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Navy Begins Market Research for Coalition Affordable Maritime Strike Weapon System
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Navy Begins Market Research for Coalition Affordable Maritime Strike Weapon System

The U.S. Navy has started soliciting information on potential industry sources with the capability, facilities and experience to rapidly develop, integrate, test, qualify and deploy prototype units of a short- to mid-range weapon system that could be launched from aircraft and surface platforms.

Mandatory and Desired CAMS Requirements

According to a sources sought notice published Tuesday, Naval Air Systems Command wants the Coalition Affordable Maritime Strike, or CAMS, weapon system to be developed using a model-based systems engineering environment.

CAMS should be capable of conducting lethal strikes at a minimum of 140 nautical miles, meet the Weapon Systems Explosives Safety Review Board requirements and comply with the Weapon Open System Architecture.

The weapons platform should use common support and test equipment, incorporate any guidance system that detects and targets moving surface targets, surface combatants and stationary ground targets and integrate a navigation system that could operate in a GPS degraded or denied environment.

The CAMS weapon system should cost approximately $1.5 million per all up round.

The service branch expects the contractor to produce a minimum of 250 rounds per year and intends to award a low-rate initial production contract no later than the first quarter of fiscal year 2027.

Requested Information on CAMS Development and Fielding

Interested stakeholders should discuss the approach to aircraft and surface integration, mission planning, modeling and digital engineering and other CAMS concepts, describe the components that could be interchangeable in the weapon system, provide the approach and methodology for using models and simulations and specify the Technology Readiness Level of the components.

NAVAIR also wants information on the estimated cost and schedule for developing the capability, facilities that would be used for the CAMS concept, expected partnerships with components and subsystems suppliers and collaboration activities with the Naval Aviation/Surface Warfare Centers.

Unclassified responses to the request for information should be submitted in an encrypted form by Sept. 16.

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DARPA Launches Quantum Benchmarking Initiative
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DARPA Launches Quantum Benchmarking Initiative

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has begun a new initiative to benchmark quantum computing algorithms and applications and assess the feasibility of building an industrial quantum computer.

DARPA said Tuesday the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, or QBI, has stemmed from two of the agency’s programs: Quantum Benchmarking and Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing.

According to the agency, QBI seeks to strengthen engagement with quantum computing hardware companies that believe that they could undergo DARPA’s validation and verification process.

“It is in the best interest of any company who thinks they can prove they are on the path to industrial quantum computing — definitely including companies who have previously applied to US2QC — to compete for QBI funding,” said Joe Altepeter, QBI program manager at DARPA.

According to a special notice published Monday on SAM.gov, QBI seeks to determine if any emerging quantum computing approaches can attain an “industrially useful operation much faster than conventional predictions.”

“The QBI program will verify and validate approaches that enable revolutionary advances in design, engineering, testing, and evaluation in the domain of fault-tolerant quantum computing and explore computational workflows that include quantum compute steps,” the notice reads.

In addition to launching the initiative, DARPA has partnered with the Department of Energy’s Office of Science to facilitate research, development, engineering and testing of quantum computing systems and teamed up with the state of Illinois to use the latter’s quantum computing infrastructure.

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GSA Says Line-Item Pricing Data Leads to Improvements in Small Business Participation, Cybersecurity
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GSA Says Line-Item Pricing Data Leads to Improvements in Small Business Participation, Cybersecurity

A program that collects transactional data at the line-item level is reportedly boosting the participation of small businesses in the government contracting market.

The General Services Administration said on Tuesday that the group, Transactional Data Reporting — dubbed TDR — led to small business sales exceeding large business sales by 22 percent on the Federal Acquisition Service’s 2nd Generation IT Products blanket purchase agreement, or 2GIT BPA, during the first quarter of 2024.

The 2GIT BPA team analyzed transactional data to identify high-demand items. They found that most of these items are being provided by large business resellers.

The team also discovered that small businesses are less likely to participate in the BPA because they lacked the letter of supply from the original equipment manufacturer. To boost small business participation, the team worked with OEMs to issue more letters of supply to small businesses.

The program also reportedly accelerated response to cyber incidents in GovCon.

According to GSA, an Office of Policy and Compliance supply chain risk management group used transactional data to trace and alert customers who have purchased products on a multiple-award schedule following an emergency directive from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The TDR program promotes transparency by requiring contractors to share sales data from governmentwide contracts. GSA plans to make more transactional data available in the coming years.

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USPTO Releases Guidance Update on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility; Kathi Vidal Quoted
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USPTO Releases Guidance Update on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility; Kathi Vidal Quoted

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has released updated guidance to help USPTO staff and stakeholders determine patent subject matter eligibility for artificial intelligence-related inventions and other innovations in critical and emerging technologies.

USPTO said Tuesday the update includes three examples of how to apply the subject matter eligibility guidance to a wide array of tech platforms and seeks to offer clarity on how the agency should assess the subject matter eligibility of claims in patent applications involving AI-related inventions.

“The USPTO remains committed to fostering and protecting innovation in critical and emerging technologies, including AI,” said Kathi Vidal, director of the USPTO and under secretary of Commerce for intellectual property.

The guidance update takes effect Wednesday, July 17.

“We look forward to hearing public feedback on this guidance update, which will provide further clarity on evaluating subject matter eligibility of AI inventions while incentivizing innovations needed to solve world and community problems,” added Vidal.

The document offers a background on USPTO’s efforts associated with AI and subject matter eligibility and includes discussions on the guidance’s certain aspects that are related to AI inventions, including discussions of Federal Circuit decisions on subject matter eligibility.

Public comments on the guidance update are due Sept. 16.

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DARPA Picks 2 Companies to Aid Supply Chain R&D Program
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DARPA Picks 2 Companies to Aid Supply Chain R&D Program

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency has chosen Exiger and MetalMiner to aid a supply chain-focused research and development program.

The Open Price Exploration for National security — a.k.a. OPEN — program is designed to strengthen the supply chain and homeland defense by creating a technology that offers accessible information on pricing and supply, demand and capacity, DARPA announced Wednesday.

Brandon Daniels, CEO of Exiger, said the company is honored to collaborate with MetalMiner to provide supply chain transparency that impacts national security.

“Base and rare earth metals and other key minerals are vital to U.S. defense operations and national security,” Daniels said. “But, opacity in these complex markets creates barriers to supply chain resilience.”

Exiger, a commercial risk artificial intelligence company, will work to leverage its conceptual computing services and experience overseeing multi-layered supply chains with MetalMiner’s knowledge of the commodities market to develop technology throughout the OPEN program.

Lisa Reisman, CEO of MetalMiner, said they look forward to joining forces with Exiger to build new systems for DARPA that promote sustainability and equip the commodities market with critical data.

“The combination of Exiger’s cognitive capabilities and MetalMiner’s time series forecasting ability will introduce a new level of accuracy, insight and sophistication to market pricing and forecasting,” Reisman stated.

Co-founded with the United States Geological Survey, the OPEN program is organized as a single-phase, 24-month effort that yields a seven-month base period with two options.

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White House Unveils Government, Civil Society Commitments to Advance Public Interest Technology
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White House Unveils Government, Civil Society Commitments to Advance Public Interest Technology

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has announced efforts to establish an inclusive technology landscape and highlighted several government, civil society and academic initiatives to build up the public interest technology ecosystem.

The White House said Tuesday the National Science Foundation will allocate approximately $48 million in funding to promote research and learning opportunities, including $32 million to expand the Experiential Learning in Emerging and Novel Technologies program, or ExLENT.

The Department of Defense will introduce the Trusted Advisors Pilot program to establish a pool of artificial intelligence and science, technology, engineering and math experts to support the implementation of the AI executive order and other priorities of the current administration.

The Ford Foundation and Siegel Family Endowment will each invest $20 million in efforts to improve the public interest tech ecosystem.

The White House also announced initiatives and commitments from several institutions, including the Kapor Foundation, the Aspen Institute, Digital Public and the NobleReach Foundation, Georgetown University, Spelman College, the University of Michigan and New York University.

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SentinelOne to Support CISA’s Persistent Access Capability Initiative; Ric Smith Quoted
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SentinelOne to Support CISA’s Persistent Access Capability Initiative; Ric Smith Quoted

SentinelOne has partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to support a CISA initiative aimed at improving the cybersecurity posture and resilience of federal information technology assets.

The company said Tuesday it will use its Singularity Platform and Singularity Data Lake to support CISA’s Persistent Access Capability initiative, which is key to the agency’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation program.

SentinelOne’s Singularity Platform and Singularity Data Lake use artificial intelligence to provide organizations with unified data visibility and help them accelerate data analysis to detect and investigate cyberthreats and speed up threat intelligence sharing and response to such threats.

“SentinelOne is committed to advancing national cybersecurity efforts in the protection of federal, public sector, and critical infrastructure from evolving cyber threat actors, and we are pleased to be deepening our long-standing partnership and collaboration with CISA in support of the PAC initiative to strengthen government-wide cybersecurity posture through innovations in cyber visibility and defense,” said Ric Smith, chief product and technology officer at SentinelOne.

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DOE Develops AI Roadmap to Accelerate Technological Breakthroughs
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DOE Develops AI Roadmap to Accelerate Technological Breakthroughs

The Department of Energy has created a roadmap to advance artificial intelligence adoption within the agency’s 17 national laboratories under the Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence for Science, Security and Technology initiative.

FASST aims to enable AI-ready scientific data repositories at DOE user facilities and build AI supercomputers to create trustworthy AI models that would allow researchers to achieve technological breakthroughs in various scientific and energy applications, DOE said Tuesday.

Advancing AI capabilities could enable new battery material discoveries and smart grid infrastructure deployment and potentially accelerate the development and implementation of new and affordable clean energy technologies, the agency added.

DOE announced the roadmap after Sens. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., and Lisa Murkowksi, R-Alaska, introduced a bill that would authorize the FASST initiative to advance national security, science and energy missions.

“FASST builds on DOE’s role as the nation’s steward of advanced supercomputing and research infrastructure across our 17 national labs to provide a national capability in AI and enable technological breakthroughs for decades to come,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

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GSA Calling for Nominees to Advisory Council on Emerging Technology Use in Federal Acquisition
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GSA Calling for Nominees to Advisory Council on Emerging Technology Use in Federal Acquisition

The General Services Administration Office of Government-wide Policy is calling for nominations for members of the GSA Acquisition Policy Federal Advisory Committee, which the agency established in 2022 and renewed just this year.

GAP FAC is an advisory committee that will convene approximately four times a year to tackle multiple focus areas concerning the application of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence on federal acquisition, including methods and policies enabling the use of such technologies or ensuring their security, according to a notice posted Tuesday on the Federal Register.

The committee will be made up of between 10 to 30 members possessing focus area-relevant expertise, including AI, data learning, big data and analytics and cybersecurity. Members will serve one to three year terms.

Nominations must be submitted by Aug. 15.

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DOD Accepting Applications for 2025 Edition of Commercial Acquisition Training Program for Defense Contracting Officers
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DOD Accepting Applications for 2025 Edition of Commercial Acquisition Training Program for Defense Contracting Officers

The Department of Defense is now accepting applications for the fiscal year 2025 cohort of the Immersive Commercial Acquisition Program.

Launched in 2022 by the Defense Innovation Unit and the Defense Acquisition University, ICAP works to address the need for DOD acquisition professionals to adopt best practices for commercial procurement and keep pace with commercial product cycles, the DOD said Tuesday.

The program’s main goals include DOD contracting officers learning how to acquire commercial technologies from non-traditional contractors, how the commercial market operates and what drives organizations to do business with the government; and contracting officers being equipped with the tools to develop acquisition strategies that would lead to commercial and nontraditional vendors becoming part of the DOD acquisition ecosystem.

ICAP features classroom as well as experiential learning, where participants work on projects with commercial solutions providers and a team from the DIU. Topics covered include using other transaction authorities and the commercial solutions opening process.

Interested contracting officers have until Aug. 7 to submit applications. Up to six applicants will be accepted for the program’s upcoming iteration, which will begin in October and last for 12 months.

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