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NTIA Requests Comments on National Spectrum Strategy; Gina Raimondo Quoted
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NTIA Requests Comments on National Spectrum Strategy; Gina Raimondo Quoted

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration is soliciting comments on the development and implementation of a long-term planning strategy to support current and future spectrum requirements of the public and private sectors.

NTIA said Wednesday the National Spectrum Strategy would address the needs of spectrum-dependent services and technologies, including broadband services, satellite communications, medical devices, small cities and manufacturing applications.

“Starting today, we are seeking input on how we can make the most efficient use of this critical resource, with the goal of identifying new spectrum bands for potential repurposing that will spur competition and innovation for years to come,” announced Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The framework would focus on three goals: developing a spectrum pipeline to ensure U.S. leadership in spectrum-driven technologies, implementing a long-term strategic spectrum planning process and expanding the overall spectrum capacity or usability through technology.

Responses are due April 17.

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SEC Proposes Cybersecurity Requirements for Securities Markets; Gary Gensler Quoted
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SEC Proposes Cybersecurity Requirements for Securities Markets; Gary Gensler Quoted

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed new requirements to address cybersecurity risks to the U.S. securities markets, including enforcing written policies and procedures to counter digital threats.

Market entities must also conduct annual reviews and assessments to ensure the effectiveness of their policies and determine whether they reflect changes in the cybersecurity threat landscape during the time of the review, SEC said Wednesday.

The commission aims to use information from the reports to boost its ability to obtain information about significant cybersecurity incidents in the sector and to address their severe impacts on investors.

“The nature, scale, and impact of cybersecurity risks have grown significantly in recent decades. Investors, issuers, and market participants alike would benefit from knowing that these entities have in place protections fit for a digital age,” said Gary Gensler, chairman of the SEC.

The proposed rules will affect the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and other market entities, including clearing agencies, broker-dealers, national securities associations and exchanges.

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SSC, NASA Send Space Test Program-Houston 9 Mission to International Space Station
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SSC, NASA Send Space Test Program-Houston 9 Mission to International Space Station

Space Systems Command and NASA launched eight experimental payloads to the International Space Station on Tuesday as part of a mission meant to support the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program.

The STP-Houston 9 mission carrying the payloads lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon spacecraft on behalf of the company’s 27th commercial resupply mission to ISS.

Dragon is expected to dock to the orbiting laboratory on Thursday, March 16, to enable robotic operators from NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Japan Exploration Aerospace Agency to extract the STP-H9 payload from the spacecraft’s trunk and attach it to the Japanese Experiment Module on the space station, SSC said Wednesday.

“This mission will test a wide range of technologies from artificial intelligence and machine learning, new space radiation and gammaray detectors, wireless power beaming, variable voltage power supplies, and observations of the ionosphere and the effects of gravity waves in the stratosphere,” said Rick Caldwell, SSC mission manager for the STP-H9 payload.

The Air Force Research Laboratory, Naval Research Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force Academy and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory participated in the development of the STP-H9 mission.

US Marine Corps Seeks Industry Input on Live, Virtual & Constructive Training Program
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US Marine Corps Seeks Industry Input on Live, Virtual & Constructive Training Program

The U.S. Marine Corps is requesting information from vendors that can provide technologies to improve its Live, Virtual and Constructive training continuum.

In a notice posted on SAM.gov, the service branch said the request for information is part of Project Tripoli, which aims to transform Marine Corps training in various domains and locations within and outside the continental United States.

Project Tripoli’s LVC-Training Environment was created to instill military preparedness, from individuals to Marine expeditionary forces. The program will also facilitate skills development in land, maritime, air, space and cyberspace domains, across all warfighting functions.

To advance the project, the service intends to procure virtual, augmented or mixed reality systems for combat vehicle simulation. It is also looking into 5G wireless connectivity, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning-assisted training platforms.

The branch will wait for RFI responses until April 11. The Marine Corps Systems Command Program Manager for Training Systems is managing the RFI.

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DOD Industrial Base Senior Advisor Erin Simpson to Lead Joint Production Accelerator Cell
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DOD Industrial Base Senior Advisor Erin Simpson to Lead Joint Production Accelerator Cell

The Department of Defense has promoted Erin Simpson, senior advisor of industrial base policy, to executive director of the agency’s Joint Production Accelerator Cell, Simpson announced in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

She will lead the DOD team that explores innovative technologies to improve weapons manufacturing capacity and flexibility.

The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment established JPAC earlier this month to manage the expansion of munition production lines. Simpson was chosen one year after she assumed the role of senior advisor.

Prior to joining the agency, Simpson founded a business services firm called Archer Avenue Consulting. She also worked for more than four years at Northrop Grumman, where she served as director of a variety of programs, including space systems strategy development and deployment.

DOE to Award $750M in Grants to Clean Hydrogen R&D Projects; Jennifer Granholm Quoted
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DOE to Award $750M in Grants to Clean Hydrogen R&D Projects; Jennifer Granholm Quoted

The Department of Energy has been authorized to release $750 million in funding for research, development and demonstration of cost-effective clean hydrogen technologies.

The funding is the first of two provisions to be implemented under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which dedicates $1.5 billion to the advancement and cost reduction of clean hydrogen systems, the agency said Wednesday.

“Making clean hydrogen from abundant renewable energy provides America with yet another incredibly powerful fuel for many different applications, from low-emissions use in the construction and manufacturing industries to energy storage to powering our cars and trucks,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm commented.

The Biden administration committed to supporting initiatives to enhance clean hydrogen recycling capabilities. Through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the administration also pledged to finance projects that aim to lower the cost of electrolysis-based manufacturing of clean hydrogen..

DOE intends to award cooperative agreements with performance periods between two and five years. The grants are open to companies, academic institutions, national laboratories, and diverse or underrepresented entities. The agency will accept concept papers until April 19, and full applications until July 19.

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Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman on Industry Partnerships’ Role in Army Readiness
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Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman on Industry Partnerships’ Role in Army Readiness

Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman, deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Futures Command, said the service branch is using other transaction agreements and other nontraditional approaches to strengthen industry partnerships and accelerate the acquisition of new technologies.

During a panel discussion at Optiv Cyber House in Austin, Coffman explained that the Army supports business arrangements with the private industry to gain access to capabilities designed to boost soldier readiness. The Army reported Coffman’s remarks on Wednesday.

“Everything that we do is focused on making our women and men in uniform successful on the future battlefield,” Coffman said.

He noted that the service branch provides broad opportunities beyond technology research and development programs to build a diverse industry base.

Coffman also acknowledged the importance of timely communications with partners to ensure a clear understanding.

“Like any relationship, communication is probably the most important thing,” he said.

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DISA’s Sharon Woods: DOD Eyes Release of Secret-Level Bid Offerings to JWCC Cloud Contract Awardees
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DISA’s Sharon Woods: DOD Eyes Release of Secret-Level Bid Offerings to JWCC Cloud Contract Awardees

Sharon Woods, director of the hosting and compute center at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said the Department of Defense intends to release in the coming weeks secret-level bid offerings to four companies that secured spots on the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

In December, DOD awarded Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle positions on the potential $9 billion JWCC contract. 

The extension of these offerings will ostensibly enable each of the four vendors to know more about the Pentagon’s requirements and make a proposal.

“That’s a capability we really don’t have in the department – an enterprise top secret cloud environment,” Woods said at an event Tuesday. 

“You know, the intelligence community does, but the department…is not able to leverage that contract and so that is one of those capability gaps that JWCC is meeting,” she added.

Woods noted that the department expects to issue top secret-level offerings in the summer and that the first task orders under the cloud contract are also “in the pipeline.”

She stated that DOD is looking at whether offerings under JWCC could help drive cloud initiatives of individual service branches.

“But separate from that…they’re creating their own environments, their own production environments, they’re layering on DevSecOps and tactical edge capabilities in a number of things,” Woods said. “There’s nothing about JWCC that stops them from doing that.”

CGI Brings 700 New Jobs to Louisiana’s Acadiana Region with Lafayette Onshore Delivery Center; William LaBar Quoted
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CGI Brings 700 New Jobs to Louisiana’s Acadiana Region with Lafayette Onshore Delivery Center; William LaBar Quoted

CGI has created over 700 jobs at its U.S. Onshore Delivery Center, a facility located in Lafayette, Louisiana that is dedicated to offering technology employment opportunities for local and former residents of the Acadiana region as well as others nationwide.

The center, which was established in 2014, has built a workforce that supports both public and private sector clients with digital modernization initiatives, the Montreal, Canada-based company said Thursday.

Don Pierson, secretary of Louisiana Economic Development, noted that this number significantly exceeded the predicted 400 jobs.

“CGI is a shining example of higher-education partnerships, business assistance programs and specialized workforce training combining to fuel technology sector expansion. The result is a rapidly diversifying state economy that is empowering our citizens with high-paying jobs, new skills and new opportunities for professional and personal success,” said Pierson.

Lafayette Economic Development Authority President and CEO Mandi Mitchell said that the jobs created by CGI have had a “transformative impact” on the wider Acadiana region by serving to uplift and “diversify the local business base.”

Within CGI’s hiring endeavors, approximately 35 percent are selected through a college recruiting program and over 25 percent have relocated to the area from outside Louisiana. The enterprise has identified over 60 open positions at the center in which new payroll has passed projections for the eighth consecutive year.

Alongside these efforts, the Lafayette center has cultivated a partnership with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, which includes CGI’s Project Based Learning Program. The course provides real-world learning opportunities for the university’s computer science and informatics students by tasking students with finding a technical solution for a business outcome.

Under the initiative, which represents Louisiana’s first software developer apprenticeship program, CGI provides three to five months of technical training before a one-year period of on-the-job experience. The completion of 2,000 apprenticeship hours paves a pathway for many graduates to pursue consulting positions at the organization.

“Additional collaborations between the University and CGI have strengthened and advanced our mission of research and innovation and have created extraordinary opportunities – and definite results – for the broader region we are both fortunate to serve,” said Joseph Savoie, president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

William LaBar, vice president of consulting services at CGI, highlighted the company’s enduring commitment to grow the job market in Acadiana and maintain its standing as a positive workplace for local students and professionals.

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Gen. Chance Saltzman Talks 3 Priorities for Space Force at Senate Subcommittee Hearing
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Gen. Chance Saltzman Talks 3 Priorities for Space Force at Senate Subcommittee Hearing

Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force, said he will prioritize the deployment of combat-ready forces, amplification of the Guardian Spirit. He also said he will prize efforts to strengthen partnerships to enable the service branch to develop a warfighting culture, outpace adversaries and preserve stability in space.

Saltzman, a 2023 Wash100 awardee, shared Tuesday in his prepared remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subpanel that the service branch is launching initiatives to advance the first line of effort, which is to build up combat-credible space forces.

These initiatives include accelerating the transition to resilient satellite constellations, networks, ground stations and data links; experimenting with organizational constructs that seek to improve readiness by strengthening connections between operations and acquisition activities; developing Operational Test and Training Infrastructure; and creating strategies, tactics and concepts that will allow space agencies to carry out full spectrum operations against adversaries in the emerging threat environment.

To amplify the Guardian Spirit, Saltzman said the service is working to attract the best talent by broadening digital recruitment efforts, advancing the Space Force University Partnership Program, implementing an annual Guardian Field Forum and integrating the Air Force Reserve space element into the military branch as a single component to help enhance its talent management system.

For the third line of effort, the general said the service “will strive to eliminate barriers to collaboration, including over-classification, so the Space Force can build enduring advantages with our partners.”

He told lawmakers that the Space Force is establishing relationships with the intelligence community, NASA, departments of State and Commerce and other federal agencies to meet national security requirements, building partnerships with the commercial sector and developing and carrying out training, educational courses and exercises with allies.

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