The House passed a bill on Wednesday directing the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to accelerate its efforts to implement automation for GEOINT activities and report progress on such programs, C4ISRnet reported Friday.

The bill requires NGA to brief the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence on its strategy to deploy automated capabilities to enable staff to rapidly process imaging data and conduct related data analyses. NGA must also establish a plan for hiring software engineers, mathematicians and data scientists to support the effort.

According to a report from the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence, the agency is failing at providing “adequate resources to integrate new automation techniques which have resulted in years of research into the issue, but limited operation gains during day-to-day imagery processing.” The House and Senate are yet to reconcile differences between their versions of the bill.

Gen. David Goldfein, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, said adopting a multi-domain operations approach that connects air, ground, maritime, space, information and cyber assets in an integrated system to detect and counter threats “will change the character of modern warfare,” the Air Force reported Thursday. 

“Where we are going is using dominance in one domain or many, blending a few capabilities or many, to produce multiple dilemmas for our adversaries in a way that will overwhelm them,” Goldfein said Thursday in his speech at the Air and Space Power Conference 2019 in London.

“Victory in combat will depend less on individual capabilities and more on the integrated strengths of a connected network of weapons, sensors and analytic tools. This is important because as air component commanders of the world, we are uniquely positioned to integrate capabilities and we are often the ones who must pull it all together,” he added.

Goldfein noted about the initiatives the service branch has implemented to advance the MDO concept, such as establishing a new officer career field and a “shadow” operations center at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Sens. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., have announced the Senate Armed Services Committee’s intention to conduct an early nomination hearing for David Norquist, a 2019 Wash100 Award recipient and President Trump’s pick for deputy secretary of defense. SASC said Thursday that it will host the nomination hearing on Wednesday, July 24 to provide advice and consent. Norquist currently holds the role on an acting basis. 

“The Deputy Secretary of Defense is the number-two civilian role at the Pentagon, so it’s incredibly important to receive a formal nomination and confirm the nominee quickly,” said Inhofe who chairs the committee.

The committee normally administers voting seven days after nominations, but have decided to accelerate the process due to the role’s significance. He added that the committee must strictly examine received nominations despite the urgency.

Reps. Jim Baird, R-Ind., Haley Stevens, D-Mich., and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., introduced a bill to support small business research and development programs. The Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Improvements Act would require the Small Business Association to annually report to Congress on SBIR and STTR programs, Baird’s office said Wednesday. The bill would also task the Department of Defense to foster technological innovation across these programs with a focus on manufacturing and cybersecurity.

“The Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Improvements Act will make these programs even stronger by increasing accountability, prioritizing cybersecurity and promoting diversity among grant award recipients,” said Stevens, who chairs the House’s Research and Technology Subcommittee.

Vice Adm. Scott Buschman, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Atlantic area, has said the service is still looking to repair its facilities damaged by three hurricanes two years ago, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

Buschman noted that Coast Guard facilities in the Virgin Islands, South and North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas are yet to fully recover from the impact of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. He added the Coast Guard wants to reconstruct its damaged bases by hardening or elevating them to avoid water and weather-related damages.

“We are looking at making sure that wherever we rebuild a facility that we can rebuild the resiliency standard so they can survive future storm that might impact that area,” he said.

The Coast Guard is also working on deploying unmanned aerial systems for disaster response and modernizing the service’s information technology infrastructure.

The U.S. Army has approved the draft of a capabilities development document for assault helicopters intended to support the service branch’s Future Vertical Lift program, DefenseNews reported Wednesday. The Army seeks to purchase and field two long-range assault aircraft units to replace its AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk fleet.

Additionally, the service branch requires a detailed schedule to speed up the deployment of the helicopters. The military service will conduct an industry day on July 31 to explain the requirements and specifications of the planned aircraft. The Army anticipates to issue a request for proposals at the said date.

Aside from FVL, the Army has launched efforts to replace its legacy combat vehicles and long-range precision missile platforms.

The Department of Defense is looking for a nonprofit organization to conduct audits and train contractors to comply with soon-to-be established Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification standards, Fedscoop reported Wednesday. The CMMC guidelines will have five levels intended to assess cybersecurity measures implemented by businesses seeking opportunities with DoD.

“We are making security a part of that discussion,” said Katie Arrington, special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense acquisition for cyber. “In fact, it is paramount to that discussion.”

Arrington expects the selected third-party entity to begin certification operations by January 2020.

The Government Accountability Office recommends that the Army Futures Command track small business engagements and bolster coordination with other U.S. Army components. GAO said Wednesday that it found the new command, despite supporting small businesses, does not maximize the use of Army expertise such as that of the service’s Office of Small Business Programs.

Futures Command aligns with the service’s branch’s recognition of small businesses, with $2.3B in Army awards covering small business efforts between fiscal 2013 and 2017. However, the command does not track the frequency of of small business engagements involving all its research and development efforts.

GAO said that engagement tracking would support the command’s capacity to evaluate and possibly improve small business activities. The accountability office urges Futures Command’s commanding general to formalize personnel functions on small business coordination.