Derek Tournear, acting director of the Space Development Agency, said SDA plans to issue before the end of this year broad area announcements to ask potential vendors to compete for technology demonstrations in support of the agency’s plan to develop “layers” of satellites, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

SDA plans to issue the first BAA for the transport layer or a network of low-Earth orbit satellites designed to provide global communications and another BAA for the tracking layer, which will work to detect hypersonic missiles and other advanced weapon systems.

The agency expects the tracking and transport layers to move into the production phase in 2022 and be operational by 2024.

Tournear said SDA will oversee the deployment of the transport layer and will work with the Missile Defense Agency to develop and field the tracking layer. “Our vision is that MDA will build out the tracking layer in coordination with SDA to make sure it plugs into the overall architecture.”

He noted that the agency will use commercial components for the SDA transport layer, which will be a government-owned platform.

Other layers SDA plans to advance are the deterrence layer for cislunar space monitoring; custody layer for mobile target tracking in the battlefield; a navigation layer that will serve as a GPS alternative for positioning, navigation and timing; and a battle management layer that will transmit data to ground commanders using artificial intelligence.

A new Government Accountability Office center seeks to help lawmakers identify and analyze emerging technological trends and their potential implications in the future, Nextgov reported Wednesday.

James-Christian Blockwood, managing director of GAO’s Office of Strategic Planning and External Liaison, said he expects the new Center for Strategic Foresight can work with other GAO organizations to “provide that full picture of raising awareness, understanding broad trends, how it’s interacting with other trends, the implications, opportunities and challenges.”

“It’s more about convening the right level of expertise and providing a lens of foresight in terms of looking at, ‘What are the implications, challenges, opportunities or other parts of the trend or topic that we want to explore five, 10, 15 years from now,’” he said of the new center.

The Center for Strategic Foresight held its first conference in early September with a focus on deep space and deepfakes and Blockwood said he expects the center to make the conference an annual event to discuss other futuristic concepts.  

According to the report, the center intends to examine other emerging technologies and concepts including quantum computing, 5G, artificial intelligence, genome editing and acellular agriculture.

The General Services Administration has partnered with the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center through the Centers of Excellence program to help JAIC accelerate AI adoption across DoD and the federal government.

“We are excited that JAIC will be leveraging GSA’s CoE expertise to strategically implement AI within DoD,” GSA Administrator and 2019 Wash100 winner Emily Murphy said in a statement published Wednesday.

JAIC and GSA have started assessing acquisition, strategy and technological challenges related to AI through the CoE initiative’s discovery sprint.

“As GSA builds its AI Center of Excellence, the addition of JAIC as our fifth partner agency helps us drive ongoing technology transformation in the federal marketplace. We’re proud to be seizing the opportunity with our newest partner, enabling AI to bolster the capabilities of today’s warfighter, and build a foundation to reuse our AI expertise to improve citizen experiences across government,” said Anil Cheriyan, director of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services.

Other agencies partnering with GSA to support IT modernization efforts through the CoE model are the departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, Office of Personnel Management and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released draft guidelines for implementing a “zero-trust” architecture for government networks in line with existing cybersecurity requirements. Zero-trust architecture is mostly focused on data protection but can also be applied to functionalities at an enterprise level.

According to NIST, ZTA can support agencies’ information technology modernization operations including cloud migration and continuous diagnostics and mitigation. A ZTA-based enterprise environment also warrants constant risk assessments as though hostile elements are already in place within a network.

“Organizations need to implement effective information security and resiliency practices for zero trust to be effective,” the document stated. “When complemented with existing cybersecurity policies and guidance, identity and access management, continuous monitoring, and general cybersecurity, ZTA can reinforce an organization’s security posture using a managed risk approach and protect against common threats.”

NIST will accept feedback on the guidelines through Nov. 22.

The National Nuclear Security Administration has concluded three non-nuclear flight tests of a gravity bomb in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force and allies from NATO. NNSA said Tuesday that it worked with partners to test the B61-12 gravity bomb last month at Tonopah Test Range, Nevada in preparation for the weapon system’s final demonstration next year.

The tests support the B61-12 Life Extension Program that aims to have the bomb operational for at least 20 more years. The program consists of efforts to refurbish the weapon’s nuclear and non‐nuclear parts.

The Nuclear Weapons Council, an organization jointly established between the departments of Defense and Energy, oversees the program. The B61 is an aircraft-dropped nuclear gravity bomb that has been operational in the U.S. military for almost half a century.

Nagesh Rao, business technology solutions director under the Small Business Administration’s chief information officer, said that the agency has been pushing for commercial cloud implementation over the past few years, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

Rao told the publication that SBA has been deploying mostly software-as-a-service technologies, and that some of the agency’s legacy systems are still run by on-premise servers. He added that his office is “really working towards the customer journey from a 360 perspective” and intends to deploy a modernized case management system as well as an enterprise-wide platform for managing customer relationships.

“The thing that we still have to work on, though, is the rest of our agency program offices,” he noted. “Some are situated through us, and some have their own IT workforce. And so we’re in the process of leading the charge forward so that everyone universally falls in alignment with our vision.”

The First Responder Network Authority and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have jointly launched a $2.2M communications technology competition.

Participants of the Tech to Protect Challenge will submit coding systems that support the communications needs of first responders, the Department of Commerce said Tuesday.

The competition will consist of 10 regional in-person coding events and one online contest open to software developers, programmers, entrepreneurs, researchers, students and public safety professionals.

The first round of coding events will take place in Chicago; Denver; College Station, Texas; Pittsburgh; and Washington, D.C., from Sept. 27 to 29. The second round will launch in Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle on Nov. 1 and end Nov. 3.