House Committee Passes Bill to Reauthorize National Quantum Initiative Act
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House Committee Passes Bill to Reauthorize National Quantum Initiative Act

The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology has unanimously voted to pass a bipartisan bill introduced by Reps. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to reauthorize the National Quantum Initiative Act.

Committee Chairman Lucas said the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act would build on the accomplishments of the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act to “conduct breakthrough research, drive new quantum applications, bolster industry partnerships, and invigorate the quantum ecosystem.”

Under the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act, the Office of Science and Technology Policy must develop a quantum research strategy to advance U.S. leadership in quantum sciences.

“As China and Russia are actively making notable investments in quantum systems, we must maintain our momentum to secure our leadership position in this revolutionary field, and this bill does just that,” Lucas said.

The House panel also passed the Commercial Space Act of 2023, which aims to modernize government oversight of the commercial space sector.

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NASA Revises Roadmap for Dragonfly Mission to Saturn’s Moon
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NASA Revises Roadmap for Dragonfly Mission to Saturn’s Moon

NASA is on track to proceed with the final design and fabrication phase of its Dragonfly rotocraft, which will be sent to Saturn’s moon, Titan, in 2028.

The agency announced Tuesday that the mission’s total cost, schedule and overall formal confirmation will be announced in mid-2024 by its program management council.

The Dragonfly mission will be the first to use a rotocraft-lander to investigate whether Titan is habitable or if hydrocarbon-based life previously existed on the moon.

Modifications to the expedition’s timeline were made after an assessment of projected fiscal year 2024 funding as well as the Biden administration’s FY 2025 budget request.

“The Dragonfly team has successfully overcome a number of technical and programmatic challenges in this daring endeavor to gather new science on Titan,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “I am proud of this team and their ability to keep all aspects of the mission moving toward confirmation.”

The program is led by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, with partners including Lockheed Martin’s space business and Sikorsky subsidiary.

DOE Issues Solicitation for HALEU Deconversion Services
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DOE Issues Solicitation for HALEU Deconversion Services

The Department of Energy has begun seeking proposals from industry sources capable of providing deconversion services needed to establish a domestic fuel supply for advanced reactors.

Selected vendors will deconvert high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, as uranium hexafluoride gas to various chemical forms during a 10-year performance period under the HALEU Deconversion Services contract, DOE said Tuesday.

Each awardee will receive a minimum guarantee of $2 million and conduct deconversion and storage services at locations within the continental U.S.

Interested parties have until Jan. 30 to respond to the request for proposals.

A second RFP is scheduled for release later this year to acquire, store and transport HALEU to the deconverters.

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Defense Health Agency PEO Seeks Industry Feedback on Potential Program Management & Enterprise Architecture Solutions
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Defense Health Agency PEO Seeks Industry Feedback on Potential Program Management & Enterprise Architecture Solutions

Program Executive Office – Defense Healthcare Management Systems is seeking industry input regarding the initial phase of its Workplace 3.X Reboot effort, which seeks the delivery of great mid- and back-office tools as part of a broader modernization program.

PEO DHMS seeks feedback regarding two “brand name” tools it is looking into, namely Atlassian Solutions for its project management requirement and Cameo Enterprise Architecture for its enterprise architecture requirement, according to a request for information posted Tuesday on SAM.gov.

The government wants to know if alternative project management and enterprise architecture solutions are available, if they are compliant with the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, if they can easily interface with existing systems and if they can be easily learned to use.

Interested parties have until Dec. 7 to respond. The new tools are expected to be in use by the second quarter of fiscal year 2025.

Through WP3.X, PEO DHMS aims to modernize its management, technologies, processes and physical spaces to bring about what it deems the “managed office of the future.” The effort succeeds the Workplace 3.0 effort from 2021, whose result was reportedly more expensive and less innovative than desired.

PEO DHMS is attached administratively to the Defense Health Agency and directly reports to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment.

Defense Health Agency PEO Seeks Industry Feedback on Potential Program Management & Enterprise Architecture Solutions

The Potomac Officers Club will hold the 2023 Healthcare Summit on December 6. The event will feature public and private sector healthcare experts, who will discuss what’s on the horizon for healthcare innovation. Register now.

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GAO Releases Updated Agile Assessment Guide
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GAO Releases Updated Agile Assessment Guide

The Government Accountability Office has published an updated guide that provides federal auditors and other officials with best practices to assess the use of Agile approach to software development across the federal government.

GAO said Tuesday the guide is also intended for organizations and programs that have developed protocols and policies for Agile adoption and implementation and those that are in the process of adopting Agile software development practices.

The guide classifies Agile adoption best practices into three categories: team dynamics and activities; program operations; and organization environment.

Under team dynamics and activities, team composition supports Agile methods, repeatable processes are in place and work is prioritized to maximize value for the customer.

The document also covers Agile and contracting best practices including tailoring acquisition planning and contract structure to align with Agile practices, incorporating Agile metrics, tools and lessons learned from retrospectives during the contract management process and integrating the program office and the developers.

To align acquisition and contract structure with Agile practices, the guide calls on the government to encourage the use of modular contracting, enable flexibility for contract requirements and decide to structure the contract for goods or services.

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AFWERX, NASA Tap ResilienX to Create Digital Advanced Air Mobility Operations Center
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AFWERX, NASA Tap ResilienX to Create Digital Advanced Air Mobility Operations Center

AFWERX, a directorate within the Air Force Research Laboratory, and NASA are collaborating with ResilienX on the development of a digital operations center meant to support future efforts focused on Advanced Air Mobility or AAM.

ResilienX was awarded $4.8 million in AFWERX and NASA funding through the Civilian Commercialization Readiness Pilot Program, or CCRPP, and will work on the project until October 2025, the Air Force Materiel Command said Tuesday.

The resulting system from the project is meant to boost base security, enhance special forces efforts and modernize emergency disaster response, and passenger and cargo transportation planning.

“Through a dedicated systems engineering approach, we intend to develop a dual-use solution to the core digital infrastructure needed for advanced air mobility that is inherently scalable and extensible,” said Ryan Pleskach, CEO of ResilienX. “Through this pioneering effort and with support of all the federal stakeholders that AFWERX is bringing to the table, we believe this solution will be turnkey and available to government and commercial markets in late 2024.”

ResilienX will conduct a detailed need and task assessment, feature development with user interviews and observations, initial integration of baseline technologies and testing during the project’s first phase. It will move to user testing of human factors, safety development, prototype testing and a live demonstration of the system during the succeeding phase.

Work is under CCRPP, a NASA Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program.

Join Potomac Officers Club’s 10th Annual Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 31 to learn about the other research and development efforts of the U.S. military. Register here for the 2024 event.

POC - 10th Annual Defense R&D Summit
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DHS S&T Secures Patent for Homeland Explosive Consequence Assessment Tool
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DHS S&T Secures Patent for Homeland Explosive Consequence Assessment Tool

The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate was awarded a U.S. patent for a DHS-developed tool designed to predict consequences and potential outcomes from terrorist use of explosives in the U.S.

DHS said Tuesday the Homeland Explosive Consequence Assessment Tool, a.k.a. the HExCAT, is a fully integrated modeling system that helps emergency managers and response planners prepare communities for large-scale, scenario-specific hazards.

The tool was developed under the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-19 Combating Terrorist Use of Explosives in the United States, which aims to prevent, detect, respond and protect communities against explosive attacks.

“With the HExCAT, response planners are now equipped with a fully integrated system that predicts the likely consequences of an explosion, including human injuries, structural damages, and medical responses, helping us evaluate a range of what-if scenarios and focus our energy on the most effective means of prevention, detection, mitigation and response,” said Helen Mearns, deputy director of DHS S&T’s Chemical Security Analysis Center.

CSAC developed the HExCAT with support from S&T’s Explosives Threat Assessment Program, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Battelle and Leidos.

Doug Bush Says Army Faces New System Training & Resources Challenges
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Doug Bush Says Army Faces New System Training & Resources Challenges

Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said the service branch is facing challenges with resources and affordability when it comes to training warfighters on new systems, Breaking Defense reported Tuesday.

Bush said a piece of gear that is “very difficult to train” on is not going to be as effective or, if it’s too expensive to train on, is “not going to be as affordable for the Army to do at scale.”

“Millions of people, hundreds of thousands of soldiers. So affordability there becomes a key factor for us, especially when we’re developing new systems,” the 2023 Wash100 awardee continued.

The Army is also working to fully ingest and understand how to use and train with artificial intelligence to enhance productivity and efficiency across the service.

“So the Army’s got efforts underway — the other services do as well — to build our capacity to fully ingest and understand how they’ve developed and actually make sure we understand what we’re being offered or what we’re proposing to use in the area of AI,” Bush said.

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DOD Invests in South Star to Bolster US Graphite Supply Chain; Laura Taylor-Kale Quoted
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DOD Invests in South Star to Bolster US Graphite Supply Chain; Laura Taylor-Kale Quoted

The U.S. Department of Defense has teamed with South Star Battery Metals Corporation, a company that manages several graphite mining projects.

Funds provided through the $3.2 million agreement will support South Star’s production of Coated, Spheronized, Purified Graphite, or CSPG, at their Coosa County, Alabama-located BamaStar Graphite Project, the DOD said on Wednesday.

“As one of our first awards to a Canadian company in the battery materials sector, this award exemplifies our combined commitment to strengthening our battery material supply chains and global approach to industrial base resilience,” said Laura Tayor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy.

The agreement was made under the Defense Production Act Title III program, which aims to build, defend and revitalize necessary industrial base capabilities. Taylor-Kale called the investment, which also used funds appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act, “another example of the critical importance” of DPA investment authorities.

Under the agreement, South Star will conduct a bankable feasibility study assessing all stages of the process, beginning with mining and ending with production of CSPG. The company will consider economic and environmental, social and governance criteria during the study.

Once the study is complete, South Star intends to build a downstream battery-grade processing facility in the southeast U.S. The new installation would convert concentrates from the BamaStar mine location into CSPG to be used as raw materials for domestic lithium-ion battery anode production.

This agreement is one of 23 awards made through the DPA Investment Program, which has issued $717.5 million in total funds.

DOD Invests in South Star to Bolster US Graphite Supply Chain; Laura Taylor-Kale Quoted

Learn more about how the DOD is investing in the production of advanced technologies at the Potomac Officers Club’s 10th Annual Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 31, 2024. To learn more and register to attend the event, click here.

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SDA Conducts Link 16 Tactical Data Network Demonstration; Derek Tournear Quoted
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SDA Conducts Link 16 Tactical Data Network Demonstration; Derek Tournear Quoted

The Space Development Agency has demonstrated space-to-ground connectivity using the Link 16 tactical data network.

SDA said Tuesday operators were able to transmit tactical messages from L-band radios aboard the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture’s Tranche 0 Transport Layer satellites to terrestrial radios at a ground test site within the territory of a Five Eyes partner country.

The operators working with the agency performed passive and active Link 16 network entry during the three demonstrations conducted between Nov. 21 to Nov. 27.

“I can’t underscore enough the significance of this technical achievement as we demonstrate the feasibility of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and its ability to deliver space-based capabilities to the warfighter over existing tactical data links,” said Derek Tournear, director of SDA and a previous Wash100 awardee.

“This is not only the first time Link 16 has been broadcast from space, but the beginning of turning the world’s finest warfighting force into a truly connected beyond line-of-sight joint force,” added Tournear.

Link 16 is a communication system that enables the U.S., NATO and other coalition forces to share situational awareness data in real time.

Starting in late 2024, SDA intends to deploy PWSA Tranche 1 satellites. The first tranche will include 126 Transport Layer satellites, 35 Tracking spacecraft and 12 tactical demonstration satellites.

The PWSA Transport Layer serves as the foundation of Joint All Domain Command and Control in space.

SDA Conducts Link 16 Tactical Data Network Demonstration; Derek Tournear Quoted

Tournear will deliver the keynote address at Potomac Officers Club’s forthcoming 2024 Space Summit, to be held in the Tysons Corner, Virginia area on March 5. Save your spot now!

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