The Government Accountability Office has found that federal agencies reported $3.2T in total spending authority and permanent appropriations for fiscal year 2015, reflecting an 88 percent rise from FY 1994.

GAO said in a report published Tuesday that such inflation-adjusted growth was primarily driven by the use of permanent appropriations authority, which supports federal entitlement initiatives such as Medicare and the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program.

The Social Security Administration and the departments of Health and Human Services and Treasury are the three agencies that comprised 75 percent of the total spending authority and permanent appropriations in FY 2015.

Offsetting collections reached a total of $421B in FY 2015, making it the second largest reported type of budget authority.

The report noted that the amount of spending authority and permanent appropriations that were not subjected to sequestration rose from 37 percent in FY 1994 to 57 percent in FY 2015.
 
 

Army Secretary Mark Esper has cleared a new policy that aims to provide the service with a strategy to advance innovation and modernization and sustain readiness through intellectual property management, the Army News Service reported Tuesday.

Esper approved the IP management policy Friday to facilitate acquisition and modernization reforms that seek to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to warfighters amid emerging threats posed by adversaries.

Alexis Ross, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for strategy and acquisition reform, said the new IP policy focuses on long-term weapons systems sustainment and has four core tenets.

Those four principles are the need to create long-term IP requirements that address the lifecycle; collaboration with industry for custom IP rights; negotiation of prices for licensing rights; and communication with industry to meet the service branch’s needs.
 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency aims to increase industry engagement in its five-year, $1.5B initiative to seek advanced electronics that will support U.S. defense systems and platforms for national security.

The agency said Monday it will host a proposers day on Dec. 19 to discuss with companies the opportunities with its ongoing Electronics Resurgence Initiative.

DARPA program managers will share ideas on how the government would utilize various technologies to build national defense hardware, such as artificial intelligence, large-scale emulation, cybersecurity, space applications, cognitive electronic warfare, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“The success of ERI relies on cooperation with the commercial sector to address shared problems,” said William Chappell, director of DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office.

“DARPA seeks to procure the expertise and transition support of industry and the defense community to help accelerate the delivery of ERI-derived innovations for national security needs,” he added.

The agency said it also hopes to create a broad agency announcement at the event at Hilton Arlington in Virginia to seek proposals to develop, demonstrate and apply ERI electronic technologies.

DARPA announced in November the ERI Phase II that focuses on commercial and manufacturing services of the electronics industry.

President Trump approved a new national strategy to counter the use of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist groups.

The National Strategy for Countering WMD Terrorism details how the federal government will launch global efforts to prevent insurgents from using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons to strengthen the security of the U.S. and its allies, the White House said Monday. The document also shows the need to increase burden sharing with other nations to pressure and counter WMD-capable terrorist groups.

“The United States will draw on the full range of our nation’s and partner nations’ capabilities to place WMD and associated materials and expertise beyond the reach of terrorists,” the White House said. 

The new strategy sets the following objectives to deter extremist groups and individuals in using such weapons:

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• The agents, precursors and materials needed to acquire WMD are placed beyond the reach of terrorists and other malicious non-state actors and the global quantity of WMD and related materials is reduced.
• States and individuals are deterred from providing support to would-be WMD terrorists.
• An effective architecture is in place to detect and defeat terrorist WMD networks.
• U.S. defenses against WMD terrorism are strengthened, and state, local, tribal and territorial preparedness to contend with WMD threats is enhanced.
• The U.S. is able to identify and respond to technological trends that may enable terrorist development, acquisition or use of WMD.

Vice Adm. Michael Moran, principal military deputy to the U.S. Navy acquisition executive, said Thursday at an engineering conference that “things can be done” when it comes to streamlining acquisition, USNI News reported Monday.

Moran said the use of new and innovative processes like additive manufacturing helped the Navy field an updated next-generation jammer for the EA-18G Growler in four months instead of the initial nine-year schedule. He added that partnering with industry and fostering communication between program managers and program executive officers are crucial to improving the Navy’s acquisition process. Moran noted that PEOs meet with Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts once a month to discuss acquisition issues and pass that information to the program managers.

He also said that program offices and the test community must be held accountable for speeding up program execution.

The U.S. Navy launched the future USS Lyndon B. Johnson on Sunday at the General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine, the Naval Sea Systems Command said Monday.

The multi-day launching saw the Zumwalt-class destroyer transferred from a land-level platform to a dry dock where fine-tuning operations will take place once the dock is flooded and the ship is afloat on the Kennebeck River. DDG 1002 has an electric propulsion system, a wave-piercing tumblehome hull and a stealth design intended to support a variety of command and control, power projection, sea control and deterrence missions.

“With the first two ships of the class underway, we are excited to continue the next phase of construction of the future Lyndon B. Johnson,” said Capt. Kevin Smith, DDG 1000 program manager for the Navy’s Program Executive Office Ships.

Lyndon B. Johnson is named after the 36th U.S. president and is the third and final DDG 1000 in the Zumwalt-class design. The Navy expects to christen the ship in the spring of 2019.