The U.S. Air Force is almost finished with its one-year study on electronic warfare technologies, and is expected to submit its final report in January next year, C4ISRnet reported Wednesday.

Gen. Stephen Wilson, USAF vice chief of staff, told reporters the same day that the results reflect the service branch’s lag in the EW area.

Brig. Gen. David Gaedecke, USAF director of cyberspace operations and warfighting integration, led a team to study on new EW approaches that would support Air Force interests.

The study’s scope included EW gaps covering fiscal 2018 through 2040, with focus on threats likely to occur in highly contested environments, the report noted.

Announced in late 2017, the study supports the Air Superiority 2030 effort, an initiative aiming to widen USAF’s technological capacity aiding joint force air superiority.

The Department of Energy is obligating up to $75M to finance four research and development efforts for more resilient large power transformers.

The DOE said Wednesday these projects aim to produce sensor-equipped transformers with boosted flexibility, analytical performance and security under the Transformer Resilience and Advanced Components and Resilient Distribution Systems programs.

The department seeks interchangeable large power transformers to increase the resiliency of the country’s energy grid.

“Creating the next generation of these critical grid components will help ensure the nation’s critical energy infrastructure is secure and able to recover rapidly when disruptions occur,” said Mark Menezes, undersecretary of energy.

Recipients of the R&D funds include Georgia Tech Research, The University of Texas at Austin, NextWatt and General Electric.

Details on their respective projects can be found here.

NASA and Boeing have partnered with the Air Force Research Laboratory to test the Defense Department‘s first human-rated centrifuge built with interchangeable cockpits to support training for both fighter jet pilots and astronauts. 

The U.S. Air Force said Wednesday the AFRL’s 711th Human Performance Wing led the test with 10 astronauts from the defense contractor and NASA at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.  

Brig. Gen. Mark Koeniger, 711HPW commander, said the system is designed to be agile and rapidly adaptable for any customer. 

The centrifuge enabled Air Force pilots to experience up to nine Gs, or nine times the normal force of gravity. The cockpit also enabled operators to measure the pilot’s ability to respond and prevent G-induced loss of consciousness.

For NASA, the vehicle exposed astronauts to upward and downward G force, according to Michael Barratt, astronaut and physician at the agency. 

He added the system would help NASA prepare for emerging commercial space vehicles, such as the SpaceX Dragon, the Boeing Starliner and the new Orion spacecraft, which take high G forces in both ascent and entry. 

The new AFRL centrifuge also provides 3D models of the environment through cockpit displays.

Jonathan Feibus, chief information security officer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has said NRC has begun to update several internal applications as part of its cloud migration effort, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

“We’ve recently moved to a number of cloud applications for productivity apps like the office suite, like email,” he said on the network’s Federal Monthly Insights-Application Services Month. 

“We’ve been testing a lot of our modeling software in the cloud so that we don’t have to purchase single-use machines for here and we’ve got a little bit more flexibility by doing it in the cloud.”

Feibus mentioned the benefits of implementing a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program-certified cloud platform.

“And by using FedRAMP cloud we have a lot of security that’s already in place for us so it ends up being a bit less expensive for us than having to purchase, secure and maintain single-use machines,” he said.

NRC selected an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud offering through an open competition and Feibus discussed the reason behind the decision.
 

John Windom, executive director of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ office of electronic health record modernization, has said VA has created 18 workflow councils and completed state reviews of the first implementation sites since it initiated the adoption of a new EHR system, Healthcare Informatics reported Wednesday.

Windom appeared Wednesday before the House Veterans Affairs Committee’s technology modernization subpanel to provide updates on VA’s implementation of a Cerner-built EHR platform.

He told lawmakers that those councils are composed of health professionals who provide feedback to help streamline the configuration of standardized operational and clinical workflows for the department’s EHR system.

Windom noted that VA has already addressed the technology aspect to facilitate interoperability and data sharing through health information exchanges such as Carequality and Commonwell.

“But, there is also another piece, the information has to be put in, and so that information has to be made accessible by the people on those networks; we’ve got the technology piece solved,” he added.

Laura Kroupa, acting chief medical officer at VA’s OEHRM, and Travis Dalton, president of government services at Cerner, also testified before the House subcommittee.
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