got geoint?

Welcome to the post X-mas Monday Morning News Kick Off post from got geoint? For those of you who celebrated Christmas, we hope you had a wonderful day full of joy and giving. Well, it’s Monday and guess what…the world is still turning and soo is the news cycle — and we are talking about news beyond the blizzard that just socked the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. So, for those stuck working at home today (or just taking the day off for the holidays), fire up that second cup off hot chocolate and read on. Happy Monday!

BAE Systems Appoints Jordan Becker to Lead GEOINT-ISR Business
BAE Systems recently announced it has named Jordan Becker to lead its geospatial-intelligence and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (GEOINT-ISR) business, based in San Diego. GEOINT-ISR develops and supports software systems for geospatial analysis, mission planning, precision targeting and command and control for the defense and intelligence community. Becker joined the company as VP and general manager on November 29. He most previously was senior VP and CTO of the Information Technology and Network Services Group for SAIC. He has led global growth in both government and private sector markets through strategy, investments, technology planning and mergers and acquisitions. Read the full press release here.

Intel Community Responds to WikiLeaks With WTF
The U.S. intelligence community has an official response to the massive WikiLeaks document
dump — WTF. It’s not what you think. WTF is the acronym for the newly formed WikiLeaks Task Force, a project launched by the CIA to determine how the leak of hundreds of thousands of cables and files will affect intelligence operations. Though the title might encapsulate a widely shared government attitude toward the diplomatic debacle, the CIA is actually fairly confident about its standing in the wake of the security breach as it continues to investigate the impact. “The CIA has had strong, longstanding measures in place to protect classified information,” CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said. Read the full Fox News story here.

Experts Push for NASA Asteroid-Hunting Probe
ASA needs an asteroid-hunting spacecraft to finally get serious about the potential threat of nearby space rocks that could slam into Earth, experts say. Lately, support is building to finally develop such a mission for both safety and scientific reasons. An asteroid hunter might take the form of an infrared imaging telescope placed in a Venus-like orbit around the sun. This high-tech spotter scope could view a much larger portion of the sky for possible asteroid threats than could observatories from the Earth. Read the full MSNBC article here.

Someday, Store Coupons May Tap You on the Shoulder
Clipping coupons is a hassle. Intentionally. If shoppers were to redeem any more than just a sliver of them, manufacturers would have a self-created financial catastrophe on their hands. Digital technology could eventually make coupon-clipping with scissors a quaint oddity. And manufacturers are willing to make clipping easier, but not too easy: they don’t want to reduce prices for customers who’d buy a product anyway. Ideally, coupons will continue to be redeemed only by those who hold out for a deal — those whom marketing experts call “deal prone.” Read the full NY Times article here.

TASC’s Plans for Expansion Into New Markets Prove Successful
Major wins in space, air and ground have soundly positioned TASC, Inc. for growth in 2011 and beyond. During its first year as an independent company, TASC leveraged its high-end capabilities to secure significant new business in areas previously not open to TASC within the Department of Defense and civilian agencies of the federal government. In its traditional Intelligence Community and DOD market space, TASC successfully pursued and won new business, task orders and recompetes of existing contracts. “TASC is now more flexible and better able to meet our customers’ evolving needs, particularly in a time when the threat environment is constantly changing and national security budgets are constrained,” says Wood Parker, president and chief executive officer of TASC. “The people of TASC have worked extremely hard to stand up an independent company, complete with a new infrastructure, while continuing their excellent work in support of our customers’ complex mission requirements. At the same time, we have pursued and won new business for which we could not have competed in the past.” Read the full TASC press release here.

Tags: BAE Systems and Jordan Becker, GEOINT, geospatial intelligence, got geoint?, Jordan Becker and BAE Systems, NASA, NASA and Asteroid Hunting, TASC, USGIF, WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks and WTF