The Department of Defense has debuted a new strategy aimed at improving its records management activities as part of efforts to achieve and maintain decision advantage.

“This DoD Records Strategy seeks to employ the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence and cloud-based services, to reduce the administrative burden associated with records management, while creating an environment where DoD records are automatically identified and captured, expertly curated, and systemically governed,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks wrote in a foreword to the document.

Hicks, a 2023 Wash100 awardee, said the strategy builds on the goals included in the DOD Data Strategy.

The new strategy outlines four key enablers to achieve an information enterprise where records are discoverable and lifecycle managed by authorized users. One is advancing the strategic use of a records schedule through enhancements that offer a machine-readable roadmap to the value of digital assets.

The other three goals are completing metadata for records and records sharing backing automated records lifecycle management; providing guidance for electronic records management in a federated enterprise architecture; and developing a “multidimensional 21st Century Records Workforce” with skillsets in records curation, program management and ERM, among others.

To advance the automation of records processes for all users, the strategy enumerates several approaches, such as defining an information technology specialist role for ERM, deploying an auto-categorization tool and developing an ERM guidebook and playbook.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working to advance the future of fission power by using an exascale small modular reactor equipped with a toolkit of computer codes to conduct simulations of reactor systems in high resolution.

“By accurately predicting the nuclear reactor fuel cycle, ExaSMR reduces the number of physical experiments that reactor designers would perform to justify fuel use,” Steven Hamilton, ExaSMR project leader at ORNL, said in a statement published Monday.

“In large part, that’s what simulation is buying companies: a predictive capability that tells you how certain features will perform so that you don’t need to physically construct or perform as many experiments, which are enormously expensive,” Hamilton added.

The toolkit is designed to help researchers predict the entire fission process of a nuclear reactor design. It consists of OpenMC, Shift and NekRS computer codes that are being optimized for new exascale-class supercomputers.

OpenMC and Shift both use Monte Carlo methods and are being used to simulate reactor depletion and nuclear particle transport, while NekRS is designed to model thermal fluid dynamics.

The research team has linked up with nuclear power technology company Westinghouse for the ExaSMR project.

Under the effort, Westinghouse will conduct simulations to assess the performance of different fuel types in an operating reactor by running ExaSMR on Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer, unveiled by ORNL and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2022.

The National Institute of Standard and Technology is seeking candidates for a group that will counsel the Secretary of Commerce on matters relating to the U.S. microelectronics industry.

Industrial Advisory Committee member nominations are being sought from various stakeholders including in the industry, federal laboratories and academe who have extensive knowledge in microelectronics research, development, manufacturing and policy, NIST said Wednesday.

IAC members provide guidance on science and technology needs, national research strategies, CHIPS research and development programs and opportunities for public-private partnerships.

The committee was established in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the William M. Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021.

Nominations are accepted on a rolling basis but new members are typically appointed every October and are expected to serve three-year terms with the possibility to serve two consecutive terms.

Interested individuals can view this Federal Register notice for submission instructions.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the service’s program engineers are working in coalition with two defense contractors on the Next Generation Air Dominance project at a design-and-development hub at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, Defense One reported Monday.

Kendall, a 2023 Wash100 Award winner, told reporters at an event that the military branch has “intimate knowledge” of the early-stage efforts of the two vendors and has assigned separate teams to each contractor working on the NGAD program, which will replace the service’s fleet of F-22 Raptor fighter jets.

“They have direct access into the database that’s being used for the design,” he said of the Air Force.

Kendall noted that the Air Force will work to ensure that it has access to all sustainment data related to the aircraft and advance the use of a modular open system design to facilitate the implementation of updates and work with different and new suppliers, according to a report by Defense News.

The Air Force plans to award an engineering and manufacturing development contract for the NGAD contract in 2024.

A team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has developed a framework to accelerate the development of additive manufacturing materials using novel measurement techniques and simulation.

The four-step rapid material development process begins with computational fluid dynamics modeling to predict material density or porosity formation, APL said Monday.

“CFD modeling quickly enables elimination of inappropriate parameters, which reduces the need for time-consuming trial-and-error experiments,” said Li Ma, a senior APL researcher.

The next step involves the use of machine learning to build a statistical design of experiments and fabrication.

Researchers will then use X-ray computed tomography and high-throughput testing to measure the material’s strength, porosity, hardness and corrosion performance.

“Similar to a medical CT scan, XRCT provides a high-resolution 3D inspection of internal material structure and can reveal small internal defects like pores or cracks that could create use-case issues,” said Brendan Croom, a senior scientist who leads XRCT testing for the team.