The Air Force Research Laboratory is working with the service branch’s collection management division to automate the detection of ground-based anti-aircraft weapons. David Sobota and Capt. Yongjun Yoon of AFRL’s sensors directorate are collecting signature data based on five of the Air Force Museum’s anti-aircraft guns, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said Friday. The two intend to fabricate these guns via radar reflectivity measurements, and use resulting replicas for future tests.

“We will design the mockup so it looks like a real AAA gun to the radar, but it has to be much lighter and reconfigurable,” said Sobota who added that modern versions of these guns are used against unmanned aerial vehicles. “As the adversary is firing at your UAVs, you can detect which AAA are firing, backtrack their projectiles and either warn the other UAVs to stay away, cue other UAVs to find targets nearby or destroy the AAA gun itself,” he noted.

The team is in talks with the U.S. Army to gather data on plasma measurements in gun-firing and Doppler gun recoil. Sobota said that future anti-air threats would include railguns and plasma powered and electro-thermal guns.

The U.S. Army plans to implement enterprise-as-a-service as the initial step towards network modernization, with possible partnerships with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, FCW reported Friday.

Col. Jeth Rey, director of operations at the Army’s Cyber Command, said at an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association event that the branch’s new network approach will involve more contractor services.

“We’re exploring the possibility of contractor-owned, contractor-operated, [on a] government-owned site,” he said.

He added that the Army will make further announcements regarding the new enterprise services approach in March. The branch is also continuing its Joint Regional Security Stacks program that leverages a wide set of assets to protect information, Rey said.

Four months after the U.S. Army took it offline due a security risk, The Department of Defense has restored a file sharing system, Fifth Domain reported Saturday.

DoD suspended the SAFE service in November after government personnel identified vulnerabilities in the platform. The department reinstated the service on Feb. 13 along with an update lowering online availability of files from 15 days to 48 hours, the report noted. The Army Combat Capabilities Development Center Aviation and Missile Center manages the Safe Access File Exchange portal built to help defense organizations and contractors exchange up to two gigabytes of data.

The Pentagon wants to give future satellite constellations the self defense capabilities to avoid missiles or other satellite-based weapons during an attack in space, Defense One reported Friday. U.S. Air Force officials announced the plan during a recent event on Capitol Hill, saying the Department of Defense has begun introducing changes to satellite systems.

“We have to give our mission systems an opportunity to participate in their own defense, give them a fighting chance,” said Michael Dickey, head of the Enterprise Strategy and Architectures Office at Air Force Space Command. “We’ve begun to introduce changes.”

The announcement follows the Defense Intelligence Agency warned in early February that China and Russia started developing space-based weapons, such as lasers. Dickey said DoD wants to build satellites with improved maneuverability to dodge any attack from adversary systems in space.

“It’s not hard to imagine, if someone is shooting at you, you would maybe like to get out the line of fire and so creating some agility with our space systems becomes very important,” he said. “Maneuverability takes fuel and thrusters and all of that.”

Col. Russell Teehan, portfolio architect of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, said future satellites should also feature tools for expanded and faster situational awareness.

The National Institutes of Health is seeking a chief data science strategist to manage vast data and digital efforts for the agency, Federal News Network reported Friday. Andrea Norris, chief information officer at NIH, announced the effort at the recent AFCEA Bethesda Health IT day in Bethesda, Md. 

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“It’s an incredibly important position that will have significant impact of the direction of biomedical research over the next decade,” she said. The new data strategist will report directly to the director of NIH and lead the implementation of the agency’s data science strategic plan. “They will work very closely to help us build this sustainable platform for these incredibly large data sets that we are now generating through electronic health record data, imaging data and genome data,” Norris said. 

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The CIO noted that NIH hopes to hire an official immediately to begin efforts to manage its rapidly growing data. Norris also announced NIH is increasing transparency in its data as well as research projects.

The Department of Defense and a UI Labs-led consortium are entering into a possible $60M follow-on agreement to develop and integrate digital tools into manufacturing processes. DoD said Friday that it will provide $10M to the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute and may award an additional $20M over the next five years through a contract option.

“We are working together to develop cutting-edge digital technology and investing in a robust research and development infrastructure to promote global competitiveness on the part of U.S. manufacturers,” said Robert Gold, director of technology and manufacturing industrial base at DoD.

DMDII collaborates with the U.S. Army to evaluate weapons production methods at Rock Island Arsenal through the use of 3D models. The institute has invested $94M in 60 applied research projects nationwide since its inception in 2014.