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How to profit from a government shutdown

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gov shutdownAs I write, 3000 air safety inspectors have had their positions deemed “non-essential.”  The Center for Disease Control’s staff for tracking food borne illnesses has been cut by more than half. Bars in Washington, D.C. are expanding hours for idle workers. From these random government-shutdown events, we can conclude that that furloughed workers are being advised: don’t fly, don’t eat strange food, stay in town, and get drunk.

 

What about the rest of us?

As attractive as this advice is, it is not the best strategy for people who do business with the Federal government. How should Defense vendors and other providers deal with these shutdowns?

Notice the plural “shutdowns.” There is a very good chance that by the time you read this, the Federal government shutdown will be over.  However, given the logjam that characterizes modern politics, an unwelcomed repeat performance is more than possible.

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The New ROCKY DR10 8.4” & ROCKY DK10 12.1” tablets are here!

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rightside_dr10-dk10The new ROCKY DR10 8.4” and ROCKY DK10 12.1” tablets are now available for purchase. Faster, brighter, and tougher, these represent major upgrades for AMREL’s rugged tablet platform.

For the new ROCKY DR10 8.4‘’ fully rugged tablet, AMREL has added a:

  • Powerful i7 processor
  • Brighter display
  • Improved memory
  • Longer-lasting battery

Even ROCKY’s legendary ruggedness has been upgraded.  Like many ROCKY products, the DR10 has been independently certified for MIL-STDs 810 & 461(military ruggedness standards), but AMREL has upped its game with an improved IP rating. ROCKY fully rugged tablets have proven their durability on multiple battlefields, earning them a Technical Readiness Level (TRL) of 9.

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Did smartphones & tablets kill the PC? Part II: Software & innovation exhaustion

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This article is a second in a series.  To read “Part I:  It’s an iPad world, not Windows PC at work, tablets at home8’s” and the article in full, click here.

 

The PC is not dead; it’s just not at home

With 300 million sales this year, it may be a bit premature to mourn the passing of PCs.  What the decline in PC sales really signifies, some argue, is the death of the home desktop. Take a look at these Business Insider illustrations:

 

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Why the future may not be a big deal in 2013 & how it will affect defense spending

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Future of Defense SpendingThis is the third in a series of articles, which predict what will not happen in 2013. This article focuses on why the future may not occur this year, and how it will affect Defense spending.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Mayan

Just to be clear, when I say 2013 will not be the year that the future finally arrives, I am not predicting some kind of apocalypse.  In this context, I am talking about attributes we commonly associate with the future, such as innovation, progress, and improvements in technology as well as the standard of living.

 In some ways this assertion is strongly counter-intuitive. After all, you may be reading this article on a handheld electronic device that received it at the speed of light over a wireless data system.  Besides, didn’t you see that net-enabled fork at the Consumer Electronic Show?  How can we say the future isn’t happening?

Nevertheless, there are a surprisingly large number of experts who are questioning our traditional assumptions of progress.

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RSJPO Roadmap & ICAF Robotics Report

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RSJPO Roadmap and ICAF Robotics Report

The last two blog postings were about what will not happen in 2012.  We thought we would take a break from this series and predict what you can expect.   Without a doubt, you can expect more reports, visions, and roadmaps from the Department of Defense.   Here are two recent DoD documents that are worth a look.

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NIE3

Is the NIE too big to succeed? Update

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NIE3UPDATE: The shine may be starting to fade on the ARMY’s golden boy, the Network Integration Evaluation (NIE). There have been grumblings about the size of the effort (see original blog post below).  Now, its price is raising eyebrows (Officials worry Army’s NIE is too expensive).  NIE costs a whopping $260 million in 2012.

Could be that’s this is just growing pains.  After all, the 2013 request is “only” $214 million, which is especially impressive considering the NIE is under pressure to grow from ambitious officers wanting to participate. This implies that the ARMY is learning how to run the evaluation more efficiently.

Still, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a procurement process that is supposed to be “agile” and cost effective seems a bit counter intuitive.  Maybe the line between boondoggle and success is thinner than is commonly realized. Read more

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NIE Smartphone Results

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The Army has just finished its second Network Integration Evaluation (NIE).  This large exercise appears to have accomplished its primary goals of accelerating the notoriously slow acquisition process, field-testing entire networks, and gathering valuable end-user feedback. Sometime massive bureaucratic efforts do work.

Although complete tactical communication systems were tested, the smartphones were the center of attention.  Some results are already filtering out. Read more

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The Incredibly Shrinking UGV

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In the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, US forces had no effective countermeasures against Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the single biggest cause of combat deaths. To fight the IED threat, our armed forces turned to Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV).

It’s hard to remember now, but UGVs barely existed 10 years ago. The Defense community abandoned the traditionally leisurely pace of decades-long weapons development and quickly flooded combat theaters with thousands of UGVs. In 2011, the world’s governments are projected to spend $702 million a year on UGVs.  Below is a chart comparing a few UGVs. Read more

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Mobile Devices Online Security Resources

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The Department of Defense’s (DoD) ambitious smartphone program may or may not reach its goal of providing advanced mobile communication devices to the warfighter, but it certainly has already scored one noteworthy achievement: creating stories for journalists.  At last count, Google News has 300+ entries for “military smartphone.” Most of these stories report that the single biggest obstacle to smartphones deployment is security. Read more

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Translating Military-ese

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wordsEvery once in a while, someone asks me to translate military jargon, or more often summarize a lengthy statement into an “executive summary.”   Here are a couple of examples of my attempts to convert a dense forest of words into a simple “take home message.”
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