The Department of Energy has awarded 85 research contracts worth a total of $218M to academic institutions and the department’s national laboratories to conduct studies in quantum information science.

The department said Monday the contract awards align with the Trump administration’s plan to advance research in quantum computing, which could lead to innovations in computer and information processing and other technologies.

The awards cover various assignments such as developing systems for modern quantum computers, identifying new materials that possess special quantum elements and determining the purpose of QIS in understanding cosmic phenomena. 

Energy Secretary Rick Perry said investing in quantum computing research will allow the U.S. to become leaders in the field.

The Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences and High Energy Physics programs of the DOE’s Office of Science are managing the contract awards.

The U.S. Army is mulling plans to allocate $31.6B in fiscal 2020 funds to help the service branch update its combat vehicle and helicopter fleets, Bloomberg Government reported Monday.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense would still have to give its approval of the service’s budget request before the funding request can be included in the official Defense Department fiscal 2020 budget proposal in February, the report said.

The Army is considering the appropriation of an additional $7.5B for research and development efforts for the next five years, which includes funding for the Army Futures Command in Austin, Texas.

The service branch also wants to give $2.36B to its Future Vertical Lift program and $1.2B to R&D efforts on its next-generation combat vehicle.

In addition, the Army wants to allocate $3.8B for procurement of the next-generation combat vehicle over a five-year period, and $1.4B and $1.3B for upgrades to General Dynamics‘ Abrams tank and Stryker combat vehicle, respectively.

The report said the DoD will be subjected to budget caps for fiscal 2020 and 2021.

Department of Homeland Security official Kshemendra Paul has said the department will focus on setting requirements for end-to-end automation across the development, security and operations workflow for cloud migration operations, Federal News Radio reported Monday.

Paul, cloud action officer and deputy director for strategy and mission with DHS, explained during a Red Hat Open First event that the department seeks to leverage various managed services or the Cloud Factory first before managing policies for moving applications to the cloud.

He added that DHS will be able to use Cloud Factory after it passes an Authorization to Operate process, which will be conducted in late 2018.

After leveraging Cloud Factory, DHS will direct its cloud steering group to speed up the department’s effort to migrate to the cloud.

The group will tackle concerns on the design of the future-state security architecture, its potential for streamlining ATO and the possibility of using existing projects to generate progress in cloud migration processes.

The U.S. Navy is looking to reevaluate its structure next year for a potential long-term reorganization of budget, National Defense Magazine reported Monday.

The service branch’s 2019 force structure assessment will focus on the fleet’s composition and determine the need in adjustments for each type of ship, said  Vice Adm. William Merz, deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems.

The upcoming assessment follows a previous 2016 iteration that indicated an annual need for $20B in funds to increase the fleet’s size to 355 ships.

“We’re still very committed to that [355 ship] number, but we’re only committed to the point where it’s the right mix of ships,” Merz said.

Bryan Clark, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said that the upcoming study may not significantly change the number of sought ships, but may likely augment the projected fleet composition.

The National Science and Technology Council recently released a document describing the government’s strategy to maintain and expand U.S. leadership in quantum information science.

The document, entitled “National Strategic Overview for Quantum Information Science,” identifies QIS as the field in which the next technological revolution will take place, and through which the U.S. “can improve its industrial base, create jobs, and provide economic and national security benefits.”

In pursuit of the national QIS strategy, the document proposes several recommendations grouped under six categories, namely: approaching QIS from a scientific perspective; creating a future workforce that is knowledgeable in QIS; fostering deeper connections between government, the QIS industry and other partners; providing infrastructure necessary for QIS R&D; pursuing economic growth and preserving national security; and promoting international cooperation in the field of QIS.

The NSTC document also acknowledges that the growth of QIS in the next ten years will likely bring about various challenges and underscores the need for the U.S. to “improve our capacity for cutting edge research and development, expand the QIS-literate workforce, and seamlessly coordinate between government, academic and private sector players.”

The General Services Administration has announced plans to implement changes to a special item number for cloud platforms and services on the Information Technology Schedule 70.

A FedBizOpps notice posted Monday says the proposed changes to SIN 132-40 include the addition of IT professional services to help agencies facilitate cloud adoption and migration efforts.

Those professional services will include cloud platform assessments; workload refactoring for cloud platforms; cloud tool preparation; cloud platform migration; and cloud governance support.

The updated cloud SIN seeks to clarify the “measured service” characteristic for cloud products.

“In short, SIN 132-40 now clarifies that cloud products must have discrete ‘pay as you go’ measurements of appropriate compute resources to ensure the government realizes the benefit of cloud deployments,” according to the request for information.

The proposed changes to SIN 132-40 also intend to remove and transition evaluation factors to CI-FSS-152-N additional factors for new offerors under IT Schedule 70.

Responses to the RFI are due Oct. 9.
 

NASA has recently published a roadmap detailing space exploration objectives, Space Policy Online reported Monday.

The 21-page “NASA Space Exploration Campaign Report” provides updated mission plans, which include: shifting U.S. human flight in low-Earth orbit to commercial operations; developing a cislunar and beyond cislunar habitat; uncovering lunar resources through autonomous instrument explorations; and holding expeditions to the moon and Mars.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said at a Washington Space Roundtable on Monday that SpaceX and Boeing will be able to send astronauts to NASA’s International Space Station by 2019.

A proposal in President Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget request ceases funding allocation for the ISS in 2025, prompting NASA to encourage commercial space operations so that space crews can have ongoing access to LEO platforms.

Additional goals outlined in the NASA report include: the creation of human lunar surface architecture to propel U.S. astronauts on the lunar surface by 2029; and the modification of a Mars-centric research and development portfolio by 2021.