Three members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have urged President Biden not to force the Department of Defense to vacate the communication spectrum used for military operations.

Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb.; Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; and Angus King, I-Maine, raised concern that requiring the Pentagon to surrender its spectrum in favor of commercial wireless use would significantly harm military missions and adversely affect U.S. national security.

The lawmakers are concerned that the Biden administration is moving forward with the National Spectrum Strategy without fully considering the recommendations of DOD’s Emerging Mid-Band Radar Spectrum Sharing report and the findings of the lower 3 GHz Band study.

“Proceeding without appropriate input in advance of the National Spectrum Strategy’s implementation could lead to an approach that overrides congressional intent and is at odds with the practical realities and technical assessments the final report provides,” the senators wrote in a letter to Biden.

In November, the Biden administration unveiled the National Spectrum Strategy to facilitate private-public collaboration over spectrum access, management and research and development to maintain U.S. leadership in global wireless technology.

The Defense Innovation Unit unveiled a new strategy with eight lines of effort to accelerate the development of military technologies and take advantage of partnerships with the private sector.

DIU 3.0 is meant to harness commercial capabilities and maximize the potential of collaborations with allies and partners to keep up with the tech competition with rivals such as China and Russia, the agency said Wednesday.

Part of its strategy involves teaming up with the Department of Defense’s “engines of scale” and prioritize the most critical gaps in warfighter capabilities. The lines of effort also entail retooling the entire unit to achieve strategic impact, as well as consistently giving the defense secretary and deputy secretary “dual fluency” advice.

Eight years ago, DIU was created to bridge communication between DOD and the tech sector. When DIU became a direct division of DOD in April, the unit shifted its strategy to speed up prototyping of technologies based on commercial innovations.

DIU 3.0 builds on these previous strategies and is a result of consultations with government agencies, private subject matter experts, international partners and non-governmental organizations.

The Department of Energy is inviting proposals for a $1.2 billion funding opportunity for companies willing to build and modernize large-scale renewable energy transmission projects.

The request for proposals marks the second iteration of the Transmission Facilitation Program, which issued its first solicitation in 2022, DOE said Tuesday.

Part of the program’s strategy is to tap late-stage and “shovel ready” projects to increase the likelihood of completing high-capacity transmission lines and reassure investors and future customers. DOE will match the contractors by purchasing up to 50 percent of a line’s maximum capacity.

The RFP is divided into two parts for administrative purposes. The first part of the application process will close on March 11.

“There’s no way around it: to realize the full benefit of the nation’s goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035, we need to more than double our grid capacity,” DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm commented. “President Biden’s historic clean energy legislation is helping modernize the nation’s transmission to deliver reliable, more affordable energy to every American community in turn driving down costs for American families and generating good paying jobs for American workers.”

The Department of Commerce Data Governance Board’s Metrics Working Group has released its final report outlining recommendations for developing evidence-building best practices to enhance program data management policies across the department.

The working group recommended that Commerce offices look into the Economic Development Administration and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s program models to identify and utilize innovative approaches to data linkage and evaluation.

The report highlighted EDA’s Good Jobs Challenge program, a $500 million program funded by the American Rescue Plan to accelerate local workforce development across the U.S.

According to the Metrics Working Group, the program created a pathway for tracking outcomes at the individual level by adopting evidence-based best practices such as collecting high-quality data for tracking equitable program outcomes, streamlining data collection processes based on the needs of multiple program stakeholders and ​​​​​​​linking program data with statistical data.

The Department of Defense has released the list of DOD installations and National Guard facilities where interim actions to expedite the cleanup of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, are ongoing or will start in fiscal year 2024.

The effort aims to mitigate impacts to groundwater from an on-base PFAS source area and prevent the migration of PFAS-contaminated groundwater into nearby surface waters, DOD said Tuesday.

“Implementation of these interim actions to clean up PFAS is another step in the right direction for protecting public health and the environment,” said William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and a 2024 Wash100 awardee.

The list includes more than 30 DOD bases and National Guard facilities located in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

In July 2023, the Pentagon issued a memo requiring military installations and facilities to take interim actions to address PFAS releases caused by DOD activities.