Feral Jundi

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Call To Action: The 2010 Warrior Pride Ride

   This is a cool project that Jake is working on, and I figured I would do a little promoting for it.  Little fundraiser projects like this can be immensely helpful to the Wounded Warrior Project or similar foundations.  Especially if guys and gals started their own little fundraisers in their towns, and then you can see how big this could get if everyone started doing it. The point is, every dollar counts and it is all going to the cause of supporting wounded warriors.

   The contribuventure concept is really neat and I hope it catches on.  If you follow the links below, you can further investigate what this is all about. To those that are doing the 2010 Warrior Pride Ride, have a good one and thanks for caring. –Matt

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Welcome to the 2010 Warrior Pride Ride!  A Contribuventure to support America’s wounded veterans.

The Contribution

The purpose of the 2010 Warrior Pride Ride is to raise $5,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP).  Donations will go to support the men and women who’ve served our country and who, as a direct result of that service, now suffer from a debilitating injury or condition.  Often their injury not only makes it impossible to continue their military service but also presents huge challenges in  re-integrating into civilian life.

The Adventure

As Contribuventurists we will ride our bicycles for 5 consecutive days going from the Washington D.C. area south to Virginia Beach.  The total distance is nearly 300 hundred miles.  Our adventure will  begin on or about Sunday, 30 May, 2010, and will end on Friday, 4 June, 2010.

We will stop to thank veterans along the way.

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Cool Stuff: The JetLev

Filed under: Cool Stuff,Funny Stuff — Tags: , , , , , — Matt @ 2:52 PM

Friday, March 19, 2010

Industry Talk: To Defense Industry, The Future Looks Uncomfortably Unfamiliar

     For traditional defense companies, the operative word is “non-kinetic,” another speaker asserted.

“We love our kinetic weapons, and we don’t want to let them go,” he said. “But the world is moving in a different direction.”

     Here’s the problem: Kinetic weapons only are useful in phases two, three and four of war. Gates is veering the emphasis to the fringes — to phases zero and one (prevention of conflict, interagency work) and to phases five and six (stabilization and policing).

*****

     I love articles like this, because looking into the future of an industry, takes analysis and synthesis.  You have to put all the pieces together, and create a picture of what you think will happen.  If you have a enough of these articles, you can start to gain a consensus with predictions.  You also hope that people aren’t just copying what everyone else is saying, and calling that prediction.

   With that said, I take all of these with a grain of salt, and enjoy the process.  From what I can deduct, I think organizations like the IPOA are gonna be very popular in this industry.  Because stabilization and policing is right at the top of the list with this industry, and if we continue to apply Kaizen to the way we do business, this industry will continue to gain.

   I also got the obvious hint in this article about what the big guys are reading. Andrew Krepinevich should be on the reading list for everyone here, if they want to make their own assessments.  If the big guys are reading it, and the thing is shaping policy because of what was said, I kind of think that our industry should keep up and get on the same track. – Matt

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To Defense Industry, the Future Looks Uncomfortably Unfamiliar 

April 2010

By Sandra I. Erwin

Once upon a time there was much anxiety in the defense industry about the Obama administration gutting the Pentagon’s budget.

Those worries have been allayed, for now. Defense is the only portion of the federal budget that the president sheltered from the axe.

So the industry is breathing a sigh of relief, sort of.

Yes, the budget is huge, but the industry still feels vulnerable. Executives fear that weapons systems that for decades have been reliably profitable are becoming obsolete. They see the Defense Department shifting into new areas of warfare, but are not sure how to reposition their companies to succeed in non-traditional markets. They also fret about the nation’s oncoming fiscal train wreck, and wonder when someone will make the tough choices.

The much-anticipated Quadrennial Defense Review was supposed to give the industry “planning tools” to strategize about the future of the business. But the review was mostly a disappointment for its lack of specificity. One industry official compared the QDR to the Soviets’ infamous five-year plans for economic development.

In boardrooms these days, corporate bosses are brainstorming.

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Thursday, March 18, 2010

Industry Talk: DHS Pulls SBInet Funding

     She added that funds allocated to the program would be used to for proven technologies like mobile surveillance equipment, thermal imaging devices, ultra-light plane detection systems, mobile radios, cameras and laptop computers for Border Patrol vehicles.  

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   I guess the economy dictates, and this project has been killed.  It is kind of interesting that they would list ultra-light plane detection systems as something to be funded.  I wonder if that includes the Flat Top Paramotor Border Patrol para-gliders I brought up awhile back? If it does, I didn’t know that was considered ‘proven technologies’. –Matt

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DHS Pulls SBInet Funding

By Jack Mann

17 March, 2010

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano

The Department of Homeland Security has pulled the plug on $50 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds for the “Virtual Border Fence,” meant to secure the U.S.’s border with Mexico.  The SBInet project would mesh security cameras, motion sensors, radar and other technologies into a high-tech detection system to defeat illegal border crossings.

“Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security will redeploy $50 million of Recovery Act funding originally allocated for the SBInet … to other tested, commercially available security technology along the Southwest border,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. She added that funds allocated to the program would be used to for proven technologies like mobile surveillance equipment, thermal imaging devices, ultra-light plane detection systems, mobile radios, cameras and laptop computers for Border Patrol vehicles.  She said that DHS has also frozen all funding beyond SBInet’s initial deployment to two areas south of Tucson and Ajo, Arizona, an assessment ordered in January.

Story here.

Industry Talk: Triple Canopy Donates And Delivers Humanitarian Aid To Haitian Earthquake Victims

   Outstanding and good on TC for giving to a worthy cause. It sounds like Diamondback Tactical and others have pitched in as well, and that is great when you see this kind of assistance.  Now if we can get some guards over there to protect the women and other innocents at these camps, then we can really do some good. –Matt

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Triple Canopy Donates and Delivers Humanitarian Aid to Haitian Earthquake Victims

Partners with GHESKIO HIV/AIDS Clinic for Timely Philanthropic Mission

March 17, 2010

Triple Canopy, Inc., a leading provider of integrated security and mission support services, announced today that it has donated supplies, transportation and personnel in an effort to provide shelter to thousands of homeless earthquake victims in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Triple Canopy is supporting the efforts of the Haitian Group for the Study of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO) to deliver aid to homeless families camped on its compound. Triple Canopy was able to coordinate with staff from GHESKIO to determine what kind of aid would be the most helpful. Within two weeks of establishing contact, a chartered flight loaded with tents, flashlights, generators and other vital items landed in Port-au-Prince.

Founded in 1982, the GHESKIO Center was the first institution in the world dedicated to the fight against HIV/AIDS. In the aftermath of the earthquake, thousands of refugees migrated to the center and have been living there in makeshift shelters.

“Upon learning about the dire situation on the ground, Triple Canopy reached out to Dr. Bill Pape, director of GHESKIO, and ascertained the critical need for shelter prior to the onslaught of the rainy season,” said Triple Canopy CEO Ignacio Balderas. “For the past three weeks, hundreds of entire Haitian families designated by GHESKIO were able to move out of their makeshift hovels and move into waterproof tents erected by our personnel.”

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