The U.S. Marine Corps intends to increase the production of the CH-53K heavy-lift helicopter after technical issues have been addressed following the restructure effort, USNI News reported Friday.

James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, told reporters after a House Armed Services Committee hearing about the move to reset the CH-53 program following the identification of 126 technical deficiencies, including the exhaust gas reingestion issue.

“And so we slowed the production buy a little bit on the front end, reset the program last year to make sure we had our arms around the technical risk and we were buying the helicopter we wanted, which again we’ve really seen good progress since then solving all the technical issues,” Geurts told reporters. “As those technical issues have now been solved, I forecast that we will now continue to look at ramping up the production of those airplanes to drive the cost down.”

Geurts joined Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, deputy commandant of the Marine Corps for aviation, at the hearing of HASC’s tactical air and land forces subcommittee to discuss budget requests and aviation initiatives.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s office of the inspector general has issued a report outlining the cloud migration efforts of the government’s two housing loan programs, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Nextgov reported Friday.

Freddie Mac started the Infrastructure Transformation Program in February 2019 and the initiative resulted in the migration of 70 percent of its applications to a commercial cloud. The remaining 30 percent of legacy apps will remain on government-owned data centers as Freddie Mac officials explore cloud-based replacements for such apps.

Fannie Mae also kicked off its own cloud migration effort. The program reported that about 25 percent of its apps had been transitioned to the commercial cloud and seeks to reach the target of 36 percent by the end of the year.

FHFA officials mentioned the cloud’s potential benefits to the two programs, including improvements to disaster recovery, economies of scale, proprietary functions and elastic response.

The report also identified several risks posed by the cloud migration efforts. Those include business resiliency, information security and third-party risks as well as inadequate technical personnel and concentration risk with a cloud service provider.

Will Roper, assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics at the U.S. Air Force and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said the service branch is considering commercial drones and high-end unmanned aircraft as it looks to replace the General Atomics-built MQ-9 Reaper drone, Defense News reported Thursday.

He said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing the Air Force is working on a study that will set the path for the Reaper replacement effort and inform the budget for fiscal year 2022.

"The Reaper has been a great platform for us. Four million flight hours, just undeniable overmatch in a low-end uncontested fight, and it is certainly saving lives,” Roper told lawmakers. “But as we look to the high end fight, we just can't take them into the battlefield. They are easily shot down.”

Roper said the service may require drones that “are more high-end, military-unique” or cheap unmanned attritable aircraft that are reusable.

The Departrment of Veterans Affairs is requesting for a 12 percent increase in funding to support commercial information technology procurement efforts under its IT office, FedScoop reported Thursday.

Paul Lawrence, the VA's undersecretary for benefits, said at a budget request hearing that the department seeks to procure a range of commercial off-the-shelf-offerings such as high-performance computers, customer management systems and other data-related capabilities to enable central processing and location of veteran information.

Surafeal Asgedom, chief modernizing officer at the VA, told attendees at a FedScoop event that COTS procurement has supported efforts like the VA’s online services consolidation initiative.

“It really requires industry partnerships,” he said. “The expectation is that veterans will have the same type of experience when they interact with us as well as when they interact with the private sector."

The Defense Innovation Unit plans to continue its annual prize challenge for computer vision technologies designed to support disaster relief missions, National Defense Magazine reported Thursday.

The xView2 Challenge aims to use artificial intelligence and machine learning for automated assessments of post-disaster damage.

Last year's iteration of the contest tasked participants to create computer vision algorithms that accelerate imagery analysis. These algorithms classify images into categories based on damage characteristics.

DIU tackles AI and ML as technology focus areas in addition to commercial space, human systems, cyber and autonomy.

“We think those are the areas that are undergoing the greatest rate of change in the commercial sector,” said Mike Madsen, director of strategic engagement at DIU.