Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told Defense News in an interview published Monday that the Pentagon has a “really great road map” for digital modernization.

Shanahan said he believes having an information technology strategy in place could help the Defense Department carry out modernization efforts, such as consolidation of data centers and deployment of a common financial platform.

“So in terms of my time now … I wanted to make sure the foundation was laid for IT,” he noted.

“That was the most important one.”

He noted that DoD adopts and demonstrates commercial best practices through the implementation of category management, use of industry sustainment techniques at Navy aviation depots and cloud migration efforts.

Shanahan also discussed the F-35 fighter jet program and the defense budget.
 

The Aerospace Industries Association has urged Congress and President Donald Trump to ensure a “steady and stable growth” in defense budget for fiscal 2019 and beyond in order to counter threats posed by transnational terrorism, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, Defense News reported Thursday.

AIA said in its Thursday statement lawmakers and the administration have started to provide the Defense Department with additional budget for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 to build up military readiness against multiple threats.

“But the shortfalls of the last decade cannot be erased in the space of two years, and now the administration has announced potential reductions in defense investment that could undermine the improvements that are just now materializing,” the trade group warned.

Trump announced in October that he projects defense spending to be $700B for fiscal 2020, a figure that reflects a potential $33B cut from the Pentagon’s expected budget.

Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said in late October that DoD plans to have two budget requests in place by Dec. 1 – a $733B spending plan and a $700B budget.

Bill Marion, deputy chief information officer at the U.S. Air Force, has said the service’s move to elevate the CIO role as part of a restructuring effort seeks to bring together information technology, data and business, Federal News Network reported Friday.

His remarks came following the appointment of Matt Donovan, the branch’s undersecretary, as permanent CIO at the Air Force in addition to his role as chief management officer.

“What we wanted to do was unify the IT, network modernization and business transformation space so when you think data, you think business systems and you think IT infrastructure all underneath one hat, all underneath the undersecretary,” Marion said on Ask the CIO.

“We know both from an operational perspective we need to unify and also from an IT implementation perspective where we are tying data all the way back into the network was very critical, especially when you start to get into next generational things like artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

Marion also provided updates on the service’s network modernization and cloud adoption efforts.

He said AT&T and Microsoft have started prototyping work on new techniques through other transaction authorities in order to deliver network services to its bases.
 

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has launched a competition that invites developers to create algorithms that can detect and localize specified movements in extended videos.

IARPA said the Activity in Extended Videos Prize Challenge seeks to encourage participants to develop activity detection and temporal localization algorithms to identify 18 activities in videos that include intervals with and without potentially multiple concurrent activities.

The challenge will be divided into two phases, the first of which will commence in late 2018.

Participating developers will be tasked with running their software on their own assets and submitting the output to a National Institute of Standards and Technology scoring server.

Eight participants will be shortlisted to move forward to the second phase, which will be conducted in March 2019.

For the second round of the challenge, NIST will assess the system performance of submitted algorithms on sequestered data. 

IARPA will award a cash prize of $25K to the ActEV-PC grand winner, and $15K and $10K to the second and third place recipients, respectively.

ActEV-PC is expected to end in June 2019.

The Education Department has disclosed that it alloted $279M of funds for science, technology, engineering and math programs in fiscal year 2018, in compliance with President Trump’s directive to increase access to STEM education.

The department said Thursday the partnership grants under the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs received the biggest investment at $108M, followed by the Education Innovation and Research initiative at $66.8M, the department said Thursday.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos noted that the efforts will help expose American students to STEM education early in their academic lives, as well as equip them with resources needed in the modern economy.

The department added that it will continue to resolve blank spots in STEM programs, after the recently released “2015-2016 Civil Rights Data Collection” study revealed that a majority of eighth graders attending schools that offer Algebra I do not attend the class.

The report also presented that the locations and types of schools, as well as the rate of enrollment affect students’ access to STEM courses.

The Department of Homeland Security‘s Science and Technology Directorate has awarded a total of $1.27M to the University of California, San Diego and University of Chicago, Illinois, to help the organizations increase positive cybersecurity control investment choices.

DHS said Thursday the award is part of the Cyber Risk Economics project, which seeks to aid in the decision making of organizations who own, manage, secure and regulate the country’s data assets and critical infrastructure.

CYRIE research and development programs support the assessment of cybersecurity control investments; impact of investment on gravity and consequences of actual risks; correlation between business performance and cybersecurity investment; and incentives to create more programs focusing on risk management.

UCSD was awarded $1.05M to create threat intelligence tools and processes for gauging the reliability of a threat intelligence source to an enterprise.

The University of Illinois has been given more than $227K to conceptualize a cyberattack economic impact model and a platform for automating data gathering and evaluation to get real-time estimates of cyber threat damage.

 

NASA has chosen 14 early stage technology proposals from different universities as part of an effort to advance and support future space science and exploration programs.

The space agency said Friday it will award grants worth up to $500,000 from the Space Technology Research Grants program to the selected universities to work on their proposals, which were sought through the Early Stage Innovations 2018 solicitation.

The research projects will be divided into five categories, one of which will focus on modernizing small electric propulsion systems for small satellites that serve as secondary payloads.

Other research areas include increasing studies on smart and autonomous space systems; demonstrating optical communications technologies; modeling shock layer radiation and chemical kinetics for planetary entry environments; and developing better welding methods for rocket components made from lightweight metals.

Jim Reuter, acting associate administrator of NASA’s space technology mission directorate, said the ESI research will help address issues on future exploration missions to the Moon, Mars and other parts of the universe.

The universities will work on their research and development projects for a maximum of three years.

The State Department has revealed that foreign military sales of defense weapons has increased to $192.3B in fiscal year 2018, due to the implementation of a new conventional arms initiative.

The department said Thursday government-to-government export sales rose to $55.66B in 2018 from $41.93B in 2017, while commercial FMS increased to $136.6B this year compared to $128.1B in the previous year.

The escalation in FMS for weapons emerged from the execution of President Trump’s Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, which aligns with the State Department’s plans to reform the arms transfers process.

The departments of Commerce and Defense and the private sector are contributing to the implementation of the CAT Policy, as well as modifying outdated rules on weapons to ultimately comply to Trump’s National Security Strategy.

The president issued the CAT Policy in April in an effort to support U.S. economic and national security interests and abide to the Arms Export Control Act of 1976.

Patrick Shanahan has said that the Office of the Secretary of Defense expects the establishment of a Space Force to cost less than the amount that the U.S. Air Force had earlier projected, Defense News reported Thursday.

Air Force leadership said in a Sept. 14 memo that transitioning the service’s space functions into a separate, independent command would initially cost $3B and $13B overall in the course of five years.

During a recent interview with Defense News, however, Shanahan, the deputy secretary of defense, revealed that the OSD’s estimate will not be as high.

“I haven’t looked at the number,” Shanahan admitted, but insisted nonetheless that “it’s going to be less than” the Air Force’s projection.

“I’m not concerned that people are just going to generate a big bill,” the senior defense official added.

The OSD will likely release its own Space Force cost estimate before the year ends.

The deputy chief of staff for policy coordination at the White House recently said he expects things to be “very much business as normal” with regards to the Trump Administration’s technology agenda despite a change in leadership in the lower chamber of Congress, Nextgov reported Thursday.

Chris Liddell said during the Technology 202 conference, hosted by the Washington Post, that Democrats retaking the House during the midterms would likely not affect federal information technology modernization efforts since these enjoy bipartisan support.

Meanwhile, regardless of the results of the elections, the administration will continue investing in advanced technologies like artificial intelligence while advocating for a less regulated technology industry, Liddell added.

“That really doesn’t change as a result of Tuesday,” Liddell noted, adding, “Everything that we’ve done in the last two years will continue.”