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Awardees for Minority Business Development Agency’s Capital Readiness Program Announced
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Awardees for Minority Business Development Agency’s Capital Readiness Program Announced

Vice President Kamala Harris has revealed the recommended awardees for a Minority Business Development Agency-led program that seeks to help underserved entrepreneurs expand their businesses.

Funded by the State Small Business Credit Initiative, the Capital Readiness Program is a $125 million technical assistance initiative of the Department of Commerce’s MBDA that was reauthorized through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, MBDA said Thursday.

SSBCI is a $10 billion fund managed by the Department of the Treasury meant to drive investments in small enterprises in various states, territories and tribal governments.

“The Capital Readiness Program will provide the resources and tools to prepare businesses to access capital and funding, and ensure prosperity is within reach for all American entrepreneurs,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The 43 awardees under the program will join MBDA’s National Network of 88 business centers and initiatives that offer technical and business support services to minority business enterprises.

Winning organizations include the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Bridgeway Capital, CIC Innovation Services, Eastern Shore Entrepreneurship Center, Impact Hub Houston and numerous others.

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House Panel Requests Briefing on Proposed Climate Disclosure Rule for Contractors
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House Panel Requests Briefing on Proposed Climate Disclosure Rule for Contractors

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has begun its oversight of a proposed rule that would require government contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and financial risks from climate change.

In doing so, the House panel has requested relevant documents and a staff-level briefing from the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council to understand how the proposed rule could affect U.S. military readiness, according to a Thursday letter addressed to FAR Council Chair Mathew Blum.

These efforts will help the committee assess how the rule may impact the fossil-fuel reliant federal fleet and identify how the Science-Based Targets Initiative would interact with the FAR Council if the rule was implemented.

The committee requested that the FAR Council submit documents and communications with the Department of Defense, NASA and the General Services Administration related to SBTi, operations of the federal fleet, military readiness and cost under the proposed rule no later than Aug. 17. It also said that the staff-level briefing should be conducted no later than Aug. 10.

The rule was introduced in November as part of efforts to address climate risks while strengthening federal supply chains.

According to the proposed policy, third-party international organization SBTi would be in charge of validating contractors’ GHG emissions and setting emissions reduction targets for such companies.

Marine Corps Names Wargaming Center After Former Commandant Robert Neller
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Marine Corps Names Wargaming Center After Former Commandant Robert Neller

The U.S. Marine Corps has named its new wargaming and analysis center after retired Gen. Robert Neller, who served as the 37th commandant of the service branch from September 2015 until his retirement in July 2019.

The General Robert B. Neller Center for Wargaming and Analysis is being constructed on the Marine Corps University campus at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia and is set to reach initial operating capability in 2025, the military service said Friday.

Within its 100,446 gross square feet of space, the Neller Center will use artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics and modeling and simulation processes to enable the Marine Corps to conduct wargaming and analysis across multiple domains and levels of classification.

The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory will maintain the first-of-its-kind wargaming center and work with other services and departments to modernize the facility.

BAE Systems developed the prototype design for the center under a $19 million contract awarded in August 2020.

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DISA Unveils OCONUS Cloud Capability, Advances Joint Operational Edge Initiative
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DISA Unveils OCONUS Cloud Capability, Advances Joint Operational Edge Initiative

The Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a new cloud capability available outside of the contiguous United States.

Now operational at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, OCONUS Region for Stratus marks a step forward in the agency’s work to establish a global infrastructure that links ground-based teams to each other, public and private cloud networks and headquarters, DISA said last week.

The agency’s hosting and compute center has partnered with the office of the Department of Defense’s chief information officer and Special Operations Command to introduce the Joint Operational Edge program, another component of bringing OCONUS to the DOD.

JOE is an interconnected network of large form factor edge computing systems designed to provide Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service and other enterprise service offerings across the DOD. Compute offerings under the JOE initiative can be procured through the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract.

DOD CIO John Sherman, a two-time Wash100 awardee, recently released a memo calling for military departments and other DOD entities to leverage the JWCC contract to purchase future enterprise wide cloud service offerings across all classification levels as part of a push to rationalize cloud adoption across the department.

DOD Teams With Selmet to Bolster Turbine Engine Supply Chain; Laura Taylor-Kale Quoted
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DOD Teams With Selmet to Bolster Turbine Engine Supply Chain; Laura Taylor-Kale Quoted

In line with the Department of Defense’s goal to bolster U.S. supply chains, its Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy has entered into a $1.31 million agreement with Selmet, Inc., a Consolidated Precision Products company.

The partnership, which was established through the office’s Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization office, will help Selmet produce specialty titanium castings used for turbine engines on F-15, F-16, F-22 and F-35 aircraft, the DOD announced on Friday.

“Resiliency at all points in our defense industrial base is required to ensure the operational availability of the platforms on which our warfighters depend. Upstream supporting activities are just as important as the manufacturing of final products” said Laura Taylor-Kale, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy.

Made under the Defense Production Act Title III authorities and funded by the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, the agreement will allow Selmet to procure and install the specific equipment needed to produce its titanium castings.

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US Navy Lengthens Service Life of 4 Arleigh Burke-Class Ships
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US Navy Lengthens Service Life of 4 Arleigh Burke-Class Ships

The U.S. Navy has cleared a service life extension for four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers stationed in Virginia and Japan.

The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Surface Warfare Division, extended the service life of the USS Ramage and USS Benfold by five years, and the USS Mitscher and USS Milius by four years, the service branch announced Wednesday.

“These service life extensions demonstrate the Navy’s commitment to ensuring the surface fleet has the right capability and capacity,” said Rear Adm. Fred Pyle, director of Surface Warfare (N96).

The Ramage and Mitscher are homeported in Norfolk, Virginia. The former will stay in active duty until fiscal year 2035, while the latter will be in service until FY 2034. The Benfold and Milius are stationed in Yokosuka, Japan, and will be reviewed again in 2036 and 2035, respectively.

“These extensions align to Secretary of the Navy Del Toro’s commitment to Congress during the FY-24 posture hearings to analyze service life on a hull-by-hull basis and extend the correct ships in order to be good stewards of resources invested in the U.S. Navy by the American people,” Pyle said.

Each of the guided-missile destroyers underwent Aegis baseline modernization upgrades as part of the DDG modernization initiative.

This approval was announced a day after the Navy awarded multiyear procurement contracts for the construction of nine DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class ships in Flight III configuration. The projects were granted to HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works business.

MSU Secures $529M DOE Funding to Extend Rare Isotope Research
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MSU Secures $529M DOE Funding to Extend Rare Isotope Research

The Department of Energy‘s Office of Science has awarded $529 million in funding to Michigan State University to continue nuclear science research at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, MSUToday reported Friday.

Under the five-year cooperative agreement, FRIB will serve as a user facility for DOE-SC to study the properties and fundamental interactions of rare isotopes and nuclear astrophysics and their applications in medicine, homeland security and industry.

FRIB has provided over 200 rare isotope beams for experiments and supported over 500 participants worldwide, including scientists from colleges, universities and national laboratories, since user facility operation commenced in May 2022.

The facility also supports chip testing for advanced semiconductor devices, the harvesting of unused isotopes for use in several fields of study and the development of new technologies for other industries and applications.

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National Institutes of Health Names Jeanne Marrazzo NIAID Director
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National Institutes of Health Names Jeanne Marrazzo NIAID Director

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been chosen to lead the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Her appointment to the NIAID director post will take effect in the fall, and she will succeed NIAID Acting Director Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, who stepped into the role after Dr. Anthony Fauci’s departure in December, the National Institutes of Health said Wednesday.

Marrazzo’s early career experience includes time as a faculty member at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

She was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Physicians in 1996, and became chair of the Subspecialty Board on Infectious Disease by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 2012.

Marrazzo is a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America and a specialist in HIV and the human microbiome. The Lesbian/Bisexual Women’s Health Study, which she co-founded, was noticed and funded by NIAID.

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CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein Discusses Cybersecurity Strategic Plan for 2024-2026
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CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein Discusses Cybersecurity Strategic Plan for 2024-2026

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has released its Fiscal Year 2024-2026 Cybersecurity Strategic Plan, which will assemble government and industry players, both within and outside the United States, to implement foundational shifts in IT protection in the nation.

In a blog post published last week, Eric Goldstein, CISA’s executive assistant director of cybersecurity, discussed the strategy, which centers three main goals: addressing immediate threats, bolstering security resilience and treating Internet-based defense as a national safety issue.

To mitigate urgent threats, CISA will intensify efforts to study how attacks really occur, as well as coordinate information sharing and crackdown on threats. It will also refine metrics to measure the efficacy of tools and other investments for cybersecurity, and build a specialized workforce to patrol existing and emerging technologies.

“Ultimately, cybersecurity is a whole of CISA, whole of government, whole of nation mission. It takes every one of us to contribute to our individual and societal security,” Goldstein wrote.

“Through our shared efforts, we believe 2023 can be an inflection point when we shift the arc of national risk to create a safer future for generations to come,” he stated.

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Defense Logistics Agency Elevates Adarryl Roberts to CIO
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Defense Logistics Agency Elevates Adarryl Roberts to CIO

Adarryl Roberts has been elevated from program executive officer to chief information officer at the Defense Logistics Agency, according to a LinkedIn post on Sunday.

Roberts has been with the DLA for over a decade, beginning as a portfolio manager for enterprise sourcing, medical and contingency in 2012.

As PEO, he oversaw the major automated information systems and special interest programs of the DLA. Prior to taking on the PEO role, he was director of the agency’s Business Systems Center of Excellence.

In his first position with the DLA, Roberts spent three years overseeing 14 program managers that served the Department of Defense and DLA’s enterprise programs focused on procurement, finance and equipment management.

Roberts has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. He earned Acquisition Management Level III and Acquisition Contracting Level III certifications at the Defense Acquisition University.

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