Ellen Lord, under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said the government should avoid any interruption or funding cuts in its ongoing nuclear capability modernization to stay ahead of Russia and China, which have been upgrading their nuclear power. She cited that some U.S. weapons are already approaching ages where technologies are required to end operations, the Department of Defense said Thursday. 

“We are living now with Cold War technology. We have put off modernizing the triad for multiple decades,” Lord said. “We need to move forward. So, any cut in funding would essentially have us unilaterally stand down in terms of our capability to have a credible nuclear deterrent.”

DoD and its military branches are working on upgrading or replacing weapons from the U.S. nuclear triad, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles. Pentagon launched the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program to replace aging weapons, including the Minuteman III ICBMs first deployed in 1970. The other systems the military plans to replace are the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines and the B-52H Stratofortress and B-2A Spirit legacy bombers.

The U.S. Air Force will establish a 10-man science and technology team to accommodate robotics and related technologies from Carnegie Mellon University’s Center of Excellence. The planned team will work with CMU’s faculty and utilize the university’s research and education components to meet its objectives, the Air Force said Wednesday. 

Heather Wilson, secretary at the U.S. Air Force and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said the team will validate, develop and deploy technologies as well as provide opportunities to the service branch’s employees through academic research efforts. 

“Carnegie Mellon has been a partner with the Air Force for many years and this is the next step to deepen that partnership,” said Wilson.

The university teamed up with the military service in 2018 to create the Center of Excellence to support integration of intelligence platforms into human capacities.

Mark Esper, secretary of the U.S. Army and 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, said the service is still assessing how its multi-domain task force operations will affect procurement procedures during a recent Brookings Institute event, FCW reported Wednesday. Esper noted changes to the task force’s structure are possible but there is no definite schedule for the release of the Army’s updated Multidomain Operations Plan Strategy.

“I need some time for our doctrine to play out and see what it looks like,” he added.

The Army secretary also noted that he is confident about the current status of the Futures Command, which previously saw concerns from Congress regarding bureaucratic obstacles.

A Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday found that the Transportation Security Administration lacks procedures for properly managing over 2.7 million miles of interstate pipelines for products such as oil and natural gas. GAO noted that TSA’s revised pipeline security guidelines didn’t include all practices under the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s cybersecurity framework and that the agency lacks documented procedures for updating such guidelines.

The government watchdog also found that TSA’s risk assessment methodology is outdated and the agency failed to track the status of GAO’s security review recommendations over the past five years. TSA officials noted that staffing limitations prevented the agency from facilitating reviews of its pipeline management system. According to the report, TSA lacks a strategic workforce plan for identifying pipeline security responsibilities. 

GAO is conducting reviews of TSA’s new security guidelines updated this month. The latter intends to complete a strategic workforce plan by July and address security review recommendations by November.