propelling it through the air, but sucking it." The Honeywell MAV is currently the front runner for selection as a Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system for FCS. "The Micro Air Vehicle has flown more than 200 successful flights, including flying in a represtative urban environment," said Mark Franzblau, Director, FCS Unmanned Aerial Vehicle system development. "We are confident it will continue to meet or exceed the goals of DARPA's contract and eventually transition to FCS as the preferred Class I UAV platform." Boeing and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) form the Lead Systems Integrator team for the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS). The following has been excerpted from a Boeing press release issued on October 18th, 2005: "The Micro Air Vehicle contract provides critical development in two key technology areas essential to meeting FCS Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle requirements: a ducted fan design providing hover and stare capability coupled with a small heavy fuels engine. The FCS program will continue to work with DARPA and Honeywell to transition the heavy fuel engine technology as it matures through the remainder of the DARPA contract. Leveraging DARPA's investment in the Micro Air Vehicle technology, Boeing issued a system engineering contract in December 2004 to Honeywell to conduct a gap analysis identifying what additional development was required to transition the DARPA vehicle to an FCS-compliant Class I UAV system. Under the extended, nearly-three-million-dollar contract announced this week, Honeywell will continue the systems engineering analyses leading to a System Functional Review in March 2006. Following a successful review, Boeing intends to award a Class I UAV System Development and Demonstration contract to Honeywell. The development and demonstration phase will continue through FY2014 and will include the development and flight test of unmanned, autonomous vehicle prototypes. The FCS Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is one of four classes of FCS Unmanned Aerial Vehicle systems that are organic to platoon, company, battalion and brigade echelons and form the airborne component of the FCS network providing protection and information for troops on the ground. Together, they constitute four of the 18 systems, which, together with the network and the soldier, will make up FCS. The FCS Class I Unmanned Aerial Vehicle will be used for reconnaissance, security and target acquisition operations in open, rolling, complex and urban terrain. Each system . comprising two air vehicles, a dismounted control device and associated ground support equipment . will be carried by selected platforms and dismounted soldiers, and will use autonomous flight and navigation with vertical take-off and landing and recovery capability." So, what's the MAV project really all about? Well, it would appear that the goal is to give U.S. military infantry personnel a similar mobile, backpackable remote-control robotic telepresence capability in the air to what they already have on the ground with reconnaissance and surveillance UGV (unmanned ground vehicle)/robotic systems like the iRobot PackBot family (including the backpackable PackBot Scout reconnaissance and surveillance robot), Foster-Miller Weaponized Talon Robot/SWORDS (which can actually target and engage the enemy), and Dragon Runner (another backpackable recon/surveillance robot). The idea is to send the MAV ahead as a scout to gleen real-time intelligence before you send your troops in. If the MAV locates a group of enemy insurgents or terrorists, you can send in the aforementioned Predator Drone outfitted with Hellfire II missiles, swarms of Weaponized Talon Robots/SWORDS, other larger weaponized unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) platforms/systems, manned attack aircraft (fighter aircraft), and various other weapons systems before you even risk your troops. Risk management and casualty mitigation, that's the name of the game, here. The less U.S. troops that are wounded and killed, the longer we can keep fighting. No doubt, the U.S. Army has plans to also integrate the MAV and future, more advanced MAV-type programs into the Future Force Warrior (FFW) and Future Warrior programs. According to 1st Lt. Mario A. Quevedo, a platoon leader with the U.S. Army's 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, "the micro air vehicles are the future." He's most likey right. It should perhaps be noted that U.S. military infantry personnel aren't the only group that will benefit from the MAV tech. U.S. law enforcement and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assets will also be able to apply the technology. It looks like Minority Report-level robotic tech for domestic crime fighting isn't that far off. Is that good or bad? Frankly, we're not sure. We'll let the reader decide. Let's just hope the technology isn't abused. Honeywell's tagline for the MAV is "Micro Air Vehicle: Providing unprecedented situational awareness in small unmanned platforms," and they very well may have succeeded in that goal. Only time will tell. But, right now, the MAV technology looks promising. About the Author: David Crane is a military defense industry analyst and consultant, and the owner/editor-in-chief of DefenseReview.com. He can be contacted by phone at 305-389-1721, or via email at david at defensereview.com. [1] http://images.military.com/pics/SoldierTech_MAV1.jpg [2] http://images.military.com/pics/SoldierTech_MAV2.jpg From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Dec 3 04:05:10 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 23:05:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Potential for Yucca Mountain Project layoffs Message-ID: <20051202230429.S3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 2 December 2005 ; KVBC Las Vegas Potential for Yucca Mountain Project layoffs http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=4195518&nav=15MV --- Employees of the Yucca Mountain Project may be facing layoffs in the new year. The Department of Energy and its biggest contractor on the project, Bechtel Saic, expect some layoffs because of a reduction in government funding. Congress approved $450 million for Yucca Mountain in 2006. That's 127 million less than it received in 2005, and less than what the bush administration asked for. Bechtel laid off 150 people last April From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Dec 4 19:56:40 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 14:56:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] FBI Delays Awarding Contract For Computer-System Overhaul Message-ID: <20051204145545.J3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 3 December 2005 ; The Wall Street Journal FBI Delays Awarding Contract For Computer-System Overhaul http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113357762116313178-d8t1EtVGKdN0tsFNRNNcqn9AbtE_20061203.html?mod=blogs --- By ANNE MARIE SQUEO Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL FBI officials, nervous about making another costly mistake overhauling the agency's antiquated computer system, have postponed awarding the contract for the high-profile job until next year. Two of the nation's biggest defense contractors -- Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. -- are competing for the information-technology system, dubbed Sentinel. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials were scheduled to announce the winner last month. But they have postponed the selection until at least early next year, according to two government officials. The delay is in part because of a desire to avoid the mistakes that plagued Sentinel's disastrous predecessor, the Virtual Case File system. FBI Director Robert Mueller pulled the plug on that project in April after four years and about $170 million. "At this time, we are currently in the middle of source selection, so it would be inappropriate to provide a specific release date," said FBI spokesman Richard Kolko. FBI officials have been seeking additional information for weeks from the two companies and haven't yet made a recommendation to senior FBI officials. Much is riding on the project's success. Congress and other overseers pilloried the FBI for its reliance on paper records, forms and file cabinets. The FBI only last year completed the rollout of the Internet to its agents and analysts. And even though the bureau installed a computerized case-management system in the mid-1990s, it relied largely on aging, less-agile technology to do so. And it did little to eliminate the department's notorious number of paper forms -- currently numbering more than 1,000. Having been hauled before Congress numerous times to explain the bureau's technology problems, Mr. Mueller has staked his legacy on installing a system that will streamline internal processes, speed investigations and improve information-sharing with other agencies. The Sept. 11 commission criticized the FBI's lack of information sharing that could have helped prevent the terrorist attacks. "There is no agency that needs the best information-sharing mechanisms more than the FBI," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in a press briefing on Friday. "Bob [Mueller's] focused on it. I'm focused on it. The president is focused on it and so are members of Congress." Lockheed, of Bethesda, Md., and Los Angeles-based Northrop are the only two bidders for the project, which likely would total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. No target price has been released. Industry and government officials have expressed surprise that no other bidders emerged but said the intense scrutiny of the project may have been a disincentive. Science Applications International Corp., which handled the earlier project, was criticized publicly when Mr. Mueller canceled it. Also, the window of opportunity to bid was fairly narrow -- the request for proposals went out in August with responses due in October. Further, bidders had to put together a working prototype. FBI Chief Information Officer Zalmai Azmi said some potential vendors decided to team up rather than compete on their own. The Lockheed team, for example, includes Accenture Ltd., Computer Sciences Corp., CACI International Inc. and others. Northrop hasn't disclosed its teammates. Industry officials acknowledge the job is enormous. "This is a big complicated system" because of the variety of issues the FBI investigates -- such as terrorism, white-collar crime, kidnappings and insurance fraud, said one industry executive who asked not to be identified because of the ongoing competition. In white-collar investigations, for example, often "bank records all have to be pulled into the case-file system, and some of these cases have 13 million financial transactions," this person said. With a wide variety of investigations, the FBI must be able to collect and store information in several different systems -- top secret, secret, classified, and sensitive but unclassified -- and any given document might contain information that falls into all four categories. Thus, the new system needs strict security controls to prevent information from falling into the wrong hands, such as in the case of rogue FBI agent Robert Hanssen, sentenced to life in prison for stealing and selling secrets to the Russians over two decades. Lockheed and Northrop are banking on their expertise integrating sophisticated weapons systems for the military to give them an edge on the FBI's problems. And both companies also have experience working with the Justice Department and the FBI on other projects. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Dec 4 19:59:40 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2005 14:59:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC appoints executive VP, CFO Message-ID: <20051204145908.S3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 4 December 2005 ; North County Times SAIC appoints executive VP, CFO http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/12/04/business/news/18_36_1212_3_05.txt --- SAN DIEGO (CNS) ---- Science Applications International announced that Mark Sopp was appointed executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Tom Darcy will assume a new special projects position. Sopp is the former chief financial officer of Titan Corp. and has an 18-year background in corporate finance, SAIC Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ken Dahlberg said. Darcy, who had been SAIC's CFO, will become executive vice president of strategic projects, Dahlberg said. SAIC, billed as the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States, provides solutions for national security, telecommunications and health care. It has an office in Rancho Bernardo. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Dec 6 00:03:09 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 19:03:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC launches Harford homeland security unit Message-ID: <20051205190219.S3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 5 December 2005 ; Baltimore Business Journal SAIC launches Harford homeland security unit http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/12/05/daily2.html --- Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) unveiled its new Abingdon-based business unit Monday, one geared to the homeland security market and a venture the Fortune 500 company says will make it one of Harford County's biggest high-tech engineering and research firms. San Diego-based SAIC was planning to host an open house at its Integration and Assurance Center, an Edgewood testing facility for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive systems being developed to guard domestically against terrorist attacks. The center is a spinout of SAIC's August acquisition of Geo-Centers Inc., a Massachusetts engineering firm which, along with two high-tech subsidiaries, has a substantial presence in Harford County. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but company executives say the combined entities will account for more than 800 high-tech jobs in and around Aberdeen Proving Ground, the hub of most of Harford's homeland security research and development. More than 150 jobs have been added in the last 18 months, SAIC said. Harford County is bracing for an influx of military jobs and contract work as a result of the latest round of military base closures instituted by the Pentagon and Congress. Aberdeen Proving Ground is home to 15,000 military, civilian and contract employees. The Army post generates $1.8 billion a year in economic impact, according to state officials, and is expected to net 2,000 more jobs from the Pentagon's base realignment. SAIC has revenues of more than $7 billion and employs 43,000 around the world. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Dec 6 13:04:31 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 08:04:31 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Acquisition Boosts SAIC Presence At Aberdeen Message-ID: <20051206080349.Q3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 6 December 2005 ; The Washington Post Acquisition Boosts SAIC Presence At Aberdeen http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/05/AR2005120501995.html --- By Dina ElBoghdady Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 6, 2005; Page D04 Science Applications International Corp. doubled its employee count in Harford County -- home of Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground -- with its purchase yesterday of a Massachusetts-based firm that specializes in the detection of chemical and biological weapons. The deal, which was announced earlier and closed for an undisclosed sum, expands SAIC's foothold in a county that gained about 5,000 mostly high-tech jobs during the most recent round of military base closings and realignments. Through its purchase of Geo-Centers Inc., SAIC gains about 400 jobs in Harford County, adding to its existing base of 400 employees there and making it the county's largest private employer of technology-based jobs, said Gary Boyd, a senior vice president at SAIC. As a result, the company hopes it will be well-positioned for contract work at the expanding the Army base, said Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger (D-Md.), whose district includes it and surrounding areas. "When you have a facility like Aberdeen, the partnerships with the commercial sector are so important," Ruppersberger said. "The way for companies to get business [with Aberdeen] is to be right there. SAIC has made a good decision to be close to Aberdeen, and they have a lot of work there now." SAIC, based in San Diego, has a large federal contracting business based in McLean and 16,000 employees in the Washington area. The company already had three buildings in Harford County totaling 200,000 square feet, Boyd said. Some of that space accommodates employees that SAIC hired when it was awarded a $390 million contract by the Defense Department in May 2004, Boyd said. Under that contract, SAIC is leading a team of firms that will work to protect 200 military installations against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. As part of that contract, SAIC created a facility in Abingdon that showcases the wares of some 300 manufacturers. Yesterday, the company held an open house there to unveil a new unit, which was created with the acquisition of Geo-Centers, to provide expertise on homeland defense against weapons of mass destruction. The center supports about 200 engineering jobs, Boyd said. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Dec 6 23:44:07 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 18:44:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC Sponsors Young Scientists' Participation in I/ITSEC Future Leaders' Pavilion Message-ID: <20051206184334.Y3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 6 December 2005 ; SAIC News SAIC Sponsors Young Scientists' Participation in I/ITSEC Future Leaders' Pavilion http://www.saic.com/news/2005/dec/06.html --- (MCLEAN, VA) - Thanks to involvement from Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), two students from Fairfax County's Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology presented their research projects to leading simulation and training industry minds last week at the 2005 Interservice/Interindustry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Fla. This year's I/ITSEC show was projected to draw more than 16,000 visitors, making it one of the largest defense industry tradeshows in the world. Dan Schafer and Justin Solomon were selected by officials at Thomas Jefferson High School to present their projects at the Future Leaders' Pavilion, formed in 2002 to engage young scientists in the modeling and simulation field. SAIC's Training and Simulation Solutions Business Unit sponsored their travel from Washington to Orlando to participate in the event, one of the many ways in which the company is involved in science and technology education in the National Capital Region. Dan Schafer's project, Optimizing Placement of Chemical and Biological Agent Sensors, examines the method used to place the sensors that detect a chemical or biological attack and monitor its spread. Dan used numerical analysis techniques to achieve a desired detection level or optimize the placement of a given number of agent sensors. The mathematical modeling for this practice is currently done with isosceles triangles and other polygons, but Dan has worked with some challenging irregular shapes, such as ellipses, in order to create a more accurate model of plumes. Justin Solomon has focused his attentions on the challenges inherent in facial recognition programs and will be presenting a project entitled Identification of Differential Surface Properties on a Triangle Mesh for Facial and Object Recognition. Most methods of face recognition depend upon purely mathematical techniques that are not representative of the way humans recognize faces, so Justin has attempted to apply classical differential geometry to the analysis of face features, in the same way that people recognize each other. Justin has developed a series of algorithms to recognize a face directly from its three dimensional shape, searching for parabolic curves, ridges and other facial properties. Established in 1985, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) is a Virginia Governor's School administered by Fairfax County Public Schools. As a selective secondary school, Jefferson serves nearly 1,800 students from the Northern Virginia jurisdictions of Arlington, Fairfax, Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William Counties, and the Cities of Fairfax and Falls Church. TJHSST provides a dynamic, specialized learning environment for selected students with high ability, aptitude, and interest in mathematics, science and technology who seek a comprehensive, challenging curriculum with emphasis in these disciplines. Each year, a competitive admissions process results in offers of enrollment to 500 freshmen. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Dec 7 14:43:41 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 09:43:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] FBI delays IT overhaul contract award Message-ID: <20051207094206.I3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 7 December 2005 ; Computer Business Review FBI delays IT overhaul contract award http://www.commentwire.com/article_news.asp?guid=A387C3B3-D6FC-4F08-AFAC-07F062AC4321 --- By CBR Staff Writer The FBI has postponed the awarding of the contract to update its computer system until next year, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing government officials. The contract was scheduled to be awarded last month, but the FBI's previous $170m IT boondoggle has made the agency rather cautious about its next outsourcing effort. The FBI has drawn criticism for its dated computer technology, continued reliance on paper forms, and poor information-sharing ability. The agency had undertaken a grand effort to update its system, but the project, known as the Virtual Case System, was abandoned earlier this year, some four years and $170m later. Federal contractor SAIC was the vendor leading the project. The FBI has yet to announce when it will award the new contract, known as Sentinel. In the running are big-time defense contractors Lockheed Martin Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp. Lockheed has partnered with fellow IT services notables Accenture, CSC, and CACI; Northrop still hasn't named its partners, the Journal reports. The contract doesn't have an exact amount yet, but it's expected to be in the hundreds of millions. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Dec 7 23:26:22 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 18:26:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC to Provide Bio-Surveillance Software, Data Analysis for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Message-ID: <20051207182611.C3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 7 December 2005 ; SAIC News SAIC to Provide Bio-Surveillance Software, Data Analysis for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.saic.com/news/2005/dec/07.html --- (ATLANTA, GA) Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) announced today it was awarded two contracts in support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Public Health Informatics' BioSense program. The first contract for software development and technical support of the BioSense system is a time and materials award with a base year worth $7,308,779 and also two option years respectively worth $8,696,681 and $8,696,681. The second contract, a cost-plus-fixed-fee award, to implement clinical and health indicator data feeds to BioSense from health organizations across the United States, has a ceiling value of $33,971,432. The combined potential value of both awards is $68.4 million. BioSense is a CDC-led initiative to provide early detection of a possible bio-terrorism attack or naturally occurring disease outbreak and to provide situational awareness to public health responders during any such event. "Over the next 33 months, SAIC expects to implement over 120 BioSense 'data feeds' that can provide the national coverage necessary to detect and characterize a possible bio-terrorist and/or natural health threat," said David Groves, SAIC vice president for Public Health Informatics. "This data will come from major healthcare providers and other health-related data sources, including pharmacies and medical laboratories nationwide." SAIC and its teammates, First Consulting Group, Falls Church, Va.; McKesson Corporation, Alpharetta, Ga.; and Healthcare Enterprise Innovations, Arlington, Va., will deploy teams to work with volunteer healthcare organizations to integrate the necessary hardware and software to enable transmission of real-time streams of health monitoring data to the CDC. Under the software development contract, SAIC will continue the work of developing and refining the BioSense Analysis, Visualization, and Reporting application. A central objective for BioSense is to provide statistical analyses and data visualization capabilities to detect a sudden shift in community health status and to support public health officials and scientists in providing early and effective public health response. SAIC has worked closely with the CDC since 2003 to rapidly design and implement BioSense and to address the urgent need for an initial systems capability to collect data from national health data sources, including the Department of Defense, and expedite initial detection and quantification of possible bio-terrorism attacks and outbreaks. "SAIC is proud to continue to support the CDC in the important BioSense initiative to help protect our nation's citizens from the growing threat of bio-terrorism," said Robert McCord, SAIC senior vice president and general manager of the Health Solutions Business Unit. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Dec 8 13:48:33 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:48:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC to bid for simulation job Message-ID: <20051208084747.V3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 8 December 2005 ; Daily Press SAIC to bid for simulation job http://www.dailypress.com/business/local/dp-34804sy0dec08,0,6490238.story --- The firm will compete with Northrop Grumman Mission Systems for a $250M defense contract. BY PETER DUJARDIN Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, announced Wednesday that it will bid for the major contract to provide technology support to the U.S. Joint Forces Command's modeling and simulation center in Suffolk. The announcement sets the stage for a battle between two of the command's biggest industry partners for a deal that is estimated to be worth about $250 million over five years: SAIC and incumbent Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. The Joint Warfighting Center develops computer scenarios to help train joint combat commanders around the world. The center is one of the major focal points of modeling and simulation work, in a region that's trying to solidify its role as a worldwide hub in the field. Northrop has held the support contract for the past five years, employing 500 people under that project, 450 of whom are based in Suffolk. Northrop announced 10 days ago that it would lead a team to bid on the work, to be re-opened for new proposals in January. At the time, Northrop said it didn't know who else wanted the work. SAIC solved that mystery with its announcement Wednesday. The company said it appointed Bill Lay, a former deputy director of the NATO Joint Warfare Center in Norway, as the firm's program manager in the Joint Warfighting Center effort. "SAIC selected Lay because of his experience in training allied and coalition forces, a growing element of the Joint Warfighting Center's evolving mission," the company said. SAIC also announced its team members for the work. Those include: L-3 Communications' Titan Group, Reston; Camber Corp., Huntsville, Ala.; Alion Science and Technology, McLean; and URS Corp.'s EG&G division, Gaithersburg, Md. Other team players for SAIC are Professional Software Engineering, Virginia Beach; SRA International, Fairfax; and EDO Corp., Arlington. SAIC has 180 employees supporting the U.S. Joint Forces Command in other capacities already. The firm has relocated much of its local office space to be near the command. The company says it has more than 3,000 employees in the Hampton Roads region. Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, based in Reston, will lead a team that includes Cubic Defense Applications of San Diego and General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems of Arlington, among others. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Dec 8 23:29:41 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 18:29:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC Announces Team to Compete for Joint Warfighting Center Program Message-ID: <20051208182929.L3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 7 December 2005 ; SAIC News SAIC Announces Team to Compete for Joint Warfighting Center Program http://www.saic.com/news/2005/dec/07a.html --- (SUFFOLK, VA) - Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) today announced it plans to compete for the U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Joint Warfighting Center (JWFC) Support Team (JST) procurement. This five-year program, expected to begin in September 2006, supports USJFCOM'S Joint Trainer responsibilities by planning and conducting exercises, crisis rehearsals and other training events, from inception through execution. SAIC expects the request for proposal to be released in January 2006. "Our goal for the JWFC program is to improve contractor responsiveness and efficiency in the near term and help JWFC achieve training transformation to meet tomorrow's missions," said Bill Lay, SAIC's JWFC program manager. Lay is the former deputy director of the NATO Joint Warfare Centre in Norway and has served as senior mentor during combined NATO exercises and crisis rehearsals. SAIC selected Lay because of his experience in training allied and coalition forces, a growing element of JWFC's evolving mission. SAIC, which has supported USJFCOM since its inception, currently has more than 180 staff members supporting the command, reflecting SAIC's growing presence in the Hampton Roads area. "JWFC is our company's top priority at JFCOM," said Bev Seay, general manager of the Strategies, Simulation and Training Business Unit, SAIC's lead organization for JWFC. "We have relocated our offices near USJFCOM and are leveraging a base of more than 3,000 employees in the Tidewater region to provide USJFCOM the support it needs." Currently, SAIC supports training to prepare U.S. forces for Operation Iraqi Freedom and is prime contractor for the Joint Knowledge Development and Distribution Capability, which provides training tailored to the needs of the individual warfighter. SAIC has chosen team members with joint training, simulation, exercise and C4ISR experience. SAIC's team includes L-3 Communications' Titan Group, Reston, Va.; Camber Corporation, Huntsville, Ala.; Alion Science and Technology, McLean, Va.; URS Corporation's EG&G Division, Gaithersburg, Md.; Professional Software Engineering, Inc. (PROSOFT), Virginia Beach, Va.; SRA International, Fairfax, Va.; EDO Corporation's Professional Services Division, Arlington, Va.; and several small business concerns. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Dec 8 23:31:22 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 18:31:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] U.S. Army Prepares To Battle FCS Budget Cuts: General Message-ID: <20051208183009.J3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 8 December 2005 ; Defense News U.S. Army Prepares To Battle FCS Budget Cuts: General http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=1401937&C=america --- By GOPAL RATNAM, NEW YORK One of the U.S. Army's top officials says the service will fight to save its most important modernization program from drastic funding cuts as the military services and senior defense officials try to close the 2007 budget preparation process. "Of the top 20 Department of Defense programs, we've got one," said Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisitions, referring to the Future Combat Systems (FCS). "Why can't I fight for it?" According to the Pentagon's latest cost estimates, the FCS program being managed by Boeing and SAIC is expected to cost about $160 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars by the time the Army buys all its requirements. Speaking Dec. 7 at the annual Aviation Week-CSFB conference on the aerospace and defense industry here, Yakovac laid out a case for preserving the Army's planned investments to prepare the service to take on the complex task of full-spectrum warfare -- ranging from low-intensity conflicts to high-intensity conventional wars -- and to respond to crises like tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes. "We can no longer pull from the investment accounts," he said. "We don't want to provide a hollow force anymore." An Army soldier, once seen as a "cheap instrument of war," is no longer cheap, he said. Today's soldier represents an average investment of about $100,000 without taking into account inflation, compared with the $2,000 soldier of the Vietnam days, Yakovac said. With weapons getting more complex, "we need a capacity to maintain and service them and it doesn't come cheap," he said. Yakovac declined to say how the Army's case will play out in the Quadrennial Defense Review, which is in its last stages at the Pentagon. Among the Army's other programs under scrutiny, Yakovac said Lockheed Martin has been asked to make a presentation to service officials on their choice of airplane for the Aerial Common Sensor program. The program was suspended in September after company and Army officials found the Embraer ERJ-145 originally chosen was inadequate to carry all the equipment. The company was given two months to come up with an alternative. Lockheed officials will present their revised proposal to the Army during the week of Dec. 12, Yakovac said. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Thu Dec 8 23:33:12 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 18:33:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC to support federal biosurveillance program Message-ID: <20051208183133.G3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 8 December 2005 ; Washington Technology SAIC to support federal biosurveillance program http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/27538-1.html --- By Alice Lipowicz Staff Writer Science Applications International Corp. won two contracts with a total value of $68.4 million to help implement and support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's BioSense national syndromic surveillance program. BioSense charts incoming health data about current patient symptoms from numerous military and Veterans Affairs hospitals to identify spikes of activity that might signal a disease cluster outbreak or bioterrorism attack. The surveillance program -- which chronicles symptoms such as breathing difficulties and high fever -- is intended to provide an earlier warning of possible public health threats than do traditional disease reporting systems. Under the new contract, San Diego-based SAIC will add additional feeds to BioSense from state and local providers. "Over the next 33 months, SAIC expects to implement over 120 BioSense 'data feeds' that can provide the national coverage necessary to detect and characterize a possible bio-terrorist and/or natural health threat," David Groves, SAIC vice president for public health informatics, said in a news release. "This data will come from major health-care providers and other health-related data sources, including pharmacies and medical laboratories nationwide." SAIC received two contracts for BioSense. The first is a time-and-materials contract for software development and technical support, with a base year worth $7.3 million and two option years worth $8.7 million each. The second contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee award to implement the data feeds to BioSense with a ceiling value of $34 million. Subcontractors include First Consulting Group, Falls Church, Va.; McKesson Corp., Alpharetta, Ga.; and Healthcare Enterprise Innovations, Arlington, Va., which will work with volunteer health-care organizations to enable them to transmit health monitoring data to the CDC. Research and engineering firm SAIC has more than 42,000 employees and annual sales of $7.2 billion. The company ranks No. 3 on Washington Technology's 2005 Top 100 list that measures federal contracting revenue. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Fri Dec 9 20:51:35 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:51:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC teams with Alion, L-3, SRA on Joint Warfighting Center support Message-ID: <20051209154743.S3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 9 December 2005 ; Washington Technology SAIC teams with Alion, L-3, SRA on Joint Warfighting Center support http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/27551-1.html --- By William Welsh Deputy Editor Science Applications International Corp. has tapped a few familiar names in the defense contracting community to compete with it for the Joint Warfighting Center support contract scheduled for award next year. SAIC's team, unveiled this week, includes L-3 Communications' Titan Group, Alion Science and Technology Corp., and SRA International Inc. Other subcontractors participating are Camber Corp., URS Corp.'s EG&G Division, Professional Software Engineering Inc., EDO Corp.'s Professional Services Division and several small businesses. The team members were selected because of their capabilities and experience related to joint training; simulation; exercise and command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The five-year contract valued at $250 million will support the U.S. Joint Forces Command's joint trainer responsibilities by planning and conducting exercises, crisis rehearsals and other training events. The request for proposals is expected to be released in January. SAIC, which has more than 43,000 employees and annual sales of $7.2 billion, ranks No. 3 on Washington Technology's 2005 Top 100 list of federal prime contractors. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Dec 10 14:39:40 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 09:39:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Alabama at work on the future of war Message-ID: <20051210093847.D3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 10 December 2005 ; The Birmingham News Alabama at work on the future of war http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1134209997150600.xml&coll=2 --- Army program seeks small, fuel-efficient vehicles, weapons KENT FAULK News staff writer HUNTSVILLE - Robots hovering in the air or rolling on the ground may one day spearhead the battle to keep soldiers out of the line of fire. The robots and improved, soldier-driven armored vehicles are part of the Army's multibillion-dollar modernization program called Future Combat Systems. North Alabama is playing a key role in the effort, said Dan Zanini, deputy program manager for Future Combat Systems, who was in Huntsville Friday to meet with companies working on or hoping to win contracts with the program. More than 500 people with the military and 17 private companies in the state are working on the effort to create war-fighting equipment that is lightweight, mobile and works in all settings. "When it's delivered it will fundamentally change the way we prosecute war," said Zanini, senior vice president at Science Applications International Corp. SAIC and the Boeing Co. are leading the 360 companies working on $21 billion in contracts to design and develop 18 manned or unmanned combat vehicles. Much of the Huntsville-area work is on design of unmanned air and ground vehicles that can go ahead of the soldiers to scout the enemy, detect physical or chemical hazards, and even fire weapons. Alabama companies are getting $150 million a year in the design and development phase of the project, which runs through 2014. That's when the first fully equipped brigade is supposed to be ready, Zanini said. A further $100 million a year in contracts for the program are managed through Huntsville, he said. Production is to begin about 2009. By the time production ends in 2025, 15 brigades will have the equipment, Zanini said. Production is expected to cost $120 billion to $130 billion, he said. Despite recent reports that the Pentagon is looking to trim the Future Combat Systems budget, Zanini said he's confident the program has the support of the Army and Congress. "It's been nicked (before), but it has not been cut," he said. Vehicle designs The Future Combat Systems manned combat vehicles are to be lighter weight, more fuel efficient, and small enough to maneuver around streets. That includes a troop carrier; armored medical evacuation vehicle; and tank with a large cannon. A craft equipped with cameras that can spy on the enemy is in advanced development at Honeywell International Inc. in New Mexico. The Micro Air Vehicle is a 15-pound hovercraft that soldiers will be able to carry in a pack. One of the ground vehicles is a small, wheeled tank loaded with missiles and an assault gun. Another is a 30-pound vehicle - small enough to be tossed into a building - that runs on tracks and carries cameras to relay pictures to soldiers nearby. Many of the systems also will have sensors to detect enemy movement or the presence of hazardous material such as chemical, biological and radiological weapons. Some unmanned ground and air vehicles are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Future Combat Systems program is pushing beyond simple remote-controlled robots, said John Guardiano, an SAIC spokesman. Soldiers will be able to program the movements of some of the vehicles ahead of time, and some of the vehicles will be able to navigate around obstacles on their own. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Dec 10 14:46:01 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 09:46:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Good news on ID theft Message-ID: <20051210094302.T3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 8 December 2005 ; San Diego Union Tribune Good news on ID theft http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20051208-9999-1b8identity.html --- Likelihood of fraud after security breach is surprisingly low, analysis finds By Bruce V. Bigelow UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER A computerized analysis of four data breaches that compromised personal information on some 500,000 people suggests the alarm that often accompanies electronic break-ins may be largely unwarranted. [Photo] Credit: SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune // Caption: Mike Cook, a co-founder and vice president of product at San Diego-based ID Analytics. The company, which analyzes the risk of fraud in credit applications, has found that the likelihood of fraud after electronic break-ins is surprisingly low On the other hand, the study also suggests that publicity can help deter fraudsters from using the stolen data. The analysis, conducted over the past six months by San Diego's ID Analytics, is believed to be the first to calculate just how much fraud occurred after each security breach. Such incidents frequently generate worries about identity theft, a crime in which fraudsters use stolen personal data to get credit cards and loans to make purchases under someone else's name. Previous studies have suggested that up to one in 70 Americans has fallen victim to identity theft, said Fred H. Cate, director of Indiana University's Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. In the analysis done by ID Analytics, however, the highest rate of misuse of the four data breaches was calculated at 0.098 percent . or less than one in 1,000 identities. The company provided no specifics on the security breaches it studied. The low rate was surprising even at ID Analytics, which uses sophisticated computer technology to analyze consumer payments and applications for credit cards, loans and cellular telephone accounts for telltale signs of fraud. A survey in January by a market research firm, Javelin Strategy and Research, found the total cost of identity theft and credit card fraud to be $52.6 billion a year. Javelin also counted 9.3 million new victims of identity theft. With the U.S. population at 281.4 million, that works out to about 3.3 percent . or more than 30 times the rate calculated by ID Analytics. One reason ID Analytics' findings may be at odds with other studies on identity theft is that it focused narrowly on breaches that involved four electronic databases, said James Van Dyke, Javelin's founder and president. "No one should project the results of their good work on the overall problem," Van Dyke said. "Most of the new account identity theft fraud is not due to data breaches." Van Dyke explained: "You are more likely to become a victim of identity fraud from somebody who knows you personally. The list could include estranged relatives, neighbors, friends or somebody hired to work around the house." As part of its business, ID Analytics uses its network to analyze some 40 million consumer applications a month, scoring the risk of fraud as part of a service provided to its customers, which include major financial institutions and wireless service providers. "No breach is good," said Mike Cook, a co-founder and vice president of product at ID Analytics. "But there are different risks associated with different types of breaches." The company, which plans to release its findings today, conducted its analysis over the past six months . comparing the compromised data from each breach with its proprietary neural network technology. Such technology searches for patterns that could include customer accounts with multiple names and different addresses and telephone numbers. Cook reviewed the results of ID Analytics' analysis just days after the University of San Diego notified almost 7,800 individuals that hackers gained access to computers containing their personal income-tax data. In the past year or so, similar breaches have hit more than a dozen organizations, including ChoicePoint, LexisNexis, GMAC Financial Services, Science Applications International Corp. and the University of California Berkeley. "Breaches are everybody's problem," Cook said. "But the incidence of occurrence is much higher with educational institutions and government agencies." Among other things, the company found that: * Deliberate data breaches that target detailed customer information, including names, Social Security numbers, addresses and birth dates pose the highest potential for fraud. * A big data breach poses a lower risk that any single person will be defrauded. If it takes five minutes to fill out an illicit credit application, it could take even a diligent fraudster more than 50 years to make use of a database holding 1 million consumer identities. * By the same token, the smaller the data breach, the chances of fraud are higher for each consumer whose personal data were compromised. * Notifying consumers about a data breach may provide a deterrent effect on fraudsters. But such notifications can be costly, and they often needlessly alarm consumers when the risk of fraud is low. Avivah Litan, a Gartner research director for payments and fraud, said ID Analytics' findings were important for three reasons. "What it told me, number one, was that disclosure is a good thing. Publicity stopped the thieves immediately. Number two, it showed that the theft of a credit card is not necessarily going to lead to identity theft. And number three, that you can't really conclude that anything will happen from the theft of a laptop computer." Cate, of Indiana University, said ID Analytics' study suggests that laws requiring institutions to notify consumers of data breaches may be unnecessary . at least in cases where the costs of notification are high and the risks of fraud are low. "It turns out that almost all the data are telling us that these breaches aren't that big of a deal," Cate said. "Statistically, you are no more likely to be a victim of identity theft the day after a breach than you were the day before." From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Tue Dec 13 21:53:13 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:53:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] PGP Corporation Signs Master Marketing Agreement With SAIC Message-ID: <20051213165156.P3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 12 December 2005 ; Yahoo News PGP Corporation Signs Master Marketing Agreement With SAIC http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051212/sfm110.html?.v=26 --- Security Expert & Leading Systems Integrator Collaborate to Supply Data Security Solutions to Joint Customers PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- PGP Corporation, a global leader in enterprise data security and encryption solutions, today announced it has signed a strategic marketing agreement with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to provide comprehensive, automatic data security for the government, commercial, and markets. The agreement highlights the award-winning PGP Universal product family and SAIC's depth and breadth in providing design and implementations services, supporting mission-critical applications such as secure email and data storage across leading companies and governments worldwide. "The new agreement with PGP Corporation will complement our array of information security solutions," said Fred Huey, an SAIC vice president of operations. "Protecting data at rest and in transit via email across a corporate network or the public Internet is an increasing priority for organizations wishing to safeguard customer or proprietary data and comply with regulations requiring that such information be protected." The PGP Universal "deploy-once" enterprise encryption platform provides fully automated information security for email, disk, file, and instant messaging (IM) encryption, securing confidential data wherever and however organizations use it. Using PGP Universal, enterprises deploy one key infrastructure and easily add new encryption capabilities and devices later -- without changing that infrastructure. PGP Universal allows enterprises to comply with regulatory, business partner, and customer security requirements while protecting their intellectual property. "We're looking forward to collaborating with SAIC on a number of initiatives," said Rajiv Dholakia, vice president of strategy and solutions for PGP Corporation. "For example, PGP Universal transparently encrypts outgoing information and was tested as part of the 2005 Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration. PGP Universal's self-managing security architecture is particularly valuable for securing data without commander or first responder intervention." From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Dec 14 14:13:51 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:13:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC to Provide Systems Development Services to the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System Message-ID: <20051214091123.T3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 12 December 2005 ; SAIC News SAIC to Provide Systems Development Services to the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System http://www.saic.com/news/2005/dec/12.htm --- (ATLANTA, GA) - Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) announced today it was awarded a $27.6 million contract to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), providing full Systems Development Life Cycle services for the continued design, development and implementation of the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) Program Area Modules (PAMs) and CDC Area Modules (CAMs). This time and materials award has a base year worth $11,149,525 and two option years worth $10,259,532 and $10,150,162 respectively, for a combined total of $31,559,219. The NEDSS project is CDC's public health initiative to provide a standards-based, integrated approach to disease surveillance in state and local public health departments. A key objective for NEDSS is to improve the nation's ability to identify and track emerging infectious diseases, investigate outbreaks and to monitor disease trends. "NEDSS is an important cornerstone to CDC's vision and strategy for the Public Health Information Network," said David Groves, SAIC vice president for Public Health Informatics. "We look forward to continuing our support to CDC and the National Center for Public Health Informatics in advancing the breadth and quality of disease surveillance and public health preparedness nationwide." This project is an important extension of the NEDSS Base System deployed by the CDC in 2003. The PAMs are disease specific and designed to run at health departments nationwide, with or without the NEDSS Base System. CAMs are designed to reside at the CDC as part of the CDC external Web presence. Over the last two years, SAIC has worked with CDC to enhance the NEDSS system, including the introduction of a flexible, layered architecture that supports commonality and code reusability. CDC will soon have a flexible and extendible platform on which to base a broad set of program-specific surveillance requirements. Modules for tuberculosis, varicella, and lead poisoning will be the first PAMs released by the CDC. SAIC and the CDC have worked on an extensive outreach campaign with state and local health department stakeholders, in a concerted effort to significantly improve the interface design, and boost user acceptance and interest in using CDC software. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Dec 14 14:17:07 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:17:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] A Short History of RADIO FREE IRAQ Message-ID: <20051214091642.K3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 12 December 2005 ; Dissident Voice A Short History of RADIO FREE IRAQ http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec05/Rajiva1212.htm --- No News is Bad News Just as President Bush urged support for a "free, independent and responsible Iraqi media," the Los Angeles Times reported that the military in Iraq is spending millions on a DC-based defense contractor to plant stories favorable to the US occupation in the Iraqi media. Senior Pentagon officials, including General Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are said to have had no idea that this secret campaign was going on. Is this even news? We're told that operatives (or if you will, troops) of an Information Operations Task Force in Baghdad write news stories, called "storyboards", and deliver them to the Iraqi staff of the Lincoln Group. These staffers translate the storyboards into Arabic and then pay (i.e. bribe) newspaper editors in Baghdad to run the stories. Actually this "new" program has been around for a time, only with different names. After the fall of Baghdad, Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), a defense contractor with no media experience, got a no-bid contract for the Iraqi Media Network (IMN) program. Seems it was picked solely for its resume as a long-time buddy of the US military. In 2002, about two-thirds of its $6 billion revenues came largely from the defense budget and David Kay, chief hunter for WMD, is a former Veep. TV producer Dan North was approached to set up a public broadcast station. But North soon became disillusioned when he found that his boss, Paul Bremer couldn't tell the difference between independent Iraqi journalism and PR for the US military. North, a veteran of Vietnam, Bosnia, Rumania, and Afghanistan and his news director, an Iraqi ex-pat, Achmed Al-Rikabi, a former Swedish producer/reporter and BBC broadcaster, knew quite well what the Iraqis needed after years of state-controlled pablum. Instead, they found themselves dishing out Bremer's pablum. The Iraqis naturally tuned out and began listening to Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Iraqi journalists started calling the Americans "Little Saddams." So General Pace's stupefaction about the fake news story is touching. And absurd. Last year, the IMN (its local name is Al Iraqiya) had a $100 million budget that came right out of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, the group in Defense that handles psyops. Pace, Chief of the JCS, does not know this? The unholy blending of psyops, information ops and military diplomacy was roundly criticized at the time even by military commanders who thought it would eventually ruin the army's ability to communicate with the public, but it went ahead anyway in mid- September 2004 under Erv Lessel, of the Strategic Communications office, but ultimately under the Undersecretary for Defense Policy, who was at the time Douglas Feith. Feith, meanwhile, also headed the Office of Special Plans (OSP) that "stove-piped" cooked intelligence to the White House to support the war and OSP itself was simply the brand new moniker under which the defunct Office of Strategic Information (OSI) was resurrected. Formed after 9-11, OSI did nothing but plant fake stories in the international (not just Iraqi) media until it was shut down from public outrage. But Pace knows nothing about this. I suppose he also knows nothing about a secret 74-page directive called "Information Operations Road Map," (late 2003) that invited proposals for a "director of central Information" who would be responsible for controlling all public or secret messages across all national security and foreign policy operations. That was presented to a "senior Pentagon panel" including none other than Doug Feith. A "senior Pentagon panel" would, one suspects, include General Pace, who is now in a swoon about the LA Times report. There is even a whole field devoted to this blending of military and psy-ops. It's called Defense Support for Public Diplomacy. Back to the Iraqi PBS (perhaps not such a bad analogy, by the way, considering recent reports of the infiltration of PBS and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting by the pro-war faction). In January 2004, after mounting complaints about SAIC's no-bid contract, inexperience and bias, Harris Communications, a company that specializes in designing, manufacturing and installing communications equipment and infrastructure, took over the IMN contract. It was also a no-bid contract. Harris also had no media experience except for a stint upgrading Romania's media network. But perhaps that was enough. Harris subcontracted the media work to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation and Al Fawares, an Iraqi owned Kuwaiti company which publishes the Al Sabah newspaper in Kuwait. Even so, under Harris (an Australian firm), American government influence was so heavy-handed that the entire staff of Al Sabah walked out and the Iraqi general director of Al Iraqiya (the Iraqi TV network) resigned after just 6 months. But senior Pentagon officials wouldn't know that. They also might not know that Harris worked with CACI together in at least one aspect of US telecommunications -- electronic platforms. Nearly half of all interrogators and analysts employed in January 2004 were CACI employees. That's the same CACI which is deeply involved with Homeland Security in a majority of defense and civilian agencies, the intelligence community, 44 state governments, more than 200 cities, counties and local agencies in North America, and also contracts with government agencies in Asia-Pacific and Europe. It does not just collect information but "maps terrorist social networks." Meanwhile SAIC -- which was supposedly removed for its incompetence and bias -- is back again under the new program, this time sharing the Special Ops Command contract (worth 100 million) to provide media work for five years. But not in Iraq, we are told. And they have nothing to do with planting fake stories, says a spokesman for the Special Ops Command. The generals would probably believe that. Lila Rajiva is a freelance writer in Baltimore, and the author of The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the US Media (Monthly Review Press, 2005) from which this article was adapted. She can be reached at: lrajiva at hotmail.com. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Dec 14 14:21:49 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:21:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Olympics Contract Troubles May Be Delaying SAIC IPO Message-ID: <20051214091736.H3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 13 December 2005 ; The Washington Post Olympics Contract Troubles May Be Delaying SAIC IPO http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121201457.html --- By Renae Merle Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 13, 2005; Page D02 Science Applications International Corp.'s plans to go public early next year apparently have been delayed by continuing troubles on a security contract for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Employee-owned SAIC, a large government contractor with 16,000 employees in the Washington area, had said it would go public early next year. But in a Dec. 9 memo to employees posted on the company Web site, SAIC chairman and chief executive Kenneth C. Dahlberg said the company will report another $61 million loss on its contract with Greece's Ministry of Defense to develop a security and communications system for the Summer Olympics, bringing the total loss to $115 million. Achilles Paparsenos, a spokesman for the Greek Embassy in Washington, said yesterday that some of the security subsystems did not work as promised. The two sides are negotiating now in hopes of reaching "a mutually agreeable solution," he said. Because of the contract problems, Dahlberg said he "reluctantly" decided to delay a Dec. 9 meeting to set a price for the company's shares and a stockholders' meeting scheduled for this Friday. The meetings will be rescheduled and the impact on the timing of the initial public offering will be determined by the board of directors, which will meet Friday, he said. Dahlberg said he and the board still believed an IPO is in the company's best interest. The chief beneficiaries of the public share offering, which aims to raise $1.7 billion, would be SAIC's more than 35,000 shareholders. Industry analysts said that the potential delay gives SAIC time to settle the dispute and emerge on Wall Street with a clean slate. "If there is bad news, get it out and explain it," said Robert Rubin, managing director of National Capital Companies LLC, an investment bank that isn't involved in the SAIC transactions. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Dec 14 14:23:46 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:23:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC's meeting on IPO delayed Message-ID: <20051214092253.R3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 13 December 2005 ; San Diego Union-Tribune SAIC's meeting on IPO delayed http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20051213-9999-1b13saic.html --- By Bruce V. Bigelow UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER In an unexpected move, San Diego-based SAIC has postponed a special shareholders' meeting that was set for Friday to vote on the company's proposed restructuring and initial public stock offering. A letter to SAIC employees by chief executive Ken Dahlberg late Friday suggests the problem is only a hiccup, and that a new vote will be scheduled when the company's board of directors meets this Friday. Dahlberg said the decision was triggered by an unforeseen loss of $61 million in SAIC's troubled contract with the Greek government to build a command-and-control security network for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. The loss was to be included in SAIC's yet-to-be-reported financial results for the third quarter ended Oct. 31. Such a loss may not seem substantial for a company that generates nearly $2 billion in revenue a quarter. It could represent a significant impact on SAIC's profit margins, as the company's second-quarter operating income was just $144 million. If it was a recent surprise, such a loss also could have become a significant factor in the internal process the employee-owned company uses to price its stock. Under its founder, J. Robert Beyster, SAIC devised an elaborate process to set the value of its shares and even created an internal brokerage to match employee stock purchases with sales in trades held every three months. The process became unwieldy in recent years. Dahlberg has said that restructuring the company's internal trading system to tap the public markets was one of the key reasons behind the IPO. In a filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, SAIC said the loss also prompted the company to postpone certain retirement plan stock transactions until Dec. 30. Those transactions, which were scheduled for this Friday, depended on a stock pricing announcement set for last Friday, which was postponed to Dec. 23. Aside from the delays, Dahlberg wrote, "We are otherwise performing strongly, and you should be very proud of our overall accomplishments thus far this year." Nevertheless, the extent of the underlying trouble remained unclear. At the end of November, SAIC replaced Tom Darcy as chief financial officer with former Titan CFO Mark Sopp. Darcy, who had served as CFO for more than five years, was named to a new position, executive vice president for strategic projects. Ron Zollars, a spokesman for the company also known as Science Applications International Corp., declined to elaborate on the announcement. When asked if the company would clarify whether the IPO also would be delayed, Zollars replied by e-mail, "We cannot speculate and go beyond what was contained in the memo." In its financial statement for the second quarter ended in July, SAIC set the full value of its Greek Olympic contract at $305 million. The company also said it had received $143 million in payments to date. Including the latest $61 million loss, Dahlberg said SAIC has lost $115 million since the contract's inception in 2003. The delayed shareholders' vote was a shock in the carefully laid plans that SAIC officially launched nearly 3 months ago in filings with government regulators. In those documents, SAIC said its IPO was part of a deeper retooling of the employee-owned company. Nearly all proceeds from the offering, estimated at more than $1.7 billion, are to be distributed to the company's shareholders. The sheer size of the proposed IPO is enormous, and prompted some observers to compare SAIC's offering with the $1.8 billion IPO that Google staged in 2004. So far, the biggest IPO of 2005 has been a nearly $1.4 billion offering by Huntsman in February, according to the Web site IPOhome.com. SAIC had arranged to hold its special meeting Friday afternoon at the company's conference center in McLean, Va. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Wed Dec 14 14:28:40 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:28:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SGI Expands Portfolio of Available CAE Software for U.S. Department of Defense Applications Message-ID: <20051214092809.M3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 13 December 2005 ; PR Newswire SGI Expands Portfolio of Available CAE Software for U.S. Department of Defense Applications http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-13-2005/0004232958 --- SGI Systems Provide Increased Performance for Leading DoD Shock Wave Physics and Electromagnetics Application Software MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Silicon Graphics (OTC: SGID) today announced the addition of two important government off-the-shelf (GOTS) application software, CTH and Xpatch(R), to the growing portfolio of computer-aided engineering (CAE) software immediately available on the SGI(R) Altix(R) and Silicon Graphics Prism(TM) family of servers, clusters and visualization systems -- the first Linux(R) High-Performance Compute (HPC) environment capable of scaling to hundreds of Intel(R) Itanium(R) 2 processors with distributed shared-memory and integrated visualization. CTH, a widely-used shock wave physics software that simulates high speed impact and penetration, and Xpatch, an electromagnetics radar simulation software suite for predicting and analyzing high frequency signatures, are now fully optimized for SGI systems. Significant numbers of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) research organizations, agencies and prime contractors rely on CAE applications to improve design quality, mission and target precision and to reduce design-cycle time and costs in the development of warfighter systems for sea, land, air, and space-based defense applications. By combining the leading HPC technologies of the Intel Itanium 2 processors, the open-source 64-bit Linux operating system and SGI(R) NUMAflex(TM) scalable system architecture, the SGI Altix and Silicon Graphics Prism family of systems can offer the capability to meet the essential needs of CAE simulation environments for advanced DoD weapons development. CTH and Shock Wave Physics Developed by Sandia National Laboratories, CTH is a widely-used shock wave physics software that simulates high-speed impact and penetration phenomena involving a variety of materials. Uses of CTH software include studying weapon effects, armor/anti-armor interactions, warhead design, high-explosive initiation physics and weapon safety considerations. Primary users include DOE national laboratories, the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and other DoD-sponsored research and development organizations. CTH is also used in national missile defense, hazardous material dispersal by explosive detonation, weapon components design and reactive materials research. This release of CTH v7.0 includes performance enhancements from code optimizations invoked with the Intel compiler, and the use of SGI(R) Message Passing Toolkit (MPT) which provides industry-standard message-passing libraries optimized for SGI systems running Linux. These high-performance libraries permit application developers to use standard, portable interfaces for developing parallel applications software while obtaining the best possible communications performance. Xpatch and High Frequency Electromagnetics Xpatch, developed by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is a premier electromagnetic software suite for predicting and analyzing high-frequency radar signatures. Xpatch is a set of prediction and analysis tools that use the shooting-and-bouncing ray (SBR) method to predict realistic far-field and near-field radar signatures for 3D target models. SAIC also develops and distributes SAF, a method of moments full-wave solver for low frequency electromagnetics predictions, which is also available for SGI Altix. The Xpatch toolset is used by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for multiple radar simulation programs. There are over 500 organizations across the U.S. in both industrial and government applications using Xpatch to produce and analyze scattering data for realistic aircraft, missiles, ships, spacecraft and ground vehicles. According to Luke Lin, deputy division manager, SAIC, "The technology and applications engineering investments from SGI and Intel provide SAIC with a solid foundation for Xpatch software development and radar cross-section simulation, design and analysis. The computing capabilities of the SGI Altix and the Silicon Graphics Prism's ability to tightly integrate HPC with advanced visualization can provide efficient and cost-effective simulation environments for SAIC's computational electromagnetics applications." SGI Focus on the CAE Simulation Workflow The current DoD challenges in CAE workflow requirements continue to benefit from the industry-leading SGI technology of HPC servers and clusters for computation, visualization systems for pre- and post-processing, and file management solutions for CAE simulation data. The availability of CTH and Xpatch build upon SGI's and Intel's already successful efforts to offer DoD-critical CAE software from the GOTS community, and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) CAE software from a variety of independent software vendors. Samples of available GOTS and COTS software for CAE simulation include: -- Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM): ABAQUS(R) from ABAQUS(R) Inc., ANSYS(R) from ANSYS, Inc., LS-DYNA(R) from Livermore Software Technology Corp., MSC.Nastran(TM) and MSC.Marc(R) from MSC.Software Corporation, and NX(TM) Nastran from UGS Corp. -- Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD): ANSYS(R) CFX(R) from ANSYS Inc., CFD++(TM) from Metacomp Technologies Inc., CFD-FASTRAN from ESI Group, Cobalt from Cobalt Solutions LLC, GASP from Aerosoft Inc., FEFLO from SAIC and George Mason University, FLUENT(R) from Fluent Inc., OVERFLOW and USM3D from NASA Langley Research Center, and STAR-CD and STAR-CCM+ from CD-adapco. -- Computational Electromagnetics (CEM): FEKO from EMSS Ltd., FMS(TM) from Multipath Corp., SAF and SIGLBC(TM) from SAIC, XFDTD(TM) from Remcom Inc., and ELEKTRA from Vector Fields Ltd. -- CAE Pre- and Post-Processing, and Visualization: Gridgen from Pointwise(R) Inc., ANSYS ICEM CFD(TM) from ANSYS Inc., EnSight from Computational Engineering Intl., FIELDVIEW from Intelligent Light Inc., Tecplot(TM) from Tecplot(R) Inc., and a variety of pre- and post-processors from ISV integrated CAE packages. -- CAE Simulation Data Management: MSC.SimManager(R) from MSC.Software "SGI is helping to advance a growing class of DoD scientists, researchers and engineers who are moving from proprietary architectures to industry standard technologies that drive value and efficiencies into their CAE workflow," said Anthony Robbins, president, SGI Federal. "We are satisfied in our joint-collaboration with Intel as we focus on our growing list of application software developers that further enhance DoD's capabilities in CAE simulation for the warfighter." From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Dec 17 15:09:49 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:09:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC Announces Revenue and Earnings for the Third Quarter of Fiscal 2006 Message-ID: <20051217100916.G3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 16 December 2005 ; SAIC News SAIC Announces Revenue and Earnings for the Third Quarter of Fiscal 2006 http://www.saic.com/news/2005/dec/16.html --- (SAN DIEGO) - Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) today announced that it achieved third quarter revenues of $2.0 billion, representing a growth rate of 10 percent over revenues of $1.8 billion for the third quarter of the previous fiscal year. View our Fiscal Year 2006 Income Statement and Balance Sheet (33k, PDF file[1]). SAIC's operating income for the third quarter was $108 million, compared to $130 million for the same period last year. Operating income decreased primarily due to an additional loss of $61 million recorded on the company's firm-fixed-price contract with the Greek Government, as compared to an additional loss of $15 million recorded on this contract in the same period last year. "The poor financial performance and challenges of the Greek Olympics contract are of continuing concern, and we are doing all we can to bring this contract to a satisfactory conclusion for our customer and the company," said Ken Dahlberg, SAIC chairman and chief executive officer. "The third quarter of fiscal 2006 was otherwise a very good quarter for us, and we continue to win and execute well on important contracts across all areas of our core business." Operating income for the third quarter before the effect of the additional loss recorded on the Greek contract was $169 million, as compared to $145 million in the same period last year. This increase in operating income reflects overall improved contract performance and higher labor utilization, partially offset by expenditures for investment in our information technology and other infrastructure required to support our growth. Non-operating income items in the aggregate increased $27 million for the third quarter compared to the same period of the prior year, primarily due to an increase in interest income and equity investment income related to the company's joint ventures. Income from continuing operations for the third quarter was $72 million, compared to $68 million for the same period of the prior year, primarily reflecting the decrease in operating income offset by the increase in non-operating income. Net income for the third quarter was $91 million as compared to $95 million in the prior year, and included income from discontinued Telcordia operations of $19 million as compared to $27 million in the prior year. Income from discontinued operations in the current quarter resulted from resolution of tax contingencies related to our former Telcordia subsidiary that was sold in March 2005. For Additional Information: * SAIC Company Overview [2] * SAIC Industry Ranking [3] [1] http://www.saic.com/news/pdf/2006Q3pandl.pdf [2] http://www.saic.com/about/overview.html [3] http://www.saic.com/news/rankings.html From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Dec 17 15:12:23 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:12:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] CONTRACTS from the United States Department of Defense Message-ID: <20051217101202.F3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 16 December 2005 ; DOD CONTRACTS from the United States Department of Defense http://defenselink.mil/contracts/2005/ct20051216-12156.html --- No. 1302-05 FOR RELEASE AT Dec 16, 2005 Media Contact: (703)697-5131 Public/Industry(703)428-0711 CONTRACTS NAVY [...] Science Applications International Corp., San Diego, Calif., is being awarded a $28,679,009 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost-reimbursement contract for engineering support for the Capital Asset Management System (CAMS). CAMS is a computer network system that is designed to manage asset accounting and reporting capabilities for all military equipment. Work will be performed in San Diego, Calif., and is expected to be completed by December 2010. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the SPAWAR e-commerce business website, with one offer received. The Space and Naval Warfare System Center San Diego, Calif., is the contracting activity (N66001-06-D-0021). [...] From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Dec 17 15:12:40 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:12:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC reports record revenue Message-ID: <20051217101224.Q3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 17 December 2005 ; San Diego Union Tribune SAIC reports record revenue http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20051217-9999-1b17saic.html --- But Olympic security pact woes trimmed earnings By Bruce V. Bigelow UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER SAIC, the San Diego defense conglomerate also known as Science Applications International Corp., yesterday reported record revenue of $2 billion for the third quarter ended in October. That represents a 10 percent gain over the $1.8 billion in sales the company posted for the same quarter last year. But a $61 million loss related to the company's troubled 2003 Greek Olympics contract decreased SAIC's operating income to $108 million, compared with $130 million for the same quarter last year. The Greek government awarded the contract, valued at about $305 million, to a consortium led by SAIC to deliver a command-and-control security network for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. The Greek Ministry of Public Order took over the system shortly before the games began, but it never formally accepted the network and has identified a host of deficiencies with the system. "The poor financial performance and challenges of the Greek Olympics contract are of continuing concern," Ken Dahlberg, SAIC's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. "We are doing all we can to bring this contract to a satisfactory conclusion for our customer and the company." Before accounting for the loss recorded on the Greek Olympics contract, SAIC said, its operating income amounted to $169 million. Third-quarter income from continuing operations was $72 million, compared with $68 million in the same period last year. Overall net income was $91 million, compared with $95 million during the same quarter last year. SAIC is the nation's largest employee-owned research and engineering company, with more than 43,000 employees. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sun Dec 18 22:51:56 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:51:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Local business briefs: SAIC reports $2B in revenue Message-ID: <20051218175118.T3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 17 December 2005 ; North County Times and The Californian Local business briefs: SAIC reports $2B in revenue http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/12/18/business/news/21_15_4412_17_05.txt --- SAN DIEGO ---- Research and engineering company Science Applications International Corp. says that it achieved third-quarter revenue of $2 billion, representing a growth rate of 10 percent over revenue of $1.8 billion for the third quarter of the previous fiscal year. Net income for the third quarter was $91 million, compared with $95 million from the same quarter last year. SAIC has an office in Rancho Bernardo. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Sat Dec 24 15:16:53 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 10:16:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] Receptionist's warmth, smile remembered by many Message-ID: <20051224101528.J3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 24 December ; Huntsville Times Receptionist's warmth, smile remembered by many http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/news/1135419340116650.xml&coll=1 --- Edna Dawson was 'Aunt Bea' to SAIC fellow employees By PAT NEWCOMB Times Staff Writer, patn at htimes.com Edna Dawson always greeted the people who walked into SAIC with her "million dollar smile." Dawson was the longtime receptionist at SAIC's office on Odyssey Drive. She died on Dec. 16 at the age of 72 after a sudden illness. "She had an infectious smile," said Sara Morgan, who is an executive assistant at SAIC. "We were so blessed we were the recipients of such graciousness." Since her death, the calls have been pouring into the company, with people commenting on Dawson's "warm personality," said Bill Gurley, a senior vice president and general manager at SAIC. "She was an icon for us in this community." As much of an impression as she made on visitors, Dawson's effect on employees was even greater, said Gurley, who said the company plans to dedicate the lobby at Odyssey Drive to Dawson. "A lot of our employees called her 'Aunt Bea'," Gurley said, because she looked so much like the character from the 'Andy Griffith Show' and for her caring nature. "She was truly a remarkable personality," he said. "So gregarious and always a smile and a pleasant personality. She was like a grandmother or an aunt to so many of our employees." Dawson felt as close to the employees at SAIC as they did to her, said her three children. "The folks at SAIC were like her family during the day," said Steve Dawson, her youngest. In their weekly phone calls, Steve said his mother would always talk about her friends at work. "I don't think she ever met anybody she didn't make a lifelong friend of." Although she was past retirement age, she had no intention of leaving SAIC, said Patti Dawson, her oldest child and only daughter. "I don't think going to work every day was 'going to work' for my mother," Steve said. Dawson's compassionate spirit was perhaps partly due to her own tumultuous upbringing. Her mother died when Dawson was 8, and her tobacco-farmer father had to send her to stay with a series of relatives when she was growing up, said Patti. She was determined her own children would always feel secure and loved. She even developed a close friendship with her ex-husband, Willie, and his wife, Terri. They were listed as "special friends" in her obituary. "She was always 100 percent loyal to her family, no matter the situation," Steve said. When her children were growing up, she always had a cool washcloth for a feverish forehead and was home when her kids got off the school bus every day. "As far as I'm concerned, she was the most gentle and caring person I ever came across," Steve said. As her children grew up, she always marked their birthdays with cards, presents and even a birthday party for Patti, who is single. She went to great lengths to make Christmas special, too, decorating her house with two Christmas trees and buying three of four gifts for each family member, said Barry Dawson, her middle child. "She loved Christmas and loved giving so much," Barry said. "We have pictures of her being all excited at people opening their presents." Steve and his family live near New Orleans, but Barry, his wife and three kids and Patti would usually gather at their mother's house on Christmas Eve. Dinner included "the most scrumptious sweet potato pie and mashed potatoes that would melt in your mouth," Patti said. They'll miss those tonight, but Patti said she's thankful her mother had done most of her Christmas shopping so her seven grandchildren could have a final Christmas from their Bam-ma. "We feel like that's a gift to the grandchildren," Patti said. From saic at vision.moundalexis.com Fri Dec 30 00:03:13 2005 From: saic at vision.moundalexis.com (Daily SAIC News) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:03:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: [saic] SAIC's Common Criteria Testing Lab: Ensuring IT Security Products Can Deliver Message-ID: <20051229190106.M3948-100000@vision.moundalexis.com> 21 December 2005 ; SAIC Feature Article SAIC's Common Criteria Testing Lab: Ensuring IT Security Products Can Deliver http://www.saic.com/cover-archive/saicpubs/cctl.html --- U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) network architects are faced with hundreds of information technology (IT) security products, such as firewalls, switches and routers, database management systems, virtual private networks, intrusion detection systems, public key infrastructures, secure operating systems, tokens, and biometrics. New and worse threats generate new products, making it difficult to match network requirements, assurance measures, and product capabilities. The nagging question is always whether the IT security product is going to deliver as advertised. That's where a Common Criteria Testing Laboratory (CCTL) comes in. SAIC's CCTL is one of 10 accredited labs in the United States approved to help the DoD determine whether computer and software security products are safe to run on its networks. Among the CCTLs, SAIC's CCTL is the leader in CCTL market share. Eighty-three certificates for Common Criteria evaluation have been awarded in the United States. Of those, 45 have been awarded to SAIC. That means that 47 percent of all certificates awarded have gone through SAIC's CCTL. Currently, there are 145 products in Common Criteria evaluation in the United States evaluation scheme. SAIC is doing 70 of those evaluations, or 48 percent of total evaluations. The other evaluations are split between the other nine accredited labs and four candidate labs. SAIC's CCTL also is the only CCTL that has current EAL5, EAL6+, and EAL7 evaluations on-going. The Common Criteria - the standard for more than 20 countries To be assured that secure manufacture and security functions work, Department of Defense Directive 8500 mandates that IT security products used on its sensitive networks be evaluated using the Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme (the CCVES or Common Criteria). The Common Criteria (international standard ISO 15408) was officially instituted in 1999 to replace a series of DoD programs and various international schemes implemented by the defense agencies of Western nations. The standard provides for evaluation of computer security products by trusted, certified, third-party labs, according to a standardized set of criteria, using a common description language. More than 20 countries now recognize the standard. In the United States, the program is managed by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), a joint activity of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Security Agency. The NIAP is the certifying body of the CCTL program. Part of the standard calls for meeting security assurance requirements that are verified according to an Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL), an assurance-rating system that runs from 1 to 7. SAIC's CCTL was one of the initial four laboratories accredited to perform IT EAL 1 through 4 within the Common Criteria, under the authority of the NIAP. A thorough understanding SAIC CCTL personnel were key players on the team that developed the Common Criteria for the NIAP. Current SAIC CCTL employees include individuals directly responsible for the development of the Common Criteria itself, including a former National Security Agency chief evaluator, former Technical Review board members, a member of the Interpretations Working Group, and a U.S. group representative. Rigorous evaluation The standard is built around an evaluation system that tests security functions and assurance. The Common Criteria are described in three parts: 1. Introduction and general model 2. Security function requirements 3. Security assurance requirements verified according to an EAL. Together, these parts are used to create a security target that, in effect, becomes a security specification that a network architect can use to compare similar technology products on a level playing field. But it's not just testing a black box. "We don't just get the product and bang away at it from the external interfaces," points out one of the CCTL's chief evaluators. "Vendors have to provide a list of claims. We look at the requirements to determine if they make sense. We evaluate the design documents to see how it does against meeting its requirements. We look at how well vendors document their processes. Testing is typically the last phase." Helping vendors Certification is more than a "nice to have" for product and software vendors. "They want to know what they need to do to make their products more secure," SAIC's CCTL leadership explains. "They're very anxious about meeting the requirements because they have contracts pending their certification." What it really comes down to, SAIC believes, is helping vendors improve their products. That involves a good deal of review of documentation and design, evaluating claims, and pointing out glitches or bugs. "We work very closely with developers and vendors that are interested in improving their security," a chief evaluator says. "We provide assurance that the vendor's security claims are accurate, and often, in the process, we work with them to make their products more secure." For SAIC, the help its CCTL provides vendors to improve the security of their IT products is another important way SAIC helps support the security of the nation. Related Information * SAIC Common Criteria Testing Laboratory (CCTL) [1] * Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme [2] --- [1] http://www.saic.com/infosec/cctl/ [2] http://niap.nist.gov/cc-scheme/defining-ccevs.html