The Government Accountability Office has called on the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide contracting officers with more training in implementing a program that aims to support veteran-owned small businesses through contract opportunities.

GAO said in a report published Wednesday that it interviewed 30 contracting officers and found that 12 of them encountered difficulty in making “fair and reasonable price” assessments of contract awards under the Veterans First program.

That is one of the two criteria, dubbed the VA Rule of Two, set by the Supreme Court in its 2016 decision.

The report showed that contracts set aside for veteran-owned small businesses rose from 20.8 percent in fiscal 2016 to 25.8 percent in fiscal 2017 following the Supreme Court decision.

GAO recommended that VA improve the way it oversees the compliance of such businesses with subcontracting limitations, such as ensuring the inclusion of the required clauses in contracts.
 

Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has said the creation of a “space force” as the sixth service branch is “absolutely necessary” to ensure the country’s superiority in space, Defense.gov reported Wednesday.

“The U.S. military is the best in the world in space, but our adversaries have taken note and are actively developing and fielding capabilities to potentially deny our usage of space in crisis or war,” he said Tuesday during the National Space Council’s fourth meeting at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C.

He mentioned the Defense Department’s plan to submit in the coming weeks a legislative measure to establish the space force and efforts to form a space development agency.

“The effort now is on reconciling capabilities prioritized by the National Defense Strategy with the readiness of technology, anchored by our assumptions on how quickly we can scale,” Shanahan said of the new agency.

Vice President Mike Pence hosted the meeting, where he delivered a speech about the space force’s role in addressing the lack of accountability and centralized leadership over national security space programs.
 

The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration will administer a workshop in November that will focus on the idea of establishing transparency for software parts, Federal News Network reported Tuesday.

The NTIA Software Component Transparency meeting on Nov. 6 in New York will be the continuation of the first workshop of its kind, which kicked off on July 19.

The effort comes as the government grows suspicious of software and hardware programs developed overseas that foreign countries may use to spy on the U.S.

“It’s very difficult when you start going to the lower tiers in the supply chain and you have embedded components and embedded software because there isn’t a bill of materials for the products you buy,” said Donald Davidson, deputy director of cybersecurity risk management at the Office of the Defense Department Chief Information Officer.

He explained during an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association-hosted event that there is a need for the government to consider requiring a bill of materials for procured software systems and analyze how that effort would affect operations and costs.

NTIA has yet to define a date for a potential third software transparency workshop.

The U.S. Army supports the idea of developing a standard for informing the DoD about threats to the supply chain.

Maj. Johanna Wynne, intelligence planner at Army Futures Command, noted that the U.S. lacks a common set of practices to communicate the data that it needs.

“The risk assessments that we do receive are often late; they do not provide adequate visualization of trends or patterns and situational awareness. Nor do they support appropriate DoD responses,” Wynne added.

The Department of Homeland Security‘s Science and Technology Directorate is initiating new research to answer key questions before it embarks on a new cybersecurity strategy.

To that end, the department’s S&T Cyber Risk Economics program, or CYRIE, aims to fund applied research and development, interdisciplinary initiatives and knowledge technologies and capabilities, the DHS said Tuesday.

CYRIE seeks to answer how and why cybersecurity investments are made; how these investments affect risk and harm; the relationship between cybersecurity and traditional business risk; and necessary incentives needed to support effective cyber risk management.

In line with this, the S&T developed the new Cyber Risk Economics Capability Gaps Research Strategy, which is grouped in six themes and subdivided into 12 focus areas and seeks to address risk challenges such as risk quantification; government, law and insurance roles; third party risk; organizational behavior and incentives; data gathering and distribution; and threat dynamics.

“The strategy’s objective is to narrow the gap between research and practice by apprising the research community of real-world cyber risk economic challenges, and ultimately, to inform evidence-based policy and actions by industry and government,” said CYRIE program manager Erin Kenneally.

“CYRIE’s goal is to improve value-based decision making by those who own, operate, protect and regulate the nation’s vital data assets and critical infrastructure,” Kenneally added.

 

The Department of Energy is investing $53M to fund 53 early-stage solar technology projects with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office.

Selected participants will work within the areas of photovoltaics and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP), aiming to develop technologies that support a growing workforce for renewable energy, the DOE said Tuesday.

Photovoltaics directly transform sunlight into electric power, while the CSP approach gathers sunlight-based heat that produces electricity like standard power plants.

“Developing new skills through workforce training is critical to expanding job opportunities in the renewable sector, which is why we are following through on our program to reach out to military veterans with new projects that will target this committed workforce,” said Rick Perry, the secretary of energy.

The projects will be grouped into three research areas: photovoltaics R&D; concentrating solar power R&D; and improving and expanding the solar industry through workforce initiatives.

The U.S. Army’s Rapid Capabilities Office is developing aerial electronic warfare capabilities for American forces deployed in Europe, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday.

Pete Manternach, who heads the RCO’s EW efforts, told C4ISRNET via a letter that the airborne electronic warfare package, which will work with manned or unmanned aircraft, is designed to extend the range at which electronic signals can be detected.

The project is one of multiple solutions under development as part of phase two of the RCO’s overall endeavor to equip U.S. units in Europe with requisite electronic warfare tools. 

Phase two is slated for deployment by the second quarter of fiscal year 2019.

Manternach noted, however, that the aerial electronic warfare package will not yet be fielded at that time.

Army Futures Command has established a new organization that will help companies navigate their way through the defense acquisition process, National Defense Magazine reported Tuesday.

The command’s Army Applications Laboratory will coordinate with traditional defense contractors to assist startups in developing military products that will be able to make it into programs of record.

Adam Jay Harrison, innovation officer of Army Futures Command and head of the new lab, noted that the U.S. Army aims to maximize program pathways to take advantage of new technologies being developed.

He found that young companies are usually uninterested in working with the Defense Department because of the demands of dealing with the Federal Acquisition Regulation and other processes that can delay transactions.

The Army Applications Lab will launch various programs that focus on product procurement businesses, as well as establish a fund for innovation programs.