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Amentum Partners with Yellow Ribbon Fund to Support Service Members; John Vollmer Quoted
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Amentum Partners with Yellow Ribbon Fund to Support Service Members; John Vollmer Quoted

Amentum has entered a long-term partnership with Yellow Ribbon Fund, a veteran service organization serving wounded, ill and injured service members, to support military members and families, the company reported on Tuesday.

“Our investment in Yellow Ribbon Fund will help enhance the lives of wounded, ill or injured service members by keeping their families together making them stronger during their life-long recovery process,” said John Vollmer, Amentum CEO and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient.

Amentum’s top-level sponsorship as a Champion Partner will enable Yellow Ribbon Fund to provide two apartments near Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The company’s support will deliver housing to family members accompanying active-duty members or veterans undergoing long-term treatment at the medical center, and other critical near-term needs.

“This partnership couldn’t have come at a better time. We are honored to be partnered with a corporation like Amentum, which will be a foundation for us to continue to grow our impact,” said Meg Lewis, Yellow Ribbon Fund’s chief advancement officer.

Each year, Yellow Ribbon Fund serves more than 1,700 military families. In the first six months of 2020, that number increased by 20 percent. Yellow Ribbon Fund has continued to respond to the growing demand for services even though the pandemic has impacted the ability to host in-person fundraising events.

“Our nation’s strength is bolstered by the commitment of our military members and the steadfast support of their families,” added Vollmer. “Amentum is honored to partner with organizations that provide critical support to those who are serving or have served our country.”

About Amentum

Amentum is a premier global technical and engineering services partner supporting critical programs of national significance across defense, security, intelligence, energy, and environment. We draw from a century-old heritage of operational excellence, mission focus, and successful execution underpinned by a strong culture of safety and ethics.

Headquartered in Germantown, Md., we employ more than 34,000 people in all 50 states and 105 foreign countries and territories. Visit us at amentum.com to explore how we deliver excellence for our customers’ most vital missions.

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Army to Expand IT, Cyber Workforce Training Program
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Army to Expand IT, Cyber Workforce Training Program

The U.S. Army plans to expand an existing program that aims to bolster the military branch's information technology and cyber workforce. The Quantum Leap pilot program commenced in September 2020 and will continue as Army officials want to widen the range of IT and cyber areas covered by the effort, the service said Wednesday.

"We started this out with a civilian population, but it is spreading rapidly to [other missions] throughout the Army," said Gregory Garcia, the deputy chief information officer at the Army.

Garcia noted that the Department of Defense's pursuit of new capabilities necessitates the expansion of the current IT workforce's existing skillsets. Quantum Leap and other similar programs are needed to maintain Army competitiveness and to curb future conflict, according to the deputy CIO.

The program now trains nearly 250 Army civilians and will soon extend its reach to soldiers. Quantum Leap's pilot is planned to run for a year from when it began.

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Reps. Frank Pallone, Greg Walden Seek FCC Support for Telecom Equipment Replacement Efforts
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Reps. Frank Pallone, Greg Walden Seek FCC Support for Telecom Equipment Replacement Efforts

Reps. Frank Pallone, Jr., D-N.J., and Greg Walden, R-Ore., have called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to help small carriers plan equipment replacement efforts to comply with the Secure and Trusted Communications Network Act.

In a Nov. 23rd letter, Pallone and Walden told FCC Chairman Ajit Pai the agency should create a list of systems, software and services that providers may adopt to replace telecom equipment deemed to pose national security risks.

Both House lawmakers emphasized the importance of providing financial support to small and rural communications firms that otherwise could not afford network modernization. 

They said the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program, which awaits appropriations from Congress, has garnered bicameral and bipartisan support.

“We urge you to take these specific, non-controversial actions as quickly as possible so these important efforts to secure our communications networks are not delayed,” the two lawmakers said in their letter to Pai.

Pallone and Walden serve as chairman and ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, respectively.

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Army, Virginia Tech Develop Machine Learning Approach to Manage Radar Performance
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Army, Virginia Tech Develop Machine Learning Approach to Manage Radar Performance

The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command has worked with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the Army Research Laboratory to create an automatic method for military radar systems to function in operational environments that are congested and have limited spectrum.

Researchers applied machine learning to understand interference activity as part of a project to explore spectrum sharing between Department of Defense radars and commercial communications equipment, the military branch said Wednesday.

The research, titled “Deep Reinforcement Learning Control for Radar Detection and Tracking in Congested Spectral Environments,” was published in the IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking journal.

Anthony Martone, an Army researcher, said the approach has the potential to help military personnel use a radar technology to detect targets at an extended range without experiencing interference.

The project is part of a broader DoD initiative to facilitate the autonomous behavior of software-based radars with machine learning and adaptive signal processing algorithms.

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DoD Cybersecurity Program Marketplace Goes Live
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DoD Cybersecurity Program Marketplace Goes Live

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Accreditation Body (AB) has created an online repository of contact details of consultancies and professionals that can offer assistance to contractors who want to meet the Department of Defense's (DoD) cyber readiness assessment process, Inside Defense reported Wednesday.

The CMMC-AB Marketplace currently lists 149 cybersecurity practitioners, 123 registered provider organizations and 74 provisional assessors.

Entries listed as practitioners may provide consulting services but they cannot administer assessments, the report noted. The webpage will also include information about third-party assessment organizations tasked with conducting the audits.

DoD sought public comments on its interim rule to implement an assessment methodology and CMMC framework as part of efforts to increase the security of unclassified defense supply chain data. Nov. 30th is the last day for submitting feedback on the rule.

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Consilient-Intel White Paper Details Federated Learning Model for Financial Crime Risk Mgmt
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Consilient-Intel White Paper Details Federated Learning Model for Financial Crime Risk Mgmt

Intel collaborated with Consilient, a joint venture between K2 Integrity and Giant Oak, to produce a white paper that describes a technological approach to update the current anti-money laundering/counter-terrorist financing system.

The "Federated Learning through Revolutionary Technology" report explains how the combination of Consilient's Dozer behavioral analytics tool and Intel's Software Guard Extensions platform could help industry obtain insights on financial crime risks while maintaining data privacy.

Both companies intend for their technologies to support efforts in both public and private sectors to identify illicit activity across the global financial system as part of the federated learning architecture.

Consilient's proprietary technology is designed to use a machine learning algorithm that would travel between servers at multiple institutions to analyze dataset patterns, while the Intel SGX platform functions as a hardware-based trusted execution environment to help organizations avoid unauthorized code or data modifications.

The report noted that Dozer has the potential to cut the false-positive rate in rule-based screening methods and AML/CFT systems from 95 percent to 12 percent.

Juan Zarate, global co-managing partner and chief strategy officer of K2 Integrity and 2016 Wash100 Award recipient, launched Consilient last month with Giant Oak founder and CEO Gary Shiffman. They authored the financial services security white paper in partnership with Intel professionals Nikhil Deshpande, Raghuram Yeluri and Parviz Peiravi.

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FCC Rejects ZTE’s Petition to not be Declared a National Security Threat
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FCC Rejects ZTE’s Petition to not be Declared a National Security Threat

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided to block Chinese company ZTE from contracts under the $8.3 billion Universal Service Fund, due to national security concerns.

FCC said Tuesday its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau denied ZTE's petition for reconsideration of being branded as a threat.

“At the next Open Meeting on December 10, the Commission will vote on rules to implement the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement program to help carriers remove and replace untrusted equipment from their networks, months before the statutory deadline," said Ajit Pai, FCC chairman

The commission declared Huawei and ZTE threats to national security in late June. ZTE requested reconsideration, and FCC rejected that petition.

This decision prohibits the Universal Service Fund from being used for purchases of ZTE products and services.

"Now it is more vital than ever that Congress appropriate funds so that our communications networks are protected from vendors that threaten our national security," Pai added.

FAA to Host Virtual Meeting for Draft Environmental Review of Shuttle Landing Facility
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FAA to Host Virtual Meeting for Draft Environmental Review of Shuttle Landing Facility

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is scheduled to host a virtual public meeting Dec. 2 to seek inputs on a draft environmental assessment for the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's shuttle landing facility.

Space Florida will discuss its intent to apply for a reentry site operator license for the installation's SLF during the virtual event, FAA said Tuesday. FAA will also deliver an overview of the draft review and the licensing process.

The agency will receive comments for the draft until Dec. 7.Applicants are required to undergo environmental reviews to receive reentry site operator licenses in line with the National Environmental Protection Act.

Space Florida currently manages Cape Canaveral's SLF through a launch site operator license. The company plans to support up to 17 reentry landings from 2021 to 2025 once they receive approval for the RSOL.

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New Army PEO Directorate Focuses on Program Integration
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New Army PEO Directorate Focuses on Program Integration

The U.S. Army has established a new directorate that will focus on program integration standards, future threat analysis and technology collaboration across the service branch, C4ISRnet reported Tuesday.

The service's Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors now has a new integration-focused directorate with three sub-offices.

The first one, labeled “Futures,” will tackle threat analysis, technology transitions and the integration of testing activities into multidomain operations and other programs.

The second one, “Architectures," will work on standards that guide integration between different programs. The last office will work to foster collaboration between PEO IEW&S and other Army organizations.

Christian Keller, who has spearheaded Army projects on aerial intelligence sensors, will lead the directorate.

“We have [a] very complex system-of-systems environment we’re dealing with,” Keller said. “We have various sensor capabilities out there, which have to interface to ground stations and may have to interface to various users, both maneuver wise and fires wise and everything like that.”

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USAF Demonstrates B-1B Aircraft’s Expanded Weapons Carriage
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USAF Demonstrates B-1B Aircraft’s Expanded Weapons Carriage

A B-1B Lancer aircraft carried a joint air-to-surface standoff missile with an external pylon at Edwards Air Force Base to demonstrate expanded carriage.

The aircraft demonstrated performance that may serve as stepping stones to carrying hypersonic weapons in the future, U.S. Strategic Command said Tuesday.

“Adapting a small number of our healthiest B-1s to carry hypersonic weapons is vital to bridge between the bomber force we have today, to the force of tomorrow,” said Gen. Tim Ray, who leads Air Force Global Strike Command.

The flight demonstration followed multiple ground tests including one that featured a modified internal bomb bay. The U.S. Air Force will use the demonstration's input to determine B-1B's future technical and weapons integration requirements as a multi-mission aircraft.

"This is a major step forward in our global precision fires capability and it is important we pursue these technologies to remain ahead of our competitors. My goal is to have a limited number of B-1s modified to become the roving linebacker of the western Pacific and the North Atlantic," Ray added. 

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