A fiscal 2019 defense appropriations bill crafted by the House Armed Services Committee contains language that would require a Defense Department component to manage commercially hosted payloads, SpaceNews reported Wednesday.

Rep. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., introduced the language as amendment to the panel’s version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

The amendment calls for DoD and U.S. Air Force leaders to assign an office that would coordinate processes, data and lessons learned concerning the use of hosted payload services from industry.

Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told SpaceNews he believes industry offers multiple opportunities for military services to increase payload capacity and resiliency.

The report said some commercial satellite operators view national security payloads as a potential business opportunity that can also work to help address a military requirement.

The U.S. Navy has conducted a live-fire missile exercise with USS Milwaukee, concluding the first phase of the surface-to-surface missile module developmental testing under the Littoral Combat Ship Mission Modules program.

The Freedom variant LCS launched four longbow Hellfire missiles to inshore craft targets in a simulated complex warfighting scenario, during the test that took place Friday off the coast of Virginia, the Navy said Wednesday.

The ship’s crew made use of radars and various systems to detect the missiles’ targets.

The exercise also marks the first LCS-based integrated firing of an SSMM. The Navy expects to field and achieve initial operational capability of the SSMM in 2019.

Shawn Johnston, captain of LCS Squadron Two, stated that the SSMM testing’s next phase will be performed with the USS Detroit LCS.

The Defense Department has asked “fourth estate” agencies that have workloads in 105 data centers to move their applications to a Defense Information Systems Agency-managed commercial cloud platform, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

A May 3 memo says fourth estate agencies should migrate virtualized workloads to the milCloud 2.0 platform by the end of March 2019 and move the remaining systems to the cloud by September 2020.

Fourth estate agencies listed in the document include the Defense Logistics Agency, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Health Agency and the Defense Finance Accounting Service.

Essye Miller, then-acting chief information officer at DoD, wrote in the memo that the move seeks to streamline the cyber infrastructure and reduce the department’s data center footprint.

General Dynamics’ information technology business runs milCloud 2.0, which launched online in February, according to the report.

Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, said at an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association event held Monday that DISA expects to receive some prototype devices for identity assurance this summer, FCW reported Tuesday.

She added the agency is scheduled to distribute 75 devices within the Defense Department in late fall.

DISA also plans to implement a prototype common access card replacement for users to authenticate, decrypt and sign operations in personal computers running Microsoft Windows, according to Norton (a 2018 Wash100 recipient).

She noted that a multifactor authentication technology will help agency personnel to unlock mobile derived credentials.