The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has chosen teams led by the General Electric Research Center, Colorado School of Mines and Sandia National Laboratories to create methods and platforms for constructing underground logistics infrastructure.

DARPA said Wednesday it aims to combine trenchless boring, robotics and horizontal drilling approaches to create a set of underground access systems through the Underminer program.

The GE research organization and Mines school will focus on developing an integrated system to address the program’s technology and operational requirements.

Sandia’s will explore and integrate technology to address current logistics tunnel system and process challenges.

“The Underminer program aims to develop and demonstrate tactical uses for rapidly created underground infrastructure in contested environments,” said Andrew Nuss, a program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office.

“The ability to quickly bore tactical tunnels could benefit contingency operations such as rapid ammunition resupply, rescue missions, or other immediate needs,” Nuss added.

The Army National Guard has completed the launch of a personnel system designed to help soldiers track their salary, benefits and other personnel actions through their mobile phones, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

More than 330K members of the Army National Guard can now use the Integrated Personnel and Pay System-Army, which can store human resources data and talent management information in digital format. The IPPS-A program is expected to support over 1M warfighters in the Guard, Reserve and active force upon its completion in December 2021.

The Army has more than 200 pay and personnel systems and the IPPS-A implementation will allow the service to remove 40 HR systems.

“In the legacy environment, the soldier would have to do an HR action on a piece of paper,” said Col. Gregory Johnson, director of the IPPS-A functional management division. “Now the soldier can turn in a personnel action request off of his personal mobile phone and then they will have complete transparency of understanding where that action is.”

The accreditation body for the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program will hold a series of webinars starting April 6 to discuss details about third-party assessment organizations and other topics about CMMC, Nextgov reported Thursday.

“As this work continues, we are listening for, and depend upon, your feedback. We encourage you to participate in the National Conversations and our newly-formed Working Groups to help us shape the CMMC ecosystem,” the CMMC-AB wrote in its email to stakeholders.

CMMC-AB expects the certification and training framework document and other deliverables to be ready by April 17 and the outline of exam for auditors by April 30.

Working groups should have evaluated a provisional definition for the CMMC assessment method and provided feedback on the methodology by the end of April.

The body has set an April 15 deadline for applications to the working group that will be in charge of the development of exam questions for auditors. Those exam questions are expected to be ready by May 27.

The U.S. Army has commenced efforts to develop air and ground vehicles that detect threats via artificial intelligence, Inside Defense reported Wednesday.

The service branch’s AI Task Force aims to develop a system of vehicles designed to autonomously gather threat data under the Aided Threat Recognition from Mobile Cooperative and Autonomous Sensors effort.

The project also seeks to drive down the reconnaissance work of deployed soldiers.

Brig. Gen. Matt Easley, the task force’s director, said his team is exploring various data collection applications of autonomous systems on the battlefield.

“The key research problem that we’re looking at is how to get those autonomous systems to work to create a [common] operating picture,” Easley said in an interview with Inside Defense.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the Army to move a initial network test under the effort from this month to June, with a demonstration scheduled for September.

NASA is looking to restructure its Human Exploration and Operations directorate which could lead to changes in the Artemis mission to the moon slated for 2024, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

Craig Kundrot, director of NASA’s space life and physical sciences research and applications division, said at a prior online industry event that the proposed reorganization follows the appointment of Doug Loverro as the HEO directorate’s associate administrator.

In July 2019, NASA Administrator and a previous Wash100 Award recipient Jim Bridenstine announced plans to make changes to HEO’s leadership team in an effort to meet Artemis’ 2024 deadline.

The HEO mission directorate oversees Artemis as well as other programs supporting the International Space Station. The Artemis effort encompasses a range of other programs including the Orion crew vehicle, Space Launch System and commercial crew efforts.

NASA expects to announce the HEO restructuring as well as changes to lunar lander contracts in the coming weeks.

About The Wash100

This year represents our sixth annual Wash100 Award selection. The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders selected by Executive Mosaic’s organizational and editorial leadership as the most influential leaders in the GovCon sector. These leaders demonstrate skills in leadership, innovation, achievement, and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2020 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2020.