Intel has won a contract from the Department of Defense to help the semiconductor industry establish and demonstrate an intellectual property ecosystem for the first phase of a commercial chip fabrication initiative.

Intel said Monday it will work with IBM, Cadence, Synopsys and other companies to build foundry infrastructure under the DOD’s Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes-Commercial program as the U.S. government is looking to expand domestic access to secure computer processors.

The National Security Technology Accelerator manages prototyping efforts for the department via the Strategic & Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems other transaction agreement — also known as S2MARTS OTA.

“One of the most profound lessons of the past year is the strategic importance of semiconductors, and the value to the United States of having a strong domestic semiconductor industry,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.

“When we launched Intel Foundry Services earlier this year, we were excited to have the opportunity to make our capabilities available to a wider range of partners, including in the U.S. government, and it is great to see that potential being fulfilled through programs like RAMP-C.”

DOD tapped Intel’s commercial foundry services 10 months after the department announced its $197.2 million investment to bolster the microelectronics industrial base.

Microsoft and IBM were the awardees of RAMP Phase 1 funds amounting to $24.5 million to modernize and secure “back-end” design processes

Separately, Intel Federal business and Qorvo secured $172.7 million to create novel packaging methods for the second phase of DOD’s State-of-the-Art Heterogeneous Integration Prototype program.

Gelsinger unveiled in March the company’s plan to invest up to $20 billion to build two chip factories in Arizona in a push to become a major foundry services provider in the U.S. and European markets.

ExecutiveBiz, sister site of ExecutiveGov, will host a virtual forum on Oct. 24 about securing the supply chain. Visit the ExecutiveBiz Events page to register for the “Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations” forum.

The U.S. Army is close to deploying a platoon of four Stryker combat vehicles equipped with 50 kilowatt-class laser weapon prototypes in fiscal year 2022 after completing an assessment of the new directed-energy capability.

Marcia Holmes, the service’s deputy director of hypersonics, directed energy, space and rapid acquisition, said in a statement published Friday the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office and industry were able to develop and implement the first prototype of the Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system within 24 months.

Holmes noted that the DE M-SHORAD laser system is meant to protect brigade combat teams and divisions from unmanned aerial systems, rockets, mortars, artillery and rotary and fixed-wing threats.

Col. Scott McLeod, DE M-SHORAD program manager, said the Army intends to demonstrate the capabilities of the weapon system in a joint and coalition exercise as part of Project Convergence 21.

"[PC 21] will be a big opportunity for us to show how we can integrate with our systems and demonstrate the capability against other threats," McLeod added.

The DE M-SHORAD development team demonstrated the capabilities of the prototype during a combat shoot-off at Fort Sill in Oklahoma in July. McLeod said program leaders collected user feedback and data to better improve the laser.

In August 2019, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman were selected to build competing laser prototypes for Strykers under an other transaction authority agreement that Kord Technologies secured from the Army.

Defense News cited sources that say Northrop has decided to drop out of the DE M-SHORAD competition after the company encountered a problem with the power and thermal management system prior to the shoot-off.

NASA has granted Psionic rights to use a light detection and ranging technology that the agency originally developed for use in robotic servicing of a satellite in low-Earth orbit.

Under a signed licensing agreement, the company can further develop and integrate the Kodiak lidar system with similar commercial technologies to support future space missions, NASA said Saturday.

The agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland designed the technology to generate a 3D image for data collectors to measure the altitude and position of the target’s surface.

Kodiak will function as part of a relative navigation system for the On-orbit Servicing Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 spacecraft on a mission to automatically refuel the government-owned Landsat 7 satellite.

Hampton, Virginia-based Psionic licensed a Doppler lidar technology from NASA's Langley Research Center in 2016.

The Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division together with NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge and Indiana Innovation Institute inaugurated a laboratory intended to serve as collaboration space for the government, academe and industry. 

The 2,000-square-foot Cyber Physical Systems Laboratory features capabilities to perform electronics test and integration, sensor integration, modeling, simulation and an additive manufacturing and machine shop, the Naval Sea Systems Command said Thursday. 

The facility also has a collaborative conference space for groups and individuals. It utilizes a high-speed fiber-optic network called I-Light that connects state, national and international research and education groups. 

“The development of this space and outfitting the space with equipment to support prototyping has been a cornerstone of what the NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge and the Indiana Innovation Institute set out to do together over a year ago,” said Anne Fields, regional director of NavalX Midwest Tech Bridge. 

The Office of Naval Research awarded a grant that supported the equipment in the new laboratory. 

Almost 60 industry, government and state officials from Indiana, Illinois, Georgia and Virginia attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony to commence the newly built facility.

Kevin Stine, chief cybersecurity adviser for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), said the agency will work over the next months to deliver what is required by President Biden's executive order on cybersecurity amid the strict timelines, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Stine said NIST will gather feedback and work to improve cybersecurity resources as federal agencies implement new guidelines for critical software in alignment with the EO.

“We’re going to produce better tools — we collectively as a community with heavy industry participation here — refine development methodologies in an iterative manner so we can continuously improve those," he said.

NIST developed a definition of critical software in June and provided corresponding security practices the next month. Biden signed the executive order in May.

Agencies now have about two months to identify 12 different types of on-premise critical software and a year to implement NIST's corresponding security measures.