Lt. Gen. Lorri Reynolds, deputy commandant for information at the U.S. Marine Corps, said the service branch needs a mobile network to support ground forces on the battlefield, C4ISRNET reported Monday.

“We have to be able to be mobile,” she said Monday at an AFCEA-hosted event in Tysons Corner, Va. “What we have to learn to do is maneuver the network. We have to learn how to think about mobility as a tool in this war-fighting construct that we have to come up with on the network. Mobile, ad-hoc, software-defined is where we have to go.”

Reynolds said the service is learning to field the Marine Corps Enterprise Network and needs a “secure, single sign-on that enables data delivery and enables long-range targeting and fires.”

The Air Force Research Laboratory will introduce a program for private firms to demonstrate prototypes of a flying vehicle in military airspace, Military.com reported Monday.

AFRL’s Agility Prime initiative seeks to encourage developers interested in working with the government to test flying car platforms without having to go through regulatory procedures mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Loren Thompson, a senior defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, said the effort shows how the military branch is attempting to deploy industry approaches to  research and development programs.

“I’ve been challenging our acquisition community to think about where our defense market has value,” said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics and 2019 Wash100 winner during an prior Air Force conference. 

NASA previously created a similar initiative with the intent to demonstrate air mobility systems in an urban environment. The space agency expects to commence field demonstrations via its Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenge in 2022.

Soraya Correa, chief procurement officer at the Department of Homeland Security, has said that DHS plans to integrate artificial intelligence into a system used to analyze data about the past performance of contractors to help inform contracting decisions.

Correa told Government Matters in an interview aired Sunday DHS launched a prototyping project to update the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System as the department aims to help contracting officials accelerate data extraction and analysis processes.

She noted the department received 40 offers for the CPARS modernization initiative and awarded nine contracts last month. The project falls under the new “commercial solutions opening” program, which seeks to quickly launch pilot programs, implement industry approaches, simplify procurement and promote government opportunities to non-traditional companies.

“What I do is encourage industry to come in and talk to us, tell us what solutions they’re offering, what space they’re working in, so we can point them in the right direction and get to talk to the right people,” Correa added.

The Department of Energy has selected Sandia National Laboratories, Georgia Institute of Technology and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop artificial intelligence tools for potential use in DOE missions.

Scientists from the two DOE-backed labs and the public research university will receive $5.5M in total funds to collaborate through the Center for ARtificial Intelligence-focused ARchitectures and Algorithms, PNNL said Wednesday.

The department established ARIAA around the “co-design” concept, which calls for a balance between software and hardware functions as researchers look to integrate algorithms and architectures to address a problem.

Collaborators aim to determine the potential applications of AI and machine learning tools in the cybersecurity, power grid, computatuonal chemistry and graph analytics areas.

“The creation of ARIAA is part of the strategy for solving some of the most challenging problems by employing novel artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques,” said Roberto Gioisa, a senior research scientist at PNNL.

Jeanette Manfra, assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has said that it’s unlikely that the agency could prevent a massive cyberattack similar to WannaCry in 2017, TechCruch reported Monday.

Manfra told attendees at a TechCrunch event in San Francisco that the rapid transmission of WannaCry attacks would make it difficult for the Department of Homeland Security component to protect thousands of systems.

“Updating your patches would have prevented a fair amount of people from being a victim,” she said. Marcus Hutchins, a security researcher and malware reverse engineer, previously developed a “kill switch” intended to prevent the attack from spreading.

WannaCry was reportedly executed by hackers associated with North Korea who used tools from the National Security Agency. Recently, DHS issued a warning for a similar attack known as BlueKeep, which has wormable properties and has the capacity to impact millions of devices connected to the internet.

Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Keyport has issued its initiatives to accelerate cybersecurity research under new authority granted by Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, has activated two phases of pilot efforts under Section 233 of the FY17 NDAA, the service branch said Thursday.

The pilot efforts extend new fielding authority to commanding officers at science and technology reinvention laboratories. The newly enacted authority allows STRL commanding officers to implement and operate at research, development, testing and evaluation networks. The authority was originally exclusive to Naval Sea Systems Command leaders.

“This new authority pushes responsibility and accountability to the commanding officer level,” said Capt. Jon Moretty, NUWC Division, Keyport commanding officer. “This increases the level of knowledge of the Risk Management Framework process, improves the cybersecurity of the networks since they can achieve required standards and continuous monitoring in a more timely manner, and removes organizational roadblocks which stifle innovation and action,” he added.