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Air Force Acquiring Additional CCAs for Operational Tests
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Air Force Acquiring Additional CCAs for Operational Tests

The U.S. Air Force is acquiring additional collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs, to test how the drones will operate in battle.

Andrew Hunter, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics and a 2023 Wash100 awardee, said that he recently authorized the purchase of more CCAs for the service branch’s experimental operations unit, DefenseNews reported Friday. With this additional purchase, Hunter looks forward to further testing and development of CCAs. 

“You learn a lot when you get into flight test,” Hunter said. “But … it’s [also] the approach to production, the people demonstrating they can scale to the rates that we envision for this platform, and that are necessary for it to be affordable mass.”

How Do CCAs Operate?

CCAs are uncrewed drones designed to travel next to F-35 joint strike fighters and the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter. The drone also features mission capabilities, including striking adversarial targets, observing threats and jamming enemy signals. 

Hunter emphasized that the Air Force aims to move swiftly through the CCA program and has already begun considering how to develop the drones and keep future maintenance costs down. He also noted that the airworthiness of CCAs will be tested differently than that of previous autonomous aircraft. 

“We think about airworthiness differently,” Hunter stated. “With prior uncrewed aircraft that we’ve procured, we’ve kind of done airworthiness largely the old way, and we really need to do it in a fundamentally new way.”

Frank Kendall, Air Force secretary and 2024 Wash100 awardee, reportedly wants CCAs to cost a “fraction” of an F-35, which can be between $80 million to $100 million.

General Atomics & Anduril CCAs 

In April, the Air Force tapped General Atomics and Anduril to develop CCAs under two option awards. Hunter said the service branch plans to acquire both Anduril’s Fury and General Atomics’ Gambit CCAs for the experimental operations unit. 

“I think both vendors have an opportunity to succeed, and it’s entirely conceivable that we could move forward with both,” Hunter stated.

Air Force Acquiring Additional CCAs for Operational Tests

You can learn more about the Air Force’s emerging autonomous capabilities at the 2025 Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 23. Claim your tickets to the 2025 Defense R&D Summit now!

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Sairah Ijaz Named HUD CIO
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Sairah Ijaz Named HUD CIO

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has appointed Sairah Ijaz, a more than 20-year federal IT veteran, as chief information officer.

In a LinkedIn post announcing her appointment, Ijaz said she looks forward to enhancing HUD’s security posture, collaborating on innovative platforms and implementing forward-thinking strategies.

Ijaz’s Career History

She previously served as deputy CIO at HUD, where she was responsible for IT platforms and service delivery, data governance, strategic planning and stakeholder collaboration to advance digital transformation.

The certified Project Management Professional held IT roles at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Government Accountability Office and the Social Security Administration.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Ijaz spent three years at Grant Thornton as a manager.

The CIO holds a bachelor’s degree in information systems from the University of Maryland’s R.H. Smith School of Business and is pursuing a master’s degree in business analytics at Georgetown University.

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LLNL’s El Capitan Deemed World’s Fastest Computing System
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LLNL’s El Capitan Deemed World’s Fastest Computing System

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced Monday that the El Capitan exascale supercomputer has been benchmarked as the fastest computing system in the world. The system was evaluated based on the High Performance Linpack standard, which is used by the TOP500 organization to evaluate supercomputing performance.

Performance Rating

El Capitan earned an HPL score of 1.742 exaFLOPs with a total peak performance of 2.79 exaFLOPs. In comparison, Sierra, LLNL’s previous most powerful system, had a peak performance of 125 petaFLOPs. El Capitan’s peak performance exceeds that of Sierra’s more than 20-fold.

Commenting on the accomplishment, LLNL Lab Director Kim Budil said it “is a testament to the Laboratory’s leadership in driving scientific discovery. It continues a legacy of supercomputing excellence that spans more than 70 years.”

“El Capitan’s extraordinary computing capabilities will allow us to tackle complex challenges that were previously out of reach. We are proud to lead this achievement in partnership with industry, and advance science in ways that will benefit society and the nation as a whole,” Budil added.

System Specs

LLNL’s new supercomputer is built on the Cray Supercomputing EX system by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The system is also powered by AMD’s Instinct MI300A accelerated processing units, which work to deliver computational performance required by artificial intelligence workloads.

Functions of El Capitan

El Capitan will be used by the National Nuclear Security Administration Tri-Labs — LLNL, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory — to support the Stockpile Stewardship Program and other nuclear security missions. The supercomputer will help with the various tasks to be carried out by Tri-Labs scientists, including weapon performance and safety modeling, high-energy-density physics experiment modeling and AI-based workflows like those involving material discovery, advanced manufacturing and digital twinning.

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Commerce Dept Awards $285M to SRC for New Manufacturing Institute
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Commerce Dept Awards $285M to SRC for New Manufacturing Institute

The Semiconductor Research Corporation Manufacturing Consortium Corporation has won funding valued at $285 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to construct and operate a new manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday the investment is part of a $1 billion total funding for the establishment of the CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute, known as the Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Research with Twins USA, or SMART USA. The investment is intended to boost the semiconductor industry through collaborative research, design and development of digital twins.

Goals of CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute

The new SMART USA institute is meant to strengthen the semiconductor industry by reinforcing the development and utilization of digital twins. Through the use of digital twins, the institute aims to optimize the design, production and testing process of semiconductor chips.

SMART USA is set to become part of a network of 17 institutes working to make U.S. manufacturing more competitive and to strengthen research and development.

SMART USA Objectives

The new institute aspires to foster partnerships between stakeholders and provide access to physical resources and novel digital capabilities needed to tackle digital twins challenges. The main goals of SMART USA are to accelerate the development and deployment of semiconductor technologies by lowering U.S. chip development and manufacturing costs by 35 percent and shortening the development cycle by 30 percent. It also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent and train over 100,000 workers and students on digital twin technology.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, said, “With new digital twin capabilities, America is fostering unparalleled opportunities to collaborate with experts and researchers anywhere in the world to develop the next frontier of technological advancements in the semiconductor industry.”

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NSF Funds MITRE-Led Dynamic Spectrum Sharing R&D
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NSF Funds MITRE-Led Dynamic Spectrum Sharing R&D

The National Science Foundation has extended a $10.5 million funding for a team led by non-profit national security advisory firm MITRE to conduct dynamic spectrum sharing research and development.

The team, dubbed “SPARKIE,” will initially establish an experimental dynamic spectrum-sharing zone at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in California that would shield radio telescope operations from interference of local spectrum users, such as cellular devices, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, MITRE said.

Portal to Next-Generation Connectivity

The non-profit firm added that as research on dynamic spectrum advance, the technology’s sharing could usher in next-generation connectivity resources for national security and critical infrastructure.

SPARKIE’s experiments, which will involve spectrum research facilities, will design and develop a toolkit for radio dynamic spectrum sharing environments.

The MITRE-led team is composed of spectrum engineers, academics and radio astronomy researchers from the non-profit research organization SETI Institute and five educational institutions: Northeastern University; University of Texas, Austin; University of Utah; University of Colorado at Boulder; and University of California, Berkeley.

Remedy for Radio Spectrum Shortfall 

NSF is funding the team through its National Radio Dynamic Zones program, which John Chapin, the foundation’s special advisor for spectrum, said will help solve the radio spectrum shortfall due to the rapid rise of wireless communications and other uses. 

“NSF is supporting this team to test innovative new ways to increase spectrum availability for diverse use cases, such as sharing spectrum between wireless communications networks and radio telescope facilities,” he added. 

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GSA Offers Update on Multiple Award Schedule Pricing RFI
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GSA Offers Update on Multiple Award Schedule Pricing RFI

The General Services Administration received 507 industry responses to a request for information on how to better align multiple award schedule, or MAS, pricing with commercial practices.

In April, GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, or FAS, issued the RFI to support its assessment of existing agency practices related to performing price analysis and determining “fair and reasonable” prices on MAS contracts.

The agency said Wednesday key takeaways from the RFI include minimizing barriers related to offering identical services and products across multiple special item numbers, or SINs, to improve sales opportunities, updating solicitation instructions to prioritize the use of data already available within the government and expanding the Transactional Data Reporting initiative as an alternative to legacy pricing disclosure requirements.

How GSA Will Implement Feedback

According to GSA, FAS will make changes to the MAS solicitation based on industry comments, including reaffirming that vendors can offer identical products and services across multiple SINs if the items are within scope.

FAS also plans to seek public feedback on planned modifications to MAS pricing practices and policies, including draft revisions to solicitation price proposal instructions that streamline documentation requirements and a new draft FAS policy and procedure implementing GSAR case 2020-G510, FSS Economic Price Adjustment.

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NASA Wants Blue Origin, SpaceX to Deliver Heavy Cargo to the Moon
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NASA Wants Blue Origin, SpaceX to Deliver Heavy Cargo to the Moon

NASA wants SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop large cargo landers and deliver payloads to the Moon for the Artemis missions. The space agency said Tuesday that the companies will be awarded additional work under existing contracts to mature their designs for the cargo versions of SpaceX’s and Blue Origin’s crewed human landing systems. 

In a statement, Stephen D. Creech, assistant deputy associate administrator for technical at NASA’s Moon to Mars Program Office, explained the mission benefits of having two lunar lander providers.

“The Artemis campaign is a collaborative effort with international and industry partners,” he shared. “Having two lunar lander providers with different approaches for crew and cargo landing capability provides mission flexibility while ensuring a regular cadence of Moon landings for continued discovery and scientific opportunity.” 

Artemis Cargo Landers

While NASA revealed in 2023 that it selected Blue Origin and SpaceX to build crewed human landing systems—or HLS—it was not until January 2024 that the space agency mentioned that the companies were also working on the cargo landers. 

In a media call on Jan. 9, Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars Program, shared that the companies were “applying the work they’re doing on the human-rated versions of the landing vehicles to develop a cargo variant.”

NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton added in a statement to SpaceNews that work on the cargo landers was done under the HLS contracts awarded to Blue Origin in May 2023 and the “Option B” award SpaceX secured in November 2022. 

In April, the agency further confirmed that the companies are creating the cargo variant of the landers and added that the spacecraft will need to be capable of delivering 26,000–33,000 pounds of payload on the Moon. 

NASA already has plans for at least two missions to land large cargo on the lunar surface. The first mission will see the SpaceX Starship cargo lander carry the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s pressurized rover to the Moon as soon as fiscal 2032. Meanwhile, Blue Origin’s Blue Moon will transport a lunar habitat as soon as fiscal 2033.

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DIU Solicits Solution for Virtual Adversary Integration
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DIU Solicits Solution for Virtual Adversary Integration

The Defense Innovation Unit seeks a commercial solution that would enable the Department of Defense’s Cyber Mission Force to integrate realistic and automated cyber adversaries into its training platform.

The desired technology is expected to advance CMF’s objective of developing and practicing the necessary skills for defensive cyber operations missions. The solution should also allow DOD training planners to build an offensive cyber campaign system with virtual actors, DIU said.

DIU’s Advanced Solution Requirements

Specifically, the solution must allow planners to control the automated adversaries’ elements, such as objectives and stealth levels. The system should also include agents that can adapt to their environment and decide based on certain goal criteria.

In addition, the solution should feature an intuitive graphical user interface to support the easy management of adversary behavior and auditing of the virtual adversaries’ actions.

The government envisions that the technology could replicate the actions and decisions of advanced persistent threat groups and eliminate the need for trained human operators as adversaries during training scenarios, thus cutting down manpower costs.

Ready for Product Deployment

DIU will prioritize proposals that demonstrate product maturity and deployment validation but partial solutions capable of addressing specific requirements would be considered. Responses will be accepted no later than Dec. 6.

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CDAO AI Implementation Plan Called Into Question by DOD OIG
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CDAO AI Implementation Plan Called Into Question by DOD OIG

The Office of the Inspector General within the Department of Defense has found delays in the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s development of an implementation plan for the DOD’s AI Adoption Strategy and AI policy.

Released on Monday, an IG report on the effectiveness of CDAO’s AI services and governance noted that the delays in issuing key foundational documents caused ambiguity in the CDAO’s roles and responsibilities for DOD data, analytics and AI and confusion between the CDAO and the DOD Chief Information Office.

According to DOD Inspector General Robert Storch, the lack of clarity may impact the DOD’s AI implementation and prevent the agency from harnessing the full potential of the technology.

What CDAO Can Do in Response

To address the issue, the report urged CDAO to complete and publish an implementation plan to guide the collaboration between the office and the DOD components on the creation of strategic performance measures that will help achieve the DOD’s AI goals. The OIG also recommended coordinating with the director of administration and management to review existing AI guidance, determine which should be removed or incorporated into the DOD AI policy, and then approve the AI policy guidance.

The report is part of the OIG’s series of oversight work focused on the DOD’s use of artificial intelligence.

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DOD, Commerce to Support Minority Business Enterprises
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DOD, Commerce to Support Minority Business Enterprises

The departments of Defense and Commerce have signed an agreement to leverage their resources, networks, and expertise to bolster the involvement of minority business enterprises, or MBEs, in the defense industrial base.

DOD said Tuesday the memorandum of understanding it signed with Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency seeks to encourage the participation of MBEs in defense supply chains, foster collaboration, use data-driven insights to help MBEs capitalize on defense procurement opportunities and provide them access to training and development opportunities.

“This MOU represents a significant step in expanding access to defense contracts for minority business enterprises, ensuring that our supply chain is diverse, resilient, and capable of addressing the demands of our national defense,” said William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

“By working with MBDA, we can tap into a broader talent base of underrepresented businesses that bring unique perspectives and solutions, which ultimately contribute to a more robust and innovative industrial base,” added the 2024 Wash100 awardee.

The agreement will also help connect MBEs to the Mentor-Protege Program, APEX Accelerators and other DOD programs to help them navigate the defense procurement process.

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