Ellen Lord, defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment and a 2020 Wash100 Award winner, said foreign adversaries may take advantage of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic to acquire U.S.-developed technologies, Defense News reported Wednesday.

She said Wednesday at a news conference that it “is critically important that we understand that during this crisis, the [defense-industrial base] is vulnerable to adversarial capital, so we need to ensure that companies can stay in business without losing their technology.”

Lord stated that the COVID-19 pandemic “presents a greater attack surface” because of the uncertainty it poses to small businesses and their contracts. “To basically mitigate that uncertainty, that’s why we’re being forward-leaning and over-communicating, probably, to say: ‘We are open,’” she added.

DoD is trying to fight the economic influence of foreign countries like China through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and the Trusted Capital Marketplace program.

Two members of the Air Force Research Laboratory's 711th Human Performance Wing have been recognized for the technology transfer of a platform designed to manage complex communication environments.

Brian Simpson, 711 HPW sensory psychologist and 711 HPW Program Manager James Kearns were honored with the 2020 Excellence in Technology Transfer Award by the Federal Laboratory Consortium for the Technology Transfer for Multi-Modal Communication effort, the U.S. Air Force said Tuesday.

The MMC system works to help operators respond to distributed personnel from various locations and trace multiple channels of high-traffic communication. Startup company GlobalFlyte received the technology from AFRL.

“In typical command and control environments, an operator may need to monitor multiple channels of information from sources such as radios, intercoms and telephones, among others,” said Simpson.

Simpson added the team sought to find an approach that will help C2 operators work with various technologies to augment decision-making capacities.

Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) hosted a quarterly industry day with the Information Warfare Research Project Consortium to tackle technology development efforts.

The event, which took place in San Diego, gathered experts from industry and academia for discussions on fleet technology matters such as the importance of partnerships, the U.S. Navy said Tuesday.

Rear Adm. Christian Becker, commander of NAVWAR, said multisector partnerships are critical to helping warfighters maintain an advantage in the modern competition of power.

“It is vital that we work together with our partners in industry and academia to outpace our adversaries in the delivery of innovative technologies and operational concepts at the ever-increasing speed of information now and in the coming decades,” he said.

The IWRP Consortium helps the military procure commercially made technologies via other transaction authority awards. The consortium’s next industry day will happen within this year’s second quarter.