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Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson Presents 2023 Wash100 Award to HII Mission Technologies President Andy Green
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Executive Mosaic CEO Jim Garrettson Presents 2023 Wash100 Award to HII Mission Technologies President Andy Green

HII Mission Technologies President Andy Green accepted his fifth Wash100 Award during an in-person plaque handover by Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the prestigious accolade.

Green, who also holds the executive vice president title at HII, joined this year’s Wash100 group for his key role in transforming the company’s portfolio for continued business growth and national security mission support. Read his full profile here.

Under his leadership, the Mission Technologies division experienced a 2.7 percent jump in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 and a 61.7 percent hike in full year sales, which were driven primarily by a higher volume of work from the acquisition of Alion Science and Technology.

One of the segment’s most significant bookings in 2022 was an $826 million task order for mission and technology support services to the Department of Defense.

Executive Mosaic congratulates Andy Green and the HII organization on their award. The annual Wash100 Award recognizes prominent government and industry figures who have made an exceptional impact on government contracting activity and national security. It also looks forward and anticipates who will be the change-makers in the year to come.

Gen. Charles Brown Commits to Accelerating Change to Maintain Competitive Advantage
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Gen. Charles Brown Commits to Accelerating Change to Maintain Competitive Advantage

Gen. Charles Brown Jr., chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, said he would concentrate on accelerating change in the U.S. military to stay ahead of emerging threats if confirmed as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Brown told the Senate Armed Services Committee that his extensive military experience has made him “mindful of the security challenges at this consequential time and [of] a need to accelerate to stay ahead of the growing threat.”

According to Brown, he has held leadership positions focused on addressing the key threats to U.S. national security.

“I’ve held leadership positions focused on our five national security challenges: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and violent extremists,” he said.

Brown also vowed to work with Congress on strengthening national security efforts and sustaining public trust in the U.S. military.

“Above all, I will dedicate myself to this proposition: That the American people should understand and know their military and its service members solely as unwavering defenders of the Constitution and our nation,” the general said.

If confirmed, Brown would succeed Army Gen. Mark Milley, whose term is slated to end in October.

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Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Joins NSSA Board of Advisors
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Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine Joins NSSA Board of Advisors

Former NASA Administrator and Wash100 Award winner Jim Bridenstine has been selected to the National Security Space Association’s board of advisors.

As a board member, Bridenstine will leverage his extensive experience in the space and national security fields to drive the association’s mission to cultivate and maintain long-term collaborations between the public and private sectors going forward, the NSSA shared with ExecutiveGov in an email sent last week.

“Since the National Security Space Association’s founding, they have managed to create a coalition highlighting the national importance of space that often transcends the national security community,” Bridenstine said.

Bridenstine shared his excitement to contribute to the board, which he said “already holds unparalleled expertise and a wide breadth of perspectives.”

In April 2018, Bridenstine was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 13th NASA administrator, a role he held until January 2021. While serving in this position, Bridenstine played a leading role in progressing NASA’s aeronautic, science and space exploration initiatives.

Before joining NASA, Bridenstine represented Oklahoma’s First Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was a member of the Armed Services Committee and the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Bridenstine assumed his first public sector role as a U.S. Navy pilot in 1998, during which he flew the E-2C Hawkete off the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. Following his transition from active duty to the U.S. Navy Reserve, Bridenstine returned to Tulsa, Oklahoma and assumed the position of executive director at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium.

“Jim brings a diversity of experience and insight that will highly inform the Association’s priorities and focus, thus enabling us to better support the national security space enterprise and our member companies,” said NSSA Chairman Joe Dodd.

Outside of NSSA, Bridenstine works as an independent consultant across multiple defense, aerospace and intelligence markets.

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Jeff Rezmovic Nominated as Homeland Security Department CFO
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Jeff Rezmovic Nominated as Homeland Security Department CFO

Jeff Rezmovic, who most recently served as deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Homeland Security, has been nominated by President Joe Biden to assume the chief financial officer role at DHS.

According to a White House announcement on Tuesday, the national security leader has experience in advancing DHS’ strategic, policy and operational priorities such as counterterrorism, cybersecurity, border security, immigration and emergency management.

Rezmovic also helped Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas oversee DHS’ $98 billion budget and 260,000 personnel.

“Jeff’s accomplishments demonstrate his talent and commitment to making government more capable, efficient and accountable to the people we serve. During his tenure at DHS, he led the creation of the congressionally-mandated Surge Capacity Force,” Mayorkas said about Rezmovic.

Rezmovic’s career with the department started in 2010, when he joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a presidential management fellow and speechwriter.

After that, he assumed roles of increasing responsibility such as acting deputy chief of staff, counselor to the deputy secretary and branch chief at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

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US Government Emails Hacked by Chinese Cyber Attackers
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US Government Emails Hacked by Chinese Cyber Attackers

China-based hackers have breached government email accounts in a cyber attack intended to collect intelligence, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

In total, approximately 25 organizations and government agencies have been affected by the hack, which targeted specific accounts rather than broader organizational networks. According to Adam Hodge, a White House National Security Council spokesman, classified networks were not affected by the attack, and there is an ongoing assessment to identify how much information was compromised.

GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks, president of Brooks Consulting International, told Executive Mosaic that the news is “not surprising,” but that despite this major vulnerability, government agencies are still making positive strides in strengthening the nation’s cybersecurity.

“Government is playing a game of catch up with legacy systems, and agency networks are still potentially exposed from millions of current and past users. The attack surface is a huge one for targeting by state actors,” said Brooks. “As SolarWinds demonstrated, adversaries are likely already lurking in networks.”

The breach is reported to be smaller and less damaging than the SolarWinds hack of 2020, but experts believe it could still provide critical U.S. information to the Chinese government and intensify the ongoing competition between the two countries during a time in which relations are somewhat strained.

“The good news is that I believe the government, led by CISA, NSA and DOD, has recognized the vulnerabilities and are on the right path to closing gaps with policies of zero trust and security by design. Enhancing the public private partnership with intelligence threat sharing for critical infrastructure is also being accelerated,” Brooks shared.

Read Brooks’ latest GovCon Expert piece here for more insights on the country’s cybersecurity posture.

“Mitigating the threats will take time but discovering and fixing the vulnerabilities, and employing risk management roadmaps are a prudent way to make sure the future will be more cyber secure,” he added.

For the latest news and developments on intelligence threats, join the Potomac Officers Club’s 9th Annual Intel Summit on Sep. 21. Don’t miss your chance to learn from and network with intelligence community leaders from NGA, CIA, ODNI and more. Register here.

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

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Report Highlights 2 Risk Factors Associated With Critical Infrastructure Sectors Using Cloud Services
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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.

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

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SDA Plans Procurement of Fire Control System for Missile Tracking Constellation
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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.

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