Gen. Mike Holmes, head of Air Combat Command, said the U.S. Air Force plans to hold a competition for trainer jets for use in testing the “Rebuilding the Forge” training concept, Defense News reported Thursday. The Reforge training concept seeks to expedite the process of developing experienced fighter pilots. Holmes said the service intends to allow other companies to offer alternative options.

“In our initial market research, there was some thought that there might be only one airplane there was going to be bid against it. But as we did more market research, we found out that there were multiple people that wanted to bid, and they were going to bid with a couple of different airplanes at least,” Holmes told reporters at a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event.

The service initially planned to lease from Hillwood Aviation up to eight T-50A trainers, which was built by Korea Aerospace Industries and offered by Lockheed Martin for the T-X competition. Boeing won the T-X contract with its T-7 Red Hawk offering.

“We proposed to lease some airplanes while we’re waiting on the T-7 to arrive and do some experiments along with AETC [Air Education and Training Command] to try to figure out what’s the best use of this new T-7 that we’re going to buy,” Holmes said.

He noted that the service plans to start leasing up to 11 training jets by the summer of 2021 through the RFX program.

Texas-based healthcare information technology company inContext.ai has received $225,000 in funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build artificial intelligence-based healthcare tools.

Robert Grzeszczuk, CEO of inContext.ai, said in a statement published Wednesday the funds will potentially allow the company to update the efficiency of its offerings through collaborative efforts.

"Our goal is to make ‘dark clinical data’ which is buried in diagnostic reports, accessible and actionable anytime, anywhere," said Grzeszczuk.

Grzeszczuk added inContext.ai plans to compete for NSF's $1 million Phase II funding. The company has developed a platform that works to optimize and support physicians' workflow by augmenting their interaction with counter-intuitive software tools.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) used a modern simulation tool to administer a wargame exercise that took place in August 2019. USINDOPACOM leveraged the Standard Wargame Integration Facilitation Toolkit to conduct the Joint Forces Energy Wargame (JFEW) and perform associated analyses, the U.S. Air Force said Wednesday.

Participants also used SWIFT to quickly address fuel logistics issues at the four-day event in Camp Smith, Honolulu. The Office of the Secretary of Defense's Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation group developed SWIFT in a matter of 12 weeks.

“The tool helped us identify a few critical energy challenges for the Air Force and joint operations, and provided decision-makers with data-driven insight on how we can improve operational plans for increased readiness," said Dominick Wright, team lead for JFEW.

CAPE engineers plan to use SWIFT with continuous updates for more joint exercises in the future.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is looking to appoint government personnel to help their own agencies achieve goals under the Federal Data Strategy (FDS), FedScoop reported Wednesday.

The “detailees” will complete 20 objectives meant to support FDS action plans, solicit agency input, coordinate with chief data officers, evaluate agency performance, share case studies and establish resources through interagency groups.

Detailees will also develop the 2021 Action Plan and conduct outreach programs with agencies as well as working groups to drive FDS implementation.

In December, OMB released the final draft version of the 2020 FDS which details goals that agencies must achieve by the year's end. Objectives include establishing data standards, developing quality metrics and updating data repositories.

OMB will accept applications through July 17 ahead of expected onboarding on Sept. 1.

Naval Information Warfare (NAVWAR) Systems Command has tested a technology made to equip the USS Gabrielle Giffords littoral combat ship with bolstered cybersecurity and backup connectivity. The Commercial Cellular as a Transport (CCaaT) test aims to demonstrate the ship's cyber readiness outside the continental U.S., the U.S. Navy said Wednesday.

CCaaT provides the Independence-variant ship connectivity via 4G LTE technology to establish an alternative connection in the event of satellite communications failure. The technology also allows technical personnel to remotely address issues amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The initial results from OCONUS testing are positive in showing how we can leverage commercial technology to get the fleet important cyber software updates quicker and more reliably,” said Nick Freije, technical director of NAVWAR's Fleet Readiness Directorate (FRD). 

NAVWAR FRD is working with Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific to further implement CCaaT technology across piers where a higher bandwidth still isn't available.

Jose Arrieta, chief information officer of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said the use of commercial-off-the-shelf technologies resulted in a more flexible approach to gathering data on the COVID-19 pandemic, FedScoop reported Wednesday.

Arrieta told attendees during a recent webinar that the department’s HHS Protect data analytics tool was able to establish fortified identity, credential and access management (ICAM) defenses while securing the transmission of data.

He noted that foreign adversaries can easily exploit ICAM layers and render existing government security protocols obsolete. The ICAM capability can help agencies other than HHS fortify their network defenses amid the ongoing health crisis, according to Arrieta.

“The way that you actually deliver and the way that you actually contract for a business outcome related to digitizing a process is totally different than it was a few years ago, maybe even a few months ago,” he said. “I think the pandemic has changed that.”

HHS Protect was launched in April 2020 and has collected over 200 health data sets across 6,146 hospitals and 80 percent of private labs to date, the report states.