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Gen. Hawk Carlisle: Lockheed-Built F-35A Reaches Initial Operational Capability
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Gen. Hawk Carlisle: Lockheed-Built F-35A Reaches Initial Operational Capability


F-35Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander of the Air Combat Command, has said the Lockheed Martin-built F-35A Lightning II aircraft has achieved initial operational capability.

Carlisle on Tuesday declared the F-35A fighter jet “combat ready” after the aircraft met the requirements for IOC, such as the capability to use mission systems and program of record weapons for operational missions and the ability to perform close air support, the U.S. Air Force said Tuesday.

The 34th fighter squadron under the service branch’s 388th fighter wing also achieved IOC status to operate and maintain F-35As in collaboration with Air Force Reservists from the 419th fighter wing at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

The fighter jet is designed to provide battlefield situational awareness, perform command-and-control functions and help military pilots interdict and suppress hostile air defenses, according to the service branch.

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White House Unveils Public, Private Efforts to Facilitate UAV Airspace Integration
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White House Unveils Public, Private Efforts to Facilitate UAV Airspace Integration


droneThe White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has announced several government and industry initiatives that seek to facilitate the integration of unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System.

The White House said Tuesday the National Science Foundation will award $35 million in research funds over a five-year period to support research projects that aim to apply UAS in disaster response, agriculture and physical infrastructure inspection, among other efforts.

NASA will launch a research effort in fiscal year 2017 to help facilitate the development of standards for drones’ command-and-control systems and detect-and-avoid tools as well as work with the Federal Aviation Administration to establish a UAS data sharing working group.

The Interior Department has pledged to carry out several programs, such as the launch of a training program by October 2018 to promote the use of drones in search-and-rescue missions as well as the development of a prototyping and approval process for UAS payloads by January 2018.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will start to use UAS to collect gravity measurements and incorporate drones with its fleet of ships for observational purposes by 2017.

Other federal and state agencies that announced efforts to advance the use of UAS include the U.S. Postal Service’s office of inspector general, New York State’s Empire State Development agency and the Northern Plains UAS Test Site in North Dakota.

Companies and alliances that announced commitments to expand drone use include:

  • Commercial Drone Alliance
  • DJI
  • DroneBase in partnership with Drones & Good
  • PrecisionHawk
  • Sinclair Broadcast Group in partnership with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the Academy of Model Aeronautics
  • Zipline International in partnership with Ellumen, ASD Healthcare and Bloodworks Northwest

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DoD IG: NAVSUP Naval Radar Sustainment, Logistics Contracts Need More Performance Metrics
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DoD IG: NAVSUP Naval Radar Sustainment, Logistics Contracts Need More Performance Metrics


DOD SEALThe Defense Department‘s inspector general has said the Naval Supply Systems Command’s weapon systems support office should apply more performance metrics into logistics contracts used to sustain a Lockheed Martin-developed naval radar system.

According to an audit report published Monday,the U.S. Navy’s AN/SPY‑1 Phased Array Radar performance-based logistics contracts has not incentivized support contractors Lockheed and Raytheon to achieve the service branch’s warfighter requirements.

DoD’s IG says contracts did not meet objectives to reduce total ownership costs associated with 327 SPY-1 radar parts covered under the contract because NAVSUP WSS personnel did not follow DoD guidance on development of the performance metrics.

NAVSUP’s commander has agreed to develop written procedures on conducting semiannual performance reviews and reexamine completed reviews for accuracy.

The SPY-1 S-band multi-function phased array radar system acts as the Aegis Combat System‘s primary air search radar and helps automatically track multiple targets simultaneously during continuous surveillance of the sky.

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NASA Appoints Aerospace Consultant Patricia Sanders as Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Chair
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NASA Appoints Aerospace Consultant Patricia Sanders as Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel Chair


PeopleNASA has appointed Patricia Sanders, an independent aerospace consultant, to succeed Vice Adm. Joseph Dryer as chairperson of the space agency’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.

The advisory committee works to provide safety performance reports to NASA and Congress, the space agency said Tuesday.

Sanders has worked in the federal government for 34 years and served as a former executive director of the Missile Defense Agency, where she was in charge of operations, safety, quality control, strategic planning, external communications, legislative affairs and associated personnel administration functions.

She joined the U.S. Army in 1974 and has since handled the Defense Department‘s acquisition programs, worked on space system and aircraft avionics testing with the Air Force Operational Test Center and served as the chief scientist of the Command, Control and Communications Countermeasures Joint Test Force and U.S. Space Command director of analysis.

Sanders has also worked for the Office of the Secretary of Defense as director of test, systems engineering and evaluation before she joined MDA.

“Pat’s background and experience make her an excellent choice to lead this important advisory group,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

“I look forward to her leadership and counsel as we continue to push forward on our journey of exploration.”

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NIST Seeks to Describe ‘Internet of Things’ Via ‘Network of Things’ Model
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NIST Seeks to Describe ‘Internet of Things’ Via ‘Network of Things’ Model


mobile device managementThe National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a document that offers information on a distributed computing-based model designed to help researchers understand the “Internet of Things” and related security risks.

Jeff Voas, a computer scientist at NIST, created the “Network of Things” model based on the four fundamental components of IoT such as computing, sensing, actuation and communication, NIST said Thursday.

The document also details the five basic components or “primitives” of a NoT that include the sensor, aggregator, communication channel, external utility and the decision trigger.

NIST said the sensor works to measure data, while the communication channel delivers sensor-derived data to an aggregator primitive or software.

An aggregator component uses an external utility or eutility primitive such as a cloud platform or laptop computer to process and transmit sensor-based data to the decision-trigger primitive, which helps determine whether to execute a specific action.

“The vocabulary and science of the Network of Things will help researchers understand how the components of IoT interoperate, and compare the security risks and reliability tradeoffs,” Voas said.

The publication also describes geographic location, environment, unique device ID and the other three elements of the model that help determine the Network of Things’ reliability.

Jean Vettel: Army Research Lab Performs Brain Science Studies to Forecast Soldier Activity
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Jean Vettel: Army Research Lab Performs Brain Science Studies to Forecast Soldier Activity


BrainMapAn Army Research Laboratory team has conducted research on brain sciences in an effort to establish a database on brain patterns to help forecast how soldiers respond in a proactive and reactive state.

The U.S. Army said Monday Jean Vettel, an ARL neuroscientist, has performed experiments with an electroencephalogram that registers voltage fluctuations in different parts of the brain to monitor brain activity through sensors placed on a person’s head.

“Researchers are beginning to use the database they have developed based on their experiments to predict both types of driving performance,” the Army notice states.

Researchers work to use non-invasive sensors monitor soldiers all day while performing a variety of tasks to collect more information for the team’s database.

The Army says future experiments might involve sleep deprivation or fatigue on the simulator as well as brain activity monitoring of soldiers on patrol.

Tony Scott: OMB Unveils 3-Year Initiative to Reduce Federal Data Center Footprint
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Tony Scott: OMB Unveils 3-Year Initiative to Reduce Federal Data Center Footprint


Tony Scott
Tony Scott

The Office of Management and Budget has introduced a three-year program that aims to require federal agencies to develop and execute strategies that seek to reduce the footprint of data centers and build up the federal government’s information technology security posture.

Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott wrote in a blog post published Monday the Data Center Optimization Initiative was introduced to comply with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act’s data centers provisions as well as to build on the accomplishments of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative that OMB launched in 2010.

Denise Turner Roth
Denise Turner Roth

DCOI has set five government-wide optimization targets for tiered data centers, such as the use of power usage effectiveness, facility utilization, virtualization and server utilization metrics, as well as installation of energy meters.

The initiative also sets a goal to close approximately 52 percent of all data centers across the federal government over a three-year period and aims to reach $2.7 billion in cost savings and avoidances from the consolidation of duplicative data centers by the end of fiscal year 2018, wrote Scott, an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2016.

Scott noted that the initiative also calls for agencies to adopt cloud and inter-agency shared services.

Denise Turner Roth, head of the General Services Administration, announced Monday that GSA’s office of government-wide policy will serve as a shared services managing partner of OMB under DCOI.

Roth, also an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2016, said OGP will set up a shared services marketplace in support of efforts to optimize data centers across federal agencies.

She also cited OGP’s efforts to help agencies manage their data centers, such as the evaluation of data center infrastructure management tools and collaboration with the Federal Acquisition Service and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program to provide agencies with information on cloud service providers.

NAVAIR Test Flies Osprey Aircraft With 3D-Printed Engine Nacelle
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NAVAIR Test Flies Osprey Aircraft With 3D-Printed Engine Nacelle


V-22-OspreyThe Naval Air Systems Command put an MV-22B Osprey military aircraft fitted with a three-dimensional printed engine nacelle system through a test flight Friday at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland.

The demonstration marks the first time a U.S. Navy-owned aircraft flew with a safety critical component that was built through the additive manufacturing process, NAVAIR said Friday.

The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division in Lakehurst, New Jersey produced the titanium, 3D-printed link and fitting assembly for the outer casing of the MV-22B engine.

“The flight today is a great first step toward using AM wherever and whenever we need to. It will revolutionize how we repair our aircraft and develop and field new capabilities,” said Liz McMichael, NAVAIR’s additive manufacturing integrated product team lead.

Prior to the demonstration event, NAWCAD and Penn State Applied Research Laboratory collaborated to build  multiple V-22 components and the subsystems were tested at the Patuxent River facility.

“We’ll be working with V-22 to go from this first flight demonstration to a formal configuration change to use these parts on any V-22 aircraft,” McMichael added.

NAVAIR noted her team has identified an additional six flight critical parts the group aims to produce and assess  over the next year for integration into the V-22, H-1 and CH-53K rotocraft platforms owned by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Boeing and Bell Helicopter jointly developed the Osprey aircraft.

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DARPA Competition Aims to Help Automate Computer Security
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DARPA Competition Aims to Help Automate Computer Security


cyberwarfareThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency intends to help automate computer security systems through the world’s first all-machine hacking competition scheduled for Aug. 4.

The Cyber Grand Challenge will take place in Las Vegas, where seven high-performance computers will compete live in conjunction with the DEF CON hacker convention, DARPA said Friday.

The seven competing teams consist of white-hat hackers, academics and private-sector cyber systems experts.

DARPA will award the prizes to the winning teams on Aug. 5 and the winners will engage human hackers in the annual DEF CON Capture the Flag contest on the same day.

The competition is part of a three-year program meant to develop autonomous systems for the detection, evaluation and removal of software vulnerabilities.

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NIH, Partners Unveil Software Tool for Molecular Bond Identification
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NIH, Partners Unveil Software Tool for Molecular Bond Identification


big dataA National Institutes of Health research team has teamed up with the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope and Freiburg University to build a new software tool to help drug developers identify aptamers or molecules that bind to biological targets of interest.

NIH said Friday the AptaTRACE tool was designed to analyze data collected using the High-Throughput Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment technique that identifies aptamers, in order to distinguish common features in the genetic sequences that bind.

Teresa Przytycka, a senior investigator at the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information, led the NIH research team that developed AptaTRACE in an effort to further understand why some molecules bind and others do not.

“This research is an excellent example of how the benefits of ‘big data’ critically depend upon the existence of algorithms that are capable of transforming such data into information,” said Przytycka.

John Burnett leads the team from Beckman Research Institute while Rolf Backofen leads the Freiburg University team.

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