Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology (DHS S&T) Directorate is using research experiences from previous disease outbreaks to inform COVID-19 response. S&T tackles COVID-19 with lessons learned from the Ebola virus, anthrax bacteria and other issues that have caused disease outbreaks, DHS said Thursday.

The Hazard Awareness and Characterization Technology Center (HACiTC) handles the technical aspects of S&T's Probabilistic Analysis for National Threats Hazards and Risks or PANTHR program.

Lloyd Hough, head of HAC-TC, said his team learned how to address knowledge gaps on diseases and identify research priorities, from past experiences. He also emphasized the importance of risk assessments.

“S&T’s risk assessment activities, conducted through the PANTHR program, consider the risk posed by a variety of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents that could potentially be used by terrorists to harm the U.S.,” Hough said.

HAC-TC also supports DHS laboratories including the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center. NBACC continuous to monitor outbreaks occurring across the globe, and learn more about coronavirus.

A newly established office at the U.S. Navy has received authority over network and information systems previously owned by other naval organizations, in support of a large-scale connectivity plan, C4ISRnet reported Friday.

The direct report program manager for Project Overmatch now has authority over all the Navy’s communications-related research, development, procurement and sustainment efforts.

Project Overmatch aims to establish a unified network capability across the Navy’s and U.S. Marine Corps’s operations, as part of the larger Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept. The military wants to implement JADC2 as an integrated network of sensors that help commanders make decisions.

Systems transferred to Project Overmatch were previously handled by Naval Sea Systems, Naval Air Systems and Naval Information Warfare Systems commands.

Thomas Wingfield, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy in the Trump administration, said that the Department of Defense (DoD) should work to align cyberspace and emerging operations within the larger information environment, C4ISRNet reported on Friday. “If cyber as a domain is in its adolescence, then information is surely in its infancy,” Wingfield said. 

In Nov. 2019, Wingfield noted that his third policy priority for the job was to help integrate cyber and information as doctrines and domains. He stated that adversaries see information and cyber as a coherent whole and are moving forward with speed and confidence.

Wingfield said that cross-functional teams can be limited and create confusion. To remedy this challenge, he recommended that the DoD appoint two deputy assistant secretaries of defense, with one heading cyber policy and the other charged with information operations.

Under Wingfield’s plan, the assistant secretary of defense would be the principal adviser on both topics, which would preserve their separate spheres of expertise at the working level, while ensuring integration before presenting information to the secretary of defense.

“But we should be thinking in terms of defining the problem we want to solve, then mapping out concrete next steps,” he added. Lloyd Austin, secretary of defense and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, pledged during his confirmation to reevaluate the department’s posture within the information sphere and how it conducts operations.

Austin committed to the cybersecurity review and to joining the ongoing review of SolarWinds impact on DoD. He also indicated in his responses to advanced policy questions that the U.S. needs to be more proactive in cybersecurity and operations to counter persistent malicious cyber campaigns by China and Russia.

"I believe the Department must effectively counter these campaigns by taking proactive action to: generate insights about the adversary's cyber operations and capabilities; enable its interagency, industry, and international partners to create better defenses, and; acting, when necessary, to disrupt adversary cyber actors and halt malicious activities," Austin wrote.

"Any intrusion operation is of great concern to the security of our systems and country," Austin said. The SolarWinds compromise is "greatly concerning, as it impacts a wide swath of American public and private networks."

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) System-of-systems Technology Integration Tool Chain for Heterogeneous Electronic Systems (STITCHES) program has been developed to create networks via self-writing software to deliver broad support to the military services, FedScoop reported on Friday. 

The program will work to solve critical battlefield networking challenges. The software will enable commanders to link data from disparate platforms, such as different weapons systems, to connect “every sensor and every shooter” under the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept.

“We are getting tremendous pull and demand for it,” Tim Grayson, director of the Strategic Technology Office at DARPA said. “The thing that has been the challenge with STITCHES is it’s weird… Anyone can develop their own STITCHES graph-based database but the current knowledge of the team which generated the existing database will be disbanded.” 

STITCHES will build a military Internet of Things by linking data from operations and hardware in air, land, sea, space and cyberspace, then funnel that data to commanders and artificial intelligence-enabled machines for better decision making. STITCHES could provide that data link without strict data standards for endpoints by creating data links and interoperable networks. 

DARPA said STITCHES was able to link different platforms that were built decades apart, allowing for interoperability and data sharing. The software is also entirely owned by the Department of Defense (DoD), without any commercial proprietary tech. 

“The toolchain does not force a common interface standard; rather it rapidly creates the needed connections based on existing fielded capabilities obviating the need to upgrade in order to interoperate,” according to DARPA.

There is also no unit structure set up to effectively use the software, Grayson said. “STITCHES falls in the seams between the boundaries of existing systems and System Program Offices… The Department is moving in this direction, but currently the STITCHES end user does not fully exist,” Grayson said.