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Space Force Enhances Agility within Workforce; Gen. John Raymond Quoted
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Space Force Enhances Agility within Workforce; Gen. John Raymond Quoted

The Space Force has announced that the agency will maintain its workforce of approximately 6,400, which will enable the unit to effectively complete missions, Federal News Network reported on Monday.

“A war that extends into space, or begins or extends into space, is going to be fought over great distances and at tremendous speeds. Big organizations are slow, and big organizations won’t be able to move fast enough to do what we need to do in space,” said Gen. John Raymond, chief of space operations and 2020 Wash100 Award recipient.

The Space Force’s minimal personnel will provide faster mission accomplishments with more agile methodologies. The Space Force has cut its initial estimates of the headquarters personnel it will need from more than 1,000 to fewer than 600. In its field commands, the Space Force now plans to have two fewer layers of command structure than its main predecessor, the Air Force, traditionally has had.

“The National Defense Authorization Act [which created the Space Force] gives us a clean sheet of paper about how we are going to develop our people,” Raymond added. “I think when somebody comes in, we’re looking to develop a model that allows them to be in the Space Force full time… transition to part time with the reserve component, and have much more portability between those different segments.”

The 2020 NDAA directed Department of Defense (DoD) officials to study how the Space Force should use National Guard and reserve forces, since many of the functions the new service is inheriting are performed by reserve forces today.

On Dec. 20, 2019, President Trump signed the fiscal 2020 NDAA authorizing the creation of the Space Force. Weeks prior to that, Raymond told SpaceNews that the establishment of the new service branch would help the country better protect its satellites.

“And just as U.S. Space Command has a singular focus on the war fighting aspect of space, having a Space Force with a singular focus on the space domain will be hugely, hugely helpful to us,” said Raymond. “This is really an exciting time to be in the space business. There’s a lot happening and it’s really an important time for the security of our nation.”

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Serco’s David Dacquino Joins Nathan Board of Directors; Susan Chodakewitz Quoted
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Serco’s David Dacquino Joins Nathan Board of Directors; Susan Chodakewitz Quoted

Nathan Associates has appointed David Dacquino, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Serco and Wash100 Award recipient to the company’s Board of Directors, Nathan reported on Monday.

“Dave Dacquino is a highly accomplished and respected business leader, and we are so pleased he has joined our board of directors.  Dave brings critical experience in large global operations that will help us advance our plans to continue to grow and diversity Nathan,” said Susan Chodakewitz, president and CEO of Nathan.

Dacquino will bring nearly four decades of experience to Nathan’s Board of Directors, including top-level executive positions with defense, aerospace and federal government contractor companies. With Secro, Dacquino supervises the $1 billion business with approximately 6,000 employees providing support in the areas of defense, transportation, citizen services and health services.

Prior to his current position with the company, he served as senior vice president of the Defense Services business unit and oversaw Serco’s work in the areas of ship and shore/base modernization, hardware integration, acquisition and program management, logistics support and personnel readiness.

Before Serco, Dacquino served as president and CEO of SkyLink, where he provided support for military airlift, search and rescue operations, international election support, remote construction, disaster recovery, aerial fire suppression and medical emergency and evacuation.

He also served as CEO of VT Group between 2009 and 2013. In the role, Dacquino was in charge of all national operations for British owned corporations including supporting defense customers with C4ISR installations and modifications on ship and shore and commercial IT integration programs.

As vice president and general manager of Raytheon Technical Services’ Integrated Support Solutions Sector, Dacquino was the executive in charge of all technical, scientific and professional services for defense, federal and commercial customers worldwide for the services operating company. He managed international programs in South America, the former Soviet Union and Europe and was responsible for profit and loss for $1.4 billion business.

Dacquino served a more than 15-year tenure with Lockheed Martin, where he held a variety of leadership positions from 1988 to 2001.

About Nathan

Nathan is a private international economic and analytics consulting firm that works with government and commercial clients around the globe to deliver practical solutions and achieve lasting results.

Whether building frameworks for economic growth or navigating regulatory hurdles, securing infrastructure financing or evaluating and assessing disputes, Nathan’s experts serve as trusted partners, offering clients the analysis, technical advice, and strategies they need for sound decision-making.

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SpaceX Launches Satellite & Smallsats on Falcon 9 Rocket; Gabriel Cristian Absi Quoted
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SpaceX Launches Satellite & Smallsats on Falcon 9 Rocket; Gabriel Cristian Absi Quoted

SpaceX has announced that its Falcon 9 rocket has successfully launched on Aug. 30th, carrying the SAOCOM 1B mission, the company reported on Monday. The mission has placed the SAOCOM 1B spacecraft into orbit as well as two rideshare payloads, Tyvak-0172 and PlanetiQ’s GNOMES-1.

The mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. , signifying SpaceX’s first launch to a polar orbit from the East Coast, and the first polar launch from Florida in decades.

Falcon 9’s first stage previously launched Dragon to the International Space Station (ISS) for SpaceX’s 19th and 20th commercial resupply missions, and it also supported the launch of SpaceX’s ninth Starlink mission.

SAOCOM 1B was deployed approximately 14 minutes after launch. GNOMES-1 and Tyvak-0172 deployed approximately 61 and 62 minutes after liftoff respectively.

Polar orbits are popular for weather and remote sensing satellites to enable coverage of the Earth’s full surface. SpaceX launched the first SAOCOM satellite, SAOCOM-1A, into a polar orbit from Vandenberg in Oct. 2018 on a Falcon 9 rocket.

The Aug. 30 launch of Saocom-1B has completed Argentina’s SAOCOM system, which has consisted of twin 3,000-kilogram satellites equipped with L-band phased array antennas that can image day and night and through clouds. The SAOCOM satellites are designed to detect soil moisture and strengthen Argentina’s agricultural sector.

“The quality of the image that we obtained with the SAOCOM-1A is very amazing,” Gabriel Cristian Absi, vice president of INVAP’s aerospace division said. “There are a lot of companies and governmental [entities] in Argentina that are very interested in the information that SAOCOM can provide to them.”

About SpaceX

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets. As one of the world’s fastest growing providers of launch services, SpaceX has secured over 100 missions to its manifest, representing over $12 billion on contract.

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CISA Issues Remote Vulnerability & Patch Management Guide
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CISA Issues Remote Vulnerability & Patch Management Guide

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued a document to guide federal agencies when patching remote devices outside agency networks.

CISA said the Capacity Engagement Guide for Remote Vulnerability and Patch Management seeks to complement the interim Trusted Internet Connections 3.0 telework guidance released in April.

The document presents a scenario where a vulnerability and patch management tool is hosted in an agency-sanctioned cloud environment and enables remote devices to utilize split tunneling to access resources in the cloud.

“Agencies using this approach must ensure that remote device traffic destined for the cloud-based solution is properly constrained to sanctioned destinations and that roaming devices do not connect to unsanctioned resources, i.e., individual software applications are not allowed to directly access and download updates from vendor sites,” the guide reads.

CISA said the guide applies to software on managed end-user government-furnished equipment running on MacOS or Microsoft Windows operating systems and provides a checklist of requirements agencies should meet to facilitate the implementation of the cloud-based remote vulnerability and patch management tool.

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Report: DHS Automated Data Sharing With 11 Gov’t Programs Saves $578M
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Report: DHS Automated Data Sharing With 11 Gov’t Programs Saves $578M

A recent report from the Deparment of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates the federal government has generated more than $578 million in cost savings as a result of DHS agencies’ efforts to share people’s personal data with 11 state and federal programs, Nextgov reported Friday.

The DHS annual report released Aug. 14 details the department’s 11 data matching agreements with five states and five federal agencies and notes that cost savings range between $380,000 and $414 million per year under those agreements.

“In addition to creating significant savings for taxpayers, these contracts protect personal privacy by establishing the conditions, safeguards, and procedures under which the data is disclosed,” the report reads. “One of the Privacy Office’s functions is to ensure that technologies used at the department sustain, and do not erode, privacy protections.”

One of the data matching agreements in 2019 is between the department’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The computer matching agreement, which sought to address improper duplication of benefits, enabled HUD and FEMA to save $94 million and $13 million respectively over a seven-year period.

FEMA also had a CMA with the Small Business Administration (SBA). The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) also signed agreements with the Department of Education, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Social Security Administration (SSA), New York State Department of Labor,  New Jersey Department of Labor, Massachusetts Division of Unemployment Assistance, Texas Workforce Commission, California Department of Health Care Services and the California Department of Social Services.

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IRS Digitalization Office Takes Incremental Funding Approach to IT Modernization
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IRS Digitalization Office Takes Incremental Funding Approach to IT Modernization

The Internal Revenue Service’s newly established enterprise digitalization and case management office has started to adopt an incremental approach to funding information technology modernization programs, including the digitization of paper-based taxpayer services and consolidation of case management platforms, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Harrison Smith, co-director of EDCMO and former deputy chief procurement officer at the IRS, said advancing IT upgrade projects in “smaller chunks” allows the agency to identify viable concepts within months or weeks.

“Identifying opportunities where we can take an informed shot and frankly an informed risk and continue if something works before we really invest a significant amount of money, it’s really a very strong business case for how we’re pursuing things in this office in general,” Smith said.

Smith and EDCMO Co-Director Justin Lewis Abold-LaBreche will oversee the transition of business processes to a Pegasystems-built enterprise case management platform in the cloud.

Abold-LaBreche said the IRS will take about a year to 15 months to finalize the move and EDCMO expects the initial business process to be operational on the cloud-based system by December.

“We have a fast feedback loop all the way to the end-user employee to say, ‘Is this working for you?’ and they’re involved in the development cycle. And then the big picture, we’re tackling business process modernization policy change and technology all at the same time, and we’re doing that in these bite-sized chunks, so it makes big change possible, but in a less risky way,” Abold-LaBreche added.

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Glenn Dean Named Army Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems
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Glenn Dean Named Army Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems

Col. Glenn Dean III has been tapped to assume the role of program executive officer for ground combat systems at the U.S. Army.

Dean currently serves as deputy for acquisition and systems management at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, the Department of Defense said Thursday.

Prior to ASAALT, Dean worked as project manager for the Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

He also served at the Tank-Automotive Research Development & Engineering Center as military deputy and supported the Bradley and Armored Knight programs as product manager.

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NASA Postpones Solicitation Procedures for ‘Free-Flying’ LEO Station
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NASA Postpones Solicitation Procedures for ‘Free-Flying’ LEO Station

NASA is terminating plans to develop a “free-flyer” commercial station as part of the agency’s long-term effort to commercialize operations in low-Earth orbit (LEO), SpaceNews reported Thursday.

In October, the agency issued a draft solicitation for the standalone station in LEO as part of Appendix K under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnership (NextSTEP) program.

NASA intends to use NextSTEP technologies to eventually transition commercial operations from the International Space Station (ISS) to industry-built LEO platforms.

Angela Hart, manager for LEO commercialization at NASA, told attendees at the recent ISS Research and Development Conference that the agency is reevaluating its Appendix K solicitation and planning to develop a strategy for related efforts.

“I can’t promise any specific timelines associated with that, but we are definitely working on the free flyer and intend to release a solicitation soon on that once we get our strategy all agreed to internally,” she noted.

Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight programs at NASA, noted that the agency’s long-term goal is to have more than one commercial platform in orbit.

Hart and McAlister’s comments come after NASA awarded Axiom Space a potential $140M contract in March to build a habitation module that will be attached to the ISS.

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GAO: DoD Must Improve Info Sharing Among Military Branches’ Maintenance Depots
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GAO: DoD Must Improve Info Sharing Among Military Branches’ Maintenance Depots

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending the Department of Defense (DoD) to improve information sharing among its repair depots through the implementation of working groups and best practices aimed at meeting weapons system maintenance goals.

GAO said in a blog post published Thursday that although the DoD has experienced challenges in meeting weapons repair objectives in recent years, the department also reported benefits through the sharing of lessons learned.

According to the watchdog, the U.S. Navy is “struggling to complete maintenance on time” for submarines, aircraft carriers and fixed-wing aircraft from fiscal years 2014 through 2019.

GAO noted that the Navy was on track to meet maintenance deadlines “about 50 percent of the time”, with the service branch’s aircraft spending over 62,000 additional days in maintenance depots since FY 2014.

The agency recommends the Navy to address its workforce issues and identify “more accurate turn-around target times” for aircraft maintenance.

The U.S. Army, Marine Corps and Air Force largely met depot maintenance goals during the same period, GAO noted. However, the Army and Marine Corps need to improve their respective metrics for progress and workflow management.

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Robyn Gatens Takes Acting Director Role at ISS
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Robyn Gatens Takes Acting Director Role at ISS

Robyn Gatens, a 35-year NASA veteran, has been appointed acting director at the International Space Station (ISS). Gatens will collaborate with ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano in overseeing the space station program's strategy, policy, integration, and stakeholder engagement, NASA said Friday.

She will also manage potential risks and deliver technical insights under her new role. Gatens served as deputy director at the ISS and helped the NASA carry out strategic planning for a low-Earth orbit commercialization effort.

She also worked as systems capability leader for environmental control, life support, crew health and performance systems at the agency. Former ISS Director Sam Scimemi has taken the role of special assistant at NASA's human exploration and operations mission directorate.

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