The Government Accountability Office has published its audit of an annual joint report by the Defense Department and Energy Department on the estimated budget required for the upkeep and modernization of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The GAO stated that it had found the budget estimates in the joint report for fiscal year 2018 “generally accurate and complete based on the underlying data that DoD used to create them.” The oversight agency also said the joint report had managed to address concerns previously raised about the methodology used to arrive at the budget estimates.

The joint report is required by a provision within the fiscal year 2012 National Defense Appropriations Act. The same provision requires the GAO to review the report for completeness and accuracy.

The DoD and the DoE prepared the FY 2018 joint report based on a variety of sources, including the President’s Budget and the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.

The joint report, however, did not factor in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which was promulgated after the report entered its final review phase.

Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, has said the U.S. Navy is considering various strategies to reach its goal of deploying 355 ships, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Moore unveiled in an interview that the service seeks to extend the service life of its existing vessels as it will not meet its target of a 355-ship fleet if it will solely focus on manufacturing new models.

“Our initial estimate was that it would take until about 2052 if you were just going to build new ships, and increase the pace that you could build them,” he said.

The Navy is reviewing its fleet of destroyer, amphibious assault and littoral combat ships to see which ones can still be used while new vessels are being built.

In a Federal Drive with Tom Temin discussion, Moore explained that NAVSEA is also considering procuring foreign designs and simultaneously ordering two aircraft carriers to shrink the shipbuilding timeline from six or seven years to four.

The Navy’s past experience of purchasing two vessels at the same time resulted to the delivery of five carriers within 17 years.

The National Institutes of Health has invested $220M for a new wave of neuroscience programs under the multiagency Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative.

NIH said Friday some of the 200 new projects will involve developing and assessing technologies for monitoring brain activity, nursing paralysis patients, treating mental illnesses and exploring non-addictive medication for individuals who have fallen into the opioid crisis.

Francis Collins, director of NIH, said the new initiatives will provide new resources needed to unearth answers for various neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders as part of the institute’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term initiative.

The BRAIN Initiative now has more than $400M in Congress-supported funds just for this year alone, which is more than 50 percent than the amount spent for the program in 2017.

A few of the existing programs financially support the development of new technologies that can help map brain circuit activities.

Eric Chewning, deputy assistant secretary for industrial policy at the Defense Department, has said he projects that DoD could address about 33 percent of the identified supply chain gaps within a year and deal with another third in the next few years, Defense News reported Friday.

DoD issued in October a White House-commissioned study that found approximately 300 risks in the U.S. defense industrial base.

Chewning told the audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Friday that he considers the remaining issues in the report as “things that long term we’re going to have to manage, recognizing that new stuff is going to come in and things are going to pop out as we dynamically manage the industrial base.”

The report said those vulnerabilities include suppliers that have decided to exit the defense market, those that could disappear from the sector and foreign-owned suppliers that could potentially leave the market in a critical situation.
 

The Professional Services Council has provided a list of 20 recommendations in response to the Office of Management and Budget’s feedback request for its updated federal cloud strategy.

PSC classified its recommendations for the Cloud Smart strategy into several categories such as the transition from the Cloud First plan to the new strategy; security; procurement; workforce; and CIO Council actions, according to an Oct. 24 letter.

The letter written and signed by Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at PSC, was addressed to Federal CIO Suzette Kent.

The council recommended the federal government direct agencies to prioritize the use of vendor-based platforms for information technology services and reiterate its commitment to assisting agencies to leverage U.S. innovation through increased adoption of commercial tech platforms.

For procurement, the administration should include in the Cloud Smart strategy OMB’s commitment to collaborate with Congress to adapt fiscal law to expedite IT modernization and cloud adoption; enable the strategy to encourage flexible contracting measures for the acquisition of cloud and complementary IT platforms; and leverage current budget flexibilities to speed up IT modernization.

The new strategy should encourage the Defense Department to update its Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide and Defense Acquisition of Services policy to facilitate “reciprocal use of security authorizations, according to PSC.

The Department of Energy‘s National Nuclear Security Administration has posted updated reports highlighting the agency’s strategy to manage and protect the country’s nuclear stockpile.

The “Fiscal Year 2019 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan” report features information on programs aiming to extend the lifespan of warheads, the DOE said Thursday.

The report also tackles the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review‘s imposed policies.

Meanwhile, the “Prevent, Counter, and Respond—A Strategic Plan to Reduce Global Nuclear Threats” or NPCR report illustrates the agency’s framework to reduce and address nuclear terrorist acts that threaten the country.

Both reports also include insights on infrastructure modernization and strategic material management.

“NNSA began work immediately to implement this guidance, and these two reports reflect our commitment to maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent and to reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism,” said Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, undersecretary for nuclear security and NNSA administrator.

The National Insider Threat Task Force, spearheaded by the attorney general and the Director of National Intelligence, is working on boosting information security efforts with the release of the Insider Threat Program Maturity Framework.

The National Counterintelligence and Security Center said Thursday the maturity framework aims to implement digital updates to help executive branch departments and federal agencies’ insider threat programs become more functional.

It was conceptualized in the fall of 2017 and vetted in the spring of 2018 by representatives from the Intelligence Community, Defense Department and federal partner insider threat initiatives.

NITTF was created in October 2011 via Executive Order 13587, which required the establishment of insider threat detection and prevention programs.

Researchers from non-profit think tank RAND Corporation have recommended that policymakers increase the use of technology in managing sensitive government information by mandating technological innovation in the field.

James Bruce, Sina Beaghley and W. George Jameson said in a report titled “Secrecy in U.S. National Security: Why a Paradigm Shift is Needed” that modern technologies can substantially enhance the secrecy framework employed by the U.S government.

Cutting-edge technology can be used “to support enhanced classification, secrecy protection and greater transparency,” the researchers stated in the recently-released study.

The authors noted, however, that funding and other incentives have been lacking, resulting in government technology falling behind and failing altogether, as in the cases of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning leaking sensitive government information to the internet.

Without the necessary advancements, technology can be “a source of harm if technological weaknesses enable foreign plundering of U.S. vaults of priceless information,” the researchers warned.