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DOD’s Replicator Initiative Evaluating Promising Innovations for All-domain Attributable Autonomous Systems; Kathleen Hicks Quoted
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DOD’s Replicator Initiative Evaluating Promising Innovations for All-domain Attributable Autonomous Systems; Kathleen Hicks Quoted

The Department of Defense reported progress on the Replicator initiative, which was launched in August to accelerate and mass-produce next-generation technologies that can benefit warfighters.

The Defense Innovation Unit announced Thursday that a working group co-chaired by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has been laboring for the past two months to identify innovations for all-domain attributable autonomy, or ADA2.

The Deputy’s Innovation Steering Group collaborated with the Defense Innovation Working Group to identify the ADA2 mission needs of the Indo-Pacific Command. DIU will start posting solicitations related to Replicator next month as soon as the committee identifies the most promising ADA2 capabilities across the services.

“The Defense Department has already demonstrated that, with concerted senior-level focus, the right technologies can make it across the various valleys of death, from capability development all the way through fielding to the warfighter,” said Hicks, a three-time recipient of the Wash100 award. “Replicator is about leveraging authorities that Congress has already granted the DoD to deliver combat-credible capabilities faster and at scale,” she added.

White House Introduces National Strategy for Enhanced GHG Monitoring, Measurement; Arati Prabhakar Quoted
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White House Introduces National Strategy for Enhanced GHG Monitoring, Measurement; Arati Prabhakar Quoted

The Biden administration unveiled a national strategy to bolster interagency coordination over greenhouse gas monitoring, measurement and information sharing.

The strategy details a phased implementation of standards and programs, including the establishment of the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center, the White House said in a statement on Wednesday.

The National Strategy to Advance an Integrated U.S. Greenhouse Gas Measurement, Monitoring and Information System is a product of the GHG Monitoring, and Measurement Interagency Working Group. Experts from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of Management and Budget, and White House Climate Policy Office make up the committee.

Aside from the GHG center, the administration plans to create an urban-scale prototype framework that combines measurement and modeling of GHG initially in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Indianapolis.

“To overcome the climate crisis, we need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Arati Prabhakar, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. “This strategy puts us on a path toward an integrated system to improve how we monitor greenhouse gas emissions, so actors across the economy can make informed decisions,” added Prabhakar, a recipient of the Wash100 Award in 2016.

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Future SLS Rocket Engine Undergoes Hot Fire Testing at Stennis Space Center
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Future SLS Rocket Engine Undergoes Hot Fire Testing at Stennis Space Center

NASA subjected the RS-25 rocket engine to a hot fire test on Nov. 29.

The test was the third in a 12-part series meant to certify new manufacturing processes used by L3Harris Technologies company Aerojet Rocketdyne to produce the version of the engine that will power the Space Launch System for the Artemis V mission and beyond, NASA said Wednesday.

During the test, the RS-25 was made to run for 650 seconds at 113 percent power. During actual operation, the engine would have to run for 500 seconds at 111 percent power. The test pushed the engine past normal operational parameters to provide for a margin of operational safety.

The test was conducted at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. It was overseen by a team of operators from the space agency, Aerojet and Syncom Space Services, the prime contractor for facilities and operations at Stennis.

AFRL Unveils New Consortium to Bridge Defense Space-Linked Medical Research Gaps
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AFRL Unveils New Consortium to Bridge Defense Space-Linked Medical Research Gaps

The Air Force Research Laboratory has announced a military research working group to examine the impact of military space operations on human health and performance.

COSMIC, short for Clinical and Operational Space Medicine Innovation Consortium, will synthesize the human health and performance research capabilities from the 59th Medical Wing and the 711th Human Performance Wing’s Human Effectiveness Directorate, respectively, AFRL said Wednesday.

“By combining the strengths of both organizations, COSMIC has access to research expertise across a continuum of both clinical medicine and human performance optimization,” said Maj. Craig Nowadly, an emergency physician and 59th MDW COSMIC steering committee co-chair.

James McEachen, a 711 HPW senior aerospace medicine physician-researcher and COSMIC steering committee co-chair, said the new research group will address immediate space-linked medical research requirements while facilitating collaboration among government, industry and academia.

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Lora Muchmore Highlights Need for Air Force to Improve Data Quality & Accessibility
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Lora Muchmore Highlights Need for Air Force to Improve Data Quality & Accessibility

Lora Muchmore, assistant deputy undersecretary of the Air Force and assistant deputy chief management officer, said the service branch must enhance its data quality and accessibility, be more compliant in functional areas such as financial management and logistics, drive rationalization and advance transformation efforts, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

“Our data quality and accessibility – the information about my systems – isn’t accurate, reliable and easily accessible,” Muchmore said at an event Wednesday.

“We’re going to do that and we’re going to do it really quickly. I think my team has promised me [that in] early December we’re going to have a big win in that area. So, I’m really excited about that,” she added.

Her remarks come as the Air Force works on the “10 x 10 Vision” plan to accelerate modernization initiatives by focusing on several areas, including low code application platforms, customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning systems.

Muchmore also mentioned the importance of cybersecurity and her top priorities for the service, such as having the right acquisition strategy for software, identifying enterprise capabilities to better manage defense business platforms and establishing a federated enterprise architecture.

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CISA Releases 1st Secure by Design Alert Publication
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CISA Releases 1st Secure by Design Alert Publication

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has released the first publication in its Secure by Design Alerts series to raise awareness of malicious cyber activity against web management interfaces.

CISA said Wednesday the initial document recommends that organizations implement security best practices, eliminate repeat classes of vulnerabilities in their products and align their work to Secure by Design principles to prevent the exploitation of vulnerabilities in their web management interfaces.

The Secure by Design Alerts series centers on two principles: take ownership of customer security outcomes and embrace radical transparency and accountability.

CISA’s first whitepaper under the new series builds around the first Secure by Design principle, suggesting that software manufacturers identify common patterns in software design and configuration that often lead to compromised systems.

According to the agency, software manufacturers should invest in application hardening, application features and default settings to create products that are secure by design.

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DOD’s William LaPlante Highlights Role of Industry in US Support for Ukraine
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DOD’s William LaPlante Highlights Role of Industry in US Support for Ukraine

The U.S. industrial base’s response to the Ukraine conflict “has been truly historic,” according to William LaPlante, under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and a two-time Wash100 Award winner.

In total, the Department of Defense has allocated $44 billion in funds to support Ukraine’s security needs since Russia invaded the nation in February 2022, and industry has provided heavy contributions, the DOD said on Wednesday.

“It’s been a nationwide effort that spans the full spectrum of our supply chains in nearly every capability area,” LaPlante said.

Funds have been issued through both presidential drawdowns and the contract-based Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, in which industry organizations are selected to deliver new equipment to Ukraine as it is produced.

To maintain U.S. military readiness, any supplies sent from existing DOD inventories must be replaced, and the department has invested close to $17 billion to replenish its stock. Another $10 billion has been allocated to contractors producing new capabilities ordered under USAI. Prime vendors and critical suppliers across 37 states have been directly impacted by these funds.

“While there’s no question we still have significant work ahead of us to fully rebuild a modern defense industrial ecosystem, we should not lose sight of what we’ve been able to achieve together with our partners in industry over the past 21 months,” he said.

The DOD has also supported manufacturers in enhancing their production capabilities, dedicating approximately $3.3 billion in funding to providers of key capabilities across 18 states.

These efforts align with the DOD’s broader push to revitalize the defense industrial base. The department is currently developing its first National Defense Industrial Strategy, which will focus on supply chain, production, workforce, acquisitions and associated metrics. Officials aim to publish the strategy in November and issue an implementation plan shortly after.

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Laura Stanton Discusses How GSA Will Support Federal Chief AI Officers in Light of New Executive Order
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Laura Stanton Discusses How GSA Will Support Federal Chief AI Officers in Light of New Executive Order

General Services Administration official Laura Stanton said the GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service could help federal chief artificial intelligence officers buy the AI tools and services they need to support missions and enable their agencies to comply with an executive order that seeks to advance the responsible use of AI.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Stanton, assistant commissioner for the Office of IT Category at FAS, announced the appointment of Zach Whitman, chief data scientist at GSA, as the agency’s chief AI officer, or CAIO.

Prior to GSA, Whitman was chief data officer at the U.S. Census Bureau. He previously served as a senior associate at Deloitte.

According to Stanton, CAIOs will drive the development of AI strategies at agencies, serve as senior AI advisers to agency leaders and work with chief information officers and chief information security officers to establish safeguards on AI use to meet cybersecurity best practices and standards.

She noted that CAIOs will also assess products, compile inventories, document use cases, review performance, ensure compliance of AI initiatives with existing policies and laws and implement internal controls, among others.

Stanton mentioned the Multiple Award Schedule – IT Category and governmentwide acquisition contracts such as Alliant 2 and VETS 2 as some of the acquisition tools that CAIOs can use to buy AI products and services.

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NOAA, Parsons Fully Transition Cloud-based Ground SaaS Platform to Operate Polar Satellites
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NOAA, Parsons Fully Transition Cloud-based Ground SaaS Platform to Operate Polar Satellites

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has deployed a cloud-based ground system-as-a-service, or GSaaS, capability to operate three of its weather and climate prediction satellites.

The GSaaS platform, which was developed by Parsons and its subcontractors in 2022, will bridge data from the legacy Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellites, a.k.a. POES, to the next-generation Joint Polar Satellite Series until 2025, the agency said Wednesday.

The cloud-based system is part of the POES Extended Life contract. It uses the Microsoft Azure application for remote operations, while Arctic Slope Technical Services provides mission architecture support and Kongsberg Satellite Services manages ground antenna services.

Parsons on Tuesday fully assumed operations of the POES satellite trio, delivering their data to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service.

POES Extended Life will “lay the groundwork for the future of Low Earth Orbit missions” such as said the Near Earth Orbit Network, Quicksounder and Series 1 missions,” said Tim Walsh, director of NOAA’s Office of Low Earth Orbit Observations.

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Rear Adm. James Downey on New Navy Office Focused on Nuclear Carrier Dismantlement
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Rear Adm. James Downey on New Navy Office Focused on Nuclear Carrier Dismantlement

Rear Adm. James Downey, special assistant to the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said the service has created a new office to inactivate and dismantle nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

The new office was formed in the past two to three months after the Navy decided to push through with its plan to dismantle the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) nuclear carrier.

“That [office] will take on the final disposal of Enterprise, but it’s setting it up for Nimitz and then for Ford,” Downey said at an event Wednesday.

“So in those programs of record … we just stood up a program office that has about 100 years of work … If we execute those programs of record and they perform to the schedule, [the office] has a century of work ahead of them,” he added.

Downey noted that disposal efforts associated with the nuclear-powered ships account for billions of dollars in additional work and hinted at the opportunity for future industry involvement in the dismantlement process.

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