Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, said DHS will raise the required minimum cybersecurity spending through Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant awards from 5 percent to 7.5 percent, reflecting a $25 million increase across the country.

Mayorkas announced the move on Thursday during the final round of the second annual President’s Cup Cybersecurity Competition, DHS said Thursday.

He said DHS has started to assess and implement additional capabilities, including potential new grant initiatives, through the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in support of state and local government agencies' cyber efforts.

Mayorkas mentioned during the event the department’s efforts to address ransomware and build a “more diverse, equitable, and inclusive cybersecurity workforce.” He said DHS also plans to announce a series of “cybersecurity sprints” to advance action in key priority areas.

“To start, we will be developing an initial set of sprints dedicated to combatting ransomware, building a deep and diverse cyber workforce, and urgently improving the security of our nation’s industrial control systems,” he noted.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is seeking information on potential industry sources that could support the requirements of the enterprise strategic planning and governance directorate within VA’s office of information and technology.

Interested contractors should state their capabilities in providing support for enterprise IT strategic planning, IT strategic planning ecosystem, development of the IT information resource management strategic plan, annual integrated planning guidance, IT enterprise roadmap and facilitation of quarterly Senior Executive Service IT strategic planning offsites, according to a request for information published Wednesday on beta SAM website.

Vendors should describe any planning experience with the multiyear cycle regarding the planning, programming, budgeting and execution framework and state the specific skillset they can provide to implement the planning process of the PPBE framework.

The enterprise strategic planning effort will have a three-year performance period, including two one-year options.  Responses to the RFI are due March 3rd.

Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces, said the U.S. Air Force should push for the rapid procurement of the Boeing-built E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft to replace the service’s aging E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system fleet and meet the demand for such capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region, The War Zone reported Thursday.

E-7 is equipped with the Northrop Grumman-made multirole electronically scanned array radar, air and sea-search modes, data sharing and communications capabilities.

Wilsbach recommended buying new E-7s as China continues to modernize its military and develop strategies that integrate long-range surface-to-air missiles, cruise and ballistic missiles and manned interceptors, posing a threat U.S. superiority.

“Air superiority is foundational to most other things that we would want to be able to do in our theater,” he said Wednesday during the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium. "Because if you don’t have air superiority, then most everything else that you want to do is really held at risk.”

Wilsbach said the future Pacific Air Forces should be equipped with E-7 Wedgetails and the Next Generation Air Dominance combat aircraft to help counter threats posed by China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Gen, Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander of Air Mobility Command (AMC), said AMC plans to adopt a conditions-based approach to increase operational use of the KC-46 Pegasus tanker manufactured by Boeing as the aircraft program reaches for full operational capability, the Air Force reported Wednesday.

“AMC is working hard to ensure U.S. Transportation Command has the tanker capacity necessary to meet Joint Force requirements,” Van Ovost said Wednesday during a media roundtable at the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium. “To meet these requirements, we are exploring a variety of options or ‘tanker levers’ to relieve stress on today’s force, including a limited, operational use of the KC-46 on a conditions-based approach.” 

Through the approach, Van Ovost said the command intends to certify mission sets on an incremental basis to increase tanker capacity to support Joint Force operational taskings.

“What changes with this approach is we will now commit the KC-46 to execute missions similar to those they’ve been conducting over the past few years in the Operational Test and Evaluation plan, but can now include operational tasking from USTRANSCOM,” said Van Ovost. “Through this conditions-based approach, we expect to increase overall tanker capacity by bringing daily taskable KC-46 operational capabilities at scale and predicted reliability for joint force employment.” 

Boeing kicked off low-rate initial production of the tanker in 2016.

Jamie Holcombe, chief information officer of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), said machine learning helps USPTO speed up the process of assigning patent applications to examiners, FedScoop reported Wednesday.

The agency’s engineers who went to Google to learn more about TensorFlow application programming interfaces and machine learning are applying ML to patent search and classification processes using Python with TensorFlow.

“We immersed them in the culture, and they got Googly,” Holcombe said Wednesday during an ACT-IAC event. “They got certified in TensorFlow, which is the open-source library for a lot of neural network feedback loops.” 

USPTO is tapping vendors to help perform patent classifications and compare them against the agency’s algorithms. Holcombe said allowing patent examiners to work with vendors allows the agency to further improve the algorithms.