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New Service Component Command Forged by Space Force, EUCOM & AFRICOM
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New Service Component Command Forged by Space Force, EUCOM & AFRICOM

The U.S. Space Force, European Command and Africa Command have established a space component at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where it will help advance EUCOM’s space-based capabilities.

The new U.S. Space Forces Europe and Africa component command, dubbed USSPACEFOR-EURAF, will be commanded by Col. Max Lantz and will have approximately 30 service members focused on supporting satellite navigation, communications and integration with NATO allies and partners, USSF said Friday.

The activation of USSPACEFOR-EURAF is intended to boost the ability of EUCOM and AFRICOM to ensure security and stability in Europe and Africa as well as to create “strong and strategic relationships” in space domain.

“Today, we will integrate our Space Forces at the component level — something that will provide a cadre of space experts who can work with the Joint Force, our Allies, and partners to integrate space activities into our shared operations, activities, and investments,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force and a 2023 Wash100 Award winner, said during the official activation ceremony. “The joint force’s missions increasingly rely on space and the Space Force is committed to ensuring that the force has the space resources it needs to succeed.”

The event also featured Lt. Gen. Steven Basham, deputy commander for EUCOM, who said USSPACEFOR-EURAF’s focus is on both space asset protection and delivery to support its missions.

In addition to EUCOM and AFRICOM’s venture, Indo-Pacific Command and Central Command have also established a space component.

Register here for the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Space Summit to get an in-depth look at how the U.S. is tackling the most urgent issues in the domain and the places it needs industry’s help. Join the March 5 event to hear from the nation’s space experts, government leaders and private sector executives.

POC - 2024 Space Summit
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Army Receives Initial Delivery of Lockheed-Made Precision Strike Missiles
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Army Receives Initial Delivery of Lockheed-Made Precision Strike Missiles

The initial batch of Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, Increment 1 Early Operational Capability missiles has been delivered to the U.S. Army.

The military service said Friday that the PrSM, which will serve as its next-generation long range precision fires missile, features an open system architecture and can be fired using the M270A2 Multiple Launch Rocket System and the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

Breaking Defense reported Friday that the PrSM is designed to hit targets as far as 500 km away and as close as less than 85 km away, based on the results of the production qualification testing that took place in November.

In contrast, the legacy Army Tactical Missile System, which the PrSM will replace, has a range of 70 to 300 km.

The PrSM was developed by Lockheed Martin. The same company is competing with a team involving RTX and Northrop Grumman for an enhanced version of the weapon intended to feature a range greater than 1,000 km.

Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology and Wash100 winner Doug Bush said, “The Precision Strike Missile will provide Joint Force commanders with a 24/7, all-weather capability that will counter the enemy’s ability to conduct combat maneuver and air defense operations.”

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BAE Systems Receives First CHIPS & Science Act Funding From Commerce Department; Tom Arseneault, Gina Raimondo Quoted
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BAE Systems Receives First CHIPS & Science Act Funding From Commerce Department; Tom Arseneault, Gina Raimondo Quoted

BAE Systems has secured funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce to upgrade its Nashua, New Hampshire-located Microelectronics Center.

This $35 million investment marks the first round of funding issued under the CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to bolster domestic microelectronics supply chains, the company announced on Monday.

“Microelectronics are at the heart of the technology and products we make for our defense and aerospace customers – from next-generation aircraft and satellites to military-grade GPS and secure communications,” said BAE Systems President and CEO Tom Arseneault, a two-time Wash100 Award winner.

He said that the funds will “fulfill the promise of the CHIPS and Science Act” by helping the organization expand its ability to support defense initiatives, cultivate its technical workforce and invigorate the onshore supply chain.

The Microelectronics Center is a Department of Defense-accredited semiconductor chip fabrication and foundry facility used to manufacture military-grade semiconductor technologies. The 110,000 square foot installation is one of few domestic defense-centric six-inch Gallium Arsenide and Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Transistor wafer foundries.

Part of the funding was provided by local and state governments, and the City of Nashua and the state of New Hampshire are offering tuition assistance and a new clean room training course at Nashua Community College to build up the semiconductor workforce.

BAE Systems will supplement the allocations with its continuous investments in modernization and research and development. With the funds, the enterprise aims to boost its production capacity, decrease build times and reduce supply chain risk through the purchase of modern manufacturing technologies.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo emphasized the CHIPS for America Program’s intent to enhance national security and domestic supply chains while strengthening the economy and job market.

“As national security becomes as much about the chips inside of our weapons systems as the weapons systems themselves, this first CHIPS announcement shows how central semiconductors are to our national defense,” she added.

BAE Systems Receives First CHIPS & Science Act Funding From Commerce Department; Tom Arseneault, Gina Raimondo Quoted

Microelectronics are a key focus area in current DOD R&D initiatives. Learn more about the department’s technology priorities at the Potomac Officers Club’s 10th Annual Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 31, 2024. Heidi Shyu, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, will deliver the opening keynote address. To learn more and register to attend, click here.

NIST Opens Public Comment for Draft Guidance on March-in Rights to Federally Funded R&D; Gina Raimondo Quoted
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NIST Opens Public Comment for Draft Guidance on March-in Rights to Federally Funded R&D; Gina Raimondo Quoted

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is inviting external comment on its draft guidance for federal march-in authority to license patents of products of government-funded research.

The proposed guidelines urge agencies to consider the practical and potential impact of exercising their rights to march in and retain patent ownership of inventions in certain circumstances and areas such as national security and safety, NIST said Thursday.

March-in rights are part of the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act of 1980, or Bayh-Dole Act. Earlier this year, NIST amended regulations to align the law with the Biden administration’s Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, but excluded the prohibition of using march-in rights in pricing decisions.

“With this draft guidance and request for comment, we are seeking continued stakeholder input to ultimately provide greater clarity on march-in rights and maintain a balance between incentivizing companies to innovate and making sure those innovations serve the American people,” Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo remarked.

NIST will discuss the framework and the request for comment requirements in an informational webinar to be held on Dec. 13. Interested parties may submit their feedback until Feb. 6, 2024.

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INSA Chair Letitia Long Underscores Importance of FISA Section 702 Reauthorization
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INSA Chair Letitia Long Underscores Importance of FISA Section 702 Reauthorization

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act should be renewed to support and protect the critical national security partnerships between government and industry, said Letitia Long, chair of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.

The law, which compels the assistance of communication companies in acquiring intelligence data on foreign persons outside the U.S., is vital to defending domestic critical infrastructure, borders and information networks, Long wrote in a commentary published Wednesday on Federal News Network.

Section 702, which is set to expire this month, has reportedly helped the private sector strengthen their cybersecurity capabilities through government-backed identification of online threats and hackers. The law has been instrumental in discovering malware signatures, network vulnerabilities and attack techniques that target critical infrastructure, Long said.

“In the modern strategic competition environment, nation-state adversaries will continue employing innovative tools in cyberspace to penetrate American critical infrastructure and other sensitive networks,” according to Long, a Wash100 awardee. “To provide an adequate defense of both private and public sector infrastructure key to our national security, Section 702 must be renewed — and in a form that maintains, rather than diminishes, the essential value that it provides.”

OMB’s Loren DeJonge Schulman: Better Customer Service Starts With Building Trust in Federal Workforce
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OMB’s Loren DeJonge Schulman: Better Customer Service Starts With Building Trust in Federal Workforce

Loren DeJonge Schulman, associate director of performance and personnel management at the Office of Management and Budget, said government agencies looking to improve customer service should provide the federal workforce with the support and tools that they need, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

She also called on agencies to empower federal employees and build trust with them.

“We have to not only build trust with our customers. We have to trust our employees as well. And that means listening to them — listening to our frontline employees who are sometimes the best source of information and advice on how do we get better,” DeJonge Schulman said Thursday at a summit.

“They’re also the ones that we have to empower, to take risks and try new things. So, building that trust loop with them is just as important as building that trust loop with the customers as well,” she continued.

Other agency leaders, including Noreen Hecmanczuk, digital experience adviser to the Federal Chief Information Officer, and Simchah Suveyke-Bogin, chief customer experience officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, also shared their thoughts on federal employee satisfaction and customer experience.

https://potomacofficersclub.com/register/?event=7018X000001f5yCQAQ&src=marie

Join the Potomac Officers Club’s CX Imperative Forum on Jan. 25 to hear federal officials and industry experts discuss how digital transformation strategies could help agencies as they redesign customer experience in accordance with a 2021 executive order. Register here.

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DISA Unveils 1st Iteration of Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Capability
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DISA Unveils 1st Iteration of Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Capability

The Defense Information Systems Agency has launched the first iteration of a cloud-based electromagnetic spectrum platform designed to improve the U.S. military’s situational awareness of the EMS battlespace.

DISA said Thursday it released Electromagnetic Battle Management – Joint as a minimum viable capability in support of the Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control initiative.

EMBM-J seeks to provide warfighters with a single visual display by integrating EMS functions into a unified system and employs a common data layer to facilitate interoperability with the U.S. Army’s Electromagnetic Warfare Planning and Management Tool and other EMS systems of service branches.

“EMBM-J provides critical and accurate electromagnetic spectrum spontaneous data to combatant commands and Joint Task Force Headquarters Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations Cells,” said Christopher Argo, Spectrum Program Executive Office director at DISA.

“This tool ensures a commander’s ability to rapidly act by visualizing the EMS common operating picture and the first step toward achieving EMS superiority,” added Argo.

DISA and U.S. Strategic Command worked together to develop EMBM-J and will continue to further develop the platform’s analytical features and ability to detect EMS issues.

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NSA Warns Against Spear-Phishing Tactics of Russian Cyber Group Star Blizzard
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NSA Warns Against Spear-Phishing Tactics of Russian Cyber Group Star Blizzard

The National Security Agency, in collaboration with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the U.K. National Cyber Security Center, has released a cybersecurity advisory warning organizations against specific spear-phishing techniques used by the Russian hacking group Star Blizzard.

Star Blizzard, formerly known as SEABORGIUM or BlueCharlie, uses the open-source framework EvilGinx in spear-phishing activities to harvest credentials and session cookies to bypass multifactor authentication, the NSA said Thursday.

The group targets government and military agencies, think tanks, academic institutions and other organizations in the U.K. and the U.S. for espionage and cyber influence activities.

Rob Joyce, director of NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate and a two-time Wash100 awardee, said the Russian Federal Security Service-linked group aims to target personal email accounts, where they can still access “sensitive information but often with a lower security bar.”

The NSA recommended that organizations use strong passwords, enable multifactor authentication, complete network and device updates, avoid clicking suspicious links, enable automated email scanning features and disable mail forwarding.

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CDC Chief Data Officer Alan Sim Highlights Communication Workstream Element of AI Roadmap
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CDC Chief Data Officer Alan Sim Highlights Communication Workstream Element of AI Roadmap

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s roadmap for artificial intelligence implementation will involve deploying collaborative communication workstreams across the organization to define and uphold best practices for responsible AI use.

CDC Chief Data Officer Alan Sim gave an overview of the roadmap on the GovAI Summit in Arlington, Virginia, saying that his team will regularly solicit feedback on experience-based AI best practices from the agency’s employees.

The CDC AI development roadmap will include a 15-page generative AI guidance as well as an artificial intelligence/machine learning consultation group that will gather input within the agency as well as advise on proposed AI use cases, according to Sim.

He said that they will strengthen guardrails to minimize risks associated with AI development by fostering innovation leveraging their existing infrastructure.

“When you can innovate and try things, and things break or fail and it doesn’t result in harm to the public, go ahead. But when you recognize it’s something that potentially could be dangerous, then you have to create that safe environment,” Sim said. “In some cases, you have to limit it. Test it out and learn from those activities…Then you increase the aperture, the scope and implementation to do more. But it is a challenge.”

House Select Committee Seeks Classified FBI Briefing on TikTok & Parent Company
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House Select Committee Seeks Classified FBI Briefing on TikTok & Parent Company

A House select panel has called on the FBI to provide a briefing on its investigation of video hosting platform TikTok and its parent company ByteDance and state the measures it is taking to safeguard the sensitive data of U.S. citizens from being accessed by the Chinese government.

In a Thursday letter addressed to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party stated that ByteDance provided the Chinese government’s cybersecurity regulators access to TikTok’s backend system containing the social media platform’s most sensitive data.

“Just last December, an internal ByteDance investigation found that employees tracked multiple American journalists covering TikTok and gained access to their IP addresses and user data on TikTok. It is our understanding that DOJ and FBI are investigating these allegations,” the letter writes.

The lawmakers are asking the FBI to provide a classified briefing on the matter no later than Dec. 22.

The letter was signed by 24 House lawmakers, including Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi respectively serve as chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee.

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