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VT Halter Marine Launches Navy Berthing Barges; Bob Merchent, Kevin Amis Quoted
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VT Halter Marine Launches Navy Berthing Barges; Bob Merchent, Kevin Amis Quoted

VT Halter Marine has achieved multiple milestones on the Auxiliary Personnel Lighter–Small (APL(S)) program, including the launch of the first two berthing barges, erected modules on the third barge and laid the keel on the fourth barge, the company reported on Wednesday.

“It’s been an exciting and busy time in our shipyard this week,” said Bob Merchent, president and CEO of Halter Marine. “We safely and successfully launched two barges and reached significant milestones on the third and fourth barges.”

Halter Marine received the initial contract to design and build two units, with options for four additional units, in Sept. 2018. Construction of all APLs is firm, fixed-price, with a total contract value of over $244 million, if all of the options are exercised, 

The company has projected to deliver the first two APLs in fall 2020, and the third vessel is due to be delivered in the first quarter of 2021. The fourth vessel is expected to be complete in the summer of 2021.

“The launches were carefully orchestrated to ensure a safe transition from dockside to our dry dock. I am proud of the dedication of the women and men at Halter Marine for their outstanding work,” Bob Merchent added.

APLs will be used by the Navy to house crewmembers when ships are in port for availabilities and Inter-Deployment Training Cycles. The barges are mobile and can be towed to new bases or shipyards to support changing fleet requirements and also offer potential use for humanitarian missions and other temporary assignments.

Halter Marine’s vessels will be capable of seating 228 enlisted personnel and 56 officers for each meal. Each vessel is equipped with offices, classrooms, washrooms, laundry facilities, medical treatment areas, barber shop and fitness center.

“My team worked closely with the U.S. Navy Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Signet, the harbor pilots and our sister company, ST Engineering Halter Marine and Offshore to plan to execute successful back-to-back dry dock launches along with the keel laying ceremony and adding modules to APL No. 3,” said Kevin Amis, executive vice president of Operations.

About VT Halter Marine

VT Halter Marine, the marine operations of ST Engineering North America, is based in Pascagoula, Miss., and is a leader in the design and construction of medium-sized ships in the United States. VT Halter Marine designs, builds and repairs a wide variety of ocean-going vessels such as patrol vessels, oil recovery vessels, oil cargo vessels, ferries, logistic support vessels, auxiliaries, and research and survey vessels.

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Iron Bow Names Rhett Butler VP of Systems Integrators and Partner Alliances
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Iron Bow Names Rhett Butler VP of Systems Integrators and Partner Alliances

Iron Bow has appointed Rhett Butler as vice president of Systems Integrators (SI) and Partner Alliances to lead sales strategy and management activity, the company reported on Wednesday. 

Butler will bring more than two decades of sales and leadership experience in federal IT to Iron Bow’s Systems Integrator (SI) and Partner Alliance Teams. He has advanced corporate development, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) consulting, professional services, product sales and business operations throughout his career. 

In his new role with Iron Bow, Butler will lead the sales strategy, management and partnership activity with Iron Bow’s SI community and will be responsible for developing and managing relationships with OEM manufacturers, suppliers and distribution partners.

Prior to joining Iron Bow, Butler served with Intelligent Decisions (ID) as vice president of Sales, where he was responsible for not only expanding ID’s presence across the federal government, but also deepening existing relationships with customers. 

He was integral in the growth and expansion of the company throughout the early stages of his career as well as a driving force behind its recent acquisition. Butler joined the company in 2001, after graduating from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. 

Butler currently serves as a board member for ThanksUSA, an organization devoted to providing need-based college, technical and vocational school scholarships and pathways to employment for children and spouses of the nation’s military troops.

About Iron Bow

Our vision at Iron Bow Technologies’ is “Innovating the world.” We do this through collaborative engagement with our clients, understanding their needs and mission requirements and enabling IT solutions that achieve their goals for today and tomorrow.

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ViON Partners with Scality to Power Cloud Service Offerings; Tom Frana, David Kushner Quoted
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ViON Partners with Scality to Power Cloud Service Offerings; Tom Frana, David Kushner Quoted

ViON and Scality have partnered to integrate RING8 as a core technology to power ViON's predefined cloud service offerings, including Object Storage-as-a-Service (OSaaS) and the long-term Archive-as-a-Service (AaaS), ViON announced on Wednesday. 

"RING8 is the perfect fit to extend our as-a-Service (aaS) solutions into object storage," said Tom Frana, chairman and CEO of ViON as well as a two-time Wash100 Award winner. "As our first pre-defined private cloud offering, Scality's core technology for object storage is best-in-class." 

RING will provide comprehensive, native AWS S3 API compatibility to ensure all cloud applications that run on AWS can also run on RING. RING will also support object storage with a native Azure Blob API to further expand application compatibility. 

ViON also selected RING8 to power long-term data archiving. The cloud services are components of ViON’s Enterprise Cloud (VEC) Infrastructure Services. The merger of ViON's U.S. federal market experience and Scality's unstructured data technology will address storage challenges for some of the largest federal agencies.   

ViON’s extended VEC portfolio will provide private cloud solutions that will enable users to scale non-disruptively as customers' needs change. Scality's software-only, vendor-agnostic approach will support ViON and allow the company to customize on-prem hardware to the exact specification and budget of each customer to support agile IT modernization within the government.

VEC's OSaaS will be offered in three classes, including a single-site storage bucket, a single-site storage bucket with data replication for disaster recovery and a multi-site storage bucket with data replicated between the two active sites. 

"Scality's platform empowers ViON to provide a secure, scalable service with market leading SLA's at cloud scale cost," said David Kushner, vice president of Sales at ViON. "This offering provides a unique service, which helps customers store, manage, and protect unstructured data at any scale with confidence." 

About ViON Corporation

ViON Corporation is a cloud service provider with over 40 years' experience designing and delivering enterprise data center solutions for government agencies and commercial businesses. The company provides a large portfolio of IT as-a-Service, including infrastructure, multi-cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.

ViON delivers an outstanding customer experience at every step with professional and managed services, backed by highly-trained, cleared resources. A veteran-owned company based in Herndon, Virginia, the company has field offices throughout the U.S.

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Jacobs Supports NASA Artemis Mission by Advancing SRBs; Steve Arnette Quoted
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Jacobs Supports NASA Artemis Mission by Advancing SRBs; Steve Arnette Quoted

Jacobs and NASA's Exploration Ground Systems Program announced on Wednesday that the motor segments of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) arrived by rail at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on June 15, 2020. 

"The arrival of the SRB components means we are getting very close to the stacking of flight hardware in the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at KSC," said Jacobs Critical Mission Solutions senior vice president Steve Arnette. 

Jacobs' success has marked a critical step in NASA's preparations for Artemis I, which will extend the frontiers of human deep space exploration. The twin SRBs are part of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS). 

The company’s team received the SRB hardware from Northrop Grumman. The segments were filled with solid propellant and will be transferred to Jacobs for integration. Each SRB contains five solid fuel segments, and each will provide 3.6 million pounds of maximum thrust. 

Jacobs will inspect and conduct final processing, including installing sensors on the motor segments and transferring them to storage. The aft motor segments will be mated with the aft skirts and aft exit cones in build-up stands in the RPSF, to form the aft assembly for each SRB. 

Once completed, the Aft Assemblies will be the first component of flight hardware to be stacked on the mobile launcher. Once all the SRB components are moved to the VAB and mated to the stack, then the SLS core stage rocket will be lowered onto the mobile launcher, between the SRBs.

Jacobs is NASA's largest services contractor and integrator of full lifecycle aerospace capability including design and construction; base, mission and launch operations; sustaining capital maintenance; and secure and intelligent asset management, development, modification and testing processes. 

"Once our team has conducted final inspections, processing and mating of the SRB segments, they will transport everything to the VAB for stacking to begin," Arnette concluded. 

About Jacobs

At Jacobs, we're challenging today to reinvent tomorrow by solving the world's most critical problems for thriving cities, resilient environments, mission-critical outcomes, operational advancement, scientific discovery and cutting-edge manufacturing, turning abstract ideas into realities that transform the world for good. 

With $13 billion in revenue and a talent force of more than 55,000, Jacobs provides a full spectrum of professional services including consulting, technical, scientific and project delivery for the government and private sector.

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House Panel Unveils $71.5B FY 2021 Funding Bill for DOC, DOJ, NASA, NSF
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House Panel Unveils $71.5B FY 2021 Funding Bill for DOC, DOJ, NASA, NSF

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday released a draft bill that would allocate $71.5 billion in fiscal year 2021 funds for the departments of Justice (DOJ) and Commerce (DOC), NASA, National Science Foundation (NSF) and other agencies.

The committee said Tuesday the bill would provide $9.54 billion for the Department of Commerce, including $5.45 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and $1.68 billion for the Census Bureau.

DOJ would get $33.2 billion in FY 2021 funds to promote civil rights and support federal law enforcement efforts. The measure would authorize $9.7 billion for the FBI and $412 million for grant programs in support of anti-opioid abuse efforts.

The proposed legislation would give NASA $22.63 billion in funds to support human space exploration programs, aeronautics research and science, technology, engineering and mathematics engagement efforts. NSF would get $8.55 billion in funds under the measure to advance research on quantum information science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, STEM education, neuroscience and advanced manufacturing.

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Christopher Wray: ‘Almost Half’ of FBI’s 5K Counterintelligence Investigations Linked to China
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Christopher Wray: ‘Almost Half’ of FBI’s 5K Counterintelligence Investigations Linked to China

FBI Director Christopher Wray said China is using cyber-intrusion techniques and bribing “trusted insiders” to steal U.S. intellectual property during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nextgov reported Tuesday. Wray said almost 50 percent of the FBI’s nearly 5,000 counterintelligence investigations are linked to China and that the bureau opens a China-related investigation every 10 hours.

“China is engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary,” Wray said Tuesday at a Hudson Institute-hosted event. “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. It’s a threat to our economic security—and by extension, to our national security.”

He noted that China is targeting U.S. agriculture, robotics, health care and aviation sectors using economic espionage as part of efforts to weaken the country’s economic dominance, leading to a 1,300 percent rise in China-related economic espionage cases in the past 10 years.

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Army Brig. Gen. Rob Collins on Joint All-Domain C2 Program
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Army Brig. Gen. Rob Collins on Joint All-Domain C2 Program

Brig. Gen. Rob Collins, program executive officer for command, control, and communications – tactical at the U.S. Army, told C4ISRNET in an interview published Wednesday how the service supports the Department of Defense (DoD) to help advance the Joint All-Domain Command and Control program.

Collins said his office is collaborating with the ISR task force and cross-functional teams like the assured position navigation and timing CFT on efforts related to JADC2.

“We’re working on integrated architectures, multi-functional sensors that are integrated within the network for both (data) transport and mission command, and really solutions that are tailored to meet the unique requirements of our Army ground force,” he told the publication.

He noted that the TITAN ground station program will play a key role in the JADC2 initiative and discussed how the program will leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“TITAN is certainly a significant focus area in the modernization effort. It’s a key component for our deep sense capability and really being scalable and expeditionary as an intelligence ground station and supporting commanders across the multi-domain operations battlefield framework,” Collins said.

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CBP-Used Autonomous Surveillance Tech Gets Program of Record Status
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CBP-Used Autonomous Surveillance Tech Gets Program of Record Status

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has designated a certain surveillance system as a program of record, allowing the technology to be continuously procured through allotted funds.

CBP said Thursday that its Autonomous Surveillance Towers, used by U.S. Border Patrol, are designed to autonomously facilitate surveillance on a 24-hour basis. AST uses radar technology to sense moving objects that are then tracked by the tower's camera. The tower uses algorithms to determine what the detected object is.

“These towers give agents in the field a significant leg up against the criminal networks that facilitate illegal cross-border activity,” said Rodney Scott, border patrol chief. CBP leverages autonomy to help border patrol agents focus on main tasks as surveillance operations run unmanned.

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DOE Unveils Participants for Efficiency-Focused R&D Entrepreneurship Programs
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DOE Unveils Participants for Efficiency-Focused R&D Entrepreneurship Programs

The Department of Energy (DOE) has selected 20 researchers to take part in two-year entrepreneurship programs to support the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

DOE said Monday the selected participants will work with the department’s national laboratories to support early-stage research and development efforts focused on energy efficiency, storage and productivity.

Under the Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Programs, six teams will work with the Argonne National Laboratory while seven and four teams will work with the Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge laboratories, respectively.

Argonne will focus on materials engineering, cybersecurity and smart manufacturing as part of the “Chain Reaction” program while Lawrence Berkeley will work on additive manufacturing, building efficiency and electrification for the “Cyclotron Road” project.

Oak Ridge’s work under the “Innovation Crossroads” program will involve topics such as smart manufacturing, computing and cybersecurity.

According to DOE, the entrepreneurship effort is meant to drive investments and promote opportunities to launch manufacturing and energy-related businesses.

“By helping entrepreneurs bring their concepts to market, the Department is investing in new energy and industrial technologies that bolster our nation’s energy and manufacturing competitiveness,” said Alex Fitzsimmons, deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency.

The programs have awarded over $32 million to support 65 projects and 89 fellows since 2015.

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Army Demos Satellite-Based Fires Direction for Long-Distance Targets
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Army Demos Satellite-Based Fires Direction for Long-Distance Targets

The U.S. Army conducted a live-fire demonstration to assess the capacity of its cross-functional teams to use space-based sensors to defeat beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) targets, C4ISRnet reported Monday.

The exercise, which took place in February and March in Germany, saw the Army's Assured Position, Navigation and Timing (A-PNT) team detect time-sensitive BLOS targets through satellite technologies.

During the demonstration, the Army used its Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and M777 howitzer weapon system to coordinate artillery operations with other sensors, vehicles and platforms for fire direction.

The Army expects the exercise to support its Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) program as well as its efforts to establish a multidomain strategy, according to a spokesperson for the service branch.

The service additionally intends to develop a universal architecture for kinetic and nonkinetic assets and integrate the sensor-to-shooter concept with aviation platforms, the spokesperson noted.

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