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DOE to Fund National Laboratory-Led Clean Energy Tech R&D Projects
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DOE to Fund National Laboratory-Led Clean Energy Tech R&D Projects

The Department of Energy will finance national laboratory projects focused on the development of commercially viable clean energy and decarbonization technologies.

According to the 2023 Technology Commercialization Fund Base Annual Appropriations National Laboratory Call released Wednesday, efforts should focus on five research areas working to reduce embodied energy and carbon emissions from materials, buildings and industrial processes.

The research priorities include the development of eco-friendly building materials, advanced systems for energy-efficient buildings, thermal energy storage and waste heat recovery technologies, advanced heat pump components and national lab technology projects that use the lab embedded entrepreneurship program.

TCF is an initiative that DOE and national laboratories collaboratively push to support the commercialization of federally funded research and development investments in technologies.

DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Office of Technology Transitions sponsored the lab call.

An online information session about the lab call will occur next Tuesday, while project proposals from interested laboratories will be accepted until June 30.

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GAO: OSTP Needs to Address Priority Recommendations Related to Interagency Collaboration, Climate Risk Management
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GAO: OSTP Needs to Address Priority Recommendations Related to Interagency Collaboration, Climate Risk Management

The Government Accountability Office identified eight priority open recommendations for the Office of Science and Technology Policy in July 2022 and found that OSTP implemented only one: the adoption of practices that improve and sustain collaboration.

GAO said Wednesday OSTP should address the seven remaining priority recommendations to achieve improvements in government operations.

These recommendations are classified into three areas: strengthening interagency collaboration; managing climate risks; and tracking progress toward national goals.

For the first area, suggested best practices include fully implementing leading activities for collaboration and developing a plan to address data limitations for potentially critical materials.

Under the second area, GAO recommends that OSTP identify the best available climate data for use in infrastructure planning and clarify sources of local assistance for integrating climate-related data and analysis into infrastructure planning.

GAO has three priority recommendations that fall in the third area: addressing characteristics of a national strategy for high-performance computing; preparing annual reports on HPC that assess progress made in implementing the 2020 strategic plan; and identifying information to gather from federal agencies to determine whether the objectives in the National Strategic Plan for Advanced Manufacturing are being met.

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Report: 84% of GEOINT Practitioners Believe AI Tech Adoption Could Accelerate Government Mission Outcomes
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Report: 84% of GEOINT Practitioners Believe AI Tech Adoption Could Accelerate Government Mission Outcomes

A study underwritten by Hitachi Vantara Federal and Rubrik found that 84 percent of geospatial intelligence practitioners in the government and higher education sectors believe organizations could improve mission outcomes through artificial intelligence adoption.

MeriTalk and the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation collaborated with the two data management companies to survey 100 GEOINT professionals in February about their priorities and anticipated challenges for the next decade.

The report noted GEOINT organizations are looking to prioritize the adoption of AI and other emerging technologies in the next 10 years, even though only 37 percent of the respondents have formalized a strategy to help implement AI.

Overall, 87 percent said they believe GEOINT technology is underutilized in the public sector and fewer than one-third gave an A grade to their organization for supporting key technology initiatives outlined in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s 2025 Technology Strategy, which recommends incorporating AI, cloud and supercomputing systems into the sector.

Looking forward, 48 percent of respondents are considering investing in data analytics over the next two years as they believe tools that offer data-driven insight will be the most important GEOINT technology development within a decade.

However, survey participants forecast that a skills gap will be the primary challenge in their discipline.

Respondents expect GEOINT to have the most significant advantages for disaster response, health geography, climate change and urban planning initiatives.

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SSC Delivers Final Space Sensor Payload for Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System
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SSC Delivers Final Space Sensor Payload for Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System

Space Systems Command has delivered the second and final U.S.-developed space sensor payload scheduled to launch aboard Japan’s geostationary satellites.

SSC said Wednesday the payloads were developed in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratories as part of the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System-Hosted Payload program.

According to the command, the payloads will contribute to the U.S. Space Force’s space domain awareness mission and the Department of Defense’s integrated deterrence strategy in the Indo-Pacific.

The program also supports the commitment of Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations and a 2023 Wash100 awardee, to “Line Of Effort #3: Partner to Win,” which highlights that “space Power is a collaborative endeavor.”

“QZSS-HP is paving the way for our space partnership efforts, as demonstrated by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and L3 Harris. Diversity of orbits, ground architectures, data paths, and host satellites is a distinct feature and distinct strength of the future architecture,” said Brig. Gen. Timothy Sejba, program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power.

IARPA Awards Contracts to 9 Teams Under New Biointelligence & Biosecurity for IC Program
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IARPA Awards Contracts to 9 Teams Under New Biointelligence & Biosecurity for IC Program

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity established a new program aimed at discovering innovations to improve the U.S. intelligence community’s biointelligence and biosecurity capabilities.

The research program has awarded contracts to nine teams, and will be divided into two phases with performance periods of nine months and 15 months, respectively, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced Wednesday.

The Biointelligence and Biosecurity for the Intelligence Community program is interested in technologies that can detect or characterize biological targets of interest. It will also fund projects that use cellular memory to improve biosecurity, as well as technologies that fortify the data infrastructure of biological samples, biotechnologies and synthetic biology.

IARPA has chosen the first set of teams to participate in the program. The contract awardees are comprised of nonprofit groups, companies and academic institutions. They are led by the following organizations:

  • Battelle Memorial Institute
  • Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
  • Exodigm Biosciences
  • Georgia Tech Research Institute
  • Ginkgo Bioworks
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • MRIGlobalQ
  • Quantitative BioSciences
  • Raytheon BBN
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Rep. Rob Wittman Co-presents Bipartisan Bill to Create Joint Autonomy Office within Pentagon’s CDAO
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Rep. Rob Wittman Co-presents Bipartisan Bill to Create Joint Autonomy Office within Pentagon’s CDAO

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said a joint autonomy office within the Department of Defense’s chief digital and artificial intelligence office could help DOD facilitate coordination and push the adoption of autonomous systems, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

Wittman and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., introduced a bill that would create the office within CDAO to speed up the development and delivery of autonomous platforms in support of U.S. military operations.

Wittman said that office proposed in the Autonomous Systems Adoption and Policy Act would serve as a single venue for how the department directs its efforts and policy related to autonomous technologies.

“We’ve seen in the Pentagon where there has been a movement towards autonomy at a faster pace than has happened in the past. But as in, again, part of the element of any large organization and bureaucracy, it’s still very fragmented,” he said during his keynote speech at an event Wednesday.

“If we’re going to have unity and purpose, it needs to be in a single place… This bill allows that to happen,” Wittman added.

The JAO proposed in the bipartisan measure would offer a departmentwide framework to classify autonomous capabilities, an enterprise platform for all-domain autonomy testing and plans and methods to standardize resourcing, planning and integration efforts.

MITRE Recommends Agile System Engineering Approach to Pentagon’s JADC2 Initiative
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MITRE Recommends Agile System Engineering Approach to Pentagon’s JADC2 Initiative

MITRE’s Center for Data-Driven Policy has released a new paper outlining a set of recommendations on how the Department of Defense could advance the deployment of its Joint All Domain Command and Control capabilities.

The research center recommended taking an agile, “bottom-up” approach to systems engineering to address user needs, ensure working products and rapidly iterate to fix issues, MITRE said Wednesday.

“Traditional systems engineering has been leading toward a top-down effort to implement JADC2 capabilities, whereas MITRE recommended a bottom-up approach of iterative experimentation to determine what really needs to be built,” the paper reads.

DOD must also use experimentation to understand gaps in a JADC2 system of systems and expand its use of operational analysis, the McLeaen, Virginia-based company believes.

The paper was authored by Jordan Fletcher, a department chief engineer at the MITRE National Security Engineering Center, and Eliahu Niewood, vice president of air and space forces for MITRE’s national security sector.

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Army Contracting Command Signs Enterprise Agreement With Carahsoft for ServiceNow Licenses
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Army Contracting Command Signs Enterprise Agreement With Carahsoft for ServiceNow Licenses

A team from Army Contracting Command-Rock Island’s Information Technology Directorate has formed an enterprise agreement with Carahsoft Technology to deliver a full suite of ServiceNow licenses to the U.S. Army.

The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract is valued at $432 million over five years and covers the provision of 1.2 million licenses for software and hardware asset management, information technology asset management, IT operations management and customer service management, the Army said Wednesday.

“This enterprise agreements consolidation of the existing licenses and purchase of additional licenses utilizes buying power to provide the Army with a discounted price and make the products and services available to all the Army,” said Ashley Smith, a contracting officer within ACC-RI’s Information Technology Directorate.

Without the enterprise agreement, the Army would have spent approximately $3.9 billion on ServiceNow product licenses over a five-year course.

“Spending $3.9 billion is unaffordable to the Army and never could have been procured on an individual or command basis, leaving the Army unable to utilize the full benefits of the ServiceNow suite of products,” Smith said.

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Colin Kahl to Step Down as DOD Undersecretary for Policy; Lloyd Austin Quoted
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Colin Kahl to Step Down as DOD Undersecretary for Policy; Lloyd Austin Quoted

Colin Kahl will step down from his role as undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense in mid-July.

Lloyd Austin, defense secretary and 2023 Wash100 Award winner, said in a statement published Wednesday that under Kahl’s leadership, the department launched its National Defense Strategy and facilitated U.S. security assistance for Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion.

Kahl’s “strategic insights, deep understanding of international relations, and staunch commitment to strengthening our national defense have been crucial in shaping our policies, seizing geopolitical opportunities, and tackling a range of challenges around the world,” Austin said.

In April 2021, Kahl assumed his current position, serving as a principal adviser to the DOD secretary for defense and national security policy and overseeing efforts to facilitate defense cooperation and partnerships with allies.

He was co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

His previous government roles include deputy assistant to the president and national security adviser to the vice president and deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

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LinQuest Elevates Stephen Chambal to EVP & CGO
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LinQuest Elevates Stephen Chambal to EVP & CGO

Stephen Chambal has been selected as executive vice president and chief growth officer of LinQuest Corporation.

In his new role, Chambal will oversee LinQuest’s business development team and guide corporate strategy with an emphasis on program development, the Herdon, Virginia-based company announced on Thursday.

“We are very excited to have Stephen lead our growth efforts. His exceptional skills and deep experience will be a catalyst to add even more momentum to our current growth trajectory,” said LinQuest President and CEO Greg Young.

As the organization’s business development lead, Chambal will drive expansion within defense and intelligence markets, including National Security Space and Department of the Air Force Operational Imperatives. The executive will also target broader client focus areas, such as systems development, digital transformation, integration and execution.

Before joining LinQuest, Chambal spent 24 years in the U.S. Air Force as a scientific analyst, where his work informed the decisions of USAF leaders. He later co-founded The Perduco Group, a defense and intelligence community-focused contractor where he served as CEO. In 2019, LinQuest acquired The Perduco Group and Chambal joined the former as senior vice president of strategic growth.

Chambal said that his time as part of the LinQuest team “has been a great experience” and highlighted the organization’s “rich and impressive history of innovation.”

“I’m excited about this opportunity to take our company forward in the service of our defense and intelligence community customers. We’re expecting continued rapid growth as we deliver high level solutions for our customers with a mission-first, people-always mindset,” he added.

Chambal’s appointment follows LinQuest’s promotion of Young to his current position in January. He succeeded Timothy Dills, who concluded his career after holding the chief executive role for almost four years.

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