Ellen Lord, undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment at the Department of Defense and a 2020 Wash100 Awardee, said aircraft manufacturers and other U.S. defense contractors depend on parts suppliers in Mexico and DoD will call for the country to reopen such facilities that have shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, Defense One reported Monday.

“I think one of the key things we have found out are some international dependencies,” she said Monday during a press conference at the Pentagon. “Mexico right now is somewhat problematical for us but we’re working through our embassy, and then there are pockets in India, as well.”

Lord said she spoke last week to Christopher Landau, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, about the supply issues and would write to Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign secretary, “to ask for help to reopen international suppliers” in the country.

“We are seeing impacts on the industrial base by several pockets of closure internationally,” she added.

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.

The Department of the Navy has begun efforts to implement the development, security and operations or DevSecOps approach in the U.S. Marine Corps’ software development activities.

The Operational Application and Service Innovation Site, part of Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic, began efforts to help USMC apply the methodology that takes security into focus across development, DON said Friday.

“The Department of the Navy has to become a software company with warfighters, because countless software-based battlefield missions can immediately benefit from the DevSecOps approach, making the future of OASIS critically relevant to operations in the information environment,” said Peter Reddy, executive director at NIWC Atlantic.

DON based OASIS on the U.S. Air Force’s Kessel Run team that has been using DevSecOps to transform USAF software development.

DevSecOps allows for faster development through the use of automation technologies. For example, an artificial intelligence platform would report situational data and quantitative aspects of software being developed.

“By not focusing on a single pipeline, or single platform, OASIS is giving technology professionals the power of the latest mainstream tools, coupled with the power of choice,” said Jeff Hays, an enterprise engineering team lead at NIWC Atlantic.

The Department of Energy wants to build partnerships that tackle the use of fusion technology as a safer source of energy than fission used in nuclear facilities, Nextgov reported Friday.

The Department released a Federal Register notice to seek out industry input on a potential fusion technology cost-share program.

Interested organizations may provide information on topics, requirements, program structures, funding approaches and evaluation criteria that would be essential to the future effort.

DOE sees potential in the approach that fuses two atoms together to produce heat energy, in contrast to fission that splits atoms. The fusion approach addresses the nuclear waste issue seen in fission reactors and reduces the potential danger.

The information request will remain open for responses through May 15.

The Federal Aviation Administration has reorganized its Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and updated performance-based regulations for launch and reentry operations in an effort to streamline commercial launch activities.

Wayne Monteith, associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA, said in a memo dated April 3 that he established the offices of Operational Safety and Strategic Management as part of the AST reorganization effort.

The restructuring is meant to help the FAA scale its procedures to meet increasing licensing demands over the next few years, according to Monteith.

In addition, Monteith said the FAA is working to consolidate its launch and reentry regulations to allow the issuance of one license for multiple launches. The agency is slated to publish the new regulation by fall.

Other agency efforts that Monteith cited include updating internal procedures, implementing automated licensing, launching organic training efforts and accelerating hiring.

The memo notes that FAA expects a 100 to 500 percent increase in commercial launch activity by 2021, which could lead to over 100 human spaceflight missions every year.

The Government Accountability Office has found in an audit that the U.S. Air Force still needs to form a full plan for the development of a certain new multidomain situational awareness system.

GAO said Thursday it recommends USAF to identify technologies and corresponding maturity assessments required to develop the Advanced Battle Management System.

ABMS is designed to facilitate the integration of warfighting activities on air, land, sea, cyber and space domains via sensors, other reconnaissance systems and cloud-based data.

The lack of a plan for the development of such a system may delay scheduled activities, risk resources and cause other problems, GAO noted.

The government watchdog also advises USAF to estimate and regularly update costs and document decision-making work related to ABMS.

A consortium created to provide high-performance computing support for COVID-19 research and development has begun supplying over 402 petaflops of compute power for 15 research proposals, FedScoop reported Friday.

The COVID-19 HPC Consortium, established under the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in March, is planning to conduct weekly reviews of research proposals to mark milestones.

Paul Dabbar, undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy, said the consortium intends to make the results of successful research efforts accessible to the public.

DOE’s Exascale Computing Initiative is also working with the National Cancer Institute on initiatives such as genomics studies to accelerate COVID-19 research. DOE is lending its HPCs at various national laboratories to support the initiative.

“These tools can be useful in understanding how the microbiomes of the lungs and the digestive system can be affected by COVID-19 and to also analyze environmental samples,” noted Barbara Helland, associate director of DOE’s Office of Science.

NASA also submitted a research proposal to the consortium focused on using HPCs to analyze patients’ genome sequences to quantify coronavirus infection risks.