The Department of Energy intends to invest $32 million to help research projects through the rapid development of new materials for the next four years. DOE said Wednesday that it will use high-performance computing facilities to create open-source software applications to support the design of functional materials for electronics, data storage, renewable energy and quantum information science. 

The initiative will cover seven projects from four universities and three national laboratories, including the University of Southern California and Argonne National Laboratory. The projects were selected through a competitive peer review process under the agency’s Computational Materials Sciences program.

“These projects will harness America’s leadership in supercomputing to deliver a new generation of materials for energy and a wide range of other applications,” said Paul Dabbar, undersecretary for science at DOE.

The U.S. Air Force joined experts from the U.S. Navy, NASA, industry and academia to discuss on how to address physiological safety issues of T-6 on-board oxygen generating systems. USAF said Wednesday that it hopes to address the matter by accelerating procurement of new technologies, bolstering research efforts and applying research findings to procurement policy. The discussions took place at a conference in late May at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph. 

“The team made good progress and consolidated a recognition across many functional areas how much we know and don’t know about OBOGS and the surrounding human-machine interaction of our aviators,” said Maj. Gen. Patrick Doherty, commander of the 19th Air Force. He noted the idea of focusing on oxygen-generating systems designed to resist against oxygen concentration, flow and pressure oscillations that result to physiological incidents.

“We’ll be asking our acquisition and requirements professionals to lean toward the ‘best of breed’ system designs to ensure our aircrew are as safe as possible,” he added. The discussion covered both human- and machine-related aspects of the problem.

“We must research and develop the human-machine interface, as well as the mechanical engineering aspects traditionally thought of when designing these types of platforms,” said Col. Lidia Stana Ilcus, aerospace medicine division chief at Air Education and Training Command.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology released a draft of best practices for the mitigation of software vulnerabilities. NIST said Tuesday that it recommends organizations using the agency’s “secure software development framework” for the management of software development life cycles.

The framework proposes practices to prepare organizations, protect software, produce well-secured software and respond to vulnerability reports. Listed practices identify the tools, personnel and actions that NIST says are needed to mitigate software vulnerabilities. The full report and list of practices can be found here.

The agency also seeks public comments on the framework. Interested parties may submit responses through Aug. 5. 

The U.S. Marine Corps wants to make the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial systems permanent in its inventory through President Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget proposal, National Defense Magazine reported Friday. The service requested $117 million in funding to buy three Reapers in the coming year and additional three for fiscal year 2021.

Officials said the UAS will enable the Marines to bring new weapons to the field and conduct missions currently unsupported by its existing systems. Capt. Christopher Harrison, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, said the service currently operates the Reapers under a contractor-owned, contractor-operated agreement.

“The MQ-9 Reaper provides increased lethality to the Marine Air-Ground Task Force by providing persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and strike capability, which the Marine Corps has not previously possessed in an unmanned system,” Harrison said. 

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the drones would support the service in surveillance and electronic warfare in the South China Sea, armed reconnaissance in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Africa and power competition against Russia and China. Congress has yet to approve the funding for the FY20 budget proposal. 

Since the first quarter of this year, the Marine Corps is field testing a satellite communications system that enables service personnel in all types of environments to make data and voice transmissions, DVIDS reported Tuesday.

Mobile User Objective System is a narrowband satellite communications system comprised of software and antennas. The Marine Corps is in the process of distributing thousands of antenna kits for the AN/PRC-117G tactical radio, as well as hundreds of diplexers to allow military vehicles to use MUOS for communications purposes.

“MUOS is essentially software and an antenna capability augmenting existing hardware,” said Noah Slemp, systems engineer at Marine Corps Systems Command. “It’s similar to adding an application to a cellphone.”

According to the Department of Defense, over 50 percent of the DOD’s satellite communication involves narrowband communication, which MUOS also uses. However, this type of communication uses less than 2 percent of the Department’s bandwidth, meaning that establishing MUOS as an integral tool will increase communications efficiency across the Department despite consuming only a minimal amount of bandwidth. The Corps intends to gradually phase out existing legacy equipment in favor of MUOS.