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USMC Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock Appointed CNMF Commander; Gen. Paul Nakasone Quoted
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USMC Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock Appointed CNMF Commander; Gen. Paul Nakasone Quoted

U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock has been appointed commander of the Cyber National Mission Force, succeeding U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Hartman.

The U.S. Cyber Command announced Friday that Mahlock will lead six task forces with more than 2,000 military and civilian personnel and contractors in defending national security against malicious online actors and adversaries.

Mahlock was the first black female Marine to earn the rank of major general in the service branch. She was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Southern Watch, which also took place in Iraq from 1992 to 2003.

Her career includes posts as director of the Marine Corps Instructional Management School, director of Marine Air Command and Control System Experimental and division executive officer for the European Command headquarters.

“CNMF has always been the ‘go-to’ force when our Nation has a challenge in the cyber domain,” said Gen. Paul Nakasone, CYBERCOM commander who presided over the change of command ceremony. “These joint cyber operators are a powerhouse that punch above their weight against some of the world’s most reckless and determined foreign malicious cyber actors,” added Nakasone, a seven-time inductee into the Wash100.

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Adm. James Kilby Becomes 43rd Vice Chief of Naval Operations
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Adm. James Kilby Becomes 43rd Vice Chief of Naval Operations

Adm. James Kilby has stepped into his new role as the 43rd vice chief of Naval operations.

The transition was made during a ceremony at the Pentagon on Jan. 5, the Navy said on Friday.

“Adm. Kilby is an exceptional leader who is truly committed to our Sailors and meeting the needs of the Fleet,” said Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of Naval operations, who welcomed him into the position.

She highlighted Kilby’s “extensive operational experience” and “deep requirements and force development expertise,” which she said will “help accelerate change across the force.”

Kilby’s career with the Navy includes sea tours on the USS Sampson and USS Philippine Sea as well as two tours on the USS San Jacinto. He also commanded the USS Russell and received the Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale Award for his leadership. His major command was aboard the USS Monterey, including its 2011 maiden Ballistic Missile Defense deployment.

He also participated in shore tours at the Naval Postgraduate School; Chief of Naval Operations Surface Warfare Directorate, N96; Navy Personnel Command’s Surface Warfare Division, PERS-41; and the Missile Defense Agency’s Aegis BMD Program Office.

Prior to assuming his new position, Kilby served as deputy commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.

“I am honored and humbled to assume this position at such a critical time for our Navy and our nation,” Kilby said. “I am excited at the opportunity to support our CNO to ensure the Navy remains the most capable and powerful maritime force in the world.”

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NIST Aims to Inform AI Developers on Attack Types, Mitigation Strategies With New Report
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NIST Aims to Inform AI Developers on Attack Types, Mitigation Strategies With New Report

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a report providing artificial intelligence developers and users an overview of potential attacks on AI tools and detailing the current approaches they could use to mitigate these risks.

Titled Adversarial Machine Learning: A Taxonomy and Terminology of Attacks and Mitigations, the report describes evasion, poisoning, privacy and abuse attacks that could impact AI systems and sorts them into multiple criteria, including the attacker’s knowledge, goals and objectives and capabilities, NIST said Thursday.

“Most of these attacks are fairly easy to mount and require minimum knowledge of the AI system and limited adversarial capabilities,” said Alina Oprea, one of the report’s co-authors and a professor at Northeastern University.

“Poisoning attacks, for example, can be mounted by controlling a few dozen training samples, which would be a very small percentage of the entire training set,” she added.

Mitigation approaches for poisoning attacks include sanitization data, modifying the machine learning training algorithm and conducting robust training instead of regular training.

The report is part of NIST’s work to advance the development of trustworthy AI.

POC - 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit

Register here to attend the Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 21 and hear federal leaders and industry experts discuss the latest developments in the field.

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Spacecraft Swarm, Mars VTOL Aircraft Among Projects to be Funded by NASA Concept Technology Program
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Spacecraft Swarm, Mars VTOL Aircraft Among Projects to be Funded by NASA Concept Technology Program

The awardees under Phase I of the 2024 edition of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program have been announced.

The NIAC program will provide grants worth up to $175,000 in total to financially support researchers in carrying out concept studies of early-stage technologies that, if brought to life, could be commercialized and even support future space missions, NASA said Thursday.

The 13 projects selected for NIAC 2024 Phase I include the development of a fixed-wing vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for use in Mars exploration; the sending of a spacecraft swarm to the Proxima Centauri star system — the nearest to our own — that would send back data using laser communications; and the development of a spacecraft that will retrieve a sample of the surface of Venus.

NIAC Program Executive Mike LaPointe highlighted the diversity of the projects under Phase I, saying, “The NIAC awards highlight NASA’s commitment to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”

For his part, NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free said NIAC has helped inspire many of the ideas that eventually became part of the space agency’s missions.

“The Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars and instruments on the MarCO deep space CubeSats can trace their lineage back to NIAC, proving there is a path from creative idea to mission success,” Free noted.

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Federal CDO Council Solicits Public Input on Synthetic Data Generation
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Federal CDO Council Solicits Public Input on Synthetic Data Generation

The Federal Chief Data Officers Council has issued a request for information regarding synthetic data generation, the act of creating a new synthetic or artificial dataset using computational methods, as it works to establish best practices for the process.

Questions for responders have been divided into five sections, with the first two focused on defining and applying synthetic data generation, according to a notice published by the General Services Administration in the Federal Register on Friday.

The three other sections deal with the challenges and limitations in synthetic data generation, ethics and equity considerations and evidence-building.

Interested stakeholders are encouraged to provide answers to a number of questions. Topics to discuss include approaches CDOs can leverage to address challenges associated with synthetic data generation, available techniques to increase transparency around synthetic data and the intersection of synthetic data generation and open government data.

Responses to the RFI are due Feb. 5.

Commerce Department Enters 2nd Preliminary MoT for CHIPS Funding With Microchip Technology; Laurie Locascio Quoted
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Commerce Department Enters 2nd Preliminary MoT for CHIPS Funding With Microchip Technology; Laurie Locascio Quoted

The Biden administration has agreed to set aside $162 million in CHIPS Act funding for Microchip Technology to promote the onshoring of semiconductor manufacturing and construction jobs.

On Thursday, the Department of Commerce entered into a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms to enable the company to ramp up production of specialty semiconductors such as microcontroller units, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“This proposed investment and others like it will help ensure that U.S. companies have a stable supply of the critical chip components they need to keep their factories running,” said Laurie Locascio, NIST director and undersecretary of commerce for standards and technology.

Under the terms of the agreement, Microchip Technology will utilize the funds to expand and modernize its facilities in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Gresham, Oregon. The Colorado Springs fabrication site will receive an estimated $90 million, while the Gresham installation will be granted approximately $72 million.

The federal incentives are expected to triple the company’s output of semiconductors produced at these facilities, which are critical to the defense, automotive, aerospace and commerce sectors.

Last month, the White House announced its first PMT through a $35 million agreement with BAE Systems.

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DARPA Issues RFI for Human-Machine Teaming Research Opportunity
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DARPA Issues RFI for Human-Machine Teaming Research Opportunity

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is accepting proposals for exploratory human-artificial intelligence teaming models as part of its new AI Exploration research program.

This presolicitation is for DARPA’s “third wave” of AI investments, which focuses on theory and applications to refine statistical learning-based technologies, according to a notice on SAM.gov.

DARPA is seeking technologies that can support quantitative modeling and the evaluation of human-machine teams in real-world scenarios. The study will be divided into two phases, one for a feasibility study and the other for proof of concept.

Respondents have until Feb. 2. to submit their proposals. The agency may grant multiple awards in the form of other transaction agreements for the chosen prototype projects.

POC - 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit

Human-machine teaming is one topic that may be highlighted at the Potomac Officers Club’s 5th Annual Artificial Intelligence Summit on March 21. Register now to take part in the event.

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Space Force Investigates On-Orbit Refueling in Latest Tabletop Exercise Series
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Space Force Investigates On-Orbit Refueling in Latest Tabletop Exercise Series

The Assured Access to Space Program Executive Office within the Space Systems Command recently conducted an exercise under its Parallax Rising program.

Parallax Rising 2.2, the third installment in a series of tabletop exercises, focused on on-orbit refueling within the context of space mobility and logistics, which the U.S. Space Force considers critical to achieving contested space superiority and moving military assets into, around and down from the space domain, the SSC said Wednesday.

On-orbit refueling would sustain a satellite’s ability to perform maneuvers, allowing the spacecraft to evade threats while providing continuous support for terrestrial military operations during conflicts.

The Parallax Rising exercise series intends to answer a number of questions, including what kinds of refuelers are best for space conflict and the ways in which commercial and Department of Defense refuelers and processes could be integrated into these operations.

Participants in the exercise include private sector organizations and members of the three Space Force field commands.

The results of the exercise, once analyzed and reviewed, are intended to inform acquisitions for the development of the USSF space architecture.

Space Force Investigates On-Orbit Refueling in Latest Tabletop Exercise Series

Interested in learning more about U.S. space operations? At the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Space Summit on March 5, you will have the opportunity to hear from key space leaders from both government and industry, who will come together to discuss the nation’s most important priorities in the domain. Click here to learn more, and click here to register for the event.

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VTG to Help Modernize Navy Aegis Combat System Under New Contract
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VTG to Help Modernize Navy Aegis Combat System Under New Contract

VTG has secured a $40 million U.S. Navy task order to support the service branch’s Aegis Combat System.

The award was issued through VTG’s Technical Insertion 16 (TI16) prime contract with the Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme Division, or NSWC-PHD, and focuses on Infrastructure-as-a-Service provisions, the Chantilly, Virginia-based company announced on Thursday.

“VTG enjoys a strong partnership with NSWC Port Hueneme, the Navy’s center of excellence for warfare systems, and we’re excited to expand our scope of support to the Aegis modernization effort,” said VTG President and CEO John Hassoun.

The TI16 initiative aims to update combat systems for the Navy’s surface fleet, which includes all cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers and amphibious ships, by integrating new commercial-off-the-shelf technologies and open architecture designs into existing platforms.

Aegis, said Hassoun, is the “combat systems workhorse of the surface fleet.”

VTG’s responsibilities under the award will support engineering, logistics and manufacturing, assembly and testing activities conducted by NSWC-PHD’s Digital Engineering Department.

The company won an earlier TL16 task order in January 2022, through which it is providing engineering services and lifecycle support for the NSWC-PHD’s Air Dominance Department. This award is valued at $20 million.

More recently, VTG secured a prime position on the Navy’s potential $4.1 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to produce the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services information warfare platform. The multiple-award contract, which was issued in April 2023, aims to deliver a secure tactical afloat network for Naval and joint operations.

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General Dynamics Rings in the New Year With Senior Leadership Appointments; Phebe Novakovic Quoted
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General Dynamics Rings in the New Year With Senior Leadership Appointments; Phebe Novakovic Quoted

Mark Roualet, executive vice president of combat systems at General Dynamics, will retire in April, and Danny Deep, president of General Dynamics Land Systems, will take over the role, marking one of many leadership transitions announced by the company on Friday.

General Dynamics Chairman and CEO Phebe Novakovic, a nine-time Wash100 Award winner, highlighted Roualet’s “demonstrated record of operational excellence” and noted Deep’s leadership experience and background in operations and land forces initiatives.

David Paddock, president of General Dynamics’ jet aviation unit, will succeed Deep as head of General Dynamics Land Systems on April 1, and Jeremie Caillet, senior vice president of operations in Basel, Switzerland, will assume Paddock’s role.

Paddock, said Novakovic, is a “proven executive with strong leadership.” She described Caillet as “a highly skilled operations and program management executive.”

Jason Aiken, executive vice president of the organization’s technology arm and chief financial officer, will step away from his CFO responsibilities to center his focus on technology group operating duties, effective Feb. 15.

He “has been a superb CFO,” according to Novakovic, who said he will “remain integrally involved in all aspects of the senior leadership of General Dynamics.”

The CFO role will be filled by Kim Kuryea, senior vice president of human resources and administration at General Dynamics, on Feb. 15. Shane Berg, senior vice president of planning and development, will take over Kuryea’s current role.

Novakovic noted Kuryea’s two decades of financial experience within the enterprise as CFO, a business unit lead, head of internal audit function and comptroller.

Berg, who joined General Dynamics two years ago, has been a “superb addition to the senior leadership team,” she said.

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