Pamela Wise-Martinez, chief cloud and enterprise data architect at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, has called for a consolidated approach to the federal government’s efforts in federal cloud acquisitions, saying it should employ hybrid cloud instead of separate multi-cloud environments.

She said at an FCW event on Wednesday that the previous cloud procurement landscape resulted in numerous enterprise challenges and a consolidated, on-premise approach would help agencies leverage a hyperconverged infrastructure and streamline operations, MeriTalk reported Monday.

The data architect emphasized the importance of governance in pursuing federal cloud and advised agencies to look back at engineering basics to identify how to manage applications’ interoperability.

“We didn’t really think about that integration part. Hybrid cloud is the reality check,” she said. “Some of the things that you have on your infrastructure need to talk to the things that are in the cloud. So now how are you going to do that? You don’t have a standard.”

While it may be impractical for agencies to audit all of their cloud applications, they should conduct an “appropriate assessment” of software, she added.

Wise-Martinez, who holds more than 20 years of experience in network engineering, has served in various senior support roles in enterprise IT architecture at the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Jason Crusan, director of advanced exploration systems at NASA, has said the proposed Deep Space Gateway platform will serve as a type of an “outpost” for future space exploration missions, Federal News Radio reported Friday.

“Think of it as kind of a space port, a dry dock, where we build ships, refurbish ships and then we actually stage missions from it,” he told the Federal Drive with Tom Temin about the proposed Gateway platform.

The report said NASA intends to launch a spacecraft every 30 days to three months to bring scientific experiments to the platform.

The proposed Gateway will work to track robotic missions on the lunar surface and perform communications functions.

“We’re building a certain set of capabilities, in this case an orbiting platform with communications functions, some lander capabilities and the ability for our life support systems to be sustained off-planet, away from Earth,” Crusan added.

Eielson Air Force Base welcomed on Thursday an RQ-4 Global Hawk tasked to support an exercise designed to better apply the aircraft’s reconnaissance capacities to simulated warfighting.

The aircraft – assigned to Beale AFB – and a team of pilots will take part in the RED FLAG-Alaska exercise under orders from the 12th Reconnaissance Squadron, Eielson AFB said Friday.

The RF-A exercise is intended to bolster joint operation between participants, including mission control pilots from the 12th RS.

The exercise will take place at the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex and would include over 100 aircraft from 12 units based across the United States, Canada, Australia and Britain.

The aircraft’s landing on Alaska marks the RQ-4’s first entry into the state for simulated combat training.

Northrop Grumman is a prime contractor for the RQ-4 development program.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., has indicated the U.S. must work to regain an edge in the military electronic warfare domain, C4ISRNET reported Tuesday.

“In the 1990s, when I was a captain and an electronic warfare officer, it was clear we had the no. 1 electronic warfare program in the world, period,” Bacon said the Department of Defense Intelligence Information System conference via a precorded video message.

The congressman introduced in April a bill that calls for the DoD to develop an advanced simulation technology and implement efforts for joint electromagnetic spectrum operations readiness.

He also pushed for the inclusion of EW-related provisions in the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that President Trump approved earlier this week.

Bill Hunt, digital services expert at the Office of Management and Budget, has said OMB’s updated cloud strategy seeks to accelerate federal agencies’ efforts to implement the technology, Federal News Radio reported Thursday.

The Cloud Smart strategy, which succeeds the Cloud First plan, will involve training federal agencies on how to move to the cloud as some are still confused about the concept and process.

OMB has been working with the General Services Administration and Department of Homeland Security to review regulations that continue to hinder agencies from adopting cloud systems.

Hunt noted that there is also a need for contractors to follow a smart procurement process to effectively use the cloud.

He added that agencies needs to take a holistic and enterprise-wide approach for the cloud migration process.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army has started using a hybrid cloud strategy that intends to automate systems to reduce labor costs.

“If you look at where the commercial sector is, whether it’s Google or YouTube, or something like this, they get where they need to be because they automate the workflow,” said Thomas Sasala, chief data officer of the Army.

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate has started leveraging commercial-off-the-shelf augmented reality systems to develop an approach that will help aircraft maintainers inspect internal components of a plane.

Wright-Patterson AF Base said Thursday the AR-based capability is expected to streamline nondestructive inspection, which is a process of safely assessing hard-to-reach equipment and materials in a structure for defects.

Eric Lindgren, principal materials research engineer at the Air Force, explained that NDI officials simultaneously check the monitor, technical documents and surface during the inspection under challenging conditions, which can tire inspectors.

AFRL researchers believe the refined NDI process would take away from the load of inspectors the task of assessing several displays and/or documents so as to focus on the inspection process.

AFRL is working with the AFRL Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality for Aircraft Maintenance integrated product team to develop the system, which they hope will be used in a laboratory environment and other operations in the future.

The researchers also expect to modify the feature to point out the critical areas of a material to be inspected, as well as ultimately help complete the inspection.

They also aim to integrate the AR system into smaller wearable systems such as safety glasses, which aircraft maintainers already use during inspections.