The New New Internet unveiled a number of timely and important news items this week geared toward the government contracting executive.
Two headline stories covered included General Dynamics testing a 10 pound GPS-guided mortar round for UAV’s and the FBI launching a new cyber unit.
The cyber initiative is meant to aid FBI agents in the field who need to quickly have experts look at patterns of attacks to see who is committing a cybercrime.
“A key aim of the Next Generation Cyber Initiative has been to expand our ability to quickly define “the attribution piece” of a cyber attack to help determine an appropriate response,” said Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the Bureau’s criminal, cyber, response, and services branch.
“The attribution piece is: who is conducting the attack or the exploitation and what is their motive,” McFeely added. “In order to get to that, we’ve got to do all the necessary analysis to determine who is at the other end of the keyboard perpetrating these actions.”
The FBI will work with the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and National Security Agency to man the cyber center which is meant to be operational 24/7.

The General Dynamics mortar round was tested on a Tiger Shark UAV, a 200-pound drone with a 17-foot wingspan, which launched three 81mm mortars at approximately 7,000 feet.
The new munitions are both cheaper and lighter than the missiles commonly utilized by UAV’s.
They are accurate too, as they each came within at least 7 meters of their target.
Mark Schneider, General Dynamics ordnance and tactical systems’ Seattle operations general manager, said the GPS-guided mortars can be used to quickly engage targets.
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