What's Brewin: Staying Alive

The $16 billion Transformational Communication Satellite program appeared to hit a serious speed bump last week, according to news reports, including one from Reuters that said a high-level Pentagon panel put off award of the broadband satellite contract from December until the summer or fall of 2010.

This story resulted in a pile on by pubs ranging from The Wall Street Journal to Aviation Week, all quoting the usual unnamed, informative, authoritative Pentagon sources who pretty much consigned the satellite program to the dustbin.

But Chris Isleib, a Pentagon spokesman, debunked this speculation. "The TSAT award date is undetermined at this point, but we intend to make the award as soon as possible," he said. "We are in discussions with the Joint Staff and are awaiting requirements changes to key performance parameters from the Joint Staff and requirements community."

Isleib added, "TSAT is a capability that the Defense Department needs. ... [It] continues to build the architecture to satisfy that need."

Meanwhile, Defense already has awarded $664 million each (that's real money) to Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. for preliminary design and development contracts. Boeing presented a proposal that ran into tens of thousands of pages for its bid on the final TSAT contract, Boeing spokeswoman Diana Ball said.

Defense has long viewed TSAT as a way to deliver broadband capability to mobile forces and as a vital connection for the bandwidth-dependent Army Future Combat Systems, which will use TSAT to link 14 manned and umanned platforms.

The chattering classes viewed the possible delay in TSAT as another bit of bad news for the troubled $160 billion FCS project.

But Army spokesman Lt. Col. Martin Downie told me that a delay in TSAT does not mean I should sound the death knell for FCS, because it will rely on a tiered communication system, including commercial satellite systems, broadband terrestrial systems and the Joint Tactical Radio System, which has its own share of problems.

I have a feeling that TSAT is an expensive can that the current leadership has kicked down the road for the incoming team to deal with next year.

Got Thought Leadership?

This sounds like something the new presidential administration could use to deal with TSAT and a host of other problems. The Defense Business Transformation Agency has a spiffy new contract vehicle designed to provide "thought leadership," whatever that is, along with some equally fuzzy "change management."

BearingPoint, Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI, Deloitte Consulting, IBM and LMI Government Consulting won the thought leadership broad purchase agreement contact, with a total value of $260 million for five years, which should buy a whole bunch of deep thinking.

NGA Wants You

In this economy, nothing looks quite as good as a secure federal job.

Susan Meisner, spokeswoman for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, asked me to pass along that NGA has a major new hiring event going on through the end of October, and with pay ranging from $43,000 to just under $134,000. It's definitely worth checking out if you have the specialized skills the agency is looking for.

You will have to commute to NGA's new digs at Fort Belvoir, Va., in 2011 as part of a massive relocation of Defense personnel mandated in 2005 by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

Why Did the DISA Employee Cross the Bridge?

To get to Fort Meade, Md.

That's a great line, but I have to admit, I stole it from Tracy Sharpe, executive assistant to John Garing, the chief executive officer for Defense Information Systems. Sharpe wrote that in her tale of a test commute from Springfield, Va., to the new DISA HQ home at Fort Meade, Md. Her account is posted on the agency's BRAC Web site launched on Oct. 20.

The site gathers in one place all the information any DISA employee faced with a move from Northern Virginia to Fort Meade, including commute times to and from a number of Virginia locations, information on Maryland communities, discussion boards -- and a webcam focused on construction of the new building.

The site is part of DISA's effort to retain its employees in the move to Fort Meade and should go a long way in countering speculation about the relocation and horrible commutes with facts.

Tracy reported she made here morning trip in 57 minutes, but took 90 minutes to come back, due to a rainstorm that snarled traffic. I think she needs to do another test run in the snow. Most of us know what happens to traffic in the D.C. area after the first four flakes fall.