The Department of Defense has established a senior integration group to better oversee and coordinate across counter-drone efforts, National Defense Magazine reported Thursday. Chris O’Donnell, deputy assistant secretary of defense for platform and weapon portfolio management, said this new group will work to address issues across technology, acquisition, operations and policy.

“We’re trying to get decision-makers to understand that there’s a wide variety of things that they can pick to do this stuff,” O’Donnell stated at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s Defense Protection Security Conference in Washington, D.C.

He also said DoD seeks to improve procurement and accelerate the transition of new technologies to warfighters. To achieve this, the Pentagon plans to pursue rapid procurement programs for emerging technologies, the report noted.

The Government Accountability Office has issued recommendations regarding the Department of Defense’s use of physical access control systems. GAO said Thursday that it found the service branch has not monitored the use of these PACS, and as a result, DoD is not aware of how much these systems are used.

DoD branches use PACS to manage personnel accessibility of military sites. The U.S. Army developed its own PACS, and the other branches use a PACS made by the Defense Manpower Data Center. The department’s Identity Matching Engine for Security and Analysis links to these PACS for assessments of whether a certain individual poses a threat.

While the Army employs performance measures to assess its PACS, DMDC does not, resulting to a lack of evaluation information on the system. GAO recommends various military officials to implement requirements that guide the monitoring of PACS’ use across installations.

Acting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said service leaders have decided to reform the structure by adopting an industry approach to accelerate the deployment of high-priority weapon systems to warfighters at affordable prices, the Army website reported Thursday.

He said that the Army implemented three measures to improve its procurement decisions: identifying six priorities to counter near-peer or peer competitors, divesting legacy systems to fund those priorities and establishing Army Futures Command on Wednesday during the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power in Washington.

“We truncated the buys on 93 programs and terminated 93 others. We made some very big, hard choices,” McCarthy said. He stated that majority of the Army’s budget for science and technology is being diverted to 31 platforms to support the six priorities.

McCarthy said Congress and other authorities will be monitoring the command’s performance in the coming years. “Field testing will be rigorous, followed by low-rate initial production testing in units at larger scale,” he added.

Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said CISA is collaborating with the Office of Management and Budget and Congress to explore approaches to consolidate civilian agencies’ cybersecurity initiatives, Nextgov reported Thursday.

“The 99 federal civilian agencies all manage their own risk, all own their own networks—that is not a particularly defensible posture,” Krebs said Tuesday during his speech at Auburn University. “In five years, I think you may see a completely different architecture across those 99 agencies.”

Krebs said CISA will act as a security facilitator to help agencies and companies secure their assets. He also discussed CISA’s priorities through a strategic plan released Thursday.

Those priorities include prioritizing risk management to address threats and other vulnerabilities and leading efforts to protect the country’s critical infrastructure while working with other stakeholders. The document also outlined security topics CISA intends to focus on: election security, federal cybersecurity, industrial control system protection, security of soft targets, election security and Chinese supply chain and 5G risks.

Ellen Lord, chair of the Nuclear Weapons Council, said during a tour of the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site that the efforts to refurbish SRS facilities and drive plutonium pit production is “the best path forward.”

DOE said Wednesday that the SRS nuclear reservation in Aiken, S.C. and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico handle efforts to meet the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review’s goal of producing at least 80 plutonium pits by 2030.

Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and three-time Wash100 Award recipient, said she supports the repurposing of the SRS mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility while ensuring that LANL remains a center of excellence for plutonium research and development.

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, DOE’s undersecretary for nuclear security and administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that DOE seeks to “ensure a more responsive and flexible infrastructure to maintain the nuclear deterrent for future threats.”

John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, added that efforts to ramp up plutonium production will help the nuclear security enterprise “be more responsive and resilient in order to meet our future military requirements.”

The SRS and LANL tours took place on Aug. 14 and 15, respectively.

Jean Schaffer, chief of cyber and enterprise operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said DIA should consider cybersecurity as it modernizes the intelligence community’s intranet used for transmitting top-secret data, Fifth Domain reported Wednesday.

The Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System “is already hardened because primarily it is a top-secret SCI network, so it is hardened that way to start. But we really need to raise the security posture,” Schaffer said Tuesday at the annual DoDIIS conference in Tampa, Fla.

“What we’re doing here at DIA is just trying to make cybersecurity part of our normal business rhythm,” Schaffer added. Schaffer also noted that the agency is focusing on migrating from a network protection model to a data protection model. “Focusing on that data means that we really are going to have to understand and clearly define on and off ramps for JWICS,” she continued.

During the U.S. Air Force’s launch of the GPS III satellite, Raytheon’s GPS Next-Generation Operational Control System, known as GPS OCX, supported the launch. The ground system will spend the next 10 days maneuvering the satellite into its final orbit, demonstrating GPS OCX’s ability to simultaneously support multiple GPS III spacecraft on-orbit throughout the checkout and calibration process.

“GPS OCX performed extremely well during the first launch and has exceeded performance requirements in the months since,” said Dave Wajsgras, president of Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient. “The team was well-prepared for this launch, and we’re confident the system’s performance will continue to be positive.”

GPS OCX, the enhanced ground control segment of America’s GPS system, has achieved the highest level of cybersecurity protections of any Department of Defense space system. Its open architecture design allows it to integrate advanced protections as they become available, and the system’s industry-leading cyber protections are why it will be used to support all future GPS III launches and GPS constellation operations upon operational acceptance.

In addition to GPS OCX’s role, RGNext, a joint venture between Raytheon and General Dynamics Information Technology, provided operational launch support to ensure the safe launch of the United Launch Alliance’s Delta-IV rocket that was carrying the GPS III satellite.

RGNext operates the launch range on behalf of the U.S. Air Force, providing maintenance, range safety, weather monitoring, communication and surveillance support for all launches conducted by defense, civil and commercial companies at the range.

About Raytheon

Raytheon Company, with 2018 sales of $27 billion and 67,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 97 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5Iâ„¢ products and services, sensing, effects and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.