The U.S. Air Force Materiel Command recently conducted a study on potential areas for improvement and found that personnel want better communication and innovation across the command.

The Air Force said Wednesday that AFMC sought the input of around 88,000 civilian and military personnel on how to meet the demands of the National Defense Strategy as part of the AFMC We Need initiative. Respondents pointed to cross-enterprise collaboration, innovation and communication as key factors for progress, while inconsistent operations significantly limit organizational improvement.

“Capturing both the internal and external perceptions of AFMC was key to this initiative,” said Col. Patrick McDonnell, team lead for the AFMC We Need effort. “We not only wanted to know what our people were seeing, but also how we are perceived by those outside AFMC who we work with on a daily basis in support of the Air Force mission.”

AFMC made improvements in hiring through streamlined procedures and Congressional hiring authorities, the Air Force noted. However, according to AFMC Commander Gen. Arnold Bunch, IT and facility issues require a longer-term strategy.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing a system of small robots that combine to form a shape-changing space exploration vehicle for missions on Saturn’s moons.

JPL said Wednesday its Shapeshifter prototype is a semi-autonomous system of 3D printed robots that form a ground exploration platform when combined and separate into flying drones.

Shapeshifter’s future, fully automated version would feature drones, known as cobots, that would automatically assemble without the need for ground station-based commands.

JPL works on Shapeshifter as part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program that supports non-traditional projects that may seem unrealistic to some.

The robotic system may support a future mission on Titan, one of Saturn’s 62 moons, according to JPL Principal Investigator Ali Agha.

Agha’s team will enter Shapeshifter to the selection for NIAC’s second phase in 2020.

The team is also looking to create up to 12 robotic systems for specific functions such as cave exploration.

Emery Csulak, chief information security officer of the Department of Energy, has said that the department has begun deploying a new cybersecurity risk management framework at several national laboratories, Fedscoop reported Wednesday. 

Csulak added that DOE has been using the Factor Analysis of Information Risk framework to assess the benefits and risks of migrating systems and applications to the cloud. The department also plans to implement FAIR for business case management as part of fiscal 2021 budgeting procedures, he noted.

“They need to be able to make honest risk decisions at the level where they affect their operational capabilities — whether or not it’s with science or nuclear protection,” according to Csulak.

DOE intends to include more agencies in efforts to implement the FAIR framework by fall, he said.

The Government Accountability Office has found that the Department of Energy is yet to develop plans for implementing electric grid security that fully address key factors such as threat actors, vulnerabilities and impacts.

GAO stated in its report that DOE based its risk assessments on outdated models and that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s grid security approval procedures failed to ensure full compliance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s requirements. FERC’s methodologies also failed to “evaluate the potential risk of a coordinated cyberattack on geographically distributed targets,” GAO noted.

According to the watchdog, DOE’s guidance for resource allocation to mitigate security risks will “likely be limited” until the department provides a complete strategy for grid cybersecurity.

The U.S. Navy has attained an 80 percent mission-capable rate for the service branch’s aviation fleets of F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler aircraft. The Naval Aviation Enterprise worked to implement the Naval Sustainment System-Aviation initiative that allowed the Navy to achieve this goal, the service branch said Tuesday.

James Mattis, former secretary of defense, directed the Navy to reach 80 percent last year when the service branch’s MC rate was at about 50 percent. The NSS-A initiative builds on industry best practices that helped the Navy improve maintenance across aviation squadrons and fleet readiness centers.

Resulting reforms supported Navy aviation in the areas of engineering, policy, safety and supply chain management.

“This is the first year in some time that we have executed our allocation of flight hours completely,” said Rear Adm. Roy Kelley, commander of Naval Air Forces, Atlantic.

The Senate has passed a bill that aims to boost cybersecurity at all levels of government and the commercial sector.

The Department of Homeland Security Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Teams Act would order the establishment of permanent teams to prevent and address cyber threats, the office of Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who introduced the bill, said Wednesday.

The DHS-commissioned teams may also include experts from the private sector for added industrial insight.

Non-federal government entities may request for the teams’ help during the event of a cyber crisis.

“This bipartisan legislation will allow the best minds in cybersecurity to work together to better protect our digital infrastructure and to respond to attacks,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who co-introduced the bill with Portman.

The bill now awaits approval from the House of Representatives.