Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Jim Risch, R-Idaho, have reintroduced a bill to secure the energy grid via government-industry engineering efforts. The Securing Energy Infrastructure Act would establish government-industry partnerships eliminating software vulnerabilities that create openings for cyber attacks, King’s office said Thursday.

The reintroduction intends to address the bill’s failure to pass the House before the 115th Congress’ end, despite the legislation unanimously passing the Senate in December. The legislation would create a two-year pilot program to study concealed security threats, and direct the secretary of energy to report results to Congress.

The bill would also task a group to assess National Laboratories’ proposed technologies, and form a national cyber strategy protecting the energy grid from potential attacks.

“Our bipartisan bill has broad support, as evidenced by its passage in the Senate last December, and I hope the new Congress will take swift action on it so we can proactively protect our country’s critical infrastructure from cyberattacks,” said King.

The White House and the Department of Defense have issued a new policy framework to protect U.S. forces and allies from missile threats posed by rogue states and other potential adversaries, U.S. Strategic Command reported Thursday.

President Donald Trump released the 2019 Missile Defense Review with Vice President Mike Pence and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Thursday at the Pentagon.

The document assesses the threats posed to the U.S. and its allies by North Korea, Iran, Russia and China as they develop capabilities such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons.

The MDR framework calls for the development and deployment of missile defenses to keep ahead of projected missile threats; use of nuclear deterrence to address ICBM capabilities of Russia and China; and pursuit of new missile defense technologies and concepts to address the evolving threats.

The review recommends several initiatives to build up the capability of the Ground-Based, Mid-Course Defense system. These include the addition of 20 more deployed ground-based interceptors in Alaska; development of a new kill vehicle for the GBI; and deployment of missile tracking and discrimination sensors in Hawaii and Alaska.

Other efforts suggested in the document to address regional offensive threats include the development of mobile missile defense capabilities to facilitate response to evolving conflicts; interoperability between missile defenses of U.S. forces and allies; and the need to build up regional missile defense posture by fielding Aegis, Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems.
 

President Trump has signed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 into law that will provide compensation for wages lost, work performed or leave used by federal workers as their agencies closed on Dec. 22, the White House said Wednesday. The bill also allows selected employees to use leave during a lapse in appropriations.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., author of the bill, said the decision guarantees pay to hundreds of thousands of workers affected by the shutdown. However, he still calls for the Trump administration to reopen the government, highlighting the back pay will not provide a permanent relief to employees. 

“Let’s reopen the government and get them all back to work so American taxpayers can receive the services they need and are paying for,” Cardin said. “This needless shutdown is having a painful effect on hundreds of thousands of workers, their families and their communities.”

Affected federal employees will be paid once the administration ends the shutdown.

The Government Accountability Office concluded in a report that the General Services Administration and the White House lack the effort to ensure identity security in federal facilities, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

GAO noted in a report that it identified several issues on the physical access control systems that GSA and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget control. These systems work to manage identity information of federal agency workers. Issues found in PACS include cost, lack of procurement clarity and technology integration difficulty with legacy systems.

GAO recommends OMB’s director establish a baseline to guide the progress of meeting PACS requirements, and monitor corresponding developments.

The U.S. Navy plans to deploy two different hull designs to replace the service’s auxiliary ships that are about to be phased out, USNI News reported Wednesday.

Last year, the Navy sought industry input on a common design to succeed its sealift ships, command-and-control ship, hospital ship, aviation logistics ship and submarine tender as part of the Common Hull Auxiliary Multi-Mission Platform program.

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During a Surface Navy Association event on Wednesday, Capt. Scot Searles, strategic and theater sealift program manager at the Navy’s program executive office for ships, said early feedback suggests the use of volume-centric and people-centric hull designs to address the program’s five mission areas. He added that the Navy will also commence service-life extension operations and procure used auxiliary ships if necessary.

The Navy has repeatedly extended production lines for the General Dynamics-built Expeditionary Seabase and the Austal USA-built Expeditionary Fast Transport. Both firms said their vessels have enough space and flexibility to accommodate various missions, including medical activities.

The National Background Investigations Bureau is still running despite the partial government shutdown’s effects on the Office of Personnel Management, Nextgov reported Wednesday.

The bureau continues to run on funds that customer agencies pay for investigation work. The NBIB has managed to cut a backlog of 725,000 investigations down to 600,000 between April and the end of 2018.

An official said the bureau intends to reduce the backlog to 300,000 this spring, the report noted.

The U.S. Navy has announced the installation of aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford‘s first advanced weapons elevator, the service branch said Wednesday. Its newest carrier received the AWE on Dec. 21 after engineers from Huntington Ingalls Industries completed certification and testing activities.

AWE units of Ford-class aircraft carriers use electromagnetic, linear synchronous motors to perform elevation, unlike those in Nimitz-class carriers that rely on cables. The new AWE is designed to carry up to 24K pounds of artillery at a speed of 150 feet-per-minute, allowing for faster elevation compared to Nimitz-class carriers.

The ship is undergoing post-shakedown availability procedures at HII’s facility in Newport News, Va. Engineers will install the 10 remaining AWE units before the ship’s PSA completion slated for July.