The U.S. Navy‘s Littoral Combat Ship program has conducted a blast and fire test on a full-scale Independence-variant LCS replicate at the U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center to evaluate the overall survivability of the platform during combat.

The Multi-Compartment Surrogate replicate underwent destructive tests that involved charges placed in several of the ship’s compartments and controlled fires, the U.S. Navy said Friday.

The Navy collected data to evaluate the ship’s failure threshold of blast-induced structural ruptures, reaction to overpressures and the effects of fire on its aluminum structure.

The Navy will use the data as a reference benchmark for computer simulations, as well as to support the Live-Fire Test and Evaluation and LFT&E Modeling and Simulation/Survivability analysis.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center has unveiled a video that seeks to inform public and private entities on foreign risks facing the industry’s supply chain.

ODNI said Thursday it released the video at a supply chain risk management conference as part of NCSC’s efforts to aid the government and industry in supply chain risk mitigation.

“Our adversaries are trying to figure out what U.S. industry—whether telecom or defense—will be doing three years from now,” said NCSC Director Bill Evanina.

“That is why NCSC and the ODNI are trying to find creative ways to help U.S. industry protect its supply chain and thereby help protect America,” Evanina added.

ODNI noted supply chains face threats from the use of globally-sourced commercial information and technologies to develop systems and services.

Risks can also affect end users through products and services that may feature defective, counterfeit or tampered parts, ODNI said.

NCSC also aims to brief government and industry partners on threats; develop an SCRM blueprint for executive branch agencies and organizations; and create a publicly available online course that will inform interested entities on supply chain risk mitigation.

https://youtu.be/oj5iD0D7JsY

The U.S. Army Materiel Command’s Anniston Army Depot has awarded a utility energy service contract that clinched the service branch’s $1 billion mark in energy savings performance contracts.

The Army said Thursday the contract will help Anniston run operations and support the depot’s readiness efforts as well as the service branch’s response to President Barack Obama’s challenge for all federal agencies to achieve a total $4 billion in investments before the end of 2016.

“These contracts are important to the Army … Federal agencies like the Army can leverage their utility budgets and take the steps essential to enhancing resiliency, achieving cost savings, and improving operations and maintenance,” said Katherine Hammack, Army assistant secretary for installations, energy and environment.

The $20 million contract, the service branch’s 127th ESPC award, pushed the total budget allotted to individual contracts and task orders to $1.015 billion which represents 68 percent of the Defense Department‘s efforts to respond to the president’s challenge.

These energy usage contracts collectively equate to an approximate of 12.7 trillion British thermal unit energy savings annually which can power almost 350,000 average U.S. households per year.

The service branch added that private investors use their own funds for modernization and implementation of energy and water efficiency strategies as well as renewable energy systems on Army installations that the service branch will return through part of the utility cost savings achieved from the projects.