The Battelle Savannah River Alliance (BRSA) team has received a Notice to Proceed with Transition, following the Department of Energy’s  (DOE) selection of BRSA to manage the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), Battelle reported on Thursday.

“BSRA’s approach will ensure the delivery of high impact science, technology and engineering solutions into the future through a significant expansion of SRNL’s core competencies and programs,” said Mark Peters, Battelle’s executive vice president for Global Laboratory Operations.

SRNL conducts research and development (R&D) for diverse federal agencies, and it provides solutions that support national environmental, nuclear security, energy and manufacturing challenges. SRNL is also the DOE’s Environmental Management Laboratory, delivering strategic support for the nation’s waste clean-up program.

BSRA is led by and wholly-owned by Battelle, and the team consists of five regional universities, as well as two small business partners. Dr. Vahid Majidi, executive vice president and director of SRNL for the incumbent contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC, will serve as the laboratory director for BSRA. 

“I look forward to working closely with the DOE, the Savannah River Site contractors, our SRNL leadership team, laboratory staff and community members to carry out a seamless transition,” Majidi said.

“Our team offers an exciting, compelling vision for the future of SRNL and provides DOE a leadership team and strategy that will deliver excellence in science and technology, operations, and community engagement,” Peters added. The Battelle-led team announced the potential 10-year, $3.8 billion contract in Dec. 2020. BRSA will begin the 120-day transition period on Feb. 16.

“We are honored by DOE’s decision to award the Savannah River National Laboratory management and operations contract to our team,” said Lou Von Thaer, president and CEO of Battelle and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, when the award was reported. “We have the lab management experience to make a difference and we’re committed to ensuring the success of this important national resource,” Von Thaer added. 

Red River has launched Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) in partnership with Cisco, Red River reported on Thursday. The companies’ offering features an integrated collaboration infrastructure for voice and video calling, messaging and mobility.

“The investment in Cisco’s three cloud platforms – HCS-D, UCM Cloud and UCM Cloud for Government – as well as Red River’s proven track record of deploying and managing Cisco solutions, solidifies Red River as a key partner in our unified collaboration strategy,” said Carl De Groote, vice president of Federal at Cisco.

Red River has integrated a variety of Cisco offerings, including Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager Cloud (UCM Cloud) and UCM Cloud for Government. Red River has leveraged UCM Cloud to host the collaboration domains and tools in Cisco’s data centers. The UCaaS offering also includes local and long-distance calling delivered by Red River. 

Red River will deliver tiered Managed Services for end-user support, system administration and security. The offering includes secure cloud gateways in three time zones to provide geographic redundancy.

“Our UCaaS portfolio gives our enterprise, government and defense customers a comprehensive solution to support today’s evolving collaboration needs, while simultaneously enabling business and mission success,” said Tim Rod, CTO at Red River. 

As a Cisco partner, Red River is authorized to offer their Hosted Collaboration Solutions for Defense (HCS-D) to its customers. HCS-D provides cloud-based, unified communications and collaboration applications within a highly secure, virtualized platform under a centralized management system. 

The applications include Impact Level 5 certified voice, video, instant messaging, presence and conferencing to deliver secure collaboration. “This alignment of partnerships between Red River and Cisco brings a new level of excitement to both companies, as we bring modern, secure and flexible collaboration tools to market,” Rod added. 

The U.S. Army’s Joint Modernization Command and the DEVCOM C5ISR Center conducted the first of four planned communications exercises at the newly established Joint Systems Integration Lab at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in January as part of the service’s Project Convergence 2021 initiative, the service reported.

Project Convergence seeks to achieve a multidomain, networked force by 2035 through a series of developmental exercises and efforts. The new facility – JSIL – provided JMC and the DEVCOM C5ISR Center a venue to perform lab-based risk reduction and evaluate system connectivity.

“The DEVCOM C5ISR Center stood up the JSIL as a result of lessons learned during Project Convergence 20,” said Kim Moeltner, systems engineering and integration branch chief. “It allows us to replicate a realistic tactical network environment so we can understand how varying conditions will affect systems’ resilience and reliability.” 

Moeltner said the lab helps the Army achieve cost savings by allowing engineers to assess, validate and integrate emerging application, network and radio technologies in a controlled environment before they are deployed into the field.

System engineers and leaders from Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical, PEO Soldier, Army Test and Evaluation Command, Network Cross-Functional Team and operational units participated in the event.

Steve Butow, director of the space portfolio at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), said the U.S. military is now looking to migrate to a new space architecture that could allow the government to incorporate emerging technologies and use commoditized satellite buses and related components to build modular systems, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

“The 20th century model doesn’t exist anymore,” said Butow said Wednesday at the SmallSat Symposium. “We need a logistics infrastructure that that’s not exclusive to the military to civil space or commercial space but a logistics architecture.”

Such an architecture would enable the government to purchase new satellites and use space tug services from the commercial sector to upgrade the spacecraft with new sensors and processors.

Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., will serve as chairman of the newly established panel within the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) that will focus on cybersecurity and efforts to advance innovation within the Department of Defense (DOD), Federal News Network reported Wednesday. 

Langevin said the new cyber, innovative technologies and information systems subcommittee’s agenda in the next legislation session will focus on cyber force structure, artificial intelligence, supply chain safety, combatant commands and cyber infrastructure.

“The era of technology has been growing at a rapid pace and becoming more and more important in the Pentagon, in Pentagon budgets and planning,” Langevin told FNN in an interview. “Cyber and AI information operations have become more and more important. We want to make sure that the right resources and attention is being given to oversight in all these areas.” 

Langevin said he wants the subcommittee to look into the cyber forces within DOD, the roles of Cyber Command, Space Command and geographic commands, the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract and the Cyber Diplomacy bill, among other priorities.