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DIU Solicits Quantum Sensing Proposals for New Emerging Technology Portfolio
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DIU Solicits Quantum Sensing Proposals for New Emerging Technology Portfolio

The Defense Innovation Unit has released a commercial solutions opening solicitation seeking proposals for a new emerging technology portfolio to transition quantum sensors to military applications.

DIU said Thursday the Transition of Quantum Sensors, or TQS, portfolio aims to demonstrate commercial technology prototypes that can be used for defense applications such as anomaly detection and positioning, navigation and timing.

The new portfolio will also focus on DIU’s existing and future hypersonics efforts, including the High-cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities, a.k.a. HyCAT, program and will launch prototyping efforts on additive manufacturing, photonics, advanced materials and propulsion microelectronics and quantum information science.

Air Force Lt. Col. Nicholas Estep, a veteran technical program manager within DIU, has been tapped to lead TQS as a portfolio manager.

“I am excited to lead DIU’s newest portfolio with a focus on Emerging Technology,  maintain momentum on the hypersonics front, and to rapidly mature quantum-derived applications with our DoD stakeholders,” Estep said. “This portfolio will create important connections across the DoD and commercial community to address capability gaps across the services.”

DIU also has emerging technology portfolios in artificial intelligence and machine learning, autonomy, cyber and telecommunications, energy, human systems and space.

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Unanet Announces New Lineup of AI-Driven Financial Automation Platforms; Assad Jarrahian Quoted
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Unanet Announces New Lineup of AI-Driven Financial Automation Platforms; Assad Jarrahian Quoted

Unanet has introduced a new family of artificial intelligence-based financial automation platforms.

These tools are built to help customers automate accounts payable and receivable processes and improve the management and tracking of spending, Unanet announced on Thursday.

“These are capabilities that growing GovCon and AE businesses must have to optimize their finance operations, make smarter strategic decisions, and operate more efficiently and profitably,” said Unanet Chief Product Officer Assad Jarrahian.

He noted that the three platforms are compatible with Unanet’s established enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management software.

The first of these products, Accounts Payable Automation, is designed to handle invoices, evaluate data and enhance accounting workflows to minimize errors in these areas. The second, Accounts Receivable Automation, is embedded into Unanet’s ERP offerings. It is meant to consolidate end-to-end workflows to accelerate the speed at which businesses receive payments.

Spend Management, the final member of the family, was developed in collaboration with Mesh Payments, a travel and spend management platform. This software will provide Unanet ERP clients with Mesh Payments’ enterprise-wide financial management technologies once it is released later this year.

With these platforms, users can reduce the need for tedious finance and accounting tasks, Jarrahian said.

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DISA Launches Cloud Management Platform for Defense Agencies
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DISA Launches Cloud Management Platform for Defense Agencies

The Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a new cloud service management platform called Olympus to help defense agencies develop and mature their cloud environments, DefenseOne reported Thursday.

Korie Seville, deputy chief technology officer for compute at DISA, said Olympus will support organizations across the Department of Defense to launch and deploy cloud applications and services “without having to deal with all of the getting enterprise network connectivity.”

According to Seville, the new platform provides common services necessary for network servers to operate, enabling defense agencies to focus on their mission.

In addition to common services, Olympus is integrated with other technology capabilities, including DISA’s Vulcan DevSecOps software development platform.

“So a customer could theoretically use that service, use Vulcan together with Olympus to create the DevSecOps pipeline from end-to-end, from code development all the way to environment instantiation, and create their own DevSecOps platform right then and there. But it’s not required,” Seville said.

Olympus will provide services from the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability multi-vendor contract vehicle.

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NASA Seeks to Ensure Lunar Activity Deconfliction With Help From Public
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NASA Seeks to Ensure Lunar Activity Deconfliction With Help From Public

NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy is calling on the lunar community to help formulate a framework that will guide efforts to ensure deconfliction of government and private sector activities on the moon’s surface.

NASA said Wednesday that deconfliction, which the Artemis Accords consider to be an area for further work, is likely to grow in importance over the coming years as more commercial and international actors operate on the moon.

Interested parties are invited to answer the Lunar Non-Interference Questionnaire, which tackles a variety of issues, including the possible definitions of the terms “interference,” “contamination” and “deconfliction.”

Another issue that the questionnaire seeks to address involves the attributes that make a site valuable for scientific inquiry and the kinds of activities that would negatively impact that value.

Responses to the questionnaire must be submitted via email by June 7.

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Assessment in Progress to Determine Changes Needed to Meet Military TacISR Needs, Says NSpC’s Chirag Parikh
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Assessment in Progress to Determine Changes Needed to Meet Military TacISR Needs, Says NSpC’s Chirag Parikh

According to National Space Council Executive Secretary Chirag Parikh, officials are in the process of analyzing the issues surrounding the tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements of combatant commands, how such requirements are not being met and how to best address such shortcomings, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

Department of the Air Force and U.S. Space Force officials said in 2023 that the need of field commanders for the speedy delivery of tactical ISR remained unfulfilled and so argued for the establishment of a budget that would allow USSF to procure commercial satellite products, including TacISR.

The Space Force’s push for commercial ISR procurement powers has been seen by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency as a potential encroachment into its role. The ongoing needs analysis, which Parikh described as an “analytically driven process,” is part of broader efforts to resolve the Space Force-NGA dispute.

Commenting on the assessment, Parikh said during the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s annual GEOINT conference on May 8 that there is a need to “better quantify the anecdotes and the challenges” being put forward by combatant commands and the Space Force while noting that the NGA may very well need to make changes to keep up with the modern battlespace.

And while it remains unclear what changes have to be made, Parikh expressed confidence that “something is going to change along the way.”

DOE to Invest $160M in Microelectronics Research & Development Projects
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DOE to Invest $160M in Microelectronics Research & Development Projects

The Department of Energy will invest $160 million over four years in research projects led by national laboratories to advance microelectronics development to support energy innovation in the U.S.

DOE said Wednesday the research investment initiative will implement the Microelectronics Research for Energy Innovation Act and support the establishment of Microelectronics Science Research Centers focused on energy efficiency and extreme environments.

The department is seeking research proposals in four research areas: new or improved materials, surface processing and control, chemistry, synthesis and fabrication; advanced computing paradigms and architectures; integrated sensing, edge computing and communication; and processing in extreme environments, radiation, radiation transport and materials interaction.

The funding opportunity is open to DOE’s national laboratories and other institutions to act as subcontractors.

“This funding will ensure our labs are all in on the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole of government effort to drive the future of innovation in chips and deliver the highly efficient computing capabilities we need to power frontier AI for many years to come,” said Geraldine Richmond, undersecretary for science and innovation in DOE.

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68 Software Companies Sign CISA’s Secure by Design Pledge; Jen Easterly Quoted
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68 Software Companies Sign CISA’s Secure by Design Pledge; Jen Easterly Quoted

Sixty-eight software manufacturers worldwide have participated in a pledge by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to produce software products and services designed with security protections.

CISA said Wednesday members of the Secure by Design pledge must work on achieving goals such as using multi-factor authentication, minimizing the use of default passwords, reducing vulnerability classes and increasing the installation of security patches by customers.

The companies must publish a vulnerability disclosure policy to authorize the public to test their products for potential vulnerabilities and allow for public disclosure of identified software weaknesses.

In addition, pledge members must include accurate Common Weakness Enumeration and Common Platform Enumeration fields in their products’ Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures records.

“More secure software is our best hope to protect against the seemingly never-ending scourge of cyberattacks facing our nation. I am glad to see leading software manufacturers recognize this by joining us at CISA to build a future that is more secure by design,” said Jen Easterly, director of CISA.

“I applaud the companies who have already signed our pledge for their leadership and call on all software manufacturers to take the pledge and join us in creating a world where technology is safe and secure right out of the box,” the 2024 Wash100 Award recipient said.

POC - 2024 Cyber Summit

Join the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Cyber Summit on June 6 to hear from government and industry experts about the dynamic and ever-evolving role of cyber in the public sector. Register here!

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GSA Names New Chair, Members to Federal Secure Cloud Advisory Committee
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GSA Names New Chair, Members to Federal Secure Cloud Advisory Committee

The General Services Administration has appointed a new chair and three new members to a federal panel that advises the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, effective May 15.

Lawrence Hale, deputy assistant commissioner within the Office of Information Technology Category Management for GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, will serve as chair of the Federal Secure Cloud Advisory Committee, GSA said Wednesday.

In this capacity, Hale will serve as a liaison and as a spokesperson for committee work products in addition to his oversight responsibilities.

Josh Krueger, chief information security officer of Project Hosts, and Kayla Underkoffler, lead security technologist of HackerOne, will fill vacant seats on the committee. Krueger will serve through July 9, 2026, while Underkoffler’s term will run through May 14, 2025.

Carlton Harris, senior vice president of End to End Solutions, will join FSCAC as a new member and serve a three-year term that will end on May 14, 2027.

Michael Vacirca, a senior engineering manager at Google, has been reappointed for a full three-year term after serving for one year on the federal panel. His term will end on May 14, 2027.

In February 2023, GSA formed FSCAC in compliance with the FedRAMP Authorization Act of 2022, which is under the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023. The committee helps agencies advance the acquisition, authorization, security and use of cloud computing platforms and services in support of their missions.

FSCAC will hold an open meeting on May 20, Monday, to discuss its next priorities.

ODNI Releases Policy Framework for Using Sensitive Public Information; Avril Haines Quoted
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ODNI Releases Policy Framework for Using Sensitive Public Information; Avril Haines Quoted

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released a policy framework outlining general principles governing the access, collection, processing and use of commercially available information, or CAI, across the intelligence community.

The framework highlights the potential impact on privacy and civil liberties of the collection and use of CAI by intelligence agencies and establishes that such activity should comply with applicable laws and be authorized to support a validated mission, ODNI said Wednesday.

“In keeping with my commitment to share as much as possible about the IC’s activities, we are sharing this framework which provides effective governance for the IC’s handling of CAI while also protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties,” said Avril Haines, director of national intelligence and a 2024 Wash100 awardee.

According to the framework, intelligence agencies must assess the integrity and quality of CAI they access or collect, consider the protection of privacy and civil liberties when gathering public information, undertake reasonable efforts to determine original CAI sources and apply to CAI appropriate safeguards tailored to protect the sensitivity of the information.

The intelligence community must also prevent the discriminatory use of CAI against certain ethnicity, race, religion, gender, gender identity and sexual orientation.

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Lloyd Austin: FY 2025 Budget Request Aligned to DOD’s Strategy
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Lloyd Austin: FY 2025 Budget Request Aligned to DOD’s Strategy

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared before Senate lawmakers on Wednesday to testify about the Department of Defense’s budget request of $850 billion for fiscal year 2025, Defense News reported.

Although he acknowledged that debt ceiling caps hamper DOD’s modernization goals, he noted that the requested budget is aligned to the department’s strategy.

“We made tough but responsible decisions that prioritize near-term readiness, modernization of the joint force and support for our troops and their families,” Austin, a three-time Wash100 awardee, told the  Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.

“Our approach dials back some of the near-term modernization for programs not set to come on line until the 2030s,” he added.

Talks over the debt ceiling caps emerged during the hearing as top senators on the subcommittee called for a higher defense topline for FY 2025.

“If we’re going to invest in future technologies, this number has to be bigger,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. “The military services and combatant commands are telling us they’re having unfunded priorities in excess of $20 billion. The price of fuel is much higher. Our military is engaged in operations around the world.”

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