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New DARPA Program Seeks Electromagnetic Warfare Innovations to Enhance Defenses of Ground Bases
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New DARPA Program Seeks Electromagnetic Warfare Innovations to Enhance Defenses of Ground Bases

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency seeks to improve the defenses of ground bases and is soliciting proposals for the effort.

The Dynamic Optimization for Defense of Ground Bases with Electromagnetic warfare, or DODGEball, program calls for innovative feedback sensors that would help optimize the countermeasures defending ground bases, according to a program solicitation posted Friday on SAM.gov.

Proposals submissions will take the form of abstracts, which will be evaluated by the government. Chosen proposers will then be invited for an oral presentation, which will also be subject to evaluation. Another round of selection will result in three proposers being given a base other transaction authority award. Of the three, only the most promising solutions will be given extension periods.

Work under the effort will likely involve the development of algorithms, hardware and models. These will then undergo evaluation using a simulation environment.

Interested parties have until April 5 to respond. It should be noted, however, that DODGEball involves accessing Secret-level information. Proposers have until March 8 to request this information.

White House Backs Passage of Bipartisan National Security Agreement in Congress
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White House Backs Passage of Bipartisan National Security Agreement in Congress

The White House has urged Congress to approve a bipartisan agreement that seeks to address national security concerns.

The national security agreement would establish a temporary border emergency authority to enable the U.S. president and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to temporarily prevent individuals from seeking asylum in the event that the southwest border is overwhelmed, the White House said Sunday.

The measure would recalibrate the asylum screening process by modifying the screening asylum threshold from “significant possibility” to “reasonable possibility” and moving consideration of statutory bars to asylum eligibility into the screening stage.

Other provisions in the proposed legislation are establishing an efficient process for considering asylum and other protection claims; providing critical funding for countering drug trafficking and smuggling, asylum processing and border security; and strengthening federal law against fentanyl trafficking.

The bipartisan agreement includes providing military aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression, investing in the defense industrial base to support U.S. jobs and offering resources to help allies in the Indo-Pacific region to develop the capabilities needed to counter threats from China and other emerging issues.

Commerce Department’s CHIPS R&D to Launch Funding Opportunity for Advanced Packaging Substrate Innovation
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Commerce Department’s CHIPS R&D to Launch Funding Opportunity for Advanced Packaging Substrate Innovation

The Department of Commerce CHIPS Research and Development Office expressed its intention to launch a research funding opportunity focused on boosting U.S. manufacturing capacity for advanced packaging substrates and their materials.

The potential five-year, $300 million project is inviting interested applicants to submit preliminary information to qualify for the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology said in a notice posted Friday on Federal Register.

NAPMP’s newest project is centered on studies that can significantly impact the production of semiconductor-based substrates, glass materials and substrates, and organic materials and substrates used in advanced packaging.

The notice of funding opportunity will be open to U.S. and foreign organizations, federally funded research and development centers and collaborative teams.

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Col. Richard Kniseley: Commercial Space Office Working on Contractual Language for Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve
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Col. Richard Kniseley: Commercial Space Office Working on Contractual Language for Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve

The U.S. Space Force plans to start identifying member companies for the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, also known as CASR, and place them under contract by 2025, C4ISRNET reported Friday.

The Commercial Space Office within Space Systems Command has begun work on an implementation strategy, including establishing contractual language for firms that will take part in CASR.

Col. Richard Kniseley, head of the Commercial Space Office, told the publication during a Tuesday interview at a conference that he plans to meet with companies as his office works to finalize the contractual details.

“We will still have a couple more industry offerings to that I can be completely transparent with them before they start seeing this in contracts going forward,” Kniseley said. “I almost want to get a litmus test from them and make sure that I’m going down the right path.”

He noted that his office is working on a surveillance plan for CASR’s member companies to ensure that they invest in cybersecurity and manufacturing capabilities, among others.

“Once we get you to that membership, we need to make sure you’re ready for what that potential bad day might be,” he added.

POC - 2024 Space Summit

Col. Richard Kniseley, head of the Commercial Space Office, will serve as a panelist at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Space Summit on March 5. Register here to hear him and other military and government leaders and industry executives discuss the latest space technologies, commercial investments and urgent issues facing the space domain.

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GovCon Index Continued Growth Trend Last Week
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GovCon Index Continued Growth Trend Last Week

Last week, Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Index continued to grow with an 0.11% increase that lifted the average to $154.69. The previous week, GovCon Index went up by 0.07%.

GovCon Index is an aggregate index that tracks data from 30 key government contractors in real time. This information provides users with a glimpse into the performance of each company and broader industry trends, empowering them to assess the financial state of the GovCon market.

CGI led last week’s growth trend with an uptick of 1.22%. The enterprise was followed by HII, which rose by 0.99%. Palantir Technologies (+0.86%) took third place, and the fourth and fifth spots were held by Tetra Tech (+0.62%) and Boeing (+0.41%).

GovCon Index experienced the highest overall growth on Thursday, when it grew by almost 1% after a slump on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Check out last week’s market reports to get the full story on daily GovCon Index performance. To access the full list of tracked companies, click here.

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GovCon Industry Leaders Chuck Prow & Jill Singer Honored With Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 Award
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GovCon Industry Leaders Chuck Prow & Jill Singer Honored With Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 Award

Chuck Prow, CEO and president of V2X, and Jill Singer, vice president of federal solutions at AT&T, were honored on Monday as winners of Executive Mosaic’s coveted 2024 Wash100 Award.

Each year, the top 100 executives of consequence in the federal government and government contracting sector are named to the prestigious Wash100 list. These executives are the ones to watch in the coming year as they are sure to deliver positive impacts across multiple facets of the GovCon landscape.

Prow earned his tenth Wash100 Award this year for driving significant company growth and securing major contract awards. Under Prow’s leadership, V2X achieved a record $1 billion in revenue and a backlog of $13.3 billion in the third quarter of 2023. Read more about why we chose Chuck Prow for this year’s Wash100 Award here.

With this year’s win, Singer has now appeared on the Wash100 list seven times. She is honored as a 2024 Wash100 recipient for her work advancing 5G innovation and spearheading network modernization for government customers in support of national security missions. Read Jill Singer’s Wash100 profile here to learn more about the executive’s achievements.

Chuck Prow and Jill Singer are also contestants in GovCon’s most exciting race, the Wash100 popular vote competition! You can cast your ten votes for these and other deserving winners at Wash100.com.

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DCSA Issues Industry Security Letter on Use of Commercial Cloud Services
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DCSA Issues Industry Security Letter on Use of Commercial Cloud Services

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency has released an industry security letter, or ISL, clarifying the process for verifying government contracting activity authorization for the use of commercial cloud services — a.k.a. CCS — by a contractor in performing work on a classified contract as required by DFARS, or the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.

The ISL also includes information on the revision made to instructions for DD Form 254 concerning contract security classification specification, DCSA said Thursday.

The agency issued the letter to inform cleared vendors and DOD components of developments under the National Industrial Security Program, or NISP.

According to the letter, the DCSA NISP authorizing official may authorize Impact Level 6 under one of the provided methods to verify the contract requirement.

In the event that a contractor later decides that it anticipates using CCS in performing contract work, a clause in DFARS states that the company should seek approval from the contracting officer before using cloud services, according to the document.

“Proof of the contracting officer’s approval may be accepted in a variety of forms, to include an email from the contracting officer or empowered official,” the letter reads.

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DOE to Test Westinghouse Electric Company Operational Technology for Potential Cyber Vulnerabilities
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DOE to Test Westinghouse Electric Company Operational Technology for Potential Cyber Vulnerabilities

Westinghouse Electric Company has partnered with the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response at the Department of Energy to participate in the agency’s Cyber Testing for Resilient Industrial Control Systems program.

The DOE said Thursday that CyTRICS aims to identify potential cyber vulnerabilities in operational technology components submitted by participating companies by subjecting them to testing with the help of state-of-the-art analytic tools provided by the agency’s national laboratories.

In the case of Westinghouse, one of its instrumentation and controls systems for nuclear applications will be tested at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Commenting on the effort, Westinghouse Vice President of Global Instrumentation & Controls Kenneth Lunz said, “[This] partnership supports our commitment to provide products fortified against cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.”

For his part, CESER Director Puesh Kumar said, “This partnership with Westinghouse will be a critical component in strengthening the supply chain cybersecurity of critical complements used to operate U.S. energy systems.”

IARPA Selects 4 Teams for New Quantum Computing Research Program
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IARPA Selects 4 Teams for New Quantum Computing Research Program

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has selected four teams to participate in a new foundational research program to demonstrate universal fault-tolerant quantum computing — also known as UFTQC — that can be used in applications relevant to the intelligence community.

ETH Zurich, Harvard University, the University of Innsbruck and the University of Sydney have received contracts to conduct foundational research under the Entangled Logical Qubits, or ELQ, program, IARPA said Thursday.

ELQ aims to demonstrate the complexities of preserving error correction and fault tolerance in operations between logical qubits to realize UFTQC, which has the potential to outperform classical computing in certain cases.

“IARPA’s previous quantum programs showed that the fundamentals behind UFTQC work in practice, and now we are taking the next significant step toward a UFTQC future through ELQ and its success,” said ELQ Program Manager Michael Di Rosa.

The Air Force Research Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories will provide test and evaluation services for the program.

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NASA to Deploy RF Instrument to Observe Lunar Surface’s Radio Energy Environment
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NASA to Deploy RF Instrument to Observe Lunar Surface’s Radio Energy Environment

NASA will send a low-frequency radio spectrometer to space to observe the dynamic radio energy environment near the moon’s surface to determine how natural and human-generated activity there could interfere with science experiments.

The Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photo-Electron Sheath, or ROLSES, is one of the NASA-provided payloads set to fly aboard Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander for the IM-1 mission, the agency said Thursday.

ROLSES features four antennas mounted at two different heights to provide a variety of radio observations on the lunar surface.

“This way, we can measure the electrons’ density based upon distance from the surface,” said Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy, lead of the ROLSES instrument project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Then we can see how the number of electrons decreases as you go farther from the surface.”

The IM-1 mission will carry science and technology demonstration payloads to the moon’s South Polar region as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

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