Leidos announced on Friday that the company has been awarded a potential 13-year, $950 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) prime contract from the U.S. Air Force to provide solutions for a broad spectrum of aviation requirements. 

"This award underscores Leidos' strong performance leveraging decades of operation and technical integration expertise for the Air Force," said Mike Chagnon, senior vice president and operations manager for Leidos. "We look forward to supporting the Air Force and its mission to maintain multi-domain dominance."

Leidos will support the Air Force's Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance & Special Operations Forces (ISR/SOF) Directorate (WI), Sensors Division (WIN) Non-Standard Foreign Military Sales (FMS) branches. 

The Leidos team will bring a cadre of professionals and tools from across the industry to improve both U.S. and allied ISR capabilities. Leidos will also provide full aircraft and ISR sensor integration, procurement of hardware and spares, sustainment support and inspections for airworthiness/configuration.

A communications technology team at Hanscom Air Force Base has demonstrated a new technology designed to bolster data sharing in the airborne battlefield.

The U.S. Air Force said Thursday that its Aerial Networks Division partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory to form the Tactical Data Link Enhancements Team, which tested the new Heimdall tactical data link.

Heimdall uses new data link methods to help pilots perform and communicate better in highly contested environments.

“What our system does is provide the Air Force with an advanced capability not only for the aircraft of the future but the aircraft of today," said Michael McAuliffe, program manager for the Tactical Datalinks and Gateways Branch.

A modified F-15C Eagle equipped with the technology flew to Holloman AFB in New Mexico then met with aircraft from Eielson AFB and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Flight tests took place at White Sands Missile Range in N.M.  and over the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex. Aircraft deployed from Alaska were participating in the Northern Edge 21 exercise.

The U.S. Marine Corps has broken ground on a Quantico, Virginia-based site where the service branch will establish a modern wargaming center.

USMC said Thursday it conducted the groundbreaking ceremony for the future Marine Corps Wargaming and Analysis Center in May, with Lt. Gen. Eric Smith, deputy commandant for Marine Corps Combat Development and Integration, as the host.

The future 100,000-square-foot facility will house computer-based exercises that train troops in simulated warfare scenarios.

“This facility will include a complex set of modeling and simulation, visualization, immersive and analytical tools to enhance wargaming activities,” said Sharleene Prieur, acting WGC program manager at Marine Corps Systems Command.

Prieur said she expects USMC to complete the center's construction by summer 2023 and begin wargaming activities in 2024. The facility is expected to have its full range of equipment by 2025.

Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command awarded Clark Construction Group an $81.3 million contract to build the facility.

The Biden administration has expressed its support for a $1.2 trillion framework that seeks to make investments in transportation, power, broadband and water infrastructure while building resilience to climate change.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework intends to establish a network of electric vehicle chargers, expand rail and transit networks across the U.S., create an infrastructure financing authority and prepare the country’s infrastructure for impacts of extreme weather conditions and cyberattacks, according to a White House fact sheet released Thursday.

The plan would earmark $312 billion for transportation, including EV chargers, roads, bridges and public transit, and $266 billion for other infrastructure, including power, water and broadband networks.

The framework also proposes measures to finance infrastructure investments. These include reducing the IRS tax gap, redirecting unused unemployment insurance relief funds, extending expiring customer user fees, allowing states to sell or buy unused toll credits for infrastructure and repurposing unused relief funds from 2020 emergency relief legislation.

“President Biden remains committed to the comprehensive agenda laid out in the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan,” the White House document reads. “He will work with Congress to build on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework in legislation that moves in tandem, and he is encouraged that both the House and Senate are working on budget plans that would do so.”

If you're interested to know about the national security implications of climate change and how data analytics can inform agencies’ climate adaptation strategies, then check out the Potomac Officers Club's Bolstering Climate Resilience for National Security Forum coming up on Sept. 14. To register for this forum and view other upcoming events, visit the POC Events page.

Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a two-time Wash100 Award winner, has signed four new “strategic directives” that establish requirements for all domain operations and mark the initial step in advancing the joint warfighting concept (JWC), Breaking Defense reported Thursday.

“Together, the Directives provide a roadmap of the capabilities and attribute the Joint Force will need to succeed in the 21st century,” a spokesperson for Hyten said in an email to the publication. “This is a key milestone in the implementation of the new Joint Warfighting Concept.”

The directives will serve as guidance for services as they implement the four key aspects of JWC: Joint All Domain Command and Control, joint fires, information advantage and contested logistics.

Hyten said in a presentation to the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) that the contents of the directives “will be mandatory compliant to all the services — all the services will meet the elements that are embedded in all of them.”

“It’s going to drive future capabilities and future doctrine. But right now it’s just the concept and we’re still learning with it,” Hyten said of JWC.

Hyten also mentioned the critical role of AI in advancing JWC and the need to increase domestic production of high-speed microprocessors that are cyber-protected. He noted that JWC is a concept that will spur experimentation.

Jesse Salazar, deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy, said the Department of Defense’s (DOD) review of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program has three “broad goals” and the first is managing cyber costs for small businesses, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

“I recognize that small businesses are under immense market pressures,” Salazar said Tuesday at a Professional Services Council conference. “Our goal is to mitigate costs while protecting the cybersecurity of these businesses.”

He said another objective of the CMMC review is to clarify and streamline contracting requirements and cyber regulations. Salazar noted that the third goal seeks to “reinforce trust and confidence in the maturing CMMC assessment ecosystem.

“The department is ensuring that we can operationalize our requirements through a sufficient number of assessors,” Salazar said. “We are also clearly defining roles and responsibilities, standards of conduct and audit mechanisms within the external assessment ecosystem.”

In early June, the CMMC Accreditation Body announced Redspin and Kratos Defense and Security Solutions as the first two certified third-party assessment organizations. The authorization will allow them to audit companies seeking CMMC certification at Maturity Levels 1 through 3.