Fifteen software application robots, designed to perform rapid manual and labor-intensive tasks at the Naval Supply System Command, are undergoing evaluation, development or production as part of the U.S. Navy’s robotic process automation program.

The service branch said Wednesday its RPA governance team cleared six bots to support the supply chain enterprise and is still working on nine similar tools.

Capt. Eugene Cash, commanding officer of the NAVSUP Business Systems Center, said the bots are performing repetitive and manual business data entry tasks to let human users concentrate on more important functions.

The branch’s 10-member RPA governance team, which includes five information technology specialists, partnered with an industry team comprised of 20 contractors to design and develop software.

Allison Holle, the team’s supervisory IT project manager, envisions NAVSUP pursuing an initiative to train citizen developers to set up RPA centers at every command.

“We want to deliver this tool to commands across the enterprise so they can quickly develop automation that support their mission,” Holle said.

Kessel Run, or the DevSecOps unit of the Air Force Life Cycle Management (AFLCM) Center, has started sharing a set of standard operating procedures for "Chaos Engineering" to the Department of the Navy’s Black Pearl to help it in providing cloud-based enterprise platform and development tool.

Delivering Chaos Engineering practices is aimed at enabling the Navy's current and future software factories and, in the future, enhancing software development units within the Department of Defense, Kessel Run said Wednesday.

The AFLCM unit leverages Chaos Engineering to continuously target applications to identify potential weak points within its own system. The approach reflects the practices developed by non-government software factories.

Kessel Run conducted its first simulated attack in 2020, which resulted in the Chaos Engineering SOP.

“That success has led us to create a ‘playbook’ in collaboration with Black Pearl for the DOD DevSecOps Reference Design Version 2.0 document set," said Omar Marrero, the Chaos and performance tech and Kessel Run all domain operation system test manager with Kessel Run. "It has the potential to be used by all of our peer software factories within the DOD.”

The Department of Homeland Security's science and technology (DHS S&T) directorate and a Vienna, Virginia-based nonprofit information technology development organization to update a mobile communications tool that works to help first responders exchange critical information.

Beacon NGO will perform code analysis work and add features to the Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS) as part of a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with DHS S&T, the directorate said Thursday.

Under this CRADA, the nonprofit will be responsible for maintaining the system's main code to prevent duplicate maintenance efforts across the user community, which includes NATO member and partner countries, U.S. states and other public safety organizations.

As the main coordinator for future NICS-related partnerships with other stakeholders, Beacon could also use lessons from other code deployments to teach users how to better use the application.

David Alexander, senior science adviser for resilience at S&T, said the partnership seeks to further develop and simplify the system for first responders.

The directorate initially gave open-source developers access to NICS in 2016 and rolled out the technology to emergency response and management organizations,

Joseph Nogueira, acting director of the office of cost assessment and program evaluation (CAPE) at the Department of Defense (DOD), told members of a House Armed Services Committee panel Tuesday that CAPE performed analytic efforts to evaluate the readiness and capability of DOD’s tactical aircraft in support of the budget request for fiscal year 2022, DOD News reported.

"To support major defense acquisition program milestones, CAPE generated independent cost estimates for the F-15 Eagle['s] Passive Active-warning and Survivability System Program and the next generation jammer low- and mid-band programs,” Nogueira told lawmakers.

He said CAPE also led the next-generation air dominance analysis of alternatives of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy and the joint tactical air synthetic training efforts.

Nogueira noted that CAPE is conducting an assessment of USAF’s digital century series business case and analyses of acquisition strategies for sixth-generation aircraft and continues discussions with contractors and program offices to get insights and inform acquisition programs.

“The digital century series business case review should be completed in August, and I expect to send it to you shortly thereafter," he told lawmakers.

Nogueira also provided updates on tactical air studies being carried out by the Navy and Air Force and other analytical efforts across the Pentagon.

Raymond O'Toole, acting director of operational test and evaluation at DOD, joined Nogueira during the hearing and testified about the need for updated test and training capabilities.

Code-X announced on Thursday its first-ever commercially available lattice-based data protection platform validated by the Department of Defense (DOD) and Intelligence Community. The platform successfully passed federal government tests demonstrating its ability to protect sensitive information and critical systems across multiple environments simultaneously. 

“For years, experts have warned of the increased threat of malicious actors and nation-states in the IT world. With accelerating advancements in technology and the threat of quantum computing looming, these advances will continue to work against organizations protecting the world’s most sensitive data,” commented Darren LaCroix, Code-X founder and CEO.

“The Code-X platform is purpose-built to ensure highly regulated organizations can authenticate and trust that their data and systems are secure. Our combination of proprietary technology and lattice equations make the Code-X platform the first-ever efficient, lattice-based security solution that helps organizations reverse the trend of malicious toolsets being on a parallel path with the advancement of technology,” added LaCroix. 

The company created the platform by  applying proprietary techniques to create five dimensions of security, acting simultaneously and rendering nearly all modern malicious tools obsolete. Code-X’s structuring, networking, authentication, management and monitoring of data and systems in real-time prevents data corruption or loss.

“As a leader in U.S. intelligence and global cyber programs, I have been privileged to lead our nation’s most talented cyber operation professionals and the leading-edge cyber tools they employed. I also had a unique perspective into companies claiming to address every type of cyber vulnerability,” said Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart (Ret.), Code-X Team Member. 

 “Code-X approaches cybersecurity from an entirely different perspective than other companies. Through its unique architecture and design, Code-X delivers a truly novel encryption and authentication solution that solves today’s most complex data security challenges while preparing organizations for future threats,” concluded Stewart.