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Momentus Books DARPA Contract to Advance In-Space Construction Capabilities; John Rood Quoted
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Momentus Books DARPA Contract to Advance In-Space Construction Capabilities; John Rood Quoted

In-space transportation services provider Momentus has received a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to help develop technologies that could support construction projects in space.

Momentus’ work will support the agency’s Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials and Mass-efficient Design initiative, known as NOM4D, which aims to lay a foundation for building large-scale structures in the domain, the company announced from San Jose, California on Thursday.

John Rood, CEO of Momentus, said the organization is “delighted by the opportunity to partner with DARPA to work at the forefront of the future in-space infrastructure economy.”

As part of the NOM4D program, the enterprise will carry out experiments that could be incorporated into the Momentus Vigoride Orbital Services Vehicle while maintaining compliance with requirements for launch and in-space operations.

The vehicle is powered by the company’s water-based propulsion system, which will enable it to maneuver and modify orbit to achieve the demands of the project.

“Vigoride’s flexibility, payload capacity, and power make it well-suited to support the demonstration of NOM4D technologies that overcome current volume, load, and vibration constraints currently limiting the type and scale of in- space structures,” said Rood.

Throughout the duration of the program, Momentus will execute on-orbit demonstrations of NOM4D’s assembly and manufacturing technologies to improve its overall technology readiness level.

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Scott Flanders Elevated to Permanent CIO Role at Nuclear Regulatory Commission
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Scott Flanders Elevated to Permanent CIO Role at Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Scott Flanders, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s acting chief information officer since January, will assume the permanent CIO role on June 2.

He will manage the overall information technology functions, including cyber and information security, data management, artificial intelligence and enterprise governance, to enhance information access and improve performance across the NRC, the agency said Wednesday.

Before taking on the role on an acting basis, Flanders was deputy CIO responsible for planning, directing and overseeing resources to align IT and information management services with NRC’s mission objectives.

Flanders joined the NRC in 1991 as a reactor engineer intern and later served as director of the Office of New Reactors Division of Site Safety and Environmental Analysis and the deputy director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards Division of Waste Management and Environmental Review.

“His experience with the government’s use of information technology and his deep understanding of the NRC mission will help the agency navigate the challenges of the future,” said Raymond Furstenau, acting executive director for operations at the NRC.

FAA Authorizes Autonomous Drone Swarm Exercises at LLNL Site
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FAA Authorizes Autonomous Drone Swarm Exercises at LLNL Site

The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Autonomous Sensors team to field test autonomous drone swarms at the main LLNL site.

The certificate of authorization enables the team to operate up to 100 drones during the daytime over the next two years as part of efforts to evaluate swarm controls and sensor payloads designed for national security applications.

Brian Wihl, systems engineer at LLNL and the initiative’s project lead, said the national lab seeks to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to its autonomous sensors but could not field-test the technologies.

“Receiving this approval enables us to take the next step in our research. We’ll be able to apply swarming technology across several national security mission spaces to see how the swarms learn and respond in real-time,” Wihl said.

Jacob Trueblood, Autonomous Sensors electrical hardware team lead and principal investigator for the initiative, said the broad-use-case approval would enable rapid development of software tools and allow the lab to benchmark available software and recommend future updates.

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Army Launches Universal Artillery Projectile Lines Facility in Texas; Christine Wormuth Quoted
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Army Launches Universal Artillery Projectile Lines Facility in Texas; Christine Wormuth Quoted

The U.S. Army has unveiled a modular metal parts manufacturing facility in Mesquite, Texas, as part of the military branch’s plan to modernize the industrial base and strengthen the country’s munition production capabilities.

General Dynamics’ ordnance and tactical systems business will operate the Universal Artillery Projectile Lines or UAPL facility, which features high-tonnage forging capabilities, automation and digital data capture systems, the Army said Wednesday.

The UAPL facility comes with high-volume production capabilities for metal parts ranging from 60 mm to 155 mm.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the new facility reflects the military branch’s efforts to modernize the World War II-era organic industrial base.

“We are building new production lines across the country, and we are expanding our contracts with existing production facilities to increase their production speed and capacity. And we couldn’t increase our production rates without the skilled expertise of the Americans who work in these arsenals and facilities around the country,” added Wormuth, a 2024 Wash100 awardee.

General Dynamics designed and built the plant for the Army through a package of contracts worth $576 million.

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Sen. Roger Wicker Calls for Generational Investment in US Military Through New Report
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Sen. Roger Wicker Calls for Generational Investment in US Military Through New Report

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., has released a report outlining key recommendations to rebuild the U.S. defense industrial base and military through generational investments to achieve military readiness and strengthen deterrence.

The defense investment plan titled 21st Century Peace Through Strength: A Generational Investment in the U.S. Military stressed the need to increase the annual defense budget to 5 percent of gross domestic product and recommended routes through which the Department of Defense, Congress and the executive branch could work together to speed up the development of new capabilities, Wicker’s office said Wednesday.

The recommendations are classified into major areas, including proliferating integrated air and missile defense, reviving homeland defense, restoring fleet readiness and accelerating U.S. Army transformation efforts.

Some of the specific recommendations listed in the report are reforming the Defense Production Act, modernizing the air defense radar network, accelerating the production of B-21 bombers and E-2D Hawkeye aircraft, expanding requirements for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, advancing the adoption of 5G at defense installations to improve data processing and buying at least 340 more fighter jets in the next five years.

Wicker, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called on the U.S. Space Force to accelerate the deployment of layered, network satellite architecture and strengthen ground stations and underlying architecture.

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DARPA Sets Proposers Day for Artificial Intelligence Quantified Program
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DARPA Sets Proposers Day for Artificial Intelligence Quantified Program

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will host a proposers day on June 14 to discuss with industry an upcoming broad agency announcement to develop and test mathematical methods for guaranteeing the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence models used across the Department of Defense.

DARPA said Wednesday the Artificial Intelligence Quantified, or AIQ, program aims to test the hypothesis that mathematical foundations of AI, combined with advances in modeling and measurement, will enable guaranteed quantification of generative AI capabilities.

“AI has achieved near human-level performance in domains including text generation, game playing, and such, which raises the prospect of widespread integration with human partners in the military and society,” said Patrick Shafto, program manager of AIQ at DARPA. “And at the most general level, we’re interested in determining how to ensure AI systems will have the properties needed to solve various problems.”

The program will be divided into two technical areas. Technical Area 1 will focus on providing foundations for understanding and guaranteeing capabilities across levels while Technical Area 2 will develop methods for evaluating AI models.

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Jen Easterly Reveals CISA Will Develop 2025 National Infrastructure Risk Management Plan
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Jen Easterly Reveals CISA Will Develop 2025 National Infrastructure Risk Management Plan

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a 2024 Wash100 Award recipient, has shared that CISA will develop a national plan that will guide federal initiatives to protect critical infrastructure from cyberthreats.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Easterly said the 2025 National Infrastructure Risk Management Plan will be informed by a new risk management cycle as stated in the National Security Memorandum-22 on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, which the White House issued on April 30.

According to Easterly, the upcoming document will replace the 2013 National Infrastructure Protection Plan and state how the U.S. government will work with partners to detect and manage national risk amid the evolving threat landscape.

“Most importantly, the National Plan will recognize that the U.S. government cannot make all critical infrastructure immune from all threats and hazards,” she wrote.

The 2025 National Plan will outline U.S. government efforts to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure against prioritized risks based on cross-sector risk assessments of CISA and risk assessments of 16 critical infrastructure sectors.

The CISA director said the agency and other federal partners will collaborate with sector risk management agencies to help manage unique sector risks.

Easterly also stressed the importance of insights from state, local, tribal and territorial governments and private sector partners in helping CISA develop and implement the 2025 National Plan.

“We ask that you work with your respective SRMAs through the development of your sector risk assessments and sector risk management plans, as these will be core inputs into the National Plan,” she noted.

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Army ERDC to Kick Off 4 Military Construction Projects in 2024
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Army ERDC to Kick Off 4 Military Construction Projects in 2024

The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center has secured approval to commence the four key military construction projects in 2024 to help advance the Department of Defense’s critical technology areas.

ERDC said Tuesday that the projects, totaling $43 million, include the expansion of the permafrost tunnel at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Fox, Alaska, and the construction of the Projection Penetration Research Facility and Military Pavements Research Facility at the Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

ERDC will also begin the construction of the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory’s Watercraft and Ship Simulator for Multi-domain Operations Facility.

Michael Harding, the ERDC master planner, said developing premier facilities is one of ERDC Director David Pittman’s top priorities to accelerate the growth and development of the center’s properties, programs and workforce.

“Our facility requirements are formed by the future programs and needs of our customers,” Harding said. “While much of our research is specialized, we aim to modernize our facilities to have the flexibility to address emerging requirements.”

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David Mussington: CISA Working on ‘Physical Security Performance Goals’
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David Mussington: CISA Working on ‘Physical Security Performance Goals’

David Mussington, executive assistant director for infrastructure security at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said CISA is developing “physical security performance goals” amid increasing threats to critical infrastructure, Federal News Network reported Friday.

“Right now, they’re in interagency coordination,” Mussington told FNN in an interview.

“At some point in the future, after the interagency has their say, we’ll be doing coordination with stakeholders in different industry domains, to try and make sure that we have customized goals and practices that are refined in the context of specific industry needs,” he added.

According to Mussington, the next critical step for CISA is to transition those high-level security performance goals into specific practices for different sectors and industries.

“There will be a general version, but goals applied to a specific business setting that allow you to put metrics together for your programs to see how you’re doing against best practices and against industry benchmarks,” Mussington said.

“So benchmarking, lessons learned, and revisiting and refreshing familiarity with best practices through training of staff, training of managers, to make sure that they’re cognizant of what the risk situation is,” he noted.

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NIST to Evaluate Societal Impacts of AI Systems Through ARIA Program
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NIST to Evaluate Societal Impacts of AI Systems Through ARIA Program

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has launched a new program aimed at assessing the societal impacts and risks of artificial intelligence tools.

NIST said Tuesday the ARIA program, which stands for Assessing Risks and Impacts of AI, will help develop a set of metrics and methodologies to quantify how AI systems function within societal contexts once fielded.

Results from the ARIA program will help inform the U.S. AI Safety Institute’s testing efforts to establish the foundation for the development of trustworthy and secure AI systems.

“The ARIA program is designed to meet real-world needs as the use of AI technology grows,” said Laurie Locascio, director of NIST and undersecretary of Commerce for standards and technology. “This new effort will support the U.S. AI Safety Institute, expand NIST’s already broad engagement with the research community, and help establish reliable methods for testing and evaluating AI’s functionality in the real world.”

NIST expects the program to help operationalize the risk measurement function of the AI Risk Management Framework.

“ARIA will consider AI beyond the model and assess systems in context, including what happens when people interact with AI technology in realistic settings under regular use. This gives a broader, more holistic view of the net effects of these technologies,” said Reva Schwartz, head of the ARIA program at the NIST Information Technology Lab.

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