On Friday, Jan. 27, the Federal Communications Commission kicked off a regulatory review process requested by startup wireless broadband carrier LightSquared to determine whether or not GPS receivers are entitled to interference protection from the company's networks.

LightSquared included that petition as an attachment to a separate filing, which in essence rehashed year-long arguments on why the company should be allowed to operate its network.

But careful reading of the FCC file on LightSquared, which as of today includes 3,736 comments, shows that the company did not formally file that petition and have it accepted by the FCC until Monday, Jan. 30, even though the FCC International Bureau announced the review the previous Friday.

I know the span of a weekend does not amount to much, but I do wonder how the FCC seemingly bent its procedures and rules on such a high-profile and contentious topic, which has morphed over the past year from a regulatory proceeding into a political football.

I sent Tammy Sun, FCC director of media relations, an email yesterday asking for an explanation, but have not heard back from her.

The list of subcontractors Northrop Grumman Corp. supplied me with for its $637.8 million Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services contract does not yet include any name brand desktop or laptop computer suppliers, but intriguingly does include a thin client company, Beatty and Company Computing, a small business that hangs out in Rancho Santa Fe, a tony and horsy suburb of San Diego.

Capt. D.J. LeGoff, the CANES program manager at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, told me last week he wanted to tightly manage the network, and I can't think of a better start than to use thin terminals, which lack drives that allow users to add their own software.

I've asked both Northrop and the command if CANES includes computers with drives along with the Beatty thin clients, but have not heard back from them yet.

IF CANES is a pure thin client play, it could end up being one of the largest installations in the government.

The original post misstated the size of the LEMV. It has been corrected.

The Army's Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) airship has been inflated since last September and has been hanging around in a former dirigible hanger at the old Lakehurst Naval Air Station in southern New Jersey (which now goes by the awkward name of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst), according to John Cummings, a spokesman for the Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

Though the airship has been floating inside that hanger for close to six months, it has yet to make a flight, as various systems are integrated into the LEMV, which is the size of a football field.

Cummings declined to provide a flight date, but did say the command and contractor Northrop Grumman are pursuing "an aggressive schedule" to get it in the air. Not to be overly cranky, but Northrop originally predicted a test flight in the spring of 2011 and a long endurance flight acceptance test for the Army by the end of 2011.

The LEMV will carry a whole bunch of sensor widgets to monitor battlefields, and Stephen Kreider, the Army's deputy program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, has big plans for the airship. In a Jan. 11 presentation, Kreider envisioned the LEMV becoming a program of record, which could mean the Army could end up with a fleet of airships.

I look forward to eyeballing the 2013 LEMV when the Army releases its budget in a couple of weeks.

As we all know, Marines really aren't supposed to engage in long land wars as they have done for the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq (and as they did in Vietnam). They're intended to conduct assaults from amphibious ships, colloquially known as "Gator Freighters."

In a return to its amphibious roots, the Marines yesterday kicked off the largest East Coast from-the-sea exercise, known as Bold Alligator, in a decade. It will run through Feb. 12.

Ships in the exercise include the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier and the USS Iwo Jima landing helicopter dock, which carries helicopters on its flight deck and assault craft in its well deck. The ship transports 2,000 Marines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

The Navy said the purpose of the exercise -- conducted off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina and Florida -- is to "revitalize Navy and Marine Corps amphibious expeditionary tactics, techniques and procedures, and reinvigorate its culture of conducting combined Navy and Marine Corps operations from the sea."

One tactic the Marines in this exercise will not have to refine is one I engaged in more times than I can remember: climbing down a net on the side of an old style `gator freighter into a LCVP bobbing on the waves, a skill now long gone from the Corps thanks to ships such as the Iwo Jima.

Teri Takai, the Defense Department's chief information officer, will lose "acquisition specific functions," according to a Jan. 11 memo signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter that was sent to me by a benevolent reader today.

That memo, which formally disestablished the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration organization mandated by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in August 2010, transfers the CIO acquisition functions to the undersecreatry of Defense for acqusitions, technology and logistics, a post Carter held before getting his deputy stripes.

The memo said the Pentagon CIO will, however, retain statutory responsibility for acquisitions related to defense business systems "for which the primary purpose is to support information technology infrastructure or information assurance activities."

The Pentagon CIO will serve as the "primary authority for the policy and oversight of information resources management, to include matters related to information technology, network defense and network operations," the memo said.

The Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, based in Omaha, Neb., "will continue to direct operations to secure, operate and defend DoD information networks in compliance with policy direction," the memo said.

This realignment, Carter said, "will further our efforts to eliminate duplicative functions and refocus efforts to ensure that resources and activities are directed to the highest overall priorities of the Department, particularly in today's fiscal environment of constrained budgets and reduced spending."