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Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and British defense chief Stuart Peach sought to affirm the U.S.-U.K. bilateral partnership, DoD News reported Friday.Dunford met with Peach at the Pentagon and stressed the role of U.K. in operations protecting Europe, and participation in joint military operations against the Islamic State militant organization.
Dunford also cited the role U.K. plays to help combat the IS group, the report says.
A battle management team of the U.S. Air Force has developed an open architecture for the service branch’s Distributed Common Ground System that works to support the service branch’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements.The Air Force said Thursday the team collaborated with the Air Combat Command and the Air Force Research Laboratory to support the now-underway transition into the new architecture.
“In order to support Combined Forces Air Component commander intelligence needs, Air Force DCGS must be able to conduct time-dominant and decision-quality analysis to optimize ISR operations, produce timely assessments and enhance battlespace awareness and threat warnings,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Williams, DCGS branch materiel leader for the Air Force.
Williams added his team worked to develop an open and “agile” architecture that is designed to support a “plug-and-play” type of environment.
Team members created, implemented and institutionalized open hardware, software processes and specifications for the new architecture within 42 weeks to help reduce analyst evaluation and decision times by approximately 60 percent, the Air Force noted.
The service branch added the open architecture is designed to provide a single consolidation of operator workflow to address intelligence storage as well as target identification time and execution.
The program has completed its risk reduction phase in December 2015 and pilots are currently being deployed to integrate the new structure in three Air Force DCGS sites.
The service branch expects to complete the piloting phase in 2017 with a development and operational test and eventually accommodate non-Air Force DCGS systems.
The Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases has issued updated guidance designed to bolster the government’s methodology for how to account and track GHGs.Howard Shelanski, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs administrator, and Jay Shambaugh, Council of Economic Advisers member, wrote in a blog post published Friday the IWG asked National Academies of Sciences to provide advice on how to update the former’s methodology to reflect the most current science.
The IWG has expanded the presentation of its social cost of carbon dioxide estimates through NAS-recommended discussion and will incorporate advise from the Academies’ into the social cost of carbon and release new estimates for methane and nitrous oxide.
“As we take steps to continue to keep these estimates informed by the most up-to-date science and economics, this Administration also recognizes that climate change is a global threat that requires international cooperation to combat effectively,” Shelanski noted.
The post added that the IWG will look to evaluate its estimation approach on the social cost of GHGs based on the longer-term guidance from the NAS’Â final report.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has published a report on the challenges faced by people with mobility impairments during emergency evacuations from multi-story buildings.NIST said Friday it conducted the Perspectives of Occupants with Mobility Impairments on Fire Evacuation and Elevators study through face-to-face interviews with 51 persons that have mobility impairments to discuss means to leave a building during a fire evacuation.
A question on the study involved the use of an occupant evacuation elevator designed to transport people with mobility impairments out of a building without the assistance of others as an alternative to the stairs method.
“For too long, building evacuation plans have been put in place with measures that designers believe people with mobility impairments will need… Our study shows that you can’t do it properly without listening to what they actually do require,” said Erica Kuligowski, co-author on the report.
NIST noted the respondents generally agreed that evacuation strategies should provide people with mobility impairments a feeling of safety, independence, an opportunity to remain with a mobility aid, a means to quickly evacuate and communicate with security.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch appointed Richard Hartunian of the Northern District of New York and Barbara McQuade of the Eastern District of Michigan as the respective chair and vice chair of the Attorney General’s advisory committee.The Justice Department said Monday that Hartunian replaces former U.S. Attorney John Walsh for the District of Colorado as committee chair while McQuade succeeds Hartunian as vice chair.
“They are both seasoned prosecutors, exemplary law enforcement officers, and devoted public servants, and I look forward to benefitting from their long experience and wise counsel as we advance the department’s vital work in the months ahead,†said U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Hartunian became vice chair of the AGAC in January 2015 after he previously served as co-chair of the border and immigration subcommittee and as a member of the subcommittees focused on Native American issues, health care fraud and environmental crimes.
He was appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York in 2010 and prior to that he was assistant U.S. attorney since 1997 and as the district’s Narcotics Chief and Organized Crime Drug.
McQuade, who joined the AGAC in April 2013, previously was co-chair of the terrorism and national security subcommittee as well as served on subcommittees that tackle civil rights and border security matters.
She also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit, Michigan, and as deputy chief of the National Security Unit.
Established in 1973, AGAC provides advice to the Attorney General on policy, management and operational issues that affect the offices of the U.S. Attorneys.
The Defense Department inspector general has released a report that indicates the U.S. Navy needs a comprehensive guidance to evaluate cost performance of the service branch’s large‑scale renewable energy projects.DoD IG said Thursday it found that Navy personnel failed to release adequate documentation to support the calculations they made in their assessments of three major renewable energy projects within the U.S. Pacific Command‘s area of responsibility, DoD IG said Thursday.
The audited projects are the Solar Multiple Award Contract in Hawaii, Guam Photovoltaic Renewable Energy and West Loch Photovoltaic Power in Hawaii.
The service branch’s current guidance does not have specific procedures for personnel to evaluate such projects, the report noted.
The IG recommended that the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment update Navy guidance with comprehensive steps and assess the cost‑effectiveness of renewable energy projects based on those policies.
Operations research analysts at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base have developed a scheduling tool that works to help forecast manpower and facilities required to maintain the F-22 Raptor fighter jet.The U.S. Air Force said Thursday research analysts collaborated with the F-22 Strategic Planning Group to create the Master Plan Scheduling Tool through the use of aircraft maintenance data and a mathematical theory.
Research analyst Greg Gehret said the tool works to align available infrastructure with maintenance skillsets, workload and facility to help meet aircraft maintenance schedules.
Gehret added the scheduling theory behind the tool can be applied to any production line such as F-35 and A-10Â aircraft.
Matt Starkey, a scheduler at the F-22 Strategic Planning Group, said the tool helps the 574th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron to analytically forecast depot resource requirements such as facilities, manpower, tooling and materials.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the ideas of reform and innovation has spread in the military, DoD News reported Thursday.
Jim Garamone writes Selva discussed the Defense Department‘s “state of innovation” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Thursday to collect ideas and knowledge from younger officers, noncommissioned officers and civilian employees.
“Innovation is about tactical, operational and strategic choices within organizations to adopt new ways of doing things … It can make the organization more effective or more efficient, or possibly both,” noted Selva.
Selva added reform and innovation are required to address challenges that the country will face such as activities in China and Russia, as well as Iran and Korea’s alleged interest to possess nuclear systems.
The general noted the military seeks to help personnel with risk assessment efforts in order to mitigate or prevent unacceptable scenarios that involve the death of people or failure of a mission.
Selva added the military constantly looks at the cause of risks in an effort to develop countermeasures against imaginative competitors that might challenge the U.S. as well as its allies and partners.
The General Services Administration has put up a former Agriculture Department research facility for public sale through an online auction that started on Aug. 15.GSA said Wednesday the Fresno, Ohio-based North Appalachian Experimental Watershed Research Facility is a 631-acre property that consists of 21 buildings and forest, crop and pasture lands.
USDA built NAEW in the 1930s to facilitate water conservation research, GSA added.
“This auction is an example of GSA’s intent to remove properties that are no longer needed in the federal inventory,” said Ann Kalayil, GSA Great Lakes regional administrator.
Kalayil added the public sale serves to help GSA limit its federal footprint and open an economic development opportunity in Coshocton County where the facility stands.
The agency noted the starting bid is $500,000 and interested bidders should submit an online registration form and a $25,000 deposit.
GSA has worked with agencies to generate proceeds of $66 million from selling 173 government assets in fiscal year 2015.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has introduced six new pilot projects that seek to secure and facilitate online access to local and state government services through multi-factor authentication and other identity-based verification measures.Mike Garcia, deputy director of NIST’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, wrote in a blog post published Thursday the initiatives bring the total number of NSTIC pilot projects to 24 across 26 states and Washington with over 150 partners.
NIST will award the Florida Department of Revenue $3.5 million in funds to implement a single log-in identity process in support of the state’s Child Support Program.
Yubico will receive $2.3 million in NIST funds to build an identity toolkit through the OpenID Connect platform as well as field YubiKey devices based on the FIDO Alliance Universal 2nd Factor authentication standard.
Other recipients and their respective grant funds include:
