Hill Air Force Base is employing new handheld tablets for use with maintenance activities on F-35A aircraft.

The tablets integrate with Portable Maintenance Aid laptops that connect with the aircraft’s Autonomic Logistics Information System, a platform that monitors and records the F-35’s status information, the U.S. Air Force said Friday.

The new handheld devices address mobility and connectivity gaps found in the laptops that are heavy and not equipped to access wireless internet.

Maintainers now use the tablets to manage work orders and information on a faster pace.

“If we have an issue with a jet and need to ground abort, a pilot will be able to sign out a spare right on the line and step to that jet,” said 1st Lt. Eric Dolan, aerospace ground equipment flight commander of the 388th Maintenance Squadron.

“We can do that right on the flight line without having to call the flight ops desk for a backup,” he added.

Dolan’s maintenance group will have almost 200 of these tablets to support the base’s future assignment of three F-35A squadrons, covering 78 aircraft in total.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency has found that the U.S. recorded $55.66B in fiscal 2018 foreign military sales, reflecting a 33 percent rise from total FMS sales posted in fiscal 2017.

DSCA said Tuesday the trend can be attributed to policy changes the White House has initiated such as the administration’s move to update the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy in April.

“These policy changes advance U.S. national security and foreign policy because they make FMS more attractive in a very competitive market,” said Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, DSCA director and a Wash100 recipient.

The agency said the total figure includes $47.71B in transactions funded by partner countries; $4.42B in agreements funded by Defense Department agencies; and $3.52B in deals supported by the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing Program.

Some of the policy reforms that DSCA introduced include the FMS transportation reduction and the agency’s move to lower FMS-related administrative surcharge to 3.2 percent from 3.5 percent.
 

President Trump intends to appoint Margaret Weichert, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, as acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.

Replacing former OPM director Jeff Pon, she will hold the role concurrently with her position at the OMB, the White House said Friday.

Weichert has 25 years of professional experience, having previously filled executive roles at various consultancy and finance firms including Andersen Consulting, Bank of America, EY and First Data. In addition, she holds 14 U.S. patents and founded the e-commerce firm Achex, now a part of First Data.

 

Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, chief information officer of the U.S. Army, has said he will prioritize the procurement of cloud products and services in fiscal year 2019, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday.

Crawford disclosed in an interview that he plans to migrate over 2,000 of the service’s applications to the cloud using a system, which will possibly align with the Defense Department’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure initiative.

He added that having the ability to aggregate data and provide access to data anywhere on the battlefield can increase the mobility of soldiers.

Army officials seek a cloud system that can organize data repositories, common software and hardware platforms and enterprise systems for tactical public key infrastructure, among other things.

Apart from cloud migration operations, Crawford also said he intends to focus on modernizing identity management and artificial intelligence systems in 2019.

Sustained efforts to develop and implement initiatives to address weapon system cybersecurity challenges are needed to update the Defense Department’s understanding of how to build more secure military tools, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

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A GAO report posted Tuesday said military capabilities are vulnerable to cyberattacks, with vulnerability testers able to hack into systems and infiltrate networks without being detected during an operational assessment. The agency is studying the state of the Pentagon’s arsenal to identify cyber weaknesses in current weapon systems, as well as assessing the DoD’s initiatives to obtain cybersecurity readiness. 

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Weapon system cybersecurity can be compromised by simple issues such as poor password management or lack of encryption, the agency reported. The GAO also said that cybersecurity modernization is hampered by the government’s difficulty recruiting enough cyber professionals.

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The DoD plans on investing around $1.66T to overhaul its armory system.

Jeanette Manfra, a cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, told Federal News Network in an interview published Tuesday that DHS prioritizes efforts to build up its cyber workforce through education.

Manfra, assistant secretary for the national protection and programs directorate at DHS’ office of cybersecurity and communications, said her office will assess this month whether personnel need to undergo the Federal Virtual Training Environment and other courses.

She noted that she wants to ensure that chief information officers have access to cyber tools and cited the need for collaboration with the private sector.

“And so the government needs to lean further forward in how we work with private companies, how we work with the public, how we work with our own systems and then we’re asking everybody, from the individual consumer all the way up to CEOs, to make cybersecurity a priority in everything that they do,” she added.
 

The Department of Homeland Security has released a new strategy aimed at protecting the country from electromagnetic pulse and geomagnetic disturbance threats.

The strategy highlights the department’s approach to addressing potential threats that may arise from electromagnetic incidents, and embodies the intelligence community’s assessment on the matter, the DHS said Tuesday.

The department notes that these incidents hold the potential to damage electrical grid, communications, transportation assets and other components of U.S. critical infrastructure.

The strategy encourages collaboration with officials at federal, state, local, tribal and territorial levels to better support EMP and GMD risk management.

The DHS is now working on an implementation plan.

Thomas Modly, undersecretary of the U.S. Navy, has crafted a business operations plan to help the Department of the Navy concentrate on fulfilling the Defense Department’s National Defense Strategy, Federal News Network reported Friday.

He said the plan will develop a long-term mission that outlines goals in six-, 12-, 18- and 24-month intervals to address audit, cybersecurity, and data fidelity and integrity concerns.

The announcement comes six months after Modly combined DoN’s management undersecretary and chief information officer positions and moved the roles under his jurisdiction.

The plan aims to adhere to the tenets of the National Defense Strategy and prioritizes creating a more lethal force; boosting relationships with alliances and fostering new ones with other partners; and reorganizing the department for more streamlined operations.

The DoN hopes the plan can serve as a communication platform for contractors to integrate their ideas with the Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.

Modly said the department is considering the establishment of a chief data officer post, which must integrate its work with the Digital Warfare Office.

Email security company Valimail reports that roughly half of federal government domains have implemented an email security protocol in compliance with a directive that the Department of Homeland Security issued nearly a year ago.

Valimail’s recent study reveals that the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance standard has been deployed to cover 655 out of 1,315 government domains and has been configured to “enforcement status”— meaning the security protocol is set to reject fake emails.

DMARC is a cybersecurity protocol that helps determine whether an email is authentic. It blocks fake emails and generates reports of such encounters.

The DHS on Oct. 16, 2017 required federal agencies to adopt DMARC — along with multiple other web and email security policies — through the issuance of Binding Operational Directive 18-01.

To be fully compliant, agencies had to activate DMARC’s automatic reporting to the DHS and configure the system to automatically block fake messages.

The automatic reporting was due in January, while the automatic blocking of emails is due on the 16th.