U.S. Army Gen. James Dickinson, who leads U.S. Space Command, said soldiers must be ready to operate without the help of space systems in case of enemy-caused disruptions, DOD News reported Thursday.

He said at the 2021 Fires Conference that training centers now teach soldiers how to perform missions in degraded environments where satellite communications, surveillance and GPS navigation are denied. This approach helps soldiers practice relying on older methods to fulfill missions in such scenarios.

"I think they are creating those effects at the National Training Center, at combat training centers, so that you get a feel for what that's like and having to go back to like an M2 aiming circle or even a lensatic compass and a map, if you have to," he stated at the event that took place at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The General Services Administration is seeking input from learning content providers in the business and academic sectors for the development of a tool that could give federal workers access to educational materials and help them identify gaps in their knowledge.

Interested education providers have until December 16 to express their interest in offering pay-for-access training content for a pilot program that will involve financial management staff members across the federal government, GSA said Thursday.

The agency noted that content for the effort should cover technology, data and financial management skills across 54 competency areas.

Roughly 140,000 members of the federal financial management workforce will serve as a test population in the two-year technology pilot, which will offer graduate and undergraduate-level training content that uses different modalities and delivery models.

Providers will work with the Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Chief Financial Officers Council, along with the 24 biggest federal agencies, through the initiative deemed by the Biden-Harris administration as a top priority. 

GSA indicated that if the limited-in-scale approach would become successful in drawing effective and affordable content, the model would be applied to bigger units in the federal workforce composed of 2.1 million employees.

Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division is contributing to a collaborative effort that aims to design, develop and test an autonomous monitoring system for the U.S. Navy's Self Defense Test Ship (SDTS).

The effort, which is a Naval Innovation, Science and Engineering project, will produce a system designed to continuously analyze the health of SDTS's hull, mechanical and electrical systems, Naval Sea Systems Command said Wednesday.

SDTS is a repurposed destroyer formerly known as USS Paul F. Foster. The ship now serves as an unmanned testbed for live-fire demonstrations at sea. The project will primarily develop a digital twin for the ship's condition-based maintenance.

"This project provides an opportunity for this Navy team to find ways to increase ship maintenance effectiveness by decreasing its downtime and get vessels ready for future missions more efficiently than before,” said Carlos Boisselier, a systems engineer at NSWC Port Hueneme Division's SDTS team.

The Navy authorized the system's installation onto SDTS in July 2021, and expects the project to run for three years.