A pair of Lockheed Martin-built interceptors engaged ballistic missile targets during a flight test hosted by the U.S. Army at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. PAC-3 Cost Reduction Initiative interceptors used hit-to-kill technology to destroy the tactical missiles and met realibility requirements in support of the service branch’s Field Surveillance Program, the company said Thursday.

Army representatives and foreign military sales customers witnessed the testing event, which marked the 12th and 13th PAC-3 CRI FSP intercepts over the past seven years. The company noted that 14 countries have placed orders for the missile defense weapon.

“We expect PAC-3 interceptors to continue serving as an essential element in integrated, layered defense systems,” said Jay Pitman, vice president of PAC-3 programs at Lockheed.

The National Security Council created a working group to help identify and manage cybersecurity risks in space as part of the National Cyber Strategy and Jaisha Wray of the council explained how the group promotes communication to carry out its mission, Fifth Domain reported Friday.

“What we saw was that across departments and agencies in the U.S. government, the space and the cyber people are often located in different offices in different bureaus, and so one of the early successes of our working group is simply just bringing these folks together to try to reduce stovepipes, compare notes and provide updates,” Wray, the council’s cybersecurity director, said at the CyberSat19 conference.

She cited the challenges faced by the council to build up space cybersecurity partnerships between the U.S. government, industry and international countries and how the space cybersecurity working group supports the newly formed space information sharing and analysis center.

“We were very pleased to see and now support the efforts of the new Space ISAC, which will help gather, analyze and disseminate critical cyberthreat information related to space among the federal commercial and international community,” Wray added.

Jim Gfrerer, assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told FCW in an interview published Friday about his team’s efforts to deploy a set of online platforms designed to facilitate the delivery of benefits to veterans under the MISSION Act.

“We were essentially trying to deliver what would normally take about 12 to 18 months of development in about four or five months. So the way we did that was very strict adherence to agile, delivering around a minimum viable product,” he said.

Gfrerer described the tech team’s experience in deploying the decision support tool, which is designed to assist the delivery of community care benefits to military retirees, and cited VA’s plan to certify the caregiver benefit program by summer 2020.

He also mentioned the department’s plans to monitor opioid prescriptions to veterans in compliance with the law’s provisions.

“Our clinicians need the data to be able to see where veterans are getting prescription medications and to make sure that they’re not overprescribing or enabling abuse,” Gfrerer said. “So we’re going to be delivering on a prescription drug monitoring program in the coming year as well.”

The Trump administration has issued a plan for the federal government to notify the public, election officials and Congress of foreign interference in U.S. elections, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a one-page summary of the framework, which outlines several principles the U.S. government should consider before issuing public notifications. The document states that notification decisions should be in support of national security interests and intended to safeguard the integrity of social and political discourse.

In the case of broad public notifications, the DNI will hold a meeting with principals to determine whether a notification should be issued. A source said those principals include CIA Director and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient Gina Haspel, FBI Director Chris Wray, Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will issue notifications to critical infrastructure and information owners with regard to non-public notifications.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy plans to award up to $30M for research projects designed to create lower-cost concepts for the development of deployable, commercially viable fusion energy.

Under a new program, dubbed Breakthroughs Enabling THermonuclear-fusion Energy, ARPA-E aims to establish controlled fusion energy by lowering the cost of more-mature fusion concepts and enhancing the application of existing fusion research and development capabilities, the Department of Energy said Thursday. 

DoE views controlled fusion as an ideal energy source due to its potential to generate abundant, clean and safe power, enabling a cost-effective, low-carbon economy. 

The BETHE initiative builds on the recent progress in the department’s first fusion program, called Accelerating Low-Cost Plasma Heating and Assembly, which demonstrated new methods of reaching fusion conditions. 

The program also seeks to foster partnerships between the government and industry in an effort to build a path to fusion commercialization.