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Vice Adm. Jon Hill on MDA’s Layered Homeland Missile Defense System Against ICBM Threats
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Vice Adm. Jon Hill on MDA’s Layered Homeland Missile Defense System Against ICBM Threats

Vice Adm. Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said there are several challenges MDA needs to address as it develops a layered homeland defense system against intercontinental ballistic missile threats and one concerns the upcoming test of the SM-3 Block IIA missile, Defense News reported Tuesday.

The upcoming SM-3 Block IIA test is scheduled by the end of 2020 and Hill said travel and coordination challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic could have an impact on the schedule.

Hill said Tuesday during a Heritage Foundation virtual event that MDA will conduct another test involving a complex ICBM target that will have “a lot of separation debris and that has a lot of countermeasures.”

Another challenge MDA needs to address is the development of engagement coordination between the various layers of the homeland missile defense architecture.

“Let’s just say that step one is a ship off the coast as a complement to [Ground-based Midcourse Defense system]. Those systems today talk already, but they’re not talking in terms of being layered defenders,” Hill said.

“So if GMD, for example, decides he’s going to wait this first shot out and let the ship take it, we have to have the communication network to go do that. We have to have the technical architecture with the Command and Control Battle Management system, but in that context of layered defense and engagement coordination.”

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Air Force’s LevelUp Code Works Software Factory Uses DevSecOps to Build Cyber Tools; Lt. Col. John Priestly Quoted
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Air Force’s LevelUp Code Works Software Factory Uses DevSecOps to Build Cyber Tools; Lt. Col. John Priestly Quoted

A San Antonio-based software factory the U.S. Air Force launched in December 2019 has been providing cyber platforms to U.S. military cyber organizations, SIGNAL Magazine reported Wednesday. The LevelUp Code Works Software Factory has adopted an Agile acquisition model and DevSecOps approach to facilitate the development of cyber-related software.

“We're going down the path of DevSecOps approaches, which requires us to automate to the maximum extent our ability to test, investigate security, provide cybersecurity and the effectiveness of these applications, micro services and software packages that we're delivering,” Lt. Col. John Priestly, director of the LevelUp Code Works Software Factory, said Tuesday at an AFCEA Alamo event.

Priestly, who also serves Unified Platform Program manager and materiel leader, mentioned LevelUp’s partnership with U.S. Cyber Command and cyber components to deliver digital cyber platforms and software to unified combatant commands and other service branches.

“U.S. Cyber Command and the service cyber components participate throughout each of our program increments, all the way in the beginning, to planning out which capabilities to how we're going to prioritize, what is going to go into the backlog, and then moving forward into actual development and execution,” Priestly said. “They are shoulder-to-shoulder with us all the way through to the demonstration and delivery of capability. And that's been a huge win for us."

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DOE Names Five Teams for Smart Manufacturing Information-Building Effort
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DOE Names Five Teams for Smart Manufacturing Information-Building Effort

The Department of Energy is investing $1M in five projects to explore smart manufacturing applications that favor energy efficiency and performance.

DOE said Tuesday its Clean Energy Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute selected teams for the creation of information profiles that tackle various topics related to smart manufacturing.

These profiles will feature different types of smart manufacturing information such as equipment data and process models.

Tackled topics include predictive diagnostics, computer numerical control, production efficiencies, poultry processing yield optimization and chemical mixing efficiency.

The effort supports a White House report that emphasizes the need for these smart technologies as the manufacturing industry digitally transforms.

The selected teams are:

  • Atollogy, South Bay Solutions and North Carolina State University
  • Case Western Reserve University and Rafter Equipment
  • ECM Performance Materials and Flexware Innovation
  • Ectron and Inova Diagnostics
  • Tyson Foods and ThinkIQ
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GSA’s Bob De Luca on Technology Transformation Service’s Automation, Identity Mgmt Efforts
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GSA’s Bob De Luca on Technology Transformation Service’s Automation, Identity Mgmt Efforts

Bob De Luca, acting director of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Service (TTS), has said his office is working on prototyping efforts focused on identity management and robotic process automation (RPA), Nextgov reported Tuesday.

De Luca told the publication in an interview that TTS is collaborating with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Small Business Administration (SBA) on initiatives such as modernizing the Login.gov portal for personnel access.

He added that the GSA unit’s RPA work falls under its artificial intelligence portfolio and builds on ongoing plans to establish an RPA-focused Center of Excellence (CoE).

According to De Luca, TTS is “in a great position” and has significant modernization capacity following the expansion of the CoE program to six centers.

“People are truly the heart of this organization—of any organization—but this one in particular because they have to be able to work together to solve these problems,” he said.

“They have to be able to be deployed to those agencies and very quickly understand what's going on and where they're at, and then formulate an issue, determine how they're going to accept that problem statement and come up with their plan to help the agency get to where they need to go.”

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DHS Issues COVID-19 Screening Tech RFI
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DHS Issues COVID-19 Screening Tech RFI

The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) science and technology (S&T) directorate has posted a request for information to seek potential sources of non-invasive febrile temperature screening technologies to assist in COVID-19 response efforts.

DHS said Tuesday that it eyes contactless temperature screening thermograph technologies designed for mass fever detection at various entry points. The department aims to address the needs of protective services and first responses through the market survey.

“While screening for mass fevers may not be a panacea for getting back to ‘normal’ given the reported asymptomatic case rates, it becomes even more important to explore and use every possible tool that we have at our disposal,” said Bhargav Patel, senior technologist at National Urban Security Technology Laboratory.

Interested vendors have until Aug. 31 to submit their responses to the RFI

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FAA Picks 26 Institutions for UAS Training Program
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FAA Picks 26 Institutions for UAS Training Program

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has partnered with 26 schools across the nation to take part in a program focused on training potential career professionals in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) technology.

FAA said Tuesday the UAS Collegiate Training Initiative, launched in April, will enable participating institutions to engage with industry, government, law enforcement and economic development organizations in labor-related activities involving the UAS sector.

The UAS-CTI program is aimed at recognizing students seeking to pursue careers in aviation as well as UAS development and operation, FAA noted.

The program also comes as part of efforts to comply with the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act, which mandates the agency to “designate consortia of public, two-year institutions of higher education” as community and technical college centers of excellence in small UAS technology training.

Post-secondary institutions with UAS-focused curriculums that want to be designated as a UAS-CTI partner may also apply for recognition to FAA, according to the agency.

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U.S. Space Force Grants U.K. Access to Space Data
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U.S. Space Force Grants U.K. Access to Space Data

The U.S. Space Force and the U.K. have formed a partnership through which the latter will receive access to U.S. space situational awareness data, C4ISRnet reported Tuesday.

The U.K.'s defense ministry will access content from USSF's Standardized Astrodynamics Algorithm Library, a compilation of data that may be used to inform trajectory predictions. The partnership aligns with Operation Olympic Defender, an alliance that aims to protect space assets through multinational collaboration.

A USSF-signed agreement under Operation Olympic Defender made the U.K. the first partner to access U.S. SAAL information. USSF plans to share SAAL access with more nations through Operation Olympic Defender.

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Benjamin Overholt Joins Census Bureau as Deputy Director for Data
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Benjamin Overholt Joins Census Bureau as Deputy Director for Data

Benjamin Overholt, formerly lead statistician at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's office of enterprise data and analytics, has taken the role of deputy director of data at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Overholt brings his seven-year federal civil service experience and expertise in decision support, data analysis and management to his new role, the Census Bureau said Monday.

Prior to his previous post, spent five years at the Department of Justice's (DOJ) civil rights division as statistician. He also served at the U.S. Army for 14 years in various assignments including Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

Overholt received the Meritorious Achievement Award in recognition of his data management work.

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NIST Issues Draft Publication on ‘Explainable’ AI; Jonathon Phillips
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NIST Issues Draft Publication on ‘Explainable’ AI; Jonathon Phillips

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is looking for input on its draft publication detailing the core principles of “explainable” artificial intelligence.

NIST said Tuesday that the draft report comes as part of the agency’s efforts to develop trustworthy AI systems and provide transparency on such systems’ limitations and theoretical capabilities.

According to NIST, explainable AI must have the capacity to provide accompanying evidence for their outputs while accurately reflecting procedures for output generation.

In addition, explainable AI systems must generate meaningful or understandable explanations while operating under conditions “for which it was designed or when the system reaches a sufficient confidence in its output,” according to the report.

"Understanding the explainability of both the AI system and the human opens the door to pursue implementations that incorporate the strengths of each,” said Jonathon Phillips, an electronic engineer at NIST and co-author of the draft report.

“AI is becoming involved in high-stakes decisions, and no one wants machines to make them without an understanding of why,” he noted.

Interested parties must submit feedback on the publication until Oct. 15.

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National Intelligence Office Reorganizes Work Structure; John Ratcliffe Quoted
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National Intelligence Office Reorganizes Work Structure; John Ratcliffe Quoted

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has reorganized its structure to revolve around two different operational directorates. ODNI said Monday that it has established the Policy and Capabilities directorate and renewed the Mission Integration directorate for the agency's organizational restructuring aimed at improving work synchronization.

The new Policy and Capabilities directorate will support the intelligence community's capacity to address future needs, while Mission Integration tackles existing intelligence requirements.

“Together, these two directorates, along with our centers snd independent offices, will provide the foresight, responsiveness and leadership our mission requires," said John Ratcliffe, DNI director.

ODNI based this organizational change on a DNI-led review covering the agency's recent structure.

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