The Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration has approved a $1.1B concept design for the Advanced Sources and Detectors program involving subcritical experiments to maintain the nation’s nuclear deterrent, DOE said Thursday. The ASD project will support the U.S. stockpile stewardship program and revolve around generating high-speed and high-fidelity images of subcritical experiments that don’t produce nuclear yield.

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Charles Verdon, deputy administrator for defense programs at NNSA, said the diagnostic capability will help scientists study plutonium reactions under extreme conditions and advance the nation’s nuclear preparation without having to conduct underground testing. The Los Alamos National Laboratory will lead the effort and partner with research entities such as the Sandia National Laboratories, Nevada National Security Site and Livermore National Laboratory. The program comes as part of NNSA’s Enhanced Capabilities for Subcritical Experiments looks to ensure the responsiveness of U.S. nuclear infrastructure in compliance with the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the Pentagon’s 2019 Future Years Defense Program is leading to a significant increase in the agency’s base-budget costs into the early 2030’s. In a report released Wednesday, CBO said the figure could increase from the agency’s request of $617B for 2019 to $735B in 2033. In April, the Department of Defense released the 2019 FYDP detailing the expectations about the planned costs from 2019 to 2023. 

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The document states DoD intention to create an overseas contingency operations-to-base shift in the coming years to transfer the cost of activities funded in the OCO budget to the agency’s base budget. CBO said the move would increase costs in DoD’s base budget by $47B per year, while costs included in the OCO budget would be reduced by the same amount. “Over that period, DoD’s annual base-budget costs would be greater than in any year over the past several decades,” the agency said. 

The factors expected to contribute to the increase are the compensation for military personnel, operation, maintenance and the acquisition of weapon systems. Military personnel costs project to cover nearly 25 percent of the total growth from 2024 through 2033, while O&M will cover 55 percent, and 20 percent would be generated by the development and purchase of weapons.

The Department of Homeland Security will double its efforts to deter hackers and foreign influence campaigns for the upcoming elections in 2020, when President Trump expects to run for re-election, CNET reported Thursday.

Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS, said they are “doubling down for 2020″ to protect election systems and the public. Krebs said the agency will continue its success from the 2018 midterm elections, which DHS described as “the most secure election we’ve ever had.”

Efforts for the 2020 elections will include hiring full-time staffers to manage election security. DHS established the same task forces in past elections but only temporarily to deter cyber attacks and disinformation on social media.

Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads the U.S. Cyber Command, told Congress that the force requires an expansion to accommodate mission needs, FCW reported Thursday.

During a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said USCYBERCOM may require over 133 teams to keep up with the technological development of U.S. adversaries. The expansion requirement comes as USCYBERCOM plans to spend $610M in fiscal year 2019, marking the force’s first year as a standalone combatant command.

Nakasone also attributes the need to boost security requirements towards the presidential election in 2020.

The Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General has found that the FBI has not collected a standard amount of text messages from over 31,000 agency-issued mobile devices. DOJ OIG said it attributes its initial observation to a database with plain text repository for a significant percentage of messages, indicating a problem with FBI Enterprise Security Operations Center’s data collection tool.

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The office first identified the issue with devices of two employees involved with the pre-election review. OIG recommends the FBI modify its existing messaging-related policy, study the current text data collection tool and seek more information on potential tool replacements. The agency must also boost coordination with device vendors and verify security weaknesses detected in the inspection, OIG noted.