Neera Tanden, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said information technology modernization and cybersecurity would be her top priorities once confirmed as director of OMB, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that advancing IT modernization will enable agencies to better support and meet the needs of citizens.

“We recognize the importance of this modernization during a global pandemic where we need to make sure that our agencies’ information and essentially the public’s privacy is protected and protected well,” Tanden said Tuesday during her nomination hearing.

She also cited the need to deploy modern platforms to better serve the public and challenges when it comes to funding IT modernization efforts.

“The real challenge here is, frankly, it takes an investment of resources in one year, because we don’t have capital budgets or systems that create some disincentives,” Tanden said. 

“But I appreciate the resources in the technology modernization fund, and it’s one of the reasons why the president has proposed a substantial increase in TMF, as well as the Information Technology Oversight and Reform [fund].” 

A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report says countries with large militaries, nonstate groups and other adversaries could use land-attack cruise missiles (LACM) to launch attacks against the U.S. and lowest-cost architectures composed of fighter jets, surface-to-air missiles and radars for homeland cruise missile defense would cost approximately $75 billion to $180 billion over two decades to purchase and operate.

CBO said in a report published Tuesday that deploying additional regional or local defenses to protect Hawaii, Alaska and U.S. territories would contribute to that cost. The report also cited the importance of positive identification of targets.

“Because many civilian aircraft fly in U.S. airspace, targets would have to be positively identified as threats before defenses could engage them,” the report reads. “However, very little time is available for defenses to act against LACMs, so any delay in achieving positive identification would significantly challenge the effectiveness of defenses, and even advanced battle management systems might be hard-pressed to respond in time.”

CBO said policymakers should look at the likelihood of an attack by adversaries using alternatives to LACMs when assessing whether and how much to invest in a wide-area cruise missile defense system.

The U.S. Navy's Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) is working on augmented reality headset applications to help engineers communicate with engineers worldwide to repair and maintain the service branch's platforms and air vehicles.

The Augmented Reality Remote Maintenance Support Service (ARRMSS) is a portable suite that employs augmented reality headsets to connect two users from any location worldwide through a virtual environment, the Naval Air Systems Command said Monday.

ARRMSS consists of a headset, a remote wireless access point and a tablet and can operate on low-bandwidth networks. Users can share files and photos and communicate verbally with one another through holograms superimposed on any equipment.

"We’re working to an aggressive developmental schedule – ARRMSS went from proof of concept to working prototype in less than two years, and we’re ready to start beta-testing the product worldwide," said Aristides Staikos, AR research and development engineering lead at NAWCAD Lakehurst.

NAWCAD tested ARRMSS across the East Coast of the U.S. and is set to enter the next phase for the system. The suite is slated to enter production in 2023.

Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, said he wants the service to equip new unmanned vessels only with proven technologies, to avoid issues in development. Gilday said this approach aims to avoid problems the Navy experienced with littoral combat ships due to using untested equipment, Breaking Defense reported Monday.

The service branch will identify its technology priorities for the new vessels under the Unmanned Campaign Plan. Adm. Gilday also told Breaking Defense he wants the unmanned vessels to integrate with the command and control networks of other domains, instead of relying on separate C2 systems.

The unmanned vessels must align with the Navy's Project Overmatch, an effort to develop a C2 network compatible with the Department of Defense's (DOD) planned Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept.

DOD envisions JADC2 as an integrated network of sensors and situational awareness systems across all military domains.

Denis McDonough, formerly chief of staff to Barack Obama, has been Senate-confirmed to become secretary of veterans affairs, NPR reported Monday.

A Senate meeting on Monday resulted in an 87-7 vote in favor of McDonough, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). McDonough was the deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration and also served in the former president’s transition team.

The newly appointed VA secretary also advised Tom Daschle, who was the Senate democratic leader, on foreign policy. McDonough, as VA secretary, will oversee efforts to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to the country’s veterans.

Alion Science and Technology will be a participant in the U.S. Air Force AFWERX Reimagining Energy for the Department of Defense (DoD) Challenge, the company reported on Tuesday. 

"Alion is honored to be included in this showcase and excited to be able to demonstrate our technology and solutions to support such an important global DoD energy effort," said John Eubank, Alion's director of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

As a participant, Alion will pitch innovative ideas to a panel of evaluators and subject matter experts, which will help the DoD reimagine the ways to generate, transmit, store and use energy. Alion's subject matter experts will present Fortis AI and Big Data Platform (BDP) technologies and solutions. 

The company’s Fortis AI is an algo gymnasium for the rapid processing of text- based data sets, leveraging a highly scalable cloud-based architecture. BDP is a government-owned knowledge management platform for securely processing large data sets at the speed of DoD operations. 

BDP and Fortis AI provide a comprehensive architecture for storing, processing and deriving value from the DoD's Energy Data. Alion’s offerings develop a knowledge management capability for Energy Data Scientists to explore DoD energy policy, education, usage and other data sets. 

Alion’s offerings will also provide recommendations and solution implementation to enable and monitor change in the DoD Energy Culture. AFWERX recently launched the Reimagining Energy for the DoD Challenge to help reduce the U.S. military's reliance on fossil fuels. 

The Air Force’s  innovation arm has also aimed to accelerate its shift toward renewable and resilient energy sources. AFWERX effort has aligned with the DoD's mission to deter conflict and ensure the nation's security, and will work to advance the clean energy industry.

"This is a phenomenal opportunity to apply Alion's expertise to solve and contribute to the future of resilient energy production, transmission, use and storage for the DoD and to come together with other leader's in the energy industry to solve this global issue,” Eubank added.