DOE Grants $72M in Clean Energy R&D Project Funding
Published on
DOE Grants $72M in Clean Energy R&D Project Funding

The Department of Energy has allocated $72 million to fund 296 small business-led projects to advance clean energy research and development.

DOE said Monday it will support the efforts through its Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs and source the funds from seven DOE offices.

Focus areas are renewable energy, nuclear energy, cybersecurity, advanced materials and manufacturing, microelectronics and artificial intelligence.

Some of the selected small businesses are EC Power Group, ecoLong, EvolOH, Faraday Technology, Gulf Wind Technology, Physical Sciences, Pitch Aeronautics, Tetramer Technologies, UBERSPARK and Wyonics.

The awardees will initially focus on establishing the technical feasibility of their proposed innovations during Phase I. The grants awarded during this initial stage amount to an average of $200,000 and have a duration of six months to one year.

Phase I awardees will have the opportunity to compete for larger Phase II grants for prototype development, although some projects have already been merited awards that fast-track them to the second stage.

NOAA Launches Accelerator Program to Advance Ocean-Based Climate Resilience Tech Commercialization
Published on
NOAA Launches Accelerator Program to Advance Ocean-Based Climate Resilience Tech Commercialization

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced a new Inflation Reduction Act-funded endeavor to support the commercialization of ocean-based climate resilience technologies.

NOAA said Monday the $60 million Ocean-Based Climate Resilience Accelerators program will fund accelerator entities that will support small businesses in the development and maturation of sustainable technologies designed to help communities prepare and build resilience to climate challenges.

The funding program will focus on several theme areas that align with the U.S. Ocean Climate Action Plan, including ocean-based renewable energy, hazard mitigation and coastal resilience and coastal and ocean carbon sequestration monitoring and accounting.

Under phase one, NOAA will award up to $250,000 per accelerator to develop the scope and design of a climate resilience accelerator program.

Selected participants may apply for funding of up to $10 million each to implement their program design.

Interested parties have until Sept. 11 to apply for the competition.

/
Report Highlights 2 Risk Factors Associated With Critical Infrastructure Sectors Using Cloud Services
Published on
Report Highlights 2 Risk Factors Associated With Critical Infrastructure Sectors Using Cloud Services

A report by the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative under the Digital Forensic Research Lab has identified compounded dependence and delegated control and visibility as two risk factors that should inform the design of a national cloud risk management policy for critical infrastructure sectors.

Compounded dependence emerges when widespread adoption of cloud service offerings prompts organizations to rely on a few technology systems, while delegated control and visibility can create risks when cloud services adopters lose visibility into the operations of technology systems, according to the report published Monday.

Maia Hamin, associate director at the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, told Nextgov/FCW that challenges with the two risk factors are rising as organizations move to outsource major components of their risk management initiatives to cloud service providers.

“Because there are so few cloud providers and services are interlinked through complex webs of dependencies, one outage or compromise could impact a host of organizations at a time, making the risks of compounded or interlinked failure more acute,” Hamin added.

The report calls for the establishment of cloud management offices within sector risk management agencies to help improve cloud visibility within critical infrastructure sectors.

The document also comes with three policy recommendations, the first being the need to systematically assess cloud computing use in critical sectors.

The two other recommendations are surveying and updating cloud policies and resources and developing a structure for cross-sector cloud risk oversight.

/
Kathleen Hicks Inspects Work on Navy’s Largest Contract With Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard Visit
Published on
Kathleen Hicks Inspects Work on Navy’s Largest Contract With Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard Visit

Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of the Department of Defense and a 2023 Wash100 awardee, visited the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawaii on Friday to get to know more about a concrete dry dock construction project being carried out under a potential $2.8 billion task order, Naval Sea Systems Command reported Monday.

In March, the Navy awarded the task order to a Dragados-Hawaiian Dredging-Orion joint venture to replace Dry Dock 3 with a new graving dock, dubbed Dry Dock 5, meant to help the PHNSY improve its capability to maintain and modernize the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s nuclear-powered submarines.

Hicks was joined during the visit by Brendan Owens, assistant secretary of Defense for energy, installations and environment; Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; and Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii.

/
SDA Plans Procurement of Fire Control System for Missile Tracking Constellation
Published on
SDA Plans Procurement of Fire Control System for Missile Tracking Constellation

The Space Development Agency is seeking industry feedback on a draft solicitation for a procurement effort to build the fire-control segment of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture system.

A notice posted Friday on SAM.gov states that the Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter program will comprise eight prototype satellites equipped with electro-optical/infrared sensors.

Each space vehicle will provide fire control capabilities for SDA’s low Earth orbit satellite constellation for tracking hypersonic missile systems and other advanced missile threats.

SDA plans to award other transaction authorities to more than one vendor to build and deploy the FOO Fighter satellites in a single launch in fiscal year 2026. The agency may acquire additional satellites and sensor payloads under the OTAs to inform constellation design requirements.

Interested parties may submit feedback until Aug. 7.

DIU’s Hybrid Space Architecture to Expand Military Access to Commercial Satellite Imagery
Published on
DIU’s Hybrid Space Architecture to Expand Military Access to Commercial Satellite Imagery

Rogan Shimmin, program manager for the Hybrid Space Architecture project at the Defense Innovation Unit, said the HSA initiative could make it easier for the Department of Defense to buy satellite imagery and intelligence from commercial providers, C4ISRNET reported Monday.

He shared that the hybrid architecture would enable military users to purchase data on a case-by-case basis and get insight into where the information originated.

“It’s all attributable, which gives us a bit of verification, a bit of history — if there’s a flaw found in one of the products, we can prevent that from happening,” Shimmin explained.

“Also, it allows for micro-transactions to reimburse each of these providers when their products have been sued, which creates a commercial incentive for the better analytics to bubble to the top,” he added.

In November 2022, the DIU selected Amazon’s cloud computing business, along with Project Kuiper, Microsoft and SpiderOak Mission Systems to support the development of an agile and resilient communications architecture.

/
Gen. Eric Smith Takes Over as Marine Corps Acting Commandant
Published on
Gen. Eric Smith Takes Over as Marine Corps Acting Commandant

Gen. Eric Smith, assistant commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, assumed additional duties as acting commandant of the service branch following Gen. David Berger’s retirement after more than four decades in service and four years at the helm of USMC, USNI News reported Monday.

The Senate has yet to confirm Smith, who testified before the upper chamber in mid-June with regard to his nomination to the USMC commandant role. He is the first acting commandant since 1910.

“Because no 39th commandant has yet been confirmed by the Senate, I will perform the duties of the commandant using the full authority of that office until such time as a confirmation occurs,” Smith said in a video message after the relinquishment of command ceremony.

Smith said he will focus on advancing the service’s overhaul efforts and ensuring the force’s readiness to respond to crises worldwide, according to a report by the Marine Corps Times.

“I still retain the authorities of the office of the commandant, so as far as budgetary, experimentation, changing formations, I can still do all that,” the general said. “And those things that are working well for us — long-range fires, et cetera — we will move faster on them as long as we have a defense budget.”

/
Dr. Stacey Dixon of ODNI Accepts Wash100 Award From Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson
Published on
Dr. Stacey Dixon of ODNI Accepts Wash100 Award From Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson

Dr. Stacey Dixon, principal deputy director of national intelligence, was presented with her fourth Wash100 Award during a meeting with Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson.

She is one of the most popular inductees in the 2023 Wash100 — as proven by her status as the award’s 2021 popular vote champion. Dr. Dixon attained her 2023 award by commandeering strategies such as robotic process automation and open source intelligence to ensure protection and ethical use of sensitive data.

Every year, Wash100 highlights leaders who were instrumental in advancing the government contracting sector. Dr. Dixon’s full award profile is published here.

With Dr. Dixon as one of its pillars, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence helped dispel disinformation from Russia in the days leading up to its invasion of Ukraine. Taking lessons learned from the conflict, she expressed the importance of studying open source information in balancing data intelligence and the right to privacy.

At the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s 2022 GEOINT Symposium, Dr. Dixon endorsed public-private collaboration as a vital element to enhance domestic GEOINT capability. Partnerships “enhance our ability to do our job better, so our customers can do theirs, and keep our country safe, while upholding the democratic principles [on] which our nation and other free societies were built,” she remarked.

“As an individual who has held some of the highest, most consequential roles in the intelligence community, Stacey is uniquely positioned to help guide ODNI’s mission and strengthen the country’s information advantage,” said Garrettson, who founded the Wash100 Award.

Dr. Stacey Dixon of ODNI Accepts Wash100 Award From Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson

Hear Dr. Dixon deliver a keynote address to the Potomac Officers Club’s 9th Annual Intel Summit on Sep. 21! Register now and save your seat at this important and timely forum.

/
RTX Business Secures $66M Contract Modification for F135 Core Engine Upgrade Program; Jen Latka Quoted
Published on
RTX Business Secures $66M Contract Modification for F135 Core Engine Upgrade Program; Jen Latka Quoted

An RTX subsidiary has received a $66 million definitized contract modification to extend its F135 Engine Core Upgrade preliminary design work.

The award, which was funded by the Connecticut congressional delegation, brings the total contract value to $180 million and will be used to advance Pratt & Whitney’s efforts under the engine modernization project, the East Hartford, Connecticut-based company announced on Tuesday.

Jen Latka, vice president for the F135 program at Pratt & Whitney, said that the organization is “extremely grateful for the ceaseless support” of the Connecticut delegation.

“We’ll use this funding to make quick progress on our Engine Core Upgrade’s preliminary design efforts, and that will keep us on track to deliver this important capability starting in 2028,” she said.

Specific areas the new allocations will support include design engineering, program management and technology maturation, as well as risk reduction, long lead material and hardware purchase and weapons system integration.

Announced in March 2023 as part of President Biden’s 2024 budget proposal, the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy decided to revitalize the F135 as opposed to replacing it with a completely new engine.

“A modernized F-35 needs a modernized engine to support it,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Ct.

This additional funding, she asserted, will help Connecticut and the broader U.S. maintain a skilled workforce to create the important capability.

“Upgrading the F135 is the right decision to support our national defense priorities and defense industrial base, and I’ll continue to ensure this program gets the support and funding it needs,” DeLauro added.

The F135 ECU is a fast, cost-effective and low-risk path to Block 4 capability for every F-35 operator globally. Built for all three F-35 variants, the F135 ECU is expected to produce $40 billion in lifecycle cost savings by utilizing the current global sustainment infrastructure and limiting disruptive and expensive air vehicle changes.

Pratt & Whitney booked the initial $115 million contract in December 2022. At the time of the announcement, DeLauro emphasized the company’s workforce of 11,000 in East Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut alone. Across the country, the F135 initiative supports over 53,000 jobs spanning 36 states.

/
European Commission Issues Adequacy Decision Supporting EU-US Data Privacy Pact
Published on
European Commission Issues Adequacy Decision Supporting EU-US Data Privacy Pact

The European Commission affirmed the adequacy of the U.S. government’s data protection measures for personal information sharing between European Union and U.S.-based companies.

The decision advances the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, which aims to ensure the safe and secure transmission of personal information from EU to U.S. organizations, the commission said Monday.

The draft framework was revised to address concerns by the European Court of Justice about the extent of U.S. companies’ access to EU data. In the newest version, a Data Protection Review Court to be established under the framework will be authorized to order the deletion of information if it was obtained in violation of data safeguards.

“The decision reflects our joint commitment to strong data privacy protections and will create greater economic opportunities for our countries and companies on both sides of the Atlantic,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in an official White House statement.

1 … 507 508 509 510 511 … 2,610