The Defense Innovation Unit and a slew of collaborators have demonstrated drone flight operations that incorporate mesh radios and satellite technology to enable data-sharing between unmanned aerial systems.

The test was performed over three days in June at the New York UAS Test Site, where select Blue UAS platforms, including AgEagle’s eBee Vision and Skydio’s X2D, were integrated with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Collaborative Low-Altitude UAS Integration Effort Uncrewed Traffic Management — or CLUE UTM — system to exhibit how drones can securely operate anywhere in the world, DIU said Friday.

Technologies employed at the flight tests include Somewear Labs’ multinetwork device, which transmits drone telemetry data to the CLUE UTM system; UXV Technologies’ Soldier Robotic Controller ground control stations for operating and controlling unmanned vehicles; and the QGC-Gov open source UAS ground control station software.

The CLUE UTM system enables combining telemetry data with other data feeds such as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, counter-UAS sensors and nearby radars to provide enhanced situational awareness for air traffic deconfliction, flight area allocation, Federal Aviation Administration compliance and drone identification.

“As the usage of small UAS aiding warfighting functions continues to expand, it is becoming increasingly important to confidently distinguish between those UAS trusted to be used for DoD missions and those that just happen to be in our airspace,” said David Michelson, autonomy portfolio director at the DIU.

Decision Lens, a software company, has received an investment from Diversis Capital to enhance product development.

Diversis will leverage its $1 billion technology-focused private equity fund to aid Decision Lens in producing financial planning applications for government agencies, the Arlington, Virginia-based company announced Monday.

John Saaty, CEO and co-founder of Decision Lens, said, “Our success has been predicated on the notion that government agencies need better tools to prioritize their investments, plan for future years and align spending with strategic imperatives.”

“We believe the public sector is at an inflection point in its modernization efforts and this investment allows Decision Lens to accelerate product development and expansion for growth to meet this need,” Saaty added.

Kevin Ma, co-founder and managing partner of Diversis, said the company became interested in collaborating once it realized Decision Lens’ impact on government agency operational efficiency.

“We are thrilled to partner with Decision Lens to further its vision of modernizing how government prioritizes, plans, and funds,” Ma stated. ”We know its software will be a critical driver of the government meeting its goals to be more data-driven.”

The award capitalizes on the momentum of Decision Lens, which has received several awards from the Army, Navy and Air Force, among other federal government organizations.

The Department of Energy has started soliciting industry proposals for a contract to develop the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s next-generation high-performance computing system.

ORNL said Friday the future HPC system, Discovery, will replace the Frontier exascale supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and is expected to be delivered by 2027 or early 2028.

The future supercomputer should be interoperable with other DOE facilities under the Integrated Research Infrastructure initiative, have advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities and generate three to five times more computational throughput for scientific applications than Frontier.

“This project is exciting because we will be building something even more capable than Frontier, with technologies that will push the edge of what’s possible,” said Matt Sieger, the OLCF’s project director for Discovery.

Discovery is expected to support potential study areas, such as training AI algorithms for scientific discovery, speeding up drug discovery and treatments for cancer and predicting the impacts of climate change.

ORNL said the next-gen supercomputer and its capabilities are expected to meet the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program’s mission needs.

Proposals are due Aug. 30.

The General Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Energy have picked a handful of technologies to participate in the Green Proving Ground program, or GPG.

Under the program, GSA and DOE plan to invest $9.6 million into 17 up-and-coming technologies to asses building systems in operational climates, GSA announced Thursday.

Robin Carnahan, administrator of the GSA, said, “Right now, GSA and the entire Administration are making once-in-a-generation investments to address climate change, bolster our economy and infrastructure, enhance security and sustainability and build a more prosperous future for all Americans.”

The GPG program focuses on critical technological areas — building envelopes and enclosures, healthy and resilient buildings, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and on-site renewables — in joint forces with the Inflation Reduction Act, which has endowed $30 million for the expansion program.

The program has examined 107 technologies since 2011. GSA’s Applied Innovation Learning Labs will facilitate the testing of recent systems.

GSA expects this year’s test results to be available in 2026.

The U.S. Army’s 1st Multi-Domain Task Force,  or 1MDTF, demonstrated the capability of the military branch’s long-range hypersonic weapon battery during a biannual joint training exercise held in June at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

The Army said Wednesday 1MDTF demonstrated the ability of the LRHW battery’s capability to integrate with joint echelons and sustain operations for over three days during Exercise Resolute Hunter 24-2.

The Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center hosted Resolute Hunter 24-2, the Department of Defense’s exercise focused on battle management, command and control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“These scenarios provide invaluable sets and repetitions that build upon and reinforce the steadfast integration of MDTF capabilities in the broader Partnered Joint All-Domain construct,” said Col. Charles Kean, commander of 1MDTF.

Since 2019, soldiers have contributed to the hypersonic weapon’s prototyping process.

The service’s 1MDTF unit launched New Equipment Training in September 2021, completed the weapon system’s fielding process by the end of fiscal year 2023 and deployed the hypersonic capability in February 2023 as part of Exercise Thunderbolt Strike.