Treasury Dept Finalizes Outbound Investment Security Program
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Treasury Dept Finalizes Outbound Investment Security Program

The Department of the Treasury has released a final rule to implement a 2023 executive order that seeks to address U.S. investments in certain national security technologies and products from countries of concern.

Outbound Investment Security Program

The Treasury said Monday the final rule, which will take effect on Jan. 2, establishes a program to prohibit or require notification of certain types of outbound investments by U.S. persons into certain entities with ties to countries of concern.

The newly created Office of Global Transactions within the Treasury’s Office of Investment Security will administer the Outbound Investment Security Program, which will apply the prohibition and notification requirement for products within the semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and artificial intelligence sectors that countries of concern may use to threaten U.S. national security.

Final Rule’s Key Elements

The final rule offers details on a U.S. person’s obligations regarding a covered transaction, categories of covered and excepted transactions, technical specifications for certain technologies and products within the three tech areas and information that a U.S. individual is required to submit to the Treasury as part of a notification.

“Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and quantum technologies are fundamental to the development of the next generation of military, surveillance, intelligence and certain cybersecurity applications like cutting-edge code-breaking computer systems or next generation fighter jets,” said Paul Rosen, assistant secretary of the Treasury for investment security.

“This Final Rule takes targeted and concrete measures to ensure that U.S. investment is not exploited to advance the development of key technologies by those who may use them to threaten our national security,” added Rosen.

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USAF Issues RFI on Satcom Operations Support Services
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USAF Issues RFI on Satcom Operations Support Services

The U.S. Air Force’s Space Acquisitions and Integration Office is conducting market research to determine the standards for its planned Commercial and Military Satellite Communications Operations Support, or COSMOS, contract on non-commercial, non-personal services. 

SAIO is developing the COSMOS award as a follow-on contract for the Wideband Satellite Communications Operations and Technical Support II, or WSOTS II contract, expected to end on Jan. 31, 2027, according to a SAM.gov post.

The new contract will continue the WSOTS II support to the Space Operations Command, 53rd Space Operations Squadron and the Satellite Communications Office. 

L3Harris Technologies holds the current WSOTS II contract with a potential value of $218 million to extend support on such satcom services as planning, management and control. 

The USAF’s request for information includes industry feedback on whether to revise the current contract’s one-year base period and seven one-year options. The RFI also seeks recommendations on the COSMOS contract structure, which under WSOTS II is a cost-plus-fixed-fee for labor and cost reimbursable for travel and other direct costs.

Interested parties will have to submit answers to a questionnaire about their work similar to COSMOS performance work standards under contract for more than $50 million. Other questionnaire subjects include inventory management system capabilities to interface with relevant Department of Defense and Air Force systems.

The deadline for the submission of RFI responses is on Nov. 18.

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Armis Closes $200M Investment, Reaches $4.2B Valuation
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Armis Closes $200M Investment, Reaches $4.2B Valuation

Cyber company Armis has reached a total company valuation of $4.2 billion after closing a $200 million investment round.

With the Series D round of investment, Armis will continue its five-year plan of building a multi-generational cybersecurity company through global go-to-market programs, product innovation and inorganic growth opportunities, Armis announced Monday.

Yevgeny Dibrov, CEO and co-founder of Armis, said, “My Co-founder Nadir Izrael and I are incredibly grateful for the support of General Catalyst and Alkeon Capital as well as Brookfield and Georgian.” 

“Their investment and belief in Armis’ future reflect the strength of our platform and the market need for a comprehensive Cyber Exposure Management platform — from asset management and Cyber-Physical systems security to Remediation of vulnerabilities and issues from IT to cloud and the CI/CD pipeline. We remain confident that this is just the beginning for Armis, and we look forward to delivering on our vision of a safer digital world,” Dibrov added.

Armis’ New Investors

New investors General Catalyst and Alkeon Capital join existing investors, including Insight Partners, CapitalG, Georgian, Brookfield Technology Partners and One Equity Partners. 

Mark Crane, a partner at General Catalyst, and Abhi Arun, a managing partner at Alkeon Capital, expressed their excitement about the investment. 

“We see Armis as a powerful force in cybersecurity, with tremendous potential to scale rapidly and drive meaningful innovation in the industry,” Crane stated. “We are excited to support them on their path to becoming a public company.”

“With a proven track record and rising demand for its solutions, Armis is uniquely positioned to redefine industry standards in the cybersecurity market. We’re excited to collaborate with Armis as it accelerates on its remarkable upward trajectory,” Arun noted.

New Investment Goals for Armis

This new round of funding comes after Armis surpassed the $200 million annual recurring revenue, or ARR, mark, growing ARR by an additional $100 million in less than 18 months. 

Armis is also targeting a future initial public offering, with a set milestone of reaching the $500 million threshold on the journey to $1 billion ARR.

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GovCon Index Slipped Back Into Negative Territory Last Week
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GovCon Index Slipped Back Into Negative Territory Last Week

Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Index closed with an average of $5,491.81 last week, a 2.29% decrease from the previous week that brought an end to a five-week winning streak.

GovCon Index allows users to follow the stock market performance of 30 major government contracting organizations in real-time. With the data it provides, individuals can gain an understanding of the financial status of each tracked company while getting a broader view of key trends shaping today’s GovCon marketplace.

Multiple companies were able to grow last week despite overall losses. Booz Allen Hamilton took the top spot with gains of 9.90%. Palantir (+4.21%) was second in the ranks, and CACI (+2.94%) came in third. Fourth and fifth place were taken by AeroVironment (+1.78%) and L3Harris (+1.59%), respectively.

GovCon Index spent almost all of last week in decline. On Friday, it flipped back into positive territory with a small increase of 0.23%, but was unable to fully recover from its earlier losses.

Check out last week’s market reports to get a closer look at daily GovCon Index performance. To unlock the complete list of tracked organizations, visit  GovConIndex.com.

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OFFP Issues Memo for Contracting Talent Recruitment, Retention
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OFFP Issues Memo for Contracting Talent Recruitment, Retention

The Office of Budget and Management’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy, or OFPP, has issued a memorandum that establishes a blueprint to recruit, develop and retain contracting professionals.

The memo, released on Wednesday, outlines recruitment and retention initiatives, including establishing an acquisition workforce advisory committee, requiring the development of strategic workforce plans at each agency, conducting leadership and soft skills training across the contracting workforce, and helping chief human capital officers and chief financial officers develop strategic workforce plans and retention programs.

Chartered under the Federal Acquisition Institute’s board of directors, the advisory committee will comprise experts and thought leaders from federal agencies to guide efforts to address key issues, share best practices and remove hiring roadblocks.

According to the document, the federal government relies on the contracting workforce to purchase goods and services, making it the most important element of the federal acquisition system. However, the memo cited research stating that the number of early contracting professional careers lags behind the number of early careers for federal professionals. 

Sustaining the acquisition workforce will support the implementation of the OFFP’s Better Contracting Initiative, or BCI, which promotes an enterprise-wide approach to buying common goods and services to get better value from high-risk and other high-priority contracts, among other benefits.

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Aerospace Releases Latest Entry in Space Agenda Series
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Aerospace Releases Latest Entry in Space Agenda Series

The Aerospace Corporation and its Center for Space Policy and Strategy have released Space Agenda 2025, which, according to the publication’s introduction, is meant to provide leaders in government and the space sector with highlights and insights concerning major space challenges.

Table of Contents

Policy Issues

Aerospace said Thursday that Space Agenda 2025 addresses various national security, commercial space and civil space-related policy issues such as the rise of proliferated Department of Defense space systems and accompanying supply chain issues; an increasingly contested geopolitical environment and the role that space assets have to play; growing interest in lunar and cislunar activities; and impacts to space sustainability.

The first entry in the Space Agenda series was launched four years ago. The latest entry “builds on our previous work and offers forward-looking perspectives on the most important topics affecting how our nation and its allies are approaching leadership and competition in space,” Aerospace President and CEO Steve Isakowitz said in a letter accompanying the publication.

A Free Resource

The publication is being offered as a free resource “to aid U.S. leaders and policymakers, including the next presidential administration and Congress, as they navigate critical decisions and deepen strategic partnerships over the next four years,” Isakowitz added.

For his part, Aerospace Vice President, CSPS Executive Director and Wash100 awardee Jamie Morin said the contents of the publication “illuminate the critical policy and economic choices facing the U.S. over the next four years in order to maximize the value space delivers to the American people.”

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NASA Invests in Open-Source Projects
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NASA Invests in Open-Source Projects

NASA has selected 15 projects that will receive $15.6 million in grant funding to maintain open-source tools, frameworks and libraries vital to the NASA science community.

The agency said Thursday the awards are intended to support the sustainable development of tools necessary for the objectives of the agency’s Science Mission directorate. The grants are part of NASA’s Open-Source Tools, Frameworks and Libraries award program, which is one of the agency’s cross-divisional opportunities intended to advance open science practices. They are funded by the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer through the Research Opportunities for Space and Earth Science.

While 15 projects were selected, only 12 organizations are represented since NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with NumFOCUS, each had two projects chosen. The awardees include:

  1. Caltech
  2. Cornell University
  3. iSciences
  4. NASA’s Ames Research Center
  5. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
  6. NASA’s JPL
  7. NumFOCUS
  8. Pennsylvania State University
  9. Quansight
  10. Triad National Security
  11. United States Geological Survey
  12. University of Maryland

Steve Crawford, program executive for Open Science Implementation of the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer, said the proposals received by the agency almost doubled compared to the previous call for solicitations, which shows the need for sustained support and maintenance of open-source software.

“These projects are integral to our missions, critical to our data infrastructure, underpin machine learning and data science tools, and are used by our researchers, every day, to advance science that protects our planet and broadens our understanding of the universe,” said Crawford.

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US Army Streamlining FMS Via Commercial Platform
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US Army Streamlining FMS Via Commercial Platform

The Foreign Military Sales – Army Case Execution System, or FMS-ACES, under the U.S. Army Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems has been authorized to advance to its implementation through a commercial off-the-shelf solution. The FMS-ACES product office will collaborate with a single vendor to develop the platform’s program in the Army’s cloud-based operational environment, the service branch said Friday.

The Forge Group, a Reston, Virginia-based technology and security consulting company, separately announced that it has secured the FMS-ACES development contract. The Army launched a competitive prototyping effort for FMS-ACES in April, with an initial search for two vendors of prototype solutions. 

The Army said FMS-ACES will provide interface management services that will enable its foreign military sales stakeholders to access an end-to-end case implementation and management system. The platform will also allow other capabilities, such as integrated logistics, query and data visualization and standardization.

A program increment planning is scheduled on Tuesday to gear the FMS-ACES for a minimal viable capability release to users within one year, with regular service delivery expected by September 2025.

The FMS-ACES execution is being coordinated with other PEO Enterprise programs, such as the General Fund Enterprise Business System, to share operational learnings and best practices.

According to Forge, it partnered with technology companies Horizon Industries and 540.co to develop its enterprise system that the Army has selected to replace its Case Information System and streamline the service’s full FMS case management lifecycle. 

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USCG Posture Statement Addresses Shortages, Mission Demands
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USCG Posture Statement Addresses Shortages, Mission Demands

The U.S. Coast Guard has detailed its plan to improve operational efficiency and readiness in its first Operational Posture Statement. At an event held in Washington, D.C., Vice Adm. Peter Gautier, deputy commandant for operations at the Coast Guard, said Friday that the 11-page document will provide transparency to stakeholders and the American people regarding how it can address challenges in workforce and resource shortages amid increasing mission demand.

The Coast Guard Mission

The recently published statement lists the six principles that guide the Coast Guard’s priorities and investments to ensure that it can carry out its operations across the globe. The principles include balancing current operational requirements with future readiness, maintaining global maritime governance and adjusting force structure to maximize operational effectiveness. 

Among the Coast Guard missions that was highlighted in the statement is search and rescue, or SAR. According to Gautier, SAR remains a priority for the service because it is a “no-fail mission” and one that it formed as “a sacred trust with the American people.” 

The Indo-Pacific was also named as a top regional priority due to its importance to global trade and geopolitics. In the region, the Coast Guard is deploying troops to support capacity-building programs in cooperation with Southeast and South Asia partners and sending National Security Cutters to preserve a free, open and rules-based Indo-Pacific. 

Coast Guard’s Financial Needs

Although Gautier said the Operational Posture Statement is not a plea for money, he admitted that the Coast Guard cannot continue at its current pace without a budget boost. 

“We really, really do struggle, and our path is going to be really challenged unless we get the kind of budget support that we need to keep ourselves on a sustainable track,” he stated.

Learn more about threats to U.S. national security at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Homeland Security Summit on Nov. 13. Register for the in-person event here.

USCG Posture Statement Addresses Shortages, Mission Demands
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NIST Seeking Sources to Develop AI Risk Assessment Tools
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NIST Seeking Sources to Develop AI Risk Assessment Tools

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is looking for capable contractors to support the development of artificial intelligence tools for assessing and standardizing chemical and biological risks.

The NIST market research aims to advance the federal government’s objective, spearheaded by the AI Safety Institute, to deploy safe, secure and trustworthy Al systems, according to a Friday notice posted on SAM.gov.

The effort aims to assist NIST in establishing federal guidance and benchmarks for evaluating and auditing Al capabilities that could cause harm.

Solicitation Requirements

The potential vendor is expected to develop relevant resources, such as question-and-answer sets for automated capabilities and safety testing of Al models relevant to chemical and biological risks. The contractor should also design new strategies to assess chemical and biological capabilities.

In addition, NIST requires the vendor to provide frontier AI models that can generate hypotheses for identifying chemical agents and automate several areas of biological design.

The government is seeking responses from interested businesses of all sizes, which must outline advanced capabilities that could satisfy the upcoming contract’s requirements.

Submissions will be accepted no later than Nov. 13.

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