GovernmentExecutive.com

Oink-Oink for Air Force Cyberspace Innovation

Congress just can't help itself when it comes to stuffing pork into Defense bills to benefit local projects, and the Senate version of the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriations bill that passed Wednesday is no exception. Individual senators piled on pet projects in the form of amendments minutes before the vote.

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., landed $4 million for something called the 8th Air Force Cyberspace Innovation Center at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. This matches $4 million already appropriated by the House, so it looks like the Air Force, Barksdale and nearby Bossier City are poised to take the cyber war lead.

Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force -- the service's cyber command -- has vowed to redefine airpower to include dominance in cyberspace. The funding line for the Cyberspace Innovation Center gives the Air Force a visible lead over other services in what Elder clearly views as the Next Big Thing.

Bossier City has set up a research park to foster all manner of cyber war and cyberspace stuff. You can visit the city's Cyber Innovation Center online or travel in person to the inaugural "Fly and Fight in Cyberspace" symposium Nov. 27-29 in nearby Shreveport.

It's been a long time since I had some gumbo or really good oysters, so I hope there is room in the budget for me to attend this inaugural cyberspace confab. Do virtual oysters taste as good as real ones?

Lighter-Than-Air Pork

Pigs do come close to flying in the Senate's 2008 Defense spending bill, with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, carving out $1 million for Army Missile Defense Systems Integration into the High Altitude Airship under development by Lockheed Martin in beautiful Akron.

Other bits of techno-pork in the bill include $3.75 million inserted by Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, the two senators from New Mexico, my home state. The money funds the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser at the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at the White Sands Missile Range.

The mid-infrared laser turns out to be the most powerful in the world, and I'm proud it's in New Mexico. But I wonder if it's really worth an extra $3.75 million. We could take that money and send a whole mess of green chile cheeseburgers from the famed Owl Bar Café in San Antonio, N.M., to the troops in Iraq.

Battling Brown Tree Snakes

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has long been a relentless foe of pork, and just before the vote on the $448 billion Defense bill, he pointed out it contained $5 billion worth of earmarks while at the same time coming in $3.5 billion below what President Bush had requested.

"During a time of war, we should be making every effort to support the president's budget request, instead of slashing it and then adding earmarks for favored projects," McCain said on the Senate floor before passage.

Egregious earmarks singled out by McCain included $3 million for an electronics futures trading program, $2 million for technology to extract water from air, $4 million to study the northern lights and $2 million for research on high pressure microwave processing for meals ready to eat.

McCain also took aim at a funding line to combat the brown tree snake on Guam -- an add-on to Defense bills for what seems to be about a decade.

And, before the e-mails start flooding in, I have spent some time on Guam, so I know that the brown tree snake has eaten most wildlife and has been known to haul off household pets. But enough is enough. Has anyone tried feeding the snakes green chile cheeseburgers from the Owl Café?

Some Big DISA Space

What's a What's Brewin' column without a mention of the Defense Information Systems Agency?

My favorite Defense agency plans to consolidate all its operations in the greater Washington area into a new 1.1 million square foot facilty at Fort Meade, Md., in the 2010-2011 time frame in a base realignment and closure move.

The new DISA headquarters will house just under 5,000 people, according to a presentation last month by David Bullock, DISA's BRAC executive.

The new DISA HQ will have roughly half the floor space of New York's Empire State Building spread out in a series of low-rise buildings off a central atrium, according to concept drawings. The drawings indicate the new HQ will lack the funkiness of the current Building 12 space on Courthouse Road in Arlington.

Bye-Bye BBC Time Checks

Since 1924, it's been easy for anyone with a shortwave radio to get an accurate time reading by tuning in to the BBC World Service and listening to the countdown of musical pips that signal the start of a new hour.

But this easy and reliable time check relied on by a variety of users worldwide will soon disappear due to the growth of digital broadcasting in the United Kingdom, according to a recent article in The Telegraph.

BBC has started transmitting the World Service over digital networks in the U.K., which causes a two-second delay to the top of the hour time code broadcast. So BBC plans to discontinue the time check on all frequencies and bands.

Soon, only people will be analog.