A new Congressional Budget Office report says the implementation of plans to modernize and maintain U.S. nuclear forces as stated in the Nuclear Posture Review and the fiscal 2019 budget requests of the departments of Defense and Energy would cost $494B from 2019 through 2028.

CBO said the figure reflects a 23 percent increase from its 2017 estimate – $400B – over the 10-year period.

The agency projects that approximately 39 percent, or $37B, of the $94B estimated increase would occur between 2019 and 2026, driven by new weapons and modernization programs and plans for nuclear command-and-control platforms.

Of the total projected costs, $432B would fund several programs including strategic nuclear delivery systems and weapons; tactical nuclear weapons and delivery platforms; DoD’s command, control, communications and early-warning tools; and DOE’s nuclear weapons laboratories and supporting initiatives.

CBO said the remaining $62B of the total estimated cost accounts for its projected additional costs based on historical cost growth.
 

The U.S. Air Force began reorganizing and unifying its headquarters’ information technology, cyber and intelligence operations, Federal News Network reported Wednesday. USAF’s new approach would combine the three technical areas into one organization, merging the branch’s deputy chief of staff offices for information dominance and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Matt Donovan, undersecretary of the Air Force, said the service branch intends to nominate Lt. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson as the prospective leader of the combined organization. Jamieson is USAF’s current deputy chief of staff for ISR.

The service branch first disclosed the combined organization’s preliminary plans in August when Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, discussed USAF’s need for tighter integration in information domain decision making, the report noted.

The U.S. Navy‘s Tactical Networks Program Office or PMW 160 verified the alignment of its efforts with the chief of naval operations’ maritime superiority plan after a recent review. The office concluded that its efforts support A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority Version 2.0., fostering future plans to boost the fleet’s network capacities, the Navy said Wednesday.

PMW 160 facilitates the Navy’s cloud transition, foster multi-sector collaboration and drives cloud-based Agile development. The office uses its Consolidated Afloat Network and Enterprise Services or CANES system with industry-based information technology to perform these tasks.

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Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, in partnership with PMW 160, also leveraged CANES to create a cloud-based collaborative staging environment for development, integration and testing activities. Now, PMW 160 has accelerated development of the second Agile Core Services afloat baseline, a subsystem of CANES. The office intends to deploy this iteration of the ACS on aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.

CNO Adm. John Richardson released the latest version of the maritime superiority plan in December 2018.

The U.S. Navy is exploring a new method of welding that officials said could reduce costs and accelerate maintenance of naval assets. The Tactical Innovation Implementation Lab within the Navy is leading efforts to field the cold spray process across U.S. shipyards, the service branch said Wednesday. 

TIIL hosted a Cold Spray Sprint on Jan. 15 and 16 hathering representatives from the Navy, Coast Guard and civilian scientists to advance fielding of the welding method. Cold spray uses 212-930 degrees Fahrenheit as the average temperature during a bonding process, far lower than traditional welding that fires around 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. The Navy said lower temperatures reduce the risk of metal distortion and allows the use of ceramics and composite materials to repair or build components. 

“This process allows us to take something worn and reconfigure it to something new,” said TIIL Director Janice Bryant.

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Alex Frank, a Navy mechanical engineer, said cold spray could also replace brush plating and epoxy repairs that involve hazardous chemicals and takes longer to complete. The Navy said it hopes to build a mobile cold spray unit using a robot installed directly into ships to support maintenance work.

The Office of Personnel Management issued a memo encouraging agencies to allow work-from-home arrangements and other approaches promoting schedule flexibility for employees. The memo intends to support federal employees who are still working despite the government shutdown, OPM said Wednesday. The office also tells agencies to disseminate these schedule approaches in ways that best suit respective workforces.

“While the shutdown has affected all furloughed workers of the Federal workforce, many employees performing excepted duties during the furlough have the additional hardship of losing their subsidies for childcare and transit benefits but continuing to incur childcare and commuting expenses in order to continue reporting to work,” said Margaret Weichert, acting OPM director.

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“OPM is grateful to the dedicated men and women of the Federal workforce who are serving the American people during the partial lapse in appropriations, and we strongly encourage agencies to be as accommodating as possible during the current lapse in appropriations,” she added.

The U.S. Navy is holding a commissioning ceremony for the future USS Michael Monsoor destroyer on Saturday at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, Calif., the Department of Defense said Wednesday.

The second Zumwalt-class destroyer will be deployed to support naval, joint or combined maritime missions including aviation, surface and undersea operations. The vessel’s features include a vertical launch system fitted with large cells, a fight deck that can accommodate multiple unmanned aerial vehicles and two MH-60R aircrafts. USS Michael Monsoor will be homeported at NAS North Island following the ceremony.

The ship is designated as DDG 1001 and named after Michael Monsoor, a Navy SEAL officer who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his service during his deployment to Iraq in 2006.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has issued a memo directing Michael Griffin, defense undersecretary for research and engineering, to submit by March 1 a plan to establish a new space development agency, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

Griffin’s office will oversee the new agency, which is expected to be set up no later than March 29, according to the Jan. 19 memo initially reported by Inside Defense.

The memo states that Griffin will lead SDA’s transition to the U.S. Space Force once congressional approval is secured.

Griffin, a 2019 Wash100 winner, tapped Fred Kennedy, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s tactical technology office, in December to conduct a study on how to structure the new agency.

Sources said SDA would have the authority over the development of architectures of future space platforms and would set its sights on systems engineering to facilitate the integration of commercial tech platforms into military programs, according to the report.