Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., will co-chair a commission intended to assess and address the cyber threats facing the country. The Cyberspace Solarium Commission consists of 14 members working to build cyber policy on recommendations, hearings, intelligence and homeland security discussions, King’s office said Thursday. The group’s establishment stems from the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

“Through the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, we’ll work to build a foundation that will not only defend our nation against ongoing cyber-attacks but also prevent attacks by adversaries who are considering launching assaults on our essential digital infrastructure,” King said.

The commission will regularly administer meetings to assess cyber threats from state and non-state parties, and identify ways to cybersecure citizens and sectors that make the country.

The 12 other CSC members are:

• Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.
• Chris Inglis, cybersecurity studies professor at U.S. Naval Academy
• Chris Wray, FBI director
• David Norquist, acting deputy secretary of defense
• David Pekoske, acting deputy secretary of homeland security
• Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security
• Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I.
• Patrick Murphy, former undersecretary of the U.S. Army
• Samantha Ravich, vice chair of the president’s intelligence advisory board
• Susan Gordon, deputy director of national intelligence
• Suzanne Spaulding, senior advisor for homeland security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Tom Fanning, chairman, president and CEO of the Southern Company

A bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission calling for increased focus on security for the 5G network, which the Trump administration wants to introduce nationwide. “As our U.S. network operators, from the largest to the smallest, gear up for significant infrastructure buildout for 5G and other advanced technologies, security should be a critical consideration and associated rules and regulations should be as clear as possible,” reads the letter issued Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

The lawmakers expressed confidence that the FCC is “well-positioned” to address the challenges facing the 5G security. They said the agency could secure the supply chain that provides equipment and software for communications networks as the government prepares to utilize high speed internet. 

FCC announced in April that it will focus on national security, emergency preparedness, next-generation 911 and the reliability of communications systems and infrastructure under the 5G program. The agency will establish a Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council to oversee deployment of the high speed network. 

Despite providing training and implementing new approaches to prepare federal employees to take on cybersecurity roles, the government continues to face challenges building and retaining its cyber workforce, FCW reported Thursday. Information technology officials from different agencies raised concerns with the effectiveness of the new cyber workforce executive order. 

“What I’m not sure how much will get addressed with the executive order is, what about retention?” Shane Barney, chief information security officer of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said at a recent Government CIO conference. 

The government provides “some really great things” like incentives to attract and retain employees. However, Barney cited he still sees people not taking any cyber-related job after training. “I’m sure any CISO or any CIO could tell you the horror stories of that exact same experience,” he said. “It really hurts us. And that’s a difficult gap to breach.”

Beth Killoran, deputy chief information officer at the General Services Administration, said employees tend to seek other opportunities as the government fails to meet the needs of new workers. 

“If we can either show folks that we can improve their skillset or show folks they’ll have opportunities they’re not going to have at a different agency or the private sector, that’s what’s going to keep them,” she said.

The Air Force Research Laboratory broke ground on a new munitions research facility at the Eglin Air Force Base. The 52.6K-square foot Advanced Munitions Technology Complex will serve to reinforce research on ammunitions and potential warfighter capacities and enable engineers as well as scientists to explore new explosive components, the Eglin Air Force Base said Tuesday.

“The Advanced Munitions Technology Complex is not just a series of buildings. It’s a center that brings minds together to conceive of next generation sophisticated ordnance technologies in an efficient way,” said Michael Lindsay, core technical competency lead for ordnance systems at AFRL.

AFRL aims to use the facility to develop lighter munitions for new aircraft systems to provide space for other weapons and reinforce mission efficiency. The U.S. Air Force is slated to conclude construction of the complex by 2021.

The U.S. Air Force released a document outlining the service’s approach to implement principles to provide airmen access to secure, visible, accessible, understandable, linked and trusted data using open data services technologies and architectural design patterns. The Data Services Reference Architecture was released as part of the Digital Air Force initiative, which seeks to harness the power of data to keep pace with adversaries, the service said Wednesday. 

The document signed by Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Donovan offers guidance about how to design, build, implement and adopt major command and functional data platforms, promotes adherence to common standards and specifications to achieve SVAULT principles and seeks to provide a common language for stakeholders.

DSRA includes four capability layers with microservices and value-added services overlays. These layers are data product consumer services; enterprise data and analytics services; enterprise metadata services and data platform foundation services.

The service said adherence to the document advances the use of cloud services, commercial-off-the-shelf software and open-source software platforms “while remaining product and vendor agnostic,” which could help the Air Force to be more agile and deliver capabilities on a monthly basis.

NASA conducted another test of its Space Launch System vehicle configuration at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., where the agency assessed the space vehicle’s aerodynamics through a set of wind tunnel tests, NASASpaceFlight.com reported Tuesday. 

The space agency launched 700 supersonic test runs using the SLS Block 1 Cargo vehicle at a speed of Mach 1.5 to 4.5. NASA aims to use aerodynamic data from the test to enhance analysis and modeling of the vehicle’s atmospheric trajectories, guidance, navigation, control and structural loading. 

The test included rolling out to the launch pad, liftoff, boost phase, booster separation and return to the launch area.  NASA started testing components of SLS at different wind tunnels across the U.S in 2018.