Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont.; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, have introduced bipartisan legislation to advance the Department of Veterans Affairs’ emergency response and management capabilities.

The Advancing VA’s Emergency Response to Crises Act of 2023 would require the VA to implement a fully operational high-frequency emergency communications system to maintain communications across its medical facilities during disasters or emergencies without requiring external infrastructure, the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs said Tuesday.

“In the last few years, we’ve seen disasters strike all parts of this country, from the COVID-19 pandemic to massive flooding in my home state of Montana. Due to its size and reach, VA is in a prime position to respond to these crises,” said Committee Chairman Tester.

The bill would also require the VA to report to Congress on the current status of its Regional Readiness Centers, establish a tracking system to ensure that its emergency caches and emergency pharmacy vehicles are fully stocked with unexpired inventory and coordinate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to analyze cross-agency coordination during emergencies.

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Defense Innovation Board officials pointed to efforts to streamline the acquisition process, rapid technology deployment and promotion of competition as some of the key challenges to modernization, GovCIO Media & Research reported Friday.

“The areas we’re looking at are everything from security processes, whether that is individual security clearances or secure facilities and their broad use, to the authority to operate in a secure ecosystem, to personnel practices, to the acquisition mechanisms themselves, everything ranging from the assets that we have or the data we need to receive,” Sue Gordon, a director at CACI International and a two-time Wash100 awardee, said during the board’s Nov. 14 meeting.

Thomas Sasala, deputy director of the Army’s Enterprise Management Office, cited the importance of data readiness during the board meeting.

“Without data readiness, you can’t have a ready military force. So we need to train our soldiers on data like we train them on the platforms and the weapons they use every day. The soldiers need to be comfortable with using data at the speed of mission to achieve that operational advantage,” said Sasala.

At its Jan. 26 meeting, the board expects to release results from two studies: “Lowering Barriers to Innovation” and “Building a DOD Data Economy.”

The Department of Defense’s Warfighter Brain Health Initiative is conducting research on the impact of blast overpressure exposures from weapons and munitions on service members’ brain health as part of efforts to optimize warfighters’ cognitive and physical capabilities.

As part of the initiative, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs has created a list of “Tier 1” weapon systems that generate the most blast pressure exposure effects for service members, the Defense Health Agency said Tuesday.

Based on input from service members, OSD(HA) initial Tier 1 systems identified five distinct categories of high-overpressure weapon systems: shoulder-mounted weapons, .50 caliber weapons, Howitzers, mortars and demolition.

“We’re offering a mitigation strategy to try to keep service members safe and then the recognition that if they have these symptoms, go get checked out, go and get a medical person to do some eyes on, to do a quick assessment, and check those things that we talked about,” said Kathy Lee, lead for the WBHI and director of Casualty Management for the OSD(HA).

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The Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Manufacturing Technology Program has pinpointed new focus areas for manufacturing through the Organic Industrial Base Modernization workshop.

Hosted last month, the workshop was designed to identify promising innovations in military technology production that could meet the needs of the office in collaboration with nine of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, the DOD said Tuesday.

Representatives of the public-private MIIs who participated in the workshop include Berardino Baratta, CEO of Manufacturing x Digital, who said that the program spearheads the “innovation and adoption of advanced manufacturing capabilities to improve the U.S. supply chain and national security readiness.”

The event was attended by numerous DOD leaders, including Vic Ramdass, deputy assistant secretary of defense for materiel readiness; Richard Martin, director of supply chain management for the Army Materiel Command; and Jeffrey Sick, director of logistics for the Air Force Sustainment Center. Other participants were David Menzen, deputy director of the Logistics Division and Marine Col. Kirk Spangenberg, commander of the Marine Depot Maintenance Command. During the workshop, they spoke about modernization challenges and technologies important to DOD missions.

OSD ManTech will launch the OIB Modernization Challenge in February 2024 to help develop technologies that could support the department’s efforts to progress in its critical technology areas.