The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has unveiled an effort to increase agencywide adoption of unmanned airborne and maritime platforms designed to collect environmental data.

NOAA said Tuesday it will establish the Unmanned Systems Operations Program within the agency’s marine and aviation operations office to expand the use of sensor-equipped autonomous or remotely piloted vehicles in different mission areas.

The Lakeland, Fla.-based NOAA Aircraft Operations Center will support unmanned aircraft activities through the new initiative, while a partnerhip between the Mississippi State Port Authority and the University of Southern Mississippi will build a facility to support the program’s unmanned martime operations.

NOAA noted it uses UxS technology to map the seafloor and habitats, assess marine mammal and fish populations, conduct observations at sea and respond to emergencies.

Congress authorized $12.7M for the agency’s UxS-based missions for fiscal 2020.

The Commercial Engagement Through Ocean Technology Act of 2018 mandates NOAA to collaborate with other federal agencies, companies, academic entities and the U.S. Navy in unmanned marine technology  projects.

Dorothy Aronson, chief information officer of the National Science Foundation, said companies seeking to help government agencies during the coronavirus pandemic should keep track of their contacts within those agencies and monitor where their services are being fielded across the government, Federal Times reported Tuesday.

She said vendors can help by linking the agencies that are in need of the same product or service.

“It’s easier for us to establish interagency agreements than it is for us to establish a new contract,” Aronson said Tuesday during a webinar. “So if you’re aware of your contacts across the government, that’s very helpful."

She noted that contractors can also consider extending help to stakeholders that federal agencies serve.

The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory partnered with the University of Chicago and Qubitekk to test a “quantum loop” that might pave the way for the development a quantum internet, National Defense reported Tuesday.

David Awschalom, a senior scientist at Argonne, said they shot out a single photon source of entangled particles into a fiber network in the Chicago suburbs and analyzed the measurements during the experiment.

“We want to make sure that those two photons are still entangled,” Awschalom said. “We measure how carefully they are [entangled] and we’re going to extend this from platform-to-platform as the basis for a national network.”

Paul Kearns, laboratory director at Argonne, said they plan to develop a two-way quantum link network between Argonne and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., in April.

“That really allows us to understand the temperature variations and how that might affect communications,” Kearns said of the experiment. “It also allows us to understand the vibrations as we go under the interstate … at our expressway or a train track.”

The Department of the Air Force has listed 23 Air Force organizations whose space missions will transition to the U.S. Space Force within the next three to six months.

Approximately 1,840 billets from across the 23 organizations will be moved to the Space Force under the transfer plan, which does not cover the physical transfer of units to a new geographic location, the service said Tuesday.

The units whose missions will transition to the Space Force include the 17th Test Squadron at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, 18th Intel Squadron at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio and the 25th Space Range Squadron at Schriever AFB in Colorado.

Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations at the Space Force and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, and Gen. David Goldfein, chief of staff of the Air Force and fellow Wash100 recipient, will help implement the transfer plan as directed by Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett in accordance with the White House’s Space Policy Directive-4.

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.

A group of researchers from SRI International and the U.S. Army created a benchmark for deep neural networks that can evaluate the reliability of artificial intelligence and machine learning systems.

Brian Jalaian, a scientist at the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, said in a statement published Monday the metric will potentially help the service branch develop secure machine learning methods that can be utilized in precision fire, decision support and command and control platforms.

“Our approach is versatile and can be added as an additional block to many of the Army’s modern algorithms using modern machine learning algorithms that are based on deep neural networks used for visual imagery,” said Jalaian.

Army researchers are working to build containerized algorithms that will gauge the reliability of algorithms within various applications. Jalaian noted the team is studying the resiliency of neural network models and variants of generative models that can protect AI systems from enemy manipulations.

Modeled loosely after the human brain, DNNs employ training data to learn and create forecasts after obtaining new information.

NASA works to understand the formation of sun-based weather storms in space and in turn protect astronauts from solar radiation. The space agency said Monday that it will deploy six CubeSat satellites to further study solar particle storms under the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment, scheduled to launch on or after July 1, 2023.

SunRISE has $62.6 million of funds to finance design, construction and launch activities. The effort’s results would better inform NASA on how to traverse space amid solar radiation.

“We are so pleased to add a new mission to our fleet of spacecraft that help us better understand the Sun, as well as how our star influences the space environment between planets,” said Nicky Fox, director of NASA’s heliophysics division.

SunRISE underwent a nearly one-year concept study after the mission’s selection in 2017, then gained approval in 2019 to continue. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor leads the project, under the management of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.