The U.S. Air Force established a new program management office to lead efforts in rebuilding infrastructures damaged by Hurricane Michael at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. The service said Wednesday the PMO will assess the damage to installation facilities and infrastructures, determine usability and preserve capabilities of the base. 

“The work that lies in front of us is extensive, but the PMO office will ensure the Air Force has a 21st-century installation to carry out the missions of today and the future,” said Col. Scott Matthews, director of Tyndall AFB PMO.

Other missions of the new office include rapid repair and construction of temporary facilities and redevelopment planning to support near-term resumption of mission operations and long-term redevelopment of the base. 

PMO Deputy Director Brian Stahl said the office is working with the 325th Fighter Wing to provide resources, expertise and manpower for the rebuilding efforts. The Air Force expects rebuilding Tyndall AFB to take up to five years and cost nearly $3B. 

Mike Rits, Air Force Civil Engineer Center resilience subject matter expert, said the PMO could also help the service branch apply “Smart City” designs at Tyndall AFB to provide resilient warfighting capabilities.

The Department of Commerce has called on the financial sector to provide “better financing and insurance” for the space industry, Space News reported Wednesday.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the agency hopes to boost the overall space economy.

“There continues to be strong and growing venture capital equity funding for the space industry. But missing from space finance are the bigger institutions, especially banks,” he said. “Their participation will be necessary to execute longer-term commercial plans.”

In mid-December, the agency hosted a seminar in Washington gathering representatives from space companies and the financial sector to encourage additional investment and address the challenges to secure finance for the space industry. Ross said the Commerce Department is also utilizing its Office of Space Commerce to provide investors with more data on the industry. 

“We think that there’s a real ignorance barrier that we need to help overcome in order to facilitate lending,” he said. “We need to come up with a group of metrics here so that people can figure out what they have to do to get to the next level of value.”

The agency proposed a Space Policy Advancing Commercial Enterprise Administration to Congress to manage commercial space operations as part of President Trump’s Space Policy Directive-2 in May. 

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Christopher Piehota of the FBI have received service awards from the Homeland Security and Defense Business Council.

HSDBC presented the 2018 Distinguished Service Award to McCaul and the Exceptional Service in Support for Government-Industry Engagement Award to Piehota at its annual dinner held on Dec. 13, the council said Friday.

McCaul is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and Piehota is executive assistant director of the bureau’s science and technology branch.

John Saad, a partner and national security sector leader at Guidehouse, has been elected board chairman at HSDBC.

Marcus Collier and Pat Schambach, who are both former board chairmen at HSDBC, were also honored at the event for their leadership efforts.

Sponsors of the event are council members Aveshka, ArdentMC, E3 Federal Solutions, Grant Thornton, Guidehouse, Oracle, Schambach & Williams and Reed Tech.
 

The Senate has passed a bill to create a government-wide council that would establish regulations for federal supply chain risk management, FCW.com reported Wednesday.

The Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Council will help the National Institute of Standards and Technology develop supply chain guidelines including protocols on information sharing between federal and non-federal parties.

The inter-agency council will also oversee the implementation of applicable contracting strategies and establish criteria for the removal of software to mitigate supply chain threats.

The Department of Homeland Security secretary will be responsible for issuing removal or exclusion orders for civilian federal agencies, while the Department of Defense secretary and director of national intelligence will have the same authority for their respective agencies.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., originally sponsored the bill which must still pass the House before being signed by the president.

The U.S. Coast Guard expects another delay in its $750M polar icebreaker program after the Department of Homeland Security failed to secure full funding for the 2019 fiscal year from Congress, USNI News reported Wednesday.

This week, the Senate approved a continuing resolution that would only provide funding to the government through February of next year. The decision puts the Coast Guard under extended 2018 funding levels rather than the requested 2019 budget that includes funding for the service’s icebreaker program. The Coast Guard originally planned to buy its first icebreaker in FY19 to replace its aging heavy icebreaker already approaching the end of its service life.

Officials said the funding delay comes as the new appropriations bill for the DHS prioritized the construction of President Trump’s border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The Senate version of the bill only provided funding for border security enhancements, while the House reduced money for various DHS programs including the icebreaker to provide $5B for the wall. 

Ellen Lord, the top acquisition officer at the Department of Defense, has said the agency plans to simplify some processes in buying technologies for the military in 2019, National Defense Magazine reported Tuesday.

The undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment said the effort mainly aims to increase partnerships with the industry and to speed up how the Pentagon acquires commercial products. 

The DoD wants to create more commonality in intellectual property policies, release scorecards to monitor contractor performance, simplify compliance with federal acquisition rules and regulations, and seek new acquisition authorities from Congress.

Lord said her office will also look to rewrite the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement next year to reduce the compliance burden for contractors.

She noted the changes would help the industry have control of their products, guide the DoD in future contract awards and requirements, and help contractors understand and utilize rapid acquisition authorities.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conducted the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge’s second and final preliminary event on Dec. 12 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, DARPA said Wednesday.

The qualifier saw teams comprised of academic, commercial and defense representatives utilize machine-intelligence technologies for various scenarios involving radio frequency operations.

Six of the eight teams that garnered top scores won $750K each as part of the SC2 event, which covered a wide range of RF scenarios including interference mitigation, high-traffic spectrum demands and other connectivity issues.

DARPA selected the six winners based on the sixth scenario, which saw competitors develop autonomous RF capabilities such as those enabling radios to carry wireless applications without relying on handcrafted spectrum plans.

Paul Tilghman, DARPA’s program manager for SC2, said the six scenarios were aligned to actual situations that involve both defense and commercial systems.

All the 15 participating teams were invited to compete for the SC2 grand finale which will be held concurrently with MWC19 in Los Angeles, Calif., on Oct. 23, 2019.

DARPA partnered with trade association CTIA for the MWC19 event.

The Senate has approved a seven-week continuing resolution for 2019 in an effort to prevent a potential government shutdown by end of the week, Federal News Network reported Wednesday. 

The resolution would provide a budget through Feb. 8 to the agencies still operating without full-year 2019 appropriations.

However, the measure filed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., does not include the proposed 1.9 percent pay raise for civilian employees in the coming year. 

But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said he plans to propose an amendment to the resolution to include the increase. 

House Republicans said in October that they also agreed with Senate counterparts to provide civilian employees across the government the 1.9 percent raise. 

The House is expected to vote on the continuing resolution on Thursday and President Trump must sign the measure on Friday to avoid the partial government shutdown on Dec. 22.

“Some kind of way, we will avoid the shutdown,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. “There is pressure coming from a number of places.”