The Defense Department has given the Verdure Award to Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command Office of Small Business Programs in recognition of its efforts in promoting small businesses through SPAWAR acquisitions in fiscal year 2015.

The U.S. Navy said Tuesday the Verdure Award is part of DoD’s Vanguard Awards Program which aims to acknowledge individuals and team members that contribute to small business opportunities in defense contracts.

The service branch said SPAWAR OSBP team members are each assigned a point of contact for each program office within the command.

Faye Esaias, SPAWAR director of small business programs, said the integration of OSBP members into acquisition teams helps foster active engagement in procurement processes and advocate small business opportunities.

To further support small business engagement in defense contracts, SPAWAR OSBP has established a procurement center representative office which collaborates with local industry organizations.

They have also developed a tool that will help the government track small business contributions in large contracts.

U.S. Air Force Col. Scott Jackson, chief of the Defense Information Systems Agency‘s Joint Information Environment Solutions Division, addressed common misperceptions regarding DISA’s Joint Regional Security Stacks program.

Jackson spoke at the 2016 Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s Defensive Cyber Operation symposium in an effort to address questions about the power of the platform, the perception that the single security system offers a single point of failure and the versioning confusion among users, DISA said Tuesday.

The JRSS is comprised of 20 racks of equipment which support the ingest of large sets of data, provide the platforms for processing the data, and provide the mechanisms to help analysts make sense of the data.

It works to perform firewall functions, intrusion detection and prevention, enterprise management, virtual routing and forwarding, and provides a host of other network security features.

Jackson noted that JRSS provides user an option to define its own security processes and controls such as a virtual routing and forwarding feature that works like a “safe deposit box” for the user.

He also added that version 1.5 looks to cater to Air Force baseline requirements while version 2.0 will work to accommodate U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps requirements.

The Air Force’s implementation should be completed by the end of fiscal year 2017.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with top Egyptian defense officials in Cairo Saturday to discuss how the U.S. and Egypt can increase their collaboration to address regional threats, DoD News reported Tuesday.

Jim Garamone writes Dunford discussed U.S.-Egypt military cooperation with Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy, the Egyptian defense chief, during his trip to Cairo.

“Although we have a broader relationship between our two countries that is bigger than security, the military-to-military relationship can be a foundation,” Dunford noted.

He flew to London Tuesday to discuss ongoing campaigns against the Islamic State militant organization with British Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Nicholas Houghton and other military leaders, Garamone wrote in a subsequent report.

The report said he aims to collaborate with the U.S.’ coalition partners to develop and implement a transregional framework to counter violent extremism.

The Department of Homeland Security science and technology directorate has collaborated with Canadian organizations to test emergency response technologies and protocols along the Michigan and Ontario border.

DHS said Tuesday the fourth leg of the Canada-U.S. Enhanced Resiliency Experiments at the Blue Water Bridge crossing will work to test cross-border broadband and wireless networks, electrocardiogram tracing, information sharing and live video during a simulated emergency scenario.

The department noted that its partners in CAUSE IV are Defense Research and Development Canada’s Center for Security Science, Public Safety Canada and several provincial, municipal and non-government organizations.

The exercise began Tuesday and will continue through April 28.

CAUSE builds on the U.S.-Canadian Beyond the Border Action Plan that seeks to to connect, test and demonstrate the two countries’ technologies, DHS said.

The House Armed Services Committee’s defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2017 would hold back 50 percent of funds allocated for the Patriot missile defense system until the U.S. Army comes up with a plan to replace the system’s radar, Defense News reported Monday.

Jen Judson writes HASC would also require the service branch’s chief and secretary to assess whether the acquisition of a new radar would be feasible through the Army Rapid Capabilities office as well as prepare the terms of the competition for the procurement of the new radar.

According to Defense News, the military branch is set to conduct a competition for the new radar that would be integrated with its Integrated Air and Missile Defense platform.

Raytheon‘s gallium nitride active electronically scanned array radar and Lockheed Martin‘s Medium Extended Air and Missile Defense System radar are potential options for the new radar, Judson writes.

Sydney Freedberg Jr. also reported for Breaking Defense that the HASC tactical air-land forces subcommittee’s markup of the 2017 defense policy bill would also allocate $5 million in additional funding for the evaluation of the Army’s ground-based anti-ship missiles.

The proposed legislation would also require a study designed to assess the installation of the Mark 41 Vertical Launch System onboard the U.S. Navy’s amphibious ships and request for $10 million in additional funding to support research and development work on land- and sea-based electromagnetic railguns, Freedberg reports.