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DOD Promotes Keith DeVries to Manufacturing Technology Director
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DOD Promotes Keith DeVries to Manufacturing Technology Director

Acquisition professional Keith DeVries has been named the new director of the Department of Defense’s Manufacturing Technology, or ManTech, a unit within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

Immediately before his appointment, DeVries served as ManTech’s deputy director who oversaw top-priority defense technology investments and facilitated access to emerging technologies, the DOD said Tuesday.

As ManTech director, he will lead the department’s initiatives on the speedy adoption of innovative manufacturing methods to ensure that the U.S. military continues to be at the forefront of technological advances.

The projects that DeVries previously handled as deputy director include the GAMMA-H initiative, an endeavor geared to encourage nontraditional contractors and small businesses to advance additive manufacturing processes for producing complex parts of hypersonic weapons systems.

Before his assignment as ManTech deputy director, DeVries managed the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Manufacturing Science and Technology Program aimed at advancing the DOD’s modernization priorities and reducing acquisition and sustainment costs of advanced technologies. 

The executive’s previous experience also includes various roles at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s divisions on radar technologies and power and energy. 

A member of the Defense Acquisition Corps, DeVries holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Michigan Technological University and a master’s degree in business administration from Ball State University.

As ManTech director, he succeeds Tracy Frost, who was appointed in June as the technology industrial innovation base director under the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology.

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DOD IG Audits Next-Gen OPIR Software Assurance Activities
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DOD IG Audits Next-Gen OPIR Software Assurance Activities

The Office of Inspector General within the Department of Defense found that the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program management office failed to ensure a program protection plan was consistently updated to reflect the Next-Gen OPIR contractor’s progress in implementing software assurance.

An IG audit report on the space architecture development also revealed that program management officials have not provided such a plan for milestone decision authority approval since October 2020, the DOD OIG said Tuesday.

The U.S. Space Force is developing Next-Gen OPIR to replace the Space-Based Infrared System missile-warning constellation.

According to a Breaking Defense report, the first of four Next-Gen OPIR satellites is expected to be deployed into geosynchronous orbit in 2026, a year later than the initial launch schedule.

DOD Inspector General Robert Storch said software assurance is critical for the agency to ensure its systems’ integrity, security and reliability, noting that software vulnerabilities “can pose significant risks to mission success and national security.”

“By implementing thorough software assurance practices, the DoD can reduce the likelihood of cyberattacks, system failures, and compromised data, ultimately protecting critical assets, enhancing operational effectiveness, and safeguarding military missions,” he explained.

To resolve the identified issues, the IG recommended that the Next-Gen OPIR program manager ensure regular updates to the program protection plan to accurately reflect the program management office and contractor’s progress in implementing software assurance activities. 

It also recommended that the under secretary of defense for research and engineering revise DOD guidance to include a process for identifying risks associated with software assurance activities and tracking the acceptance of any risk left unmitigated.

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Telos Opens 12 New Sites for TSA PreCheck Enrollment Centers
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Telos Opens 12 New Sites for TSA PreCheck Enrollment Centers

Telos Corporation has opened 12 new sites for the Transportation Security Administration PreCheck program, which allows enrolled travelers expedited screening through airport security.

The new enrollment centers in California, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and West Virginia started offering enrollment services on Monday, the company said.

The new centers highlight ongoing efforts by Telos to expand its national TSA PreCheck enrollment footprint. To date, the company operates 137 enrollment sites in 28 states across the United States.

Telos noted that the expansion program will continue to support its objective of providing consumers with increased convenience by establishing additional locations and operating at extended hours.

“Telos is proud to bring TSA PreCheck to your neighborhood for an easy, convenient enrollment experience,” Telos CEO and Chairman John Wood said.

Enrolled TSA PreCheck travelers can get through the airport security checkpoint in less than 10 minutes and without removing their shoes, belts and light jackets.

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NASA Requests Proposals for Lunar Logistics, Mobility Enhancement
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NASA Requests Proposals for Lunar Logistics, Mobility Enhancement

NASA has issued a request for proposal for technologies meant to help with future Artemis missions’ lunar logistics and mobility.

The agency said Tuesday the RFP, published in September, intends to address the possible issues in landing and moving cargo on the lunar surface identified in two white papers the agency previously published as part of its Moon to Mars objectives.

The Lunar Logistics Drivers, Needs white paper focused on the accurate prediction of logistics resupply needs involving items such as food, water, air and spare parts. The design of future lunar missions will depend on these logistics items since they will take up a large part of the cargo.

The Lunar Mobility Drivers, Needs white paper, meanwhile, tackles the transportation of cargo and exploration assets from the landing site to other locations on the surface of the moon.

NASA’s planned lunar terrain vehicle and pressurized rover can theoretically carry around 1,760 pounds of cargo and will be mainly used by astronauts to move around the moon’s surface. The agency is seeking proposals that will enable the transportation of 4,400 to 13,000 pounds of cargo.

According to the Lunar Surface Cargo white paper, existing cargo delivery capabilities like the commercial lunar payload services and human-class delivery landers will meet near-term needs. However, they are not designed for future missions with larger cargo.

NASA is soliciting proposals providing a comprehensive assessment of logistics with the possible inclusion of different transportation systems.

Nujoud Merancy, deputy associate administrator for strategy and architecture stressed that the agency collaborates with various partners to develop its exploration architecture.

“Studies like this allow the agency to leverage the incredible expertise in the commercial aerospace community,” Merancy said.

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DHS Taps Startups to Develop Synthetic Data Generation Systems
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DHS Taps Startups to Develop Synthetic Data Generation Systems

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate has selected four startups to develop synthetic data generation capabilities for protecting privacy and mitigating security threats.

Betterdata, DataCebo, MOSTLY AI and Rockfish Data are expected to deliver synthetic data capabilities that replicate real data’s shape and patterns, DHS said Tuesday.

According to Melissa Oh, managing director of S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program, the selected startups can provide agile and creative approaches to help the government address complex challenges like data privacy and security.

DHS awarded the contracts following the release of SVIP’s solicitation in collaboration with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the DHS Privacy Office.

The request for proposals seeks to acquire synthetic data generation capabilities that would enable DHS to train machine learning models in scenarios where real data is either unavailable or poses security risks.

Commenting on the effort’s progress, CISA Associate Chief of Strategic Technology Garfield Jones said investing in privacy-enhancing technologies and collaborating with industry partners will advance the overall privacy ecosystem and its stakeholders.

The selected awardees could potentially access up to $1.7 million in funding across the four stages of the SVIP project.

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NIST Issues RFI for USG NSSCET Implementation
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NIST Issues RFI for USG NSSCET Implementation

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, under the Department of Commerce, is seeking information to support the implementation of the U.S. Government National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology, an initiative launched in May 2023 to enhance existing private sector-led activities and plans focused on critical and emerging technology—or CET—by adhering to standards of transparency, impartiality, consensus and coherence.

According to a request for information issued on Tuesday, NIST is calling for feedback to enhance the education and empowerment of the standards workforce and decision-makers within the business and technology sectors.

NIST is also gathering information regarding existing awards and recognition programs that can help encourage standards participation and leadership in CET areas.

In addition, the notice seeks to maintain open communication within the U.S. CET and standards communities about the USG NSSCET Implementation Roadmap.

Interested parties have until Dec. 9 to send in their comments.

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HBCUs & MIs Receive $50M in DOD Grants for Research Equipment
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HBCUs & MIs Receive $50M in DOD Grants for Research Equipment

The Department of Defense has selected 98 historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions to receive a total of $50.1 million in grants for the purchase of research and scientific equipment.

The DOD said Monday researchers from 21 HBCUs and 49 MIs, including one tribal college, across 26 states and the District of Colombia will benefit from grants worth up to $800,000 each.

The initiative is part of the DOD HBCU/MI Research and Education Program, which aims to boost transformative research in crucial defense technology areas.

The competition, managed by the Army Research Office with input from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, received 152 proposals totaling $82 million. The ARO, alongside the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, evaluated the proposals and selected the 98 awardees.

Evelyn Kent, director of the DOD HBCU/MI Program and Outreach, said, “Equipping universities with relevant instrumentation and other equipment is imperative for advancing novel research aligned with defense science and technology priorities while fostering innovation at the institutions. These awards help enrich the curricula offered to scholars pursuing science, technology, engineering and mathematics degrees and support the training of the next-generation workforce.”

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DOD Cloud Financial Operations Strategy Made Publicly Available
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DOD Cloud Financial Operations Strategy Made Publicly Available

The Department of Defense has made its Cloud Financial Operations Strategy publicly available.

The purpose of the DOD Cloud FinOps strategy is to provide the agency a framework to better manage and optimize cloud costs to, in turn, improve architectural, budgetary and investment decision-making, Leslie Beavers, acting DOD chief information officer and 2024 Wash100 Award winner, said in a memorandum.

“It establishes a way ahead that will allow the Department to be a better user and buyer of cloud services,” Beavers added.

The strategy says that the DOD needs to improve its acquisition of cloud services, because cloud adoption is a fundamental component of modernization, and modernization is made necessary by the increasing digitalization of warfare.

Improving acquisition is also necessary because of rising cloud costs and tightening military budgets.

To help with this effort, the strategy “describes a desired outcome, provides a DoD-tailored FinOps framework, and identifies strategic imperatives and associated actions to enable an enterprise understanding of cloud cost and impact.”

Its implementation will be overseen by the Enterprise Cloud Management Board.

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Parsons Receives Biometric Collection Systems Army Contract
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Parsons Receives Biometric Collection Systems Army Contract

Parsons has secured a technical direction letter from the U.S. Army valued at $1.9 million for the acquisition of biometric mobile and static collection devices, including peripherals and software, in support of the Next Generation Biometrics Collection Capability, dubbed NXGBCC.

The Army said Tuesday under the TDL, which runs through April 2025, the devices will be integrated into the Ares Gateway Transaction Manager, or AGTM, to collect, store, match and share fingerprint, facial, iris and voice biometric modalities.

The AGTM will operate on a government-provided Amazon Web Services Impact Level 5 Gov-Cloud. The cloud service submits collected data to the Department of Defense Automated Biometric Identification System. After the system evaluates the biometrics data, it will return matches to the AGTM and the collection device. 

The NXGBCC is expected to be field-ready and provide soldiers with identity information in real-time by 2025.

The project manager for terrestrial sensors and the product manager for biometrics oversee the NXGBCC and DOD ABIS programs.

Lareina Adams, project manager of terrestrial sensors, said, “The NXGBCC searches a given biometric submission against 30 million encounters and more than 13 million identities in DOD ABIS, as well as against the largest unsolved latent fingerprint file in the government.”

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Senate Bill to Require DOD to Assess Risks of AI in Defense Systems
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Senate Bill to Require DOD to Assess Risks of AI in Defense Systems

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., has introduced a bill that would require the Department of Defense to report to Congress on risk assessments of the use of artificial intelligence in defense systems as part of a push to improve DOD’s ethical technology leadership and transparency.

Welch’s office said Tuesday the proposed Artificial Intelligence Weapons Accountability and Risk Evaluation Act, also known as the AWARE Act, would establish a risk assessment process that evaluates AI technologies against several factors, including bias, bias towards escalation, cybersecurity, privacy, dependability and risk of civilian harm.

The measure would apply the risk assessment to any AI-enabled weapons, targeting or decision support tools, catalog the covered technologies and assessment outcomes in a risk ledger that is unclassified to the extent possible but may include a classified appendix and annotate which of the tech platforms have been shared, exported or used by a foreign individual or government.

Under the bill, DOD should perform an annual risk assessment of all covered AI-enabled systems and conduct a new risk assessment if a weapons review process is initiated, when a technology is procured, or when there is an update to an underlying AI model.

The legislation includes a requirement to report to Congress on an annual basis on the progress of implementing the measure, the ledger and a report on the findings.

“We know that AI-enabled weapons are exacerbating harm to civilians in warzones, and without effective oversight these systems could dangerously reshape our future. The United States has an obligation as a leader in AI innovation to also lead in AI ethics,” said Welch.

“We must be ready to answer questions about accuracy, security, privacy, and harm when we use AI-enabled weapons—and we need better data to do that,” added the Senate Commerce Committee member.

Register now to attend the Potomac Officers Club’s GovCon International Summit on Oct. 10. Listen to speakers as they discuss how international partnerships, emerging technologies and coalition warfare are reshaping the defense landscape and how the U.S. can stay ahead of the curve.

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