Steve Peacock's U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor

WND: FBI Plans to Spend $100 Million on Ammo

Though seemingly off-topic for U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor, the FBI's voluminous ammo purchase is worth sharing via this venue, particularly as the bullets could get distributed to "other approved federal government locations" beyond simply FBI facilities.

WND recently reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has purchased well over a billion rounds of ammunition over the past year...

But the full impact may not yet have developed, as WND has uncovered plans by the FBI to spend up to $100 million over five years on millions of rounds for its machine guns and pistols.

Read more at WND.com.

Obama Hands Out Free Health Care to Pakistanis

The Obama administration is preparing to give free health care to Pakistanis even as Americans who cannot get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions soon will be rejected by domestic programs due to a lack of funds.

Pakistani nationals working at several U.S. embassies soon could get a boost in health care benefits as the U.S. State Department has begun shopping for top-tier services.

Their paychecks will not see so much as one Pakistani rupee deducted as they receive a broad variety of medical services, according to a solicitation U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research.

The document also made clear that the selected vendor “shall insure that health care under this contract does not exclude HIV/AIDS care, or preexisting conditions.”

The State Department will subsidize an estimated 1,222 family plans and 190 single-employee plans. The family plans cover children of Pakistani employees to age 18, or age 23 if a full-time student and unmarried.

Coverage could apply to a variety to individuals and their families for local employees of the:

• U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, its consulates in Karachi, Lahore, and Peshawar, and its “presence” in Quetta.
• Department of State.
• Defense Attaché Office .
• Drug Enforcement Administration.
• Legal Attaché Office.
• Foreign Agricultural Service.
• Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
• Office of Defense Representative in Pakistan.
• Public Affairs Section.
• Refugee Office.
• Library of Congress.
• Foreign Commercial Service.
• Kabul Support Unit.
• Department of Homeland Security.
• Voice of America.
• Narcotics Affairs Section/International Narcotics and Law Enforcement – Pakistan.
• Office of Overseas Building Operation.
• US Agency for International Development.
• Department of Treasury.
• Department of Energy.
• Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

Although it is standard practice for State to offer health-care benefits to locally employed staff worldwide, the Pakistani package is noticeably more generous than coverage offered in other nations, such as Venezuela.

Citing prevailing practices in and around the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, State will foot the bill for just 90 percent of the monthly premium for those workers. Similarly, the U.S. Embassy in Caracas also prevents providers from excluding HIV/AIDS care and preexisting conditions, unless excluded by the human resources department.

On the other hand, Venezuelan staff can elect to include coverage for the employees’ parents up to 80 years old, though they must full cover the premium. Furthermore, while children of Pakistani staff only are potentially eligible for coverage until they are 23, unmarried college-bound Venezuelan dependents can stay on the plan until they turn 25.

Additionally, Venezuelan family-plan members each may receive funeral-coverage costs of 6,000 Bolivars, about U. S. $1,000.

Meanwhile, Obama administration officials said, according to the Washington Post, that the state-based “high risk pools” set up under Obamacare will be closed to new applicants over the next few days because funding is running low.

And the Washington Times reported Obamacare will push 7 million Americans out of their job-based insurance coverage due to limited funding. The report said the incentives for businesses to provide health care are being minimized, so more employers are expected to choose to pay a penalty to the government and not provide health care.

At the same time, there are reports the lowest cost health plan for a family soon will cost $20,000, and the Obamacare mandate fine for Americans is hitting $695 soon.

A similar version of this article was published via WND on Feb. 19, 2013. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

Feds Recruit Private Sector to Expand Drone Use

The federal government’s expanded use of drones over U.S. airspace for “humanitarian assistance and homeland security” purposes soon will receive a boost of assistance from the private sector.

A cadre of contracted “subject-matter experts” will help devise national policies and procedures governing unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

In order to “facilitate the safe expansion” of the Obama administration’s domestic drone deployment, the U.S. Air Force Safety Center, or AFSC, will outsource to industry the assembling of this expert crew, according to a Sources Sought document that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor discovered via routine database research.

The release of a formal Request for Proposals to provide those services is imminent.

A recent amendment to the procurement – known as the RPA Advisory & Assistance Services initiative – indicates that the bid request will be made public this week.

The AFSC’s Remote Piloted Aircraft, or RPA, Safety Branch, which oversees “safety policy, global mishap prevention strategies and processes,” said the outsourcing of this “safety expertise” will play a critical role in integrating drones into the National Airspace System.

The endeavor also will enable the Department of Defense to execute its plan to establish 65 regional drone Combat Air Patrols, while additionally providing “functional safety capabilities in support” of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom missions, the solicitation said.

Helping to clear a backlog of RPA cases under investigation at the Air Force Central Command and the Air Combat Command also falls within the purview of this procurement.

The department intends to hire a single prime contractor – which must be a U.S. firm –responsible for filling several subject-matter expert positions. According to a Summary of Required Services document, approximately seven analysts and engineers will comprise the RPA safety crew.

Positions slated to be created for the expert drone cadre include an “operations research analyst” and an “airspace/air traffic control expert.” Those contractors will interact with representative of the major military commands and the Federal Aviation Agency generally to help safely expand drone operations in U.S. airspace.

A pair of “systems safety engineers” and a “human factors expert” specifically will be tasked with analyzing “aviation safety trends,” involving evaluations of existing “mishap reports and data.” The document did not include statistics revealing the extent of such drone “mishaps.” Those experts also will coordinate safety efforts with other unmanned aerial system – or UAS– users, both governmental and non-governmental, “to identify common problem areas and share potential technical solutions.”

Among those other entities is the Electronic Systems Center, or ESC, a key Air Force unit responsible for many Defense-wide military command and control projects around the globe. ESC, headquartered at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, oversees “some of America’s most valuable defense assets.”

Those assets include the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or Joint STARS, whose primary mission “is to provide theater ground and air commanders with ground surveillance to support attack operations and targeting that contributes to the delay, disruption and destruction of enemy forces.”

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research and Engineering, known as MITRE Corp., was identified in the document as a non-governmental partner with whom the engineers would work. MITRE, for example, later this year will host a panel meeting on behalf of the Office of the Secretary of Defense to explore UAS “sense and avoid, or SAA, science and research.”

The defense secretary’s office, in a Request for Information on SAA data, acknowledged that “a key challenge to integrating UAS into the National Airspace System is a means for UAS to sense and avoid other aircraft.” The meeting will take place Nov. 14-15 at MITRE’s McLean, Va., facility, where the Office of the Secretary of Defense will lead an assessment of “ongoing science and research initiatives.”

The gathering also will seek to identify “areas where industry and the research community desires government guidance.”

This article originally was published via WND.com on July 8, 2012. Under agreement with WND, rights have reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock.

WND: Feds Recruit Private Sector to Expand Drone Use

See my latest article contribution to WND: “Feds recruit private sector to expand drone use;  Seek traffic control experts to launch more spy planes over U.S. airspace.”

 

Recommended Site: The PMSC Observer

For those readers interested in additional resources about government contracting, specifically in the realms of global security and law enforcement, I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with The PMSC Observer.

This excellent blog is operated by David Isenberg, author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq (Praeger Security International). Isenberg also has a column at the Huffington Post.

DHS ' Racing ' to Fill Border Patrol, Customs Vacancies

The Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) has come up with a new idea to help secure the nation's borders and airports: by sponsoring NASCAR racing teams.  DHS is soliciting bids from marketing firms capable of arranging the placement of Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) advertising on the cars of winning racers in competitions in the coming years. The goal of the endeavor is to entice potential recruits to fill critical vacancies at CBP. According to a Request for Proposals that The Peacock Report located via a routine search of the FedBizOpps database, DHS wants to secure "Primary sponsorship of a vehicle in 29 domestic races during the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series and the transportation and setup of a Government-furnished recruiting booth at these events." DHS did not disclose the estimated value of the contract.

TSA Seeks to Take ' Intelligent ' Surveillance Technology to Next Level

The creation of next-generation "intelligent" surveillance systems capable of sensing group- and individual-behavioral changes could be deployed across U.S. airports and other transportation centers -- if the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) can indeed achieve such a capability. The agency's wish-list of new surveillance capabilities includes "micro-behavior detection," an outcome which TSA seeks to accomplish, for instance, via automated recognition of changes in facial expressions "that indicate stress and other anomalies," according to a procurement document that The Peacock Report has located. TSA's Office of Security Technology seeks to create additional micro-behavior detection capabilities such as the "detection and identification of nervous related actions" such as sweating and pacing, the document says.

The first step that TSA's "Intelligent Closed-Circuit Television" (ICCTV) project will take toward achieving this capacity is an assessment of commercially available "automated and semi-automated technology," according to a TSA Request for Information (RFI) dated Feb. 24.  Assessing and cataloging these technologies could be followed by subsequent contracting actions necessary to bring about "an easily-integrated 'system of systems,'" the RFI says:

It is envisioned that such a video system… could be part of an integrated approach to enhancing the security of the national transportation system in the United States by means of remote surveillance… The objective of this RFI is to solicit input from industry related to technologies with operational capabilities that enhance and automate or are capable of automating some of the remote surveillance processes and tools available to meet the TSA’s requirements.

The ICCTV system that TSA envisions likewise would be capable of "macro-behavior detection." Such capabilities would include "individual-level anomaly detection," enabling the agency to spot people "walking in the wrong direction" or simply loitering. That surveillance function would unfold concomitant with the automated or human "tracking or following of individuals within a facility" using multiple cameras, it said. Similarly, it hopes to deploy remote surveillance tools to agents in the field who could tap into this system.

TSA points out that it is carrying out its post-9/11 congressional mandate to deploy advanced technologies that modify and enhance the agency's airport-screening checkpoint capabilities and infrastructure. Such enhancements later could be employed in settings other than airports, according to the RFI:

Finding solutions that secure the aviation transportation mission is the primary focus for this RFI in the near term, but the TSA is interested in the eventual application of operationally effective and suitable security screening technologies for other transportation modes as well.

Marines (Almost) Create Counterintelligence Link With State, Local Police

The U.S. Marine Corps last month launched a recruitment drive for a private-sector analyst who would serve as Corps liaison among DoD- and federal-wide counterintelligence agencies as well as with state and local law enforcement agencies. The position was created to help coordinate and disseminate "domestic threat information," according to a presolicitation notice dated Aug. 20. However, on Sept. 4, the Corps cancelled the Request for Proposals (#M20001-07-R-0001) in its entirety, solely noting that "If the government later determines a need exists for this requirement it will re-solicit for it at that time."

Building Bridges: Did You Know Your Tax-Dollars Are Funding Mexican Port & Highway Projects? (Commentary)

The blame-game has begun over this week's deadly collapse of the Interstate 35 bridge in Minnesota. Pundits and analysts are posing questions such as "Is the federal government doing enough to maintain the nation's bridges and highways?" The Peacock Report (TPR) poses an additional question: since there are indeed such structural shortcomings in the national infrastructure of the United States, why, then, are U.S. taxpayers being fleeced to help upgrade Mexico's highways and ports? The answer, of course, is that such subsidies enable U.S.-based multinationals to simultaneously siphon the U.S. Treasury -- and hence the pockets of U.S. citizens -- to more effectively exploit the Mexican labor pool.

As previously reported here at TPR, the U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA) last year began funding "feasibility studies" leading toward the eventual financing of projects to modernize Mexican transportation and shipping networks. The goals of these endeavors were twofold: one, to ease the shipment of goods in and out of Mexico; plus, to ameliorate the flight of companies from Mexico to Asia.

It's time for policymakers and the mainstream media to take a closer look at this theft by the USTDA. See U.S. Developing Port & Highway Master Plan and U.S. Helps Fund Mexican Road Projects As Industry Flees To Asia -- both which provide direct access to relevant federal-procurement documents -- for additional info on these questionable initiatives.

' Environmental Surveillance ' on Tap at DHS

"Environmental surveillance" is the next area of research & development that the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) is targeting as it broadens its portfolio of preventative capabilities. According to a planning document dated July 23, DHS intends to award a sole-source contract for this endeavor to The National Academies, which will undertake a year-long effort to develop a report outlining a potential:

R&D strategy for development of a surveillance and detection system for novel, emerging, and engineered biological threat agents. The report will inform the Chemical and Biological Research and Development's (CBR&D) program plan for the development of such surveillance and detection systems to allow first responders and state, local, and federal officials to accurately identify and effectively manage bioterrorism attacks against citizens of the United States.