Page Updated: February 13, 2006

Welcome to The Contractor's Outpost.  

I want to thank you for taking an interest in this site.  I know that it will be worth your time.

This site is a clearinghouse of information dedicated to all personnel who work software development contracts for the defense industries.  In time, this site will present readers with information relevant to all phases of software development.  I hope to present code and information of my own as well as material supplied by others in our field.  If you would like to make a contribution to this site, you will find links to do so at the bottom of the appropriate pages.   

The the left,  you will see a variety of links.   The site has five major departments: 

• Development -- This department presents information and resources of particular interest to those performing the actual software development.  Whether you are performing design, or coding -- or even if you are working requirements definition, you will find something interesting in these pages. 
• Test, QA & Safety-- In this department I present resources of particular interest to software test personnel and software quality assurance teams.  You will also find information here relating to software safety and reliability.
• The Biz -- This department provides information and resources for those seeking business with any branch/organization of the Department of Defense.  You will find information regarding contacts, procurement policies and procedures and more.  
• Information Security -- This department is a portal to some of the best sources for those concerned with information security.  Here you will find exhaustive resources on current and past viruses, anti-virus software, software vulnerabilities and more.  Tips and techniques for securing your system.
• Joint Resources -- This department is a portal to information and resources that members of all project departments will find useful.  Within this department, you will find information relating to real-time and embedded systems, safety-critical systems, high-performance computing (HPC), processes, configuration management, metrics and more.   You will also find resources relating to information security and virus protection in this department.

In addition to the major departments, you will find other resources and areas of interest through the navigation bar on the left:

• Systems -- Here you will find resources relating to Safety-Critical Systems and Trusted Systems among others.
• Weapons 101 -- Details on weapons, weapon systems, munitions, military concepts and more.
• DoD Links -- This department presents official links to Department of Defense websites.  However, for those sites concerned with performing business with the Department of Defense, you would need to look in The Biz department.  Go to DoD Links!
• Media -- Often, when preparing presentations, proposals or other documentation, you need pictures and clip-art of a wide variety of military hardware.  This department presents resources to help you in this area.
• Office Resources -- Resources for the top office applications, free viewers for Microsoft®, Corel, AutoCAD and CALS Raster images and Windows drivers too!

But it doesn't stop there.  I also provide an assortment of news sources and current news headlines:

• Defense News --  This department will provide links to many outside defense news sources so that you can keep abreast of news from the defense community.  You will find links provided for official DoD news sources and commercial and non-profit sources.  This page also includes current military news headlines from around the world.   You must have a javascript-capable browser to read the headlines but all other material will be available.
• Tech & World News -- Here you will find links to some of the best technology news sources available on the web.  You will also find a list of links to some of the better "all-purpose" news sources around the world so that you can stay on top of world events as they happen.  These links are provided in no particular order and are not to be interpreted as an endorsement of any specific political or military belief.  They are provided so that we all can be better informed about this world in which we live.  

A senior level engineer or group lead will likely use all the departments of this site with the exception of The Biz which is dedicated to getting work with the DoD.  Senior management will likely find all departments useful.  That is -- I hope -- the beauty of this site.  A one-stop-shop for defense software contractors.

You will find a Site Search Engine on the navigation bar to your left that allows you to perform any search of the page contents on this website.  I have also provided numerous targeted search engines accessible through the Targeted Web Search link on the navigation bar.  A targeted search engine is one that is designed to search specific knowledge areas or internet domains.  These allow you to search the web without having to sort through thousands of useless junk that has absolutely nothing to do with what you are trying to find.

The Contractor's Outpost also features the Contractor's Desk Reference or CDR.  This is your personal set of desktop reference books.  Dictionaries, acronym lists, standards, handbooks, field manuals and more may be found here.  You will also find business references, modeling and simulation references, units of measure, physical constants and more!

The Contractor's Outpost also offers a free newsletter that you can join to be notified of changes in the content of this site or in the status of this site.

No other site on the web brings together the resources that you need no matter what role you play on a DoD or government software development project.  So browse around and let me know what you think.  

I am a Software Consultant and not a web designer.  This site is not my job but a passionate interest.  With the help of my readers, I hope to bring information that will help us in our professional endeavors.  I can't understate this, I want the readers to feel free to contribute to this site.  It can only help all of us to share our knowledge and experiences.  

I  hope that you will find this site useful and return again often.  Who knows what the future may hold.  But for now, let's give it a try... 

George Chastain 
Software Consultant/Systems Engineer 
Huntsville, Alabama

To contact the webmaster of this site, please see the contact link at the top of the page.

About the Design of This Site

When I designed this site, my goal was to make it a useful tool.  Something that project personnel would want to use frequently in their daily activities.  As a prerequisite to this goal, the pages had to download relatively quickly.  This meant that I would not be using lots of large, bandwidth-hogging, high-resolution images.  

Also, in many instances, government/DoD project personnel work on isolated, secure LANs.  To access the web, they may have older systems (that nobody wants anymore) to access the "triple-Dub" (that's the World Wide Web).  This means older operating systems, older browsers and older, slower modems often are still used, especially on military sites.  So I had to avoid many of the nice new features that techniques such as cascading style sheets (CSS) and Dynamic HTML (DHTML) can provide.  The result is what you see before you.  Simple and effective design. 

Proxies

Many of you may be reading this site from a corporate network that utilizes a proxy server.  This may result in an old page being displayed from time-to-time when you visit this site because a proxy typically places visited pages in a cache and servers those up to you when you access that URL.  If you wish to be sure that you are viewing the latest version of a page you should use the "refresh" button on your browser.