The Government Accountability Office found that the National Nuclear Security Administration was unable to leverage its “enhanced procurement authority” to exclude suppliers of nuclear weapons and components that may pose risks to supply chain security.

GAO stated in its report that the Department of Energy component has not used the authority it received in 2013 to prohibit procurement of items related to the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons as well as associated components and information technology systems. According to NNSA officials, the agency was unable to use the authority due to lengthy approval procedures and concerns that it is best applied on a case-by-case basis.

“By formally communicating the agency’s concerns about, and suggested changes to, the enhanced procurement authority in a timely manner, NNSA would provide Congress with the relevant information for considering how to make the authority more useful to DOE and NNSA for managing supply chain risks,” the watchdog noted.

NNSA is slated to submit a draft report including recommendations on delegating a lower-level approval authority to speed up procedures and allowing the enhanced procurement authority to cover multiple contracts with a single supplier.

David Spirk Jr., chief data officer of the Special Operations Command, said at a National Defense Industrial Association-hosted conference that the command is developing a strategy for emerging technology initiatives, National Defense Magazine reported Friday. Spirk said the strategy will help SOCOM plan its allocations for artificial intelligence and machine learning efforts for fiscal years 2022 to 2026.

Applications covered by the blueprint include cyber protection, contract and budget management, training, planning and maneuver, predictive maintenance, logistics and forecasting. Spirk also mentioned that SOCOM will also establish a digital data mission management team and enlist the help of experts for program management and other technical matters.

“Data-driven technologies can be used in every function that we have,” he told National Defense. “We hope to demonstrate the capability and then allow that to just grow in the services where, naturally, it should.” Components under the special operations forces will meet in September to work on the new strategy before calling on industry and academic entities for input, Spirk noted.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a total of $35M in grants to Morgan State University for academic research efforts including training and the establishment of an innovation center. An amount of $16.9M will go to the second phase of a program that aims to train biomedical researchers, NIH said Friday.

This effort is known as A Student-Centered, Entrepreneurship Development or ASCEND. The university will use $14.2M of the grants to build a research center that would support the development of medical applications for Baltimore citizens.

The center, known as RCMI@Morgan, will pursue laboratory-based and behavioral research to address urban health disparities such as HIV and poverty-associated gene expression. The remaining fraction amounting to $3.7M would finance other research efforts at the biology and chemistry departments within Morgan’s School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

“The grant awards we have received were made possible by the collaboration of more than 25 hardworking faculty and staff members committed to bringing in the resources needed for these important research initiatives,” said Hongtao Yu, SCMNS’ dean.

The U.S. Air Force conducted an exercise to train aircrews in surviving various mission scenarios. Eleven airmen from the Travis Air Force Base tested Somewear Labs-built hotspot devices with combat-configured smartphones while they performed evasion training under the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program, the service branch said Friday.

Nate Simon, a product manager at Somewear Labs, said the hotspot is designed to enable data transmission, satellite messaging and blue-force tracking capabilities for command centers.

“This new device can be paired with any smartphone once the user downloads the application and provides encrypted messaging between the user in the field, the receiver, another team member, a recovery force or a personnel recovery cell,” Tech. Sgt. Emanuel Espino-Mata, a noncommissioned officer in charge of SERE operations at the 60th Operations Support Squadron.

The Defense Digital Service sees the aviation “village” at the DEF CON security conference in Las Vegas as an opportunity to recruit and hire cybersecurity professionals, Fedscoop reported Friday.

“In this room and throughout the convention is some of the best security talent in the world,” said Brett Goldstein, head of DDS. “This is a win for me if I can spark the imagination of this community, get them to understand we want to collaborate with them, that the problem space is fascinating, and this is something they should think about.”

DDS has approximately 70 active-duty military and civilian employees who go into rotation every couple of years, allowing the agency to recruit talent to bring in new concepts. The aviation village features an F-35 fighter jet simulator that serves as a hacking target for cyber professionals at the event.

The Department of Commerce continues to assess U.S. firms’ requests to sell certain products to Huawei Technologies, Reuters reported Saturday.

A White House official said President Trump’s earlier comment on Huawei referred only to a ban that restricts U.S. agencies from procuring equipment from the Chinese telecommunications firm. The department added Huawei to a blacklist in May due to national security risks, according to the report.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report stating that the Department of Defense’s projected $718B spending from 2020 to 2024 would increase to $776B or 13 percent by 2034.

CBO assessed DoD’s Future Years Defense Program which includes the department’s projected costs for programs within a five-year period. CBO predicts that total costs for the 2020 to 2024 period would be 2 percent or $78B higher than 2020 FYDP estimates, and that costs for the 2020 to 2034 period would increase by 4 percent or $472B.

CBO analyzed DoD’s base budget as well as its overseas contingency operations funding which is reserved for temporary war-related activities. The agency noted that this is due to DoD’s decision to allocate 85 percent of OCO funding for 2020 and 2021 for base budget operations and “enduring” activities such as global military operations.

Contigency operations funding “are even more uncertain” due to changes in ongoing conflicts such as the U.S. government’s plans to subside operations in the Middle East, according to CBO. The 2020 FYDP’s projected total funding is 3 percent less than the 2019 FYDP’s estimates.