The Defense Department’s Office of Strategy and Force Development has launched a crowdsourcing initiative to gather ideas in support of DoD efforts to address operational challenges, DoD News reported Monday.

Cheryl Pellerin writes Mara Karlin, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, said the initiative is “focused on what we think are key operational challenges that are animating how we think about the changing character of war.”

Karlin added DoD seeks crowdsourced approaches to areas such as counter power projection, battle networks and technology, Pellerin reported.

A team comprised of members with experience in policy, acquisition, technology, logistics and Joint Staff operations will review the submissions and select top proposers, according to Karlin.

Chosen proposers will brief Karlin’s team and the proposals will be presented to Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pellerin wrote.

Karlin said her team can talk to the Strategic Capabilities Office and planners at combatant commands to discuss the potential use of crowdsourced technology proposals.

She added there are no funds allocated for the projects but DoD has several different processes to fund technology ideas and in operational concepts.

Interested participants can submit papers until Nov. 28.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has called on U.S. allied countries to join the agency’s program that works to provide unlimited access to Iridium‘s constellation of mobile communications satellites, Space News reported Friday.

Peter de Selding writes Clare Grason, DISA program manager of the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services program, said allies can pay a fixed rate to access Iridium’s constellation through a DISA-operated gateway as well as add an unlimited number of devices.

DISA awarded the five-year, $400 million EMSS contract to Iridium in 2013 to give U.S. government agencies access to Iridium’s satellite constellation at a fixed cost.

Grason said Iridium has activated 85,000 subscriber units under the contract primarily for military users and approximately 15 percent for civilian agencies.

Grason noted DISA and Iridium will begin negotiations for a new contract in 2017 and that the agency does not need to wait for the launch of the Iridium Next second-generation constellation.

The Government Accountability Office has found that Defense Department-owned utility systems experienced 4,393 instances of disruptions due to equipment failure from fiscal years 2009 through 2015.

DoD installation officials claimed the utility disruptions led to more than $29 million in financial impacts as well as operational consequences such as a week-long shutdown of operations at a U.S. Army facility, GAO said Monday.

Factors that caused equipment failures include the use of equipment beyond its intended life; lack of proper maintenance and poor equipment condition, the report stated.

GAO added 151 out of 364 surveyed officials said they did not have information on utility disruptions in fiscal years 2009-2015.

Auditors found the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine Corps lack guidance that require installations to monitor utility disruption information while the Army’s guidance to report utility disruptions is not consistently available for some installations.

The U.S. Navy released a new guidance in 2015 which could support the collection of utility disruption information if implemented as directed, GAO noted.

DoD’s use of the Sustainment Management System software to run standardized condition assessments could result in varying facility condition index data since services can customize settings or condition standards in the SMS process, GAO said.

GAO recommended the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps to take measures or provide guidance to help collect disruption information consistently.

DoD should oversee services’ efforts to apply uniform condition standards, GAO stated.

The Defense Department‘s inspector general has recommended the U.S. Navy assess whether to continue or cancel the development of the Knifefish surface mine countermeasure unmanned undersea vehicle.

DoD IG said Tuesday the requirements developers of Knifefish and the Littoral Combat Ship program — Expeditionary Warfare Division N95 and Surface Warfare Division N96, respectively — did not coordinate to establish Knifefish capability requirements.

Lack of coordination led to engineering change proposals to redesign Knifefish and that move added $2.3 million to program costs, the IG found.

The Knifefish program office compressed developmental test schedules and combined test events due to lack of funds which might lead to uncorrected design problems, according to the audit report.

The report stated the Navy has yet to demonstrate Knifefish’s capacity to detect, classify and identify bottom and buried mines and failure to meet minimum requirements could result to program reassessment or modification of production increments.

The IG noted Knifefish might not be ready for initial production decision in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017.

Knifefish’s program office has received $91 million out of an estimated $842.5 million budget to cover research, development, test, evaluation, procurement, operational and maintenance efforts.

DoD IG asked the directors of Expeditionary Warfare Division N95 and Surface Warfare Division N96 to jointly develop Knifefish capability requirements associated with the communication interface, launch and recovery operations between Knifefish and LCS.

The IG also recommended for the director of Expeditionary Warfare Division N95 to coordinate with the LCS program executive officer to determine whether to continue the development of Knifefish or use the remaining $751.5 million program funds for other purposes.

Knifefish is designed to serve as a self-propelled, untethered and autonomous UUV that will be launched and recovered from LCS.

The U.S. Air Force is looking to retrain more than 1,900 enlisted personnel to support approximately 95 understaffed career fields, Air Force Times reported Sunday.

Stephen Losey writes the service branch’s Non-Commissioned Officer Retraining Program also needs to retrain 292 enlisted soldiers out of 20 overstaffed Air Force specialty codes.

The report noted that most retraining opportunities are for first-term enlisted soldiers that seek to join the security forces career field that has 145 slots open under the 3P011A dog handler field and 82 slots on the 3P011B combat arms security forces.

“Training seats are at a premium and most AFSCs are at or near max capacity… Correspondingly, our retraining opportunities are limited and focus on balancing the inventory between AFSCs,” said Brian Kelly, Air Force director of military force management policy.

The service branch has developed a program called the Air Force Work Interest Navigator which uses data from inquiries on interests, skills and work histories to create a list of jobs that might suit each candidate and compare interests to entry-level AFSCs.