The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence has drafted a project description for implementing a secure network that uses only Internet Protocol Version 6.

NIST said Thursday it seeks public feedback to further refine the project titled Secure IPv6-Only Implementation in the Enterprise.

The project aims to tackle the security, privacy and operational matters involved in implementing or transitioning to IPv6-only network infrastructure. This includes both fully new implementations and transitions from existing IPv4 infrastructure.

NIST intends to demonstrate tools that enable secure IPv6 implementation and develop practice guides based on the effort’s results.

Interested parties may submit feedback through Jan. 27th.

Mara Karlin, the assistant secretary of defense for strategies, plans and capabilities, said the Department of Defense’s new National Defense Strategy will deal with existing and emerging threats posed by countries, including China, DOD News reported Friday.

The new NDS, which is expected to be released in early 2022, will focus on employing the concept of integrated deterrence to address national security threats from adversarial states while increasing collaboration with international allies and partners, said Karlin, who also performs the duties of deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.

“Every national defense strategy has to look at the force-planning construct — what is it that the military should be sized and shaped to execute? This national defense strategy, like the others, will, of course, have a force-planning construct,” Karlin explained during a virtual event hosted by the Center for a New American Security.

Integrated deterrence is about combining all the necessary tools of the U.S. military and civilian agencies to deter national security threats.

“The concept of integrated deterrence reminds us how it has to be really front and center to how we think about dealing with challenges,” said Karlin.

The NDS strategy is nested under the National Security Strategy and serves as the foundation for the other strategic documents, such as the Nuclear Posture Review and the Missile Defense Review.

The Department of Defense has devised a new procurement approach to guide the task order award process for its new multibillion-dollar cloud computing contract vehicle, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Danielle Metz, the Pentagon’s deputy chief information officer for information enterprise, said DOD plans to award separate indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) program to a sole contractor chosen by a centralized program office.

According to Metz, the Pentagon will employ an account tracking and automation tool housed within the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Hosting and Compute Center to keep track of JWCC contractors’ service offerings and prices to inform the decision-making process of the cloud computing program office.

Under the proposed acquisition process, contractors Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and Google are most likely to each receive single-award IDIQs. In November, DOD issued directed solicitations to the four companies to compete for JWCC, which will replace the $10 billion single-award Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract.

Metz said the goal of the new procurement approach is to accelerate the cloud acquisition process and reduce the time it takes to award a task order from the usual 30 to 45 days to just five to 10 days.

“This is very revolutionary, and I think it shows the department’s commitment in terms of wanting to transform our business processes so that we can get effective capabilities quicker to our warfighter,” said Metz.

BWX Technologies has delivered coated reactor fuels to NASA in support of the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s space nuclear propulsion project.

The company said Monday that the announcement positions BWXT as the first private company to deliver relevant coated fuels for use in scheduled NASA testing, which is expected to take place next year.

Dr. Rob Smith, president of government operations at BWXT, said, “This is a landmark accomplishment for BWXT, and we’re extremely proud to support these efforts toward one day seeing a crewed spaceflight travel farther than ever before.”

Smith added that the achievement represents a culmination of joint efforts by teams across the company’s national laboratories, manufacturing facilities and academic research operations.

BWXT is currently developing two forms of fuel for use in future reactor ground demonstrations, as well as a third, more advanced and energy-dense fuel for potential future evaluation.

The fuels BWXT delivered to NASA are expected to withstand extremely high temperatures and corrosive conditions, as well as propel a spacecraft to Mars and back using nuclear thermal propulsion.

Earlier this year, BWXT booked a 12-month, $5 million contract from the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory to develop a reactor design concept for a nuclear thermal propulsion system.

Additionally, the company will continue to support INL by producing fuel kernels, coated fuel kernels and fuel assembly design materials and manufacturing processes.