The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency hosted the SubT Integration Exercise that gathered local and international teams to test autonomous air and ground systems for navigating underground areas. DARPA said Monday that the event in Idaho Springs, Colo., marked the initial phase of its Subterranean Challenge intended to provide service members and first responders with new technologies to map, navigate and search underground environments. 

STIX involved nine teams of universities and companies from Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, South Korea, Switzerland and the U.S. Each team demonstrated how their technologies could locate objects within tunnels during complex scenarios that a warfighter or first responder would experience. DARPA plans to conduct three other tests that will focus on tunnels, underground urban environments and natural cave networks. Tests at the first tunnel circuit will begin in August. Interested parties can still submit proposals to join the competition. 

The U.S. Air Force is developing a platform that enables government and private sector information technology teams to access software tools certified for and compatible with Department of Defense networks, FCW reported Monday. 

The Air Force Cognitive Engine is intended to be a “software ecosystem” of algorithms, data, personnel and computational resources necessary for developing artificial intelligence technology, according to Maj. Michael Seal, director of the Air Force’s autonomy capability team 3. Seal noted that the military branch seeks to promote the sharing of code-based tools across industry and in-house IT teams. 

“If you find your preferred AI business, their team has a toolbox they prefer to work with that can’t get through the door to our network system because most of it hasn’t been approved or cleared for our activities,” he added.

The recently created Joint AI Center will work on addressing ACE’s predictive maintenance issues over the next six months ahead of the platform’s scheduled release in summer 2020.

The Defense Information Systems Agency unveiled a commercial off-the-shelf technology to track and map potential attacks on the internet. The platform is designed to search for critical gaps, confirm remediation results, provide alerts to any public network changes and address compliance requirements, DISA said Monday.

The system also functions to manage misconfigured cloud and internet assets as well as validate potential system behavior risks between the public internet and the network attack surface. In addition, DISA utilizes the system to secure the Department of Defense’s information network. DISA noted that misconfigurations occur in unregistered internet protocol space due to attempts to enable core operations and support mission needs.

The Government Accountability Office discovered that nine agencies successfully implemented provisions of a 2014 law requiring changes to governmentwide information technology management. GAO released a report on Monday highlighting the 12 practices that helped agencies implement the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act. 

Agency officials working on FITARA relied on senior leadership support, performance measures, an executive to manage the implementation, implementation policies, centralized software licenses management and a risk rating process for IT investments. The other practices were application rationalization, data center visits, utilizing the cloud, incentivizing agencies and using full capacity of data centers. 

The implemented FITARA provisions focused on CIO authority enhancements, enhanced transparency and improved risk management, portfolio review, data center consolidation and software purchasing. The agencies mentioned in the report are the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Justice and Veterans Affairs, the Agency for International Development, NASA and the General Services Administration. 

Amy Hess, executive assistant director of the FBI, said the bureau is working to establish partnerships with companies to better respond to cyber threats since the private sector manages approximately 95 percent of the country’s infrastructure, Federal News Network reported Monday.

“And we have to develop those relationships from a government perspective with private sector to ensure that for number one, for starters, that were notified when it is happens, because the sooner we can get involved, the sooner we can identify who it is, the sooner we can identify their [tactics, techniques and procedures], and the sooner we can stop them, hopefully from doing it again,” Hess said on the network’s Agency in Focus – Justice Department.

She noted that the bureau serves as the lead agency for threat response as part of a three-pronged effort to help protect the industry from cyber attacks.

“What the FBI is doing in the meantime, and the Justice Department, is trying to identify who did it. What are the techniques, tactics and procedures they’re using, to identify who it comes back to? … Who did it and then, ultimately, to hold them accountable, so that we can either bring them to justice or to reveal their identities, and essentially make life difficult,” Hess added.

Hess said the FBI is working with Microsoft, Mastercard and other companies on a talent recruitment program that aims to assure employees jobs in the private sector once they complete a two-year stint with the bureau.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center has established a facility in Pittsburgh, Pa., that will provide training services to engineers and operators. The Advanced Technology and Training Center is slated to open on April 29 and will serve to validate potential technologies for the U.S. Air Force’s sustainment enterprise, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said Friday.

The center’s employees will cater on projects in the areas of robotics, automation, artificial intelligence in a move to apply them to Air Force needs.  In addition, the facility will create predictive maintenance algorithms to confirm aircraft concerns through the use of AI methods.

“Part of the reason we chose Pittsburgh is because the area is known as an innovation hub, and there are numerous opportunities to collaborate with local universities and industry,” said Debbie Naguy, chief of product support engineering division at AFLCMC.