Gil Alterovitz, director of artificial intelligence at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), said VA is testing an AI ‘to-go’ delivery model to help medical centers during the COVID-19 pandemic, FedScoop reported Tuesday.

Alterovitz said Tuesday during the ATARC IT Acquisition Virtual Summit that VA is working with academia and industry to develop AI modules that can be embedded and integrated across various systems. Such modules serve as plugins to existing software.

He noted that one of those AI modules was embedded in a department’s patient dashboard for use by veterans. That module helps VA’s health facilities predict an individual’s risk for the new coronavirus.

“Similarly, when you think about cutting-edge AI, many times it takes years for it to be developed and to lead to actual care — kind of like that meandering experience within a restaurant,” Alterovitz said. “And so we’re looking at: How do you cut that time? How do you allow for it to be developed in this kind of scalable, modular model?”

Will Roper, assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics at the U.S. Air Force and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said the service is expected to provide in the next few weeks new information on the “Digital Century Series” concept for aircraft procurement, National Defense reported Tuesday.

The concept seeks to speed up future aircraft development through the adoption of advanced software development processes, open systems architecture, digital engineering and other techniques.

“It’s a completely outside-the-box-idea in this century, but not too uncommon when the Air Force was first created [in the mid-20th century] that you could have continual competition for small lots of airplanes,” Roper told reporters Tuesday during a teleconference.

He said the Air Force is about three weeks out from coming up with a business case to prove the viability of the concept.

“We brought in some independent experts to help check our assumptions, check our map,” he said. “We’ve done the best job we can with our own data, comparing and contrasting.”

Roper also discussed the digital thread concept as a key element of the service’s Digital Century Series initiative.

The U.S. Air Force's operational energy office seeks ideas on how the service branch can better leverage aviation fuel for boosted performance and efficiency.

The office partnered with the AFWERX innovation program to launch the Airmen Powered by Innovation Challenge through which USAF members may submit ideas on aviation fuel optimization, USAF said Monday.

A group of subject matter experts will review submitted ideas and help Air Force Operational Energy select entries based on costs, risks, challenges and potential benefits.

Topics of interest include optimized fuel loads, energy and logistics risk mitigation, engine sustainment processes, lighter weight aircraft parts and efficient flight formations.

Air Force Operational Energy works to reduce the service branch's energy-related risks and boost energy reliability.

The U.S. Space Force has completed flight readiness review activities for a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) mission focused on sending four satellite payloads to orbit for intelligence missions.

The Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) said Saturday that NRO Launch-129 will lift off from NASA’s launch complex on Wallops Island in Virginia as part of the Orbital/Suborbital Program 3 (OSP-3) initiative.

According to a report by C4ISRnet, Northrop Grumman’s Minotaur IV rocket will launch NROL-129 within the 9 a.m. ET window on Wednesday. The report noted that details on the NRO payloads remain classified.

Lt. Col. Ryan Rose, chief of the Launch Small Launch and Targets Division at SMC, said that NROL-129 will serve as the division’s first Space Force mission as well as the “first dedicated NRO mission” from Wallops’ Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

SMC has launched 26 missions through the Minotaur vehicle with the last mission taking place in 2013, he noted.

NASA has concluded assembly and initial full-systems testing of the James Webb Space Telescope built by Northrop Grumman and Ball Aerospace ahead of electrical analysis and critical software operations for the observatory.

NASA said Monday that the comprehensive systems test (CST) serves as the first full-systems evaluation for the telescope to assess the performance of its software and electronic parts.

In the coming months, the team will conduct acoustic and vibration tests to mimic launch scenarios as well as a full-system scan in preparation for the observatory’s launch scheduled for March 2021.

“We have a lot of pride, and feel a lot of personal reward in what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last year in assembling Webb into its final form, and with the completion of this latest systems evaluation we can confidently move forward knowing that the assembly was a success,” said Randy Pollema, electrical integration and testing lead for the James Webb effort at Northrop.

Teams worked for 15 consecutive days to perform thousands of procedural steps during the CST phase, according to NASA.