Huntington Ingalls Industries and the U.S. Navy have released the first Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer designated to assume the new Flight III configuration. The ship launched from HII's Ingalls Shipbuilding division last Friday.

The future USS Jack H. Lucas, also known as DDG 125, will feature the new AN/SPY-6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar, power generation updates and augmented cooling capacity, the Navy said Monday. 

“Flight III ships will provide cutting edge integrated air and missile defense capability to include significantly greater detection range and tracking capacity," said Capt. Seth Miller, program manager for the Arleigh Burke-class.

Four other ships from the same class, including the future USS Ted Stevens, are under construction at HII facilities. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled an effort to accelerate the implementation of reliable clean energy by reducing clean hydrogen costs. DOE said Monday the first part of its Energy Earthshots initiative, titled Hydrogen Shot, aims to drive down clean hydrogen costs by 80 percent over a decade, from $5 per kilogram to $1 per kg.

The department expects this effort to address climate-related issues and help the U.S. government achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“The Energy Earthshots are an all-hands-on-deck call for innovation, collaboration and acceleration of our clean energy economy by tackling the toughest remaining barriers to quickly deploy emerging clean energy technologies at scale,” said Jennifer Granholm, secretary of Energy.

The effort provides a framework that would guide how the U.S. would achieve the cost reduction goal. DOE also seeks information on greenhouse gases, environmental justice, hydrogen production and other specific topics related to hydrogen cost reduction. Interested parties may submit input through July 7th.

The airspace mission planning division at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts is developing a cloud-based application to support the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control vision.

USAF said Monday the tool will use a collaborative microservice-based platform, called the JMPS Open Mission System, and the Cloud One computing environment as part of a project to update the branch’s Joint Mission Planning System.

The service has used JMPS software in military aircraft operation, refueling and training since 2008.

Emily Coppin, program manager at Hanscom’s airspace mission planning division, said the team will apply a service-oriented architecture to automate the current system and manage user experience.

JMPS recorded 75 percent faster reporting rate during an October 2020 virtual demonstration with the branch’s CloudOne environment.

The team at Hanscom expects its JOMS architecture to be fully deployed in 2027.

Linda Burger, a director of a National Security Agency (NSA) office, has been elected as the Federal Laboratory Consortium's (FLC) executive board chair, responsible for driving the implementation of FLC initiatives meant to help consortium members and stakeholders.

Burger, NSA's Office of Research and Technology Applications (ORTA) director, will start her two-year term at the federal technology transfer organization in October, NSA said Monday.

According to the elected executive board chair, she will team up with other national laboratory leaders to advance understanding and application of the Federal Technology Transfer Act.

Burger has been working to increase T2 collaborations between NSA, which is a federal lab and an FLC member, and its external partners to implement T2 authorities to achieve the agency's mission goals. National-level engagement is one of the ORTA director's efforts to drive federal technology development.

The FLC, which was was organized in 1974, represents over 300 federal laboratories, agencies and research centers. The consortium was chartered by the T2 legislation.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) demonstrated a multilayer architecture designed to detect and counter small unmanned aerial systems in recent tests at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida as part of DARPA’s Mobile Force Protection program.

The drone interceptor system zeroed in on UAS threats using an X-band radar during the demonstration, DARPA said Monday.

The radar senses UAS threats and pairs drone targets to interceptors via an automated decision engine linked to a command and control system that guides and launches fixed- and rotary-wing interceptors with two types of UAS countermeasures.

“Because we were focusing on protecting mobile assets, the program emphasized solutions with a small footprint in terms of size, weight, and power,” said MFP program manager Gregory Avicola at DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “This also allows for more affordable systems and less operators.

Dynetics serves as the primary systems integrator on the MFP program, which seeks to develop an integrated platform of sensors, autonomy and mitigation systems to counter drone threats over military installations and protect mobile assets moving through potentially populated areas.

DARPA said it is collaborating with service branches to transition MFP program technologies into acquisition programs.

The second unmanned surface vessel, named NOMAD, of the Ghost Fleet Overlord program passed through the Panama Canal and completed its transit to the Pacific. The USV traveled 4,421 nautical miles from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast, moving autonomously 98 percent of the time, the Department of Defense said Monday.

DOD’s office of the secretary of defense strategic capabilities office and the U.S. Navy performed the second long-range autonomous transit with NOMAD. The Ghost Fleet Overlord program’s first vessel, dubbed RANGER, completed a similar trip in October 2020. Both vessels were in manual mode when they traversed the Panama Canal.

“This is another significant milestone for SCO’s Ghost Fleet Overlord program and supports the Navy’s Unmanned Campaign Framework by adding a second Overlord vessel to the West Coast,” said SCO Director Jay Dryer.

“The SCO Ghost Fleet Overlord program serves to inform Navy prototype efforts by integrating mature technologies to accelerate service priorities and is a key piece of the build a little, test a little, and learn a lot philosophy articulated in the Navy Unmanned Campaign Framework,” Dryer added.

Sailors from the Navy’s Surface Development Squadron One performed the remote mission for the NOMAD transit, which provided DOD and the service a chance to further test autonomous operations and vessel endurance, among others.

Two additional USV prototypes for the Ghost Fleet Overlord program are under construction and the Navy will use those to expand its experimentation and testing initiatives.

The program’s second phase that started in Sept. 2019 is expected to wrap up in early 2022. By that time, the Navy will oversee those vessels for further experimentation.

Officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday the recovery of $2.3 million in bitcoin paid to a group of cyber hackers responsible for the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, CNBC reported.

Paul Abbate, deputy director of the FBI, said agents identified the digital currency wallet used by the DarkSide group to collect ransomware payments from the oil company.

“Using law enforcement authority, victim funds were seized from that wallet, preventing Dark Side actors from using them,” Abbate said during the press briefing Monday.

In May, DarkSide launched a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline that resulted in the shutdown of about 5,500 miles of fuel pipeline and gas shortages in the southeast. A source told CNBC that the oil company paid a ransom of nearly $5 million to the threat actors.

“The message here today is that [if you report the attack], we will bring all of our tools to bear to go after these criminal networks,” Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general at DOJ, said during the press briefing.

Abbate also stressed the need for companies to immediately report cyberthreats to the FBI.

“Victim reporting not only can give us the information we need to have an immediate real-world impact on the actors … it can also prevent future harm from occurring,” Abbate said.

If you want to know more about the latest updates about the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, then check out Potomac Officers Club’s CMMC Forum coming up on June 16. To register for this virtual forum and view other upcoming events, visit the POC Events page.

The Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has examined the underlying process of information exchange in reinforcement learning algorithms and identified a framework for the development of multiple artificial intelligence models that may support robot-soldier collaboration.

For the project, ARL researchers and a postdoctoral fellow at Oak Ridge Associated Universities explored algorithms within a publication period of five to six years in hopes of understanding how centralization in AI training could facilitate work on collaborative multiagent systems, the laboratory said Monday.

The team believes its findings could pave the way for further studies into teaming between autonomous technology and soldiers.

Piyush Sharma, a computer scientist at Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, said the military service sees an emerging application for multiagent systems in collaborative tactical missions as such technology becomes more prevalent in the commercial sector.

He cited Amazon's warehouse robots and Intel's drone light shows as examples of multiple systems built to work cooperatively. Sharma and his collaborators are looking to model and simulate multiagent reinforcement learning as part of theory validation and expansion efforts.

GovCon Wire, sister site of ExecutiveGov and part of the Executive Mosaic digital umbrella, hosted its AI: Innovation in National Security Forum on June 3rd. 

David Sprik, chief data officer of the Department of Defense (DOD), will serve as the forum’s keynote speaker. He will address the DOD’s defense data strategy, plans for commercial data, analytics, AI and emerging data processing technologies.

If you missed the virtual event, you can still access the OnDemand footage by visiting the GovCon Wire Events Archive.

ASCEND announced on Monday its 2021 Guiding Coalition. The Coalition is an advisory board of technical, scientific, engineering and business leaders selected to help maximize ASCEND’s mission. The board will include Mike Costas, general manager and principal vice president of Bechtel’s Defense and Space business line.

Costas said that the Coalition is “The infrastructure needed to grow the space industry in the coming years will be complex and requires cooperation from a large and diverse supply chain.”

“ASCEND recognizes that adjacent industries beyond traditional aerospace companies will be needed to propel this growth. It was the same more than 60 years ago when Bechtel first worked for the U.S. space program. We see a bright future and our support will continue,” Costas added.

Long-term space exploration and exploitation will require infrastructure on Earth, in low-Earth orbit, on the moon or in deep space will require master planning, management of complex megaprojects, first-of-a-kind technologies, detailed design and engineering and construction in remote or harsh environments.

The 33 members of the 2021 ASCEND Guiding Coalition bring a treasure trove of experience, from space exploration and vehicle design to communications, government and finance, to solve the complicated challenges in the space sector.

ASCEND is powered by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and was launched in 2020 to accelerate space commerce, exploration and discovery. The annual event this November follows a quarterly series of 2021 ASCENDx programs online. The November event will be live in Las Vegas and online everywhere.

The November Event’s program will host presentations by notable thought leaders and rising industry leaders. The content will focus on big picture challenges, paths to success, innovation applications and the exponential value of interdisciplinary collaboration in outer space.

“ASCEND is connecting leaders across disciplines in bold, new ways. AIAA is unique in our ability to convene the technical conversation, so that expertise can inform the economics and the policies of space exploration,” said Dan Dumbacher, AIAA executive director.

“We want to have the hard conversations and drive the intentional outputs to accelerate building our off-world future,” concluded Dumbacher.