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Tag: defense contractors

  • Sanborn Fined Over Iraq Map Outsourcing

    The U.S. Department of Justice today announced that the Sanborn Map Company has been fined $2.1 million over false contract claims it submitted with regards to its Army Corps of Engineers contracts in Iraq.

    According to the DOJ, Sanborn was contracted to produce convoy route maps for U.S. Marines and other forces in Iraq from 2005 to 2011. Though Sanborn was required contractually to do all the map work itself, the company instead outsourced the work to local subcontractors. The decision ended up causing delays on Sanborn’s convoy mapping projects.

    The contract violations were brought to light by a former Sanborn whistleblower named James Peterson. Under the terms of the False Claims Act Peterson will share in the money recovered from Sanborn, though the size of his share has not yet been revealed.

    “We are committed to defending the integrity of our public contracting process,” said Stuart Delery, assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at the DOJ. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to pursue companies that knowingly fail to comply with their contractual obligations, particularly obligations involving the protection of our national security interests.”

    The Sanborn settlement is yet another example of the DOJ cracking down on war profiteers in recent weeks. Near the end of January the U.S. announced it was suing Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) for taking bribes and inflating claims related to its Iraq war logistics contracts. Just last week the DOJ sentenced a former U.S. Army Specialist for her role in the organized theft of fuel in Afghanistan.

  • U.S. Sues KBR Over False Military Contract Claims

    The U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) today announced that it is suing Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) and two Kuwaiti companies for providing false claims as part of a contract to provide logistical support for the U.S. Army in Iraq. The Kuwaiti companies were subcontracted by KBR to fulfill its contract duties in Iraq.

    The lawsuit alleges that KBR, La Nouvelle General Trading & Contracting Co., and First Kuwaiti Trading Co. knowingly provided the U.S. government with false claims as part of KBR’s contract to provide transportation, food, shelter, and other amenities to the U.S. Army in Iraq. The claims involved KBR employees taking bribes from La Nouvelle and First Kuwaiti for subcontracting work. These inflated and sometimes unfulfilled contracts were then submitted to the U.S. government for reimbursement. Specific claims by the USDOJ include supply fuel tankers priced at three times their value and truck lease payments for vehicles that were no longer in use.

    “Our office investigated the actions of KBR and related companies, as well as certain KBR employees,” said Jim Lewis, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of Illinois. “We were able to obtain criminal convictions against several subcontract managers whose actions were illegal and caused damage to our military, and we are now committed to pursue these civil claims against the companies themselves.”

    Three KBR subcontract managers have already been convicted of taking kickbacks or making false statements as part of their contracting work. In addition, Soudi company Tamimi Global has paid the U.S. $13 million in civil and criminal claims related to kickbacks it paid to a KBR contract manager.

    “Contractors and subcontractors are expected to comply with their statutory obligations and act in good faith when dealing with the United States government,” said Janice Flores, special agent in the Southwest Field Office of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. “The lawsuit demonstrates the commitment of DCIS and its partner agencies to prevent false billing and corrupt practices involving the military contracting process.”

  • DARPA Just Spent $26M… On Anti-Missile Laser Beam

    According to an article in Military & Aerospace Electronics, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has given a total of $26 million in contracts to two U.S. defense companies to research a more efficient anti-missile defense system.

    Northrop Grumman’s Aerospace Systems division in Redondo Beach, CA will receive $14.6 million while Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Training division in Akron, OH will receive $11.4 million as a part of Project Endurance. Both are engaged currently in the development of laser weapons that could successfully protect aircraft from missiles.

    Project Endurance initially sprung out of DARPA’s Excalibur program, an effort to reduce the size of optical laser arrays by at least 10 times, making it more feasible to load both manned and unmanned aircraft with a missile defense system.

    The idea for a pod-mounted laser that can fit on a plane is hardly a new one. Boeing built a tricked-out 747-400 freighter plane that it called the Airborne Laser, which was sold for scrap last year.

    At the time, researchers believed that a giant plane fitted with a megawatt laser could simply fly ovals around a combat zone and, with clever targeting, could render most ballistic missiles inert before they were fired. At-the-time Defense Secretary Robert Gates scrapped any plans the Air Force may have had to build a second one, saying “The [Airborne Laser] program has significant affordability and technology problems, and the program’s proposed operational role is highly questionable.”

    Boeing’s weapon design was a chemical iodine laser, or COIL, that was fired through the nose of the plane accompanied by two solid state lasers to lock on and control the beam. Here’s a picture of what it looked like; the tracking laser is on top, while the larger laser is on the nose, charging up.


    [YouTube]

    DARPA’s latest designs are a bit smaller and less cumbersome by leaps and bounds. However, they are the first to admit that the size limitations are affecting the power output of their laser. By combining two different types of laser systems (diode lasers and fiber laser amplifiers), DARPA hopes to increase beam efficacy by between 30 and 50 percent.


    [DARPA]

    “To produce a weapons-grade system, however,” Excalibur program manager Joseph Mangano writes, “[the laser’s] output power must be increased without introducing additional optical phase noise and modal instability.” Basically, they won’t be aiming for a Boeing-sized megawatt laser, but a couple hundred kilowatts might be enough to get the job done.

    [Main image via DARPA]