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FCC Chair Wants to Begin Process of AWS-3 Auction
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FCC Chair Wants to Begin Process of AWS-3 Auction

The head of the Federal Communications Commission wants to begin the auction of advanced wireless services-3 spectrum as soon as possible to fund the removal and replacement of China-made Huawei and ZTE equipment from U.S. networks. Jessica Rosenworcel in a notice of proposed rulemaking circulated Monday called for the immediate adoption of procedures for granting commercial licenses for the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz and 2155-2180 MHz bands. 

The outgoing FCC commissioner pointed to the previous attempts of Chinese government-backed threat actor Salt Typhoon to access communications of presidential campaign officials and their staff and American telecommunication firms such as AT&T, Lumen and Verizon. 

“Today’s proposal is a critical step toward finally filling the shortfall in the Rip and Replace program,” Rosenworcel commented. “I am confident that the FCC’s world-leading and award-winning auction team will meet this important moment.”

Rip and Replace Program’s Funding Problem

The Rip and Replace Program started in 2021 with funding of $1.9 billion from Congress to reimburse eligible entities with the cost necessary to remove and dispose of communications equipment provided by Huawei and ZTE. The China-based companies were designated as national security threats and have been banned from distributing their products and services in the U.S. 

The FCC Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program is in charge of banned communications equipment in the U.S.

Rosenworcel commented in previous interviews that the program needs over $3 billion more to fully remove banned equipment and address the network threat posed by insecure Chinese products.

In December 2024, Congress signed into law part of the National Defense Authorization Act that allows the FCC to borrow up to $3.08 billion from the Department of the Treasury to fund the Rip and Replace program. 

Upcoming AWS-3 Spectrum Auction

Rosenworcel has proposed an update to the service-specific competitive bidding rules surrounding the licensing of the AWS-3 spectrum bands. Included in the changes, the chairperson suggestedm, is the modification of small and very small business definitions under the commission’s general part 1 competitive bidding rules. According to the proposed rulemaking, the updated definition must confirm with the Small Business Act’s five-year lookback period used in recent spectrum auctions. 

The FCC plans to repay its Rip and Replace program loans through proceeds from the AWS-3 auction.

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Kathleen Naeher Joins Aerospace Corporation as SVP & COO
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Kathleen Naeher Joins Aerospace Corporation as SVP & COO

Kathleen Naeher has joined Aerospace Corporation as the new senior vice president and chief operating officer. 

In her new position, Naeher will leverage over three decades of national security and IT experience to spearhead Aerospace’s business operations and execute corporate priorities, the Chantilly, Virginia-based company announced Monday. Naeher is set to start at Aerospace on Feb. 3. 

As Aerospace’s COO, Naeher will oversee teams in the areas of finance, people operations, IT, safety, security, communications and facilities.  

Steve Isakowitz, CEO and president of Aerospace, said, “In today’s complex operating environment, delivering seamless capabilities that enable our team to collaborate, solve hard problems and maximize our impact for our customers is more important than ever.”

“Kathleen brings the proven ability to integrate across business functions and drive the adoption of advanced technologies that will enable us to deliver on our mission at this critical time in space,” Isakowitz noted.

Naeher’s Leadership Experience

Prior to joining Aerospace, Naeher most recently served as vice president of digital enablement and collaboration at Leidos. In this role, she led the delivery of innovative technologies and managed organizational advancements that improved contract operations and customer satisfaction. She also served as the chief operating officer of Leidos’ civil group. 

Prior to Leidos, Naeher served as associate deputy director for digital innovation at the CIA, where she oversaw efforts to implement data management and cybersecurity throughout the agency.

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Jarod Koopman on How AI Helps IRS Address Fraud
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Jarod Koopman on How AI Helps IRS Address Fraud

Jarod Koopman, executive director of cyber and forensics at the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation, said IRS-CI is exploring the use of artificial intelligence as it tries to keep up with criminals who leverage AI tools to introduce more fraud schemes, Federal News Network reported Wednesday

“What used to take a significant amount of effort, going into some type of a social media-type exploit or a hack, they can now do this with AI that’s much more efficient, much more effective, and certainly much more volume at high speed,” Koopman said of fraudsters.

Using AI to Detect Patterns in Data

According to the IRS-CI official, his agency is using AI to better optimize the data already available to its personnel, including third-party data from other financial institutions and operational data from ongoing and previous casework.

“All of that data is pretty vast and it’s large volumes of data. AI has certainly made us much more effective and efficient in sifting through that to find patterns, to identify fraud methodologies or typologies, to identify current threats or vectors that might be red flags of issues that we were not aware of prior,” Koopman said.

“It’s like having AI and large language models be able to match up against our data internally to be able to give us the results and the outputs that we’re looking for to make decisions, not for the AI to use the data to make decisions directly,” he noted.

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DOJ Issues Solicitation for Potential $36M FPMS Software Contract
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DOJ Issues Solicitation for Potential $36M FPMS Software Contract

The Department of Justice has begun seeking proposals for the procurement of software subscriptions and related services with a potential value of $36 million.

According to the request for proposal posted on SAM.gov Thursday, the potential contractor will be awarded an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity task order to provide a Financial & Performance Management System, or FPMS, software as a service subscriptions and support services.

Expectations of the Award

The selected vendor will deliver a cloud-based software service that covers various FPMS activities, including:

  • A-123 audits
  • Agency financial reporting
  • Component and department-wide data calls
  • Component and enterprise risk management
  • Component financial statement audits
  • Congressional budget justifications
  • Department-wide financial statement audits
  • Enterprise performance management
  • Operational and program audits
  • Policy reviews
  • Sarbanes-Oxley internal controls review for federal prison industries

The software should have a moderate or high impact Federal Risk and Management Program certification and be commercial-off-the-shelf or commercially available to the public.

The contract will have a one-year base period with an initial value of $250,000 and will run through March 31, 2026. It also comes with four option periods that will extend the work until March 2033, if all are exercised.

The project will be conducted in Washington, D.C. at DOJ headquarters. Interested contractors may send their proposals no later than Jan. 30.

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NIST Opens Draft BGP Security Guidance for Public Comment
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NIST Opens Draft BGP Security Guidance for Public Comment

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is seeking public comments on its draft guidance on securing internet routing, particularly Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP. The draft document published Friday provides information and recommendations on how information security officers and managers can prevent internet routing incidents across federal enterprise networks. 

The BGP is the routing protocol that distributes compute pathways between autonomous networks, allowing for the seamless transfer of information. It is a critical component of the internet, which is why its security, especially in government, is paramount. 

BGP Vulnerabilities, Solutions

According to NIST, the guidance is part of its response to increasing internet routing incidents, especially involving BGP. The BGP reportedly lacks security and resilience, making it vulnerable to malicious attacks. 

Threats targeting the BGP include prefix hijacking and route leaks, which can result in denial of service and network performance degradation.

Another internet routing vulnerability is source address spoofing to avoid traceability. Many malicious actors use IP source address spoofing to carry out denial of service attacks, potentially crippling a target network.

The draft document identifies all vulnerabilities associated with BGP, and provides mitigation strategies to potential risks.  

For instance, NIST recommends Resource Public Key Infrastructure certification and Route Origin Authorization to enhance internet routing security and resilience. The agency also listed down technologies that can minimize vulnerabilities such as remotely triggered black hole filtering, source address validation and unicast Reverse Path Forwarding. 

Comments on the public draft of the NIST Special Publication 800-189, Border Gateway Protocol Security and Resilience will be accepted until Feb. 25.

Wider Government Effort to Strengthen Internet Routing Security

The NIST publication is part of the U.S. government’s efforts to address the vulnerabilities of internet routing. The White House Office of the National Cyber Director on Sept. 4, 2024, published a 19-page report titled ”Roadmap to Enhancing Internet Routing Security.” 

The ONCD also partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to establish the Internet Routing Security Working Group. The working group will create a risk assessment framework for network operators to prioritize IP address resources.

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Drone Use Said to Cut Pre-Flight Aircraft Inspection Time
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Drone Use Said to Cut Pre-Flight Aircraft Inspection Time

Funding from the NASA Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer program has enabled Near Earth Autonomy to develop a drone-based pre-flight aircraft inspection process. The Pittsburgh-based aircraft technology company’s Proxim unit is behind the technology that can gather safety inspection data in less than 30 minutes, compared with the commercial airliners’ typical manual check-up lasting up to four hours, NASA said.  

Test flights on the drone system have been conducted on the Boeing aircraft fleet of American Airlines and Emirates Airlines. A drone in autonomous flight around an aircraft for inspection gathers photos through a computer task card with program inputs from Federal Aviation Administration commercial inspection rules. 

Cost-Saving Potential

The drone’s collected photos are shared among airline maintenance personnel for remote analysis. Through the system, users also can sound reinspection or repair alerts if necessary. With the technology, the airline industry can prevent an estimated earning loss of $10,000 per hour on average during unplanned aircraft grounding, Near Earth Autonomy said.

Danette Allen, NASA senior leader for autonomous systems, noted that the agency has previously engaged Near Earth Autonomy in searching for autonomous inspection solutions in multiple areas.

“We are excited to see this technology spin out to industry to increase efficiencies, safety and accuracy of the aircraft inspection process for overall public benefit,” she said.

In October 2017, Boeing announced an investment in Near Earth Autonomy through its ventures arm HorizonX to explore new unmanned platforms for use in urban mobility and other emerging market applications.

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DARPA Issues RFP for Biohybrid Robotics
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DARPA Issues RFP for Biohybrid Robotics

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Defense Sciences Office has issued a request for proposal for research concepts on biohybrid robotics.

HyBRIDS ACT Opportunity

According to the notice posted on SAM.gov Friday, DARPA DSO is planning to award an Advanced Research Concepts, or ARC, Opportunity to support the Hybridizing Biology and Robotics through Integration for Deployable Systems, or HyBRIDS, initiative.

Under the ARC Opportunity, vendors will have a maximum period of performance of one year. Each organization selected for the ARC award will receive $100,000 to $300,000 in funding. Interested parties have until April 7 to send in their proposals.

Biohybrid Robots

Current robotic platforms pose challenges in terms of real-world operations and applications. Biohybrid robots, composed of biological and synthetic elements, are being developed to address this issue. With the recent progress in engineering and biology, biohybrid systems are being designed to have the controllability and precision of fully engineered abiotic systems and the adaptability, efficiency, resiliency and sensitivity of biological systems.

However, current biohybrid robots have yet to be fully integrated with these qualities. The HyBRIDS ARC opportunity intends to bridge the gap in existing robotics by encouraging interested parties to develop robotic systems with enhanced capabilities.

Register and join the Potomac Officers Club as it hosts the 2025 Defense R&D Summit, where leading defense researchers, experts and decision-makers will discuss the technologies shaping the future of the U.S. military.

DARPA Issues RFP for Biohybrid Robotics
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Navy Names New Destroyers—USS Intrepid, USS Robert Kerrey
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Navy Names New Destroyers—USS Intrepid, USS Robert Kerrey

The U.S. Navy has named its two newest Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers as the future USS Intrepid and USS Robert Kerrey.

DDG-145 is the fifth ship to be called Intrepid while DDG-146 was named after Joseph Robert Kerrey, a former senator, Nebraska governor and naval officer, the Navy said Saturday.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced the vessels’ names during formal ceremonies held in New York and Washington. “One of the great privileges I have as Secretary of the Navy is to name ships,” according to the two-time Wash100 Award recipient.

Honoring Naval Legacies and Heroes

The last Intrepid saw action from 1943 to 1974, serving during World War II and the Vietnam War and supporting NATO and NASA missions. The former aircraft carrier was decommissioned in 1974 and is preserved as a museum ship in New York City.

Meanwhile, DDG-146 will be honoring Kerrey, who lost his leg while serving as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam. For his heroic conduct, Kerrey received the Medal of Honor in 1970. He then served as the governor of Nebraska from 1983 to 1987 and as a U.S. senator from 1989 to 2001.

Navy’s Multi-Mission Ships

As part of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the Intrepid and Robert Kerrey are built around the Aegis Combat System. The multi-mission ships are designed to conduct various operations and provide a wide range of warfighting capabilities in air, surface and subsurface domains.

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MITRE Issues Report on How Gov’t Can Address Drone Threats
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MITRE Issues Report on How Gov’t Can Address Drone Threats

The U.S. government faces multiple challenges as well as opportunities when it comes to addressing the threats posed by unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS, MITRE said in a report released Friday.

Drone Acquisition & Operation

According to the not-for-profit corporation, one of the challenges in countering UAS threats is the ease by which drones can be acquired and operated. Related to this matter is the ability of drones to overcome traditional countermeasure capabilities, like signal jamming.

Opportunities to address these include the government looking into alternative types of equipment ownership, rental or lease agreements. The government can also implement incentives to motivate industry to develop new technologies to enhance air domain awareness or defeat drones altogether.

Integration Into NAS

Another challenge faced by the government is the integration of authorized UAS into the National Airspace System, or NAS. MITRE describes this issue as “multifaceted” that is made more complicated by several other factors, including cybersecurity, privacy and airspace congestion. Nevertheless, opportunities remain in terms of the enforcement of UAS remote identification as well as the deployment of UAS traffic management. Collaboration with federal security partners is key.

Counter-UAS Infrastructure

A third challenge involves the lack of processes and infrastructure across the U.S. designed specifically to handle the legitimate use of drones and to counter their illicit use. According to MITRE, opportunities to address this challenge involve public-private partnerships.

Soft Targets & Crowded Places

A fourth challenge has to do with UAS being used to threaten soft targets and crowded places. MITRE notes that many security partners lack the resources to safeguard such targets. The federal government can step in and call for additional resources, including personnel, equipment and training, to bolster counter-UAS efforts at such locations.

Expanding Legal Authorities

MITRE went on to note that maximizing these opportunities does not only involve providing resources and coordinating and collaborating with various agencies and levels of government; it would also involve the expansion of legal authorities.

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Commerce Dept Provides $285M for Chips Manufacturing Institute
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Commerce Dept Provides $285M for Chips Manufacturing Institute

The Department of Commerce has awarded the Semiconductor Research Corporation Manufacturing Consortium Corporation funding grant of $285 million to build and operate a chips manufacturing institute in Durham, North Carolina.

To be known as Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Research with Twins USA—SMART USA for short—the $1 billion institute will develop, test and deploy digital twins to enhance domestic semiconductor design, manufacturing, advanced packaging, assembly and test processes, the Commerce Department said Friday.

Bringing Chip Production to US

According to Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the investment will assist the Biden administration’s vision of bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States. The funding will also support efforts to “pursue the research and development needed to win the future,” the Wash100 Award winner added.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo noted that digital technology will enable manufacturers and researchers to “develop and produce the next frontier of technological advancements in the semiconductor industry.”

Working to Improve Chip Industry’s Production Efficiency

Digital twins allow engineers and researchers to create virtual models to design and test processes digitally before their deployment. The technology also supports the development of future capabilities in a simulated environment. In the semiconductor industry, digital twins can use artificial intelligence to optimize chip design, improve production efficiency and lower costs.

When it becomes operational, SMART USA intends to cut down U.S. chip development and manufacturing costs by over 40 percent, reduce development cycle times by 35 percent, minimize the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent and train more than 110,000 workers and students on digital twin technology over the next five years.

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