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Today, President Obama announced his nominees for key posts within the administration. One person certainly stood out to us and that was Michael Vickers who is being nominated for Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Department of Defense. Mr. Vickers is a key leader the defense and intelligence work. He currently serves as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities. He also serves as the senior civilian advisor to the Secretary of Defense on the operational employment and capabilities of special operations forces. Previously he served as Senior Vice President, Strategic Studies, at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He was also once a CIA Operations Officer. Quite an impressive resume and we extend our congratulations to Mr. Vickers for this nomination!

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The U.S. military has access to the world’s best topographic maps. It is now trying to build “culture maps” that include details such as a region’s tribal affiliations, ethnicity, religion and language. The commander of U.S. Central Command, Army Gen. David Petraeus, in a number of speeches has repeatedly said that “human terrain” is the decisive element in counterinsurgency operations. “His remarks have had a rippling effect across the intelligence community,” said Jesse Wilson, who works at the command’s Afghanistan Pakistan Intelligence Center of Excellence. Officials there are pairing human terrain analysts with traditional intelligence teams. Traditional intelligence, based upon satellite and aircraft imagery of the geophysical environment, worked well in past wars where open battle spaces far removed from civilians were the norm. Commanders needed to know the lay of the land in order to attack the opposing force. But in current conflicts, they are relying upon soldier interactions with the local people to gather information. Check out the full article from the NDIA’s National Defense Magazine here.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers took less than nine hours to find 10 red weather balloons that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had placed randomly in public places around the United States as part of its “Network Challenge.” The winners from MIT used what is called an “inverse pyramid” approach to locate the coordinates for 10 red balloons in less than nine hours, claiming the $40,000 contest prize. About 4,300 teams participated in the contest, and the Pentagon will study the results to better understand how social networking can solve large-scale problems that require fast solutions.

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The Department of Defense recently disclosed annual budget documents that reveal the structure and the contents of the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) that supports DoD operations. As many of our readers may know, the U.S. Intelligence Community is funded through two separate budgets: the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the MIP. Secrecy News recently did a blog post that showcases how the Director of National Intelligence revealed last month that the combined annual cost of the NIP and the MIP is approximately $75 billion. $25 billion of that amount goes to the MIP.

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This could certainly be good news for those of us developing top secret technologies and solutions for the Defense Department. Wired’s “Danger Room” blog recently ran a story about how the DoD will spend $35.8 billion on secret technologies in 2010, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The funding is split between research and weapons purchases. Eighty percent of the funding goes to the Air Force. It is also noted that “black” spending accounts for nearly half of the Air Force’s purchases, and secret Air Force spending previously produced the SR-71 recon plane, the F-117 stealth fighter and the B-2 stealth bomber. Read more here.

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Happy Monday. My how the weeks fly by during these heady days of Spring. We all should certainly take time to stop and smell the roses, or perhaps the daffodils since they are in bloom. Well, actually our Monday Morning News Kick Off is designed to give you more time to do just that. By summarizing all the actionable news you need to start he week, we hope you have more time to be productive, or even take a long lunch and enjoy the nice weather. Scroll down for all the news you can use.

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Happy Friday. It has been quite a week for the intelligence and defense communities. From the political fall-out of the Obama administration releasing the interrogation memos to the breach of the Joint Strike Fighter program, it has been a week rife with drama. I’m sure many are ready for the weekend to begin, and enjoy the nice weather. Speaking of weather and the environment, we neglected to pay homage to Earth Day this week. As such, we are expanding upon the theme of last month’s “Big Blue Marble” FFT post. Oh, and we have a few miscellaneous items to tickle your frontal lobe. Scroll down and enjoy.

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This morning, the Wall Street Journal broke this story about computer spies breaking into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project – DoD’s costliest weapons program to date. According to the article, the intruders were able to copy and siphon data related to design and electronics systems, making it potentially easier to defend against the plane. The good news is that they could not access the most sensitive data kept on computers not connected to the Internet.

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It truly seems that we are in a Web 2.0 world these days — especially when it comes to government and Defense. For example, did you know that all of these government-related entities were on Twitter? Did you know that the US Government has its own official blog?

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