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DCMA Stands Up Radars & Sensors Contract Management Office
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DCMA Stands Up Radars & Sensors Contract Management Office

A new contract management office called Radars and Sensors was created by the Defense Contract Management Agency to centralize all contract management and surveillance efforts related to a class of systems.

DCMA Radars and Sensors, as a systems command, will help ensure agency work is in line with military service requirements by consolidating contractor oversight activities of six disestablished offices, DCMA reported Wednesday.

DCMA Director Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello, who attended the standup ceremony at agency headquarters April 17, sees the new office as an ideal opportunity as it is a broad technology portfolio.

“This is a good thing. We’re evolving here at DCMA,” said Masiello. “As we talk more in our portfolios, we’ll see the interconnectedness of the supply chains.”

Boston-headquartered DCMA Radars and Sensors is the first CMO described as a systems command and is led by Army Col. Jonathan Patrick as its commander.

DCMA is undergoing reorganization in an effort to align specialized skills with the requirements of customers across product-focused and geographic offices. Once the initiative is done, the 45 subordinate contract management offices are expected to be consolidated into about eight geographic offices and 10 product offices.

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Hanna Kim Appointed Director of GSA’s Login.gov Platform
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Hanna Kim Appointed Director of GSA’s Login.gov Platform

Hanna Kim, deputy director of the General Services Administration’s Login.gov since January, has been named director of the single sign-on program, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

She will assume her new position on May 11 and succeed Dan Lopez-Braus, who will step down as director and join GSA’s Technology Transformation Services as a senior adviser.

Kim joined GSA from Amazon, where she most recently served as principal product manager and head of product and partnerships, responsible for leading the business strategy for the company’s virtual product placement platform.

Before that, she was a national security policy adviser at the departments of Defense, State and Treasury.

Her appointment comes after GSA announced that Login.gov will pilot facial matching technology in accordance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Digital Identity Guidelines to achieve remote identity verification at Identity Assurance Level 2.

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Sandia Announces Completion of 1st Production Unit of Mark 21 Fuze
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Sandia Announces Completion of 1st Production Unit of Mark 21 Fuze

Sandia National Laboratories and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City National Security Campus have completed the first production unit of the Mark 21 replacement fuze, which will be integrated with the W87-0 warhead for the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile and Sentinel ICBM.

Sandia Labs said Tuesday the first Mark 21 production unit, which was approved and accepted in March, is now in the full-rate production phase.

“Sandia’s role is to deliver a fuze that meets the Air Force’s requirements. Completing the first production unit is a visible milestone in maintaining a credible deterrent,” said Brad Boswell, a director at Sandia’s nuclear deterrence modernization program.

“It demonstrates that we are providing the necessary capability for the U.S. nuclear deterrent into the future,” added Boswell.

Sandia Labs will now conduct flight and ground testing, modeling and simulation of the fuze as part of the stockpile assessment.

NNSA partners with the U.S. Air Force on the Mark 21 Fuze Replacement Program.

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Assessment of Energy Department Contractors Reveals Weaknesses in Safety Issue Management
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Assessment of Energy Department Contractors Reveals Weaknesses in Safety Issue Management

The Department of Energy’s Office of Enterprise Assessments, or EA, conducted from fiscal year 2019 through 2023 an evaluation of the way nine DOE contractors managed safety issues at their respective facilities and has observed three “significant and extensive weaknesses” across the organizations.

The contractors demonstrated inadequacy when it comes to fully identifying safety issues, determining their causes and resolving them in a timely manner, EA said in the report titled “Independent Assessment of U.S. Department of Energy Contractors’ Management of Safety Issues,” which was released Wednesday.

EA noted that the weaknesses resulted in worker and nuclear safety hazard controls as well as the “defense-in-depth” approach to nuclear safety being compromised. The office also expressed concern that the same weaknesses may be affecting Energy Department contractors that were not evaluated.

To address the weaknesses and their likely causes, several recommendations were proposed, including the articulation by the DOE of clear goals and requirements concerning issue identification and correction; the sharing of best practices between contractors; and the establishment of performance objectives to promote yearly improvement in issue identification and correction.

Navy’s Virtualized Aegis Combat System Helps Destroyer Intercept Target in Qualification Trials
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Navy’s Virtualized Aegis Combat System Helps Destroyer Intercept Target in Qualification Trials

The USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81), the U.S. Navy’s first ship running a fully virtualized Aegis Combat System, has intercepted an air target with a missile during the final phase of the ship’s combat system ship qualification trials.

Rear Adm. Seiko Okano, the program executive officer for integrated warfare systems, said the milestone indicates that the Navy has “gone from a testbed virtualized combat system on USS Monterey (CG 61) that was not connected to the ship’s weapons to a fully virtualized system that controls all of the weapons and sensors.”

DDG 81 has been operating with a virtualized Aegis Combat System since July 2023, becoming the first Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to use the automated weapon control system.

The Navy anticipates installing the virtualized system into another Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the USS Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee, and five more ships and four land-based test sites.

SBA Unveils Stage One Winners of 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition
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SBA Unveils Stage One Winners of 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition

The Small Business Administration has selected the stage one winners of its 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition, which aims to build a national innovation support ecosystem that advances small business research and development.

The stage one winners will each receive a $50,000 cash prize for their approaches to fostering a collaborative innovation ecosystem in three areas: national and economic security, domestic manufacturing and production and sustainability and biotechnology, SBA said Tuesday.

“In its tenth year of driving our nation’s innovation ecosystem forward, this competition provides a unique opportunity to recognize the critical importance of those who help entrepreneurs from all backgrounds access opportunities to scale and grow,” said SBA Administration Isabel Casillas Guzman.

Since 2014, the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition has awarded over $26 million in cash prizes to 314 winners across the U.S. and U.S. territories.

The competition’s second stage will focus on advancing the commercialization of selected innovations.

The Catalyst Accelerator, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Lab Space Vehicles Directorate, is one of the stage one winners in the national and economic security area.

Under the stage one award, the Catalyst Accelerator will facilitate a Boot Camp model to build relationships among Small Business Innovation Research winners.

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DOD Issues Directive on Reporting Sustainment Health Metrics in Support of Materiel Availability
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DOD Issues Directive on Reporting Sustainment Health Metrics in Support of Materiel Availability

The Department of Defense has released a directive that assigns responsibilities, establishes policy and offers direction for monitoring and reporting sustainment business health metrics in support of materiel availability.

The document defines materiel availability and operational availability as the two superordinate sustainment health metrics that enable DOD to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the department’s sustainment enterprise.

The directive took effect Wednesday, April 24, and was approved by William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and a 2024 Wash100 awardee.

The DOD Instruction 3110.05 outlines metrics that seek to allow decision makers across DOD to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of weapon system sustainment using a standard structure.

Under the directive, the assistant secretary of defense for sustainment should monitor materiel availability and operational availability reporting for weapon systems and use the superordinate metrics and supporting data to oversee sustainment programs and operations.

The document directs the secretaries of military departments to review the methodology and procedures on an annual basis, recommend revisions, maintain superordinate metrics and supporting data and identify and address the primary causes of high non-availability or excessive cost per day of availability.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should manage the approval of sustainment metrics in the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System process and review all changes to materiel availability and operational availability requirements pursuant to a 2022 memorandum and sustainment reviews, according to the directive.

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Michael Boyce to Lead DHS AI Corps
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Michael Boyce to Lead DHS AI Corps

Michael Boyce was tapped by the Department of Homeland Security to lead its new team of artificial intelligence experts who are tasked to help DHS enhance its responsible use of AI and machine learning technologies across the homeland security enterprise, Nextgov/FCW reported Wednesday.

Boyce will bring to his role as the DHS AI Corps director experience in serving as chief of the innovation and design for enhanced adjudication division at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate, a post he has held for over five years. Before that, he was a fellow with the Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer at the Office of Management and Budget focusing on AI policy and cloud governance program modernization.

At the USCIS directorate, he was responsible for supervising a team of 50 staff and 150 individuals, driving the launch of the first U.S. online Asylum application, creating a digital overseas refugee process and helping streamline Asylum processing.

Boyce’s career also includes time serving as a product and strategy lead at the U.S. Digital Service and as a refugee officer at the DHS.

During the time of the initiative’s launch, Alejandro Mayorkas, DHS secretary and a previous Wash100 awardee, said, “The DHS AI Corps will enable the Department of Homeland Security to keep up with the pace of innovation as we enhance our work combating fentanyl traffickers, rescuing victims of child sexual exploitation, countering cyberattacks, assessing disaster damage, and much more.”

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Final DOD Rule to Impose Limitation on LRIP Procurement Under Certain Circumstances
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Final DOD Rule to Impose Limitation on LRIP Procurement Under Certain Circumstances

The Department of Defense has released a final rule to implement a section of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that puts a limitation on the procurement of low-rate initial production, or LRIP, lots related to a major defense acquisition program under certain circumstances.

The final rule takes effect Thursday, April 25, according to a Federal Register notice.

Under Section 808 of the FY 2023 NDAA, the U.S. government may not purchase more than one LRIP lot associated with a major acquisition program if the milestone decision authority, at the time of Milestone B approval, authorizes the use of a fixed-price contract and the scope of work of such a contract includes both development and LRIP.

“Risk to a contractor is higher when the contractor must propose prices for multiple production lots of an item before the development and initial production of that item are complete,” the notice reads.

According to the final rule, the limitation may be waived by the service acquisition executive.

DOD released the final rule as an amendment to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.

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Vendors Must Submit Plan to Consolidate MAS Contracts by May, GSA Says
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Vendors Must Submit Plan to Consolidate MAS Contracts by May, GSA Says

Holders of two or more General Services Administration Multiple Award Schedule contracts that share a unique entity identifier — or UEI — must submit by May 24 a plan to consolidate those awards as part of phase 3 of the MAS Consolidation effort.

The GSA made the announcement on the MAS Program Interact community blog on Wednesday, warning affected contractors that non-compliance would result in a 30-day suspension from GSA eTools.

The GSA launched the MAS Consolidation effort to consolidate the 24 legacy Schedule contracts managed by the agency into a single Schedule. The ultimate aim of the initiative is to simplify and modernize acquisition and contract management for government agencies and vendors alike.

The effort also calls on recipients of more than one Schedule award to consolidate them into one contract per UEI. The plan required under phase 3 details how and when that consolidation would take place.

Suspension due to non-compliance with the requirement would result in contractors having their information removed from the eLibrary, not being notified of new opportunities in eBuy, not being given new orders under their Schedule contract and not receiving modifications to current tasks.

Additions or pricing modifications outside of phase 3 would also be rejected until the consolidation plan is submitted.

Non-compliance beyond the 30-day suspension would result in the cancellation of MAS contracts associated with the relevant UEIs.

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