Dennis Kelly, Arlington Capital Partners Launch Cybersecurity-Focused Company Eqlipse Technologies
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Dennis Kelly, Arlington Capital Partners Launch Cybersecurity-Focused Company Eqlipse Technologies

Dennis Kelly, a U.S. Navy veteran with over three decades of experience in the defense and intelligence contracting industry, has launched Eqlipse Technologies in collaboration with private equity firm Arlington Capital Partners.

The new company will offer cybersecurity-related engineering services, identity management tools and research and development assistance to Department of Defense and intelligence community customers, Eqlipse announced on Tuesday.

“As technology evolves and our infrastructure increasingly shifts to a digital domain, cybersecurity becomes an even more critical component of our national security. Eqlipse was created to provide an operational advantage to our customers as their missions evolve to new, virtual battlefields,” said Kelly, who now serves as the organization’s CEO.

In a LinkedIn post published the same day, Kelly noted his excitement for the newly-established company, which he said will align “the most innovative solutions to evolve and transform how our customers accomplish their most complex national security missions.”

Through its work, Eqlipse aims to address critical demands spanning the full cyber domain, including offensive and defensive cyber, signals intelligence engineering, computer network operations and software development.

Henry Albers, a vice president at Arlington Capital Partners, said that the name Eqlipse represents the “total alignment” of its “innovative culture” with its clients’ mission needs.

“We will continue to invest significant resources behind Eqlipse to recruit industry-leading scientists and engineers, build out state-of-the-art facilities and labs, and fund the IRAD necessary to continue to deliver innovation for the most pressing missions,” he added.

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McAleese Report Explores FY24 Air Force, Army Budget Requests
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McAleese Report Explores FY24 Air Force, Army Budget Requests

A McAleese & Associates report shows that the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army requested budgets of $215 billion and $185 billion, respectively, for fiscal year 2024.

The Air Force’s proposed FY 2024 budget includes $185 billion for the service branch and $30 billion for the U.S. Space Force, Jim McAleese, founder and principal at McAleese & Associates, wrote in the overview.

According to McAleese, the proposed Air Force and Space Force budgets reflect a growth of about $5 billion in research, development, test and evaluation funds from the enacted FY 2023 funding level to advance several programs, including the nuclear triad recapitalization, missile warning and tracking initiatives and space resiliency.

For procurement efforts, the Air Force is seeking $30.6 billion in funding for the next fiscal year and the Space Force is requesting $4.7 billion.

McAleese, a member of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Expert program and three-time Wash100 winner, noted that the Army’s FY 2024 budget request shows a 4 percent rise from the funding request for the current fiscal year and that the service found $2.1 billion in savings to keep the deployment of its “24-by-2023” modernization prototypes on schedule.

These modernization efforts are the Future Vertical Lift, Long Range Hypersonic Weapon and the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle programs.

The Army sought $2.3 billion in funding to advance digital transformation efforts in FY 2024. These initiatives include zero trust implementation, defensive cyber tools, cloud adoption, artificial intelligence and crypto modernization, per the consulting firm’s findings.

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NRO’s Aaron Weiner Talks Microelectronics in New Video Interview
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NRO’s Aaron Weiner Talks Microelectronics in New Video Interview

Microelectronics underpin a myriad of technologies from household appliances to some of the most advanced military weapons systems. As the United States ramps up its investment in domestic semiconductor chip manufacturing, public sector leaders anticipate major advancements.

“Developing a robust domestic supply chain of microelectronics in the two to three nanometer feature size is going to be key both to our commercial advantage as well as our national security advantage going forward. And the CHIPS Act was approved to do just that,” said Dr. Aaron Weiner, director of Advanced Systems and Technology at the National Reconnaissance Office, during an exclusive video interview with Executive Mosaic.

The CHIPS Act, which passed in August 2022, provides $52.7 billion in new funding for American semiconductor research, development, manufacturing and workforce development. Today, officials are working to harness the investment boost at the speed of innovation in order to unlock new capabilities needed in today’s competitive global environment.

“Right now we’re really partnering across government to find out how we can quickly achieve those ends,” Dr. Weiner added. “These devices, from an NRO perspective will greatly increase the smarts of our satellites and allow them to do more value-added activities on orbit.”

Hear Dr. Weiner speak about the future impact artificial intelligence will have on NRO missions and how the agency is working to bridge the valley of death in tech — watch the full video interview here. 

Executive Mosaic Honors Guidehouse’s Scott McIntyre & Verizon’s Maggie Hallbach for 2023 Wash100 Wins
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Executive Mosaic Honors Guidehouse’s Scott McIntyre & Verizon’s Maggie Hallbach for 2023 Wash100 Wins

Guidehouse CEO Scott McIntyre and Maggie Hallbach, senior vice president of public sector at Verizon, were spotlighted today for their achievements and their selection to the esteemed 2023 Wash100 list.

Executive Mosaic’s annual Wash100 Award recognizes the most impactful, outstanding and promising executives working in the dynamic and evolving government contracting field. This year marks the award’s tenth anniversary, and Executive Mosaic is pleased to again usher in a new roster of winners.

Scott McIntyre earned his seventh Wash100 Award this year for his continued leadership at the helm of one of GovCon’s major consulting firms. McIntyre has led Veritas Capital-backed Guidehouse through three major acquisitions in the last five years, growing the organization’s footprint in key markets. Most recently, Guidehouse purchased Grant Thornton’s public sector advisory business. Read McIntyre’s full Wash100 profile here.

This year marks Maggie Hallbach’s debut on the Wash100 list. She earned the recognition by securing key government contracts and advancing the 5G mission across the public sector. Hallbach has been with Verizon for over two decades, and she has served in her current role for just over one year. Read Hallbach’s Wash100 profile here.

Now is your chance to sway the outcome of the 2023 Wash100 popular vote competition! Each year, our readers vote for their favorite Wash100 winners, and the top 10 are announced at the end of April. Who will take first place? Cast your vote at Wash100.com to find out!

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DARPA Announces 3 University Teams to Develop Protective Biofilms
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DARPA Announces 3 University Teams to Develop Protective Biofilms

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has selected three university teams to develop protective biofilms designed to prevent the degradation of military assets.

DARPA said Tuesday the Arcadia program aims to create beneficial materiel coatings using naturally occurring microorganisms to address biologically induced problems such as increased drag on unmanned undersea vehicles.

Clemson University will develop a stable microbial biofilm to decrease drag on underway UUVs as part of its Engineering Control of Organic Coatings on Autonomous Navy Gliders project.

Columbia University will work on its Inhibiting Molds with Probiotic Ensembles from Diverse Environments to identify and disseminate inhibitory organisms to safeguard military materiel and equipment. 

Texas A&M University’s Microbes Achieve Resistance to MicroOrganism-influenced Rust was selected to develop methods of modeling and predicting microbially influenced rust to engineer a functional and resilient biofilm.

“Research has shown that accumulation of biofilms on UUVs can cause more than a 90% reduction in velocity within three months, leading to deployment failure,” said Tiffany Prest, Arcadia program manager.

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College Students Invited to Participate in NASA Tech Competition to Address Lunar Dust
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College Students Invited to Participate in NASA Tech Competition to Address Lunar Dust

NASA has opened registration for the Human Lander Challenge, a competition encouraging college students to develop technologies that can mitigate lunar surface dust clouds during spacecraft landing and ascent.

The winning technology could be used in the Artemis mission to the Moon’s South Pole, the agency said Wednesday.

Lunar dust, technically known as plume surface interaction, is made of granular, rocky material that could cause safety risks and damage to NASA’s assets. The agency is also looking for techniques that could protect habitats, scientific experiments, mobility systems and other infrastructure from the dust, called regolith.

The first-ever Human Lander Challenge is seeking devices and methodologies such as dust shields, flight instrumentation, or approaches that enable visibility through plume surface interaction. 

The space agency will grant funding to 12 teams for their technical papers and design models or prototypes. They will present their products in June 2024, in Huntsville, Alabama. The top three teams are set to receive corresponding monetary prizes.

Interested parties should submit their proposals by March 4, and their non-binding notice of intent by Oct. 22.

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NSA, CISA Recommend Identity & Access Management Best Practices Via New Document
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NSA, CISA Recommend Identity & Access Management Best Practices Via New Document

The National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have developed a document as part of the Enduring Security Framework to provide system administrators with recommended best practices related to identity and access management.

Alan Laing, NSA lead for the IAM working group, said in a statement published Tuesday that rigorous IAM enables organizations to detect and prevent malicious cyber actors from gaining access to data of national importance and corrupting critical systems.

The document provides IAM-related threat mitigation techniques organizations should implement. These are identity governance, environmental hardening, identity federation and single sign-on, multifactor authentication and IAM monitoring and auditing.

The paper, for instance, defines identity governance as a process that allows an organization to gain better visibility into access privileges and identities and is comprised of policies that cover role management, access review, reporting, analytics, logging and segregation of duties.

According to the document, phishing, insider threats and creation of accounts to maintain persistence are some of the IAM threats that identity governance can help mitigate.

“IAM is a critical part of every organization’s security posture, and we must work collectively with the public and private sector to advance more secure by default and secure by design IAM solutions,” said Grant Dasher, office of the technical director for cybersecurity at CISA.

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Commerce Department Seeks to Protect CHIPS Incentives Program With Proposed Rule
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Commerce Department Seeks to Protect CHIPS Incentives Program With Proposed Rule

The Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking outlining guardrails to prevent the improper use of incentives under the CHIPS Incentives Program established through the CHIPS and Science Act. The law would also protect U.S. technologies and innovation from foreign adversaries.

If passed, the rule would bar CHIPS incentives recipients from using the funds in other countries and investing in semiconductor production in foreign countries of concern, such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, for a period of 10 years following the award, NIST said Tuesday.

“CHIPS for America is fundamentally a national security initiative and these guardrails will help ensure malign actors do not have access to the cutting-edge technology that can be used against America and our allies,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The rule also aims to classify semiconductors as critical to national security; strengthen U.S. export controls; restrict the expansion of legacy facilities in foreign countries of concern; and establish standards to limit expansion of advanced facilities in such countries.

The department will open the proposed rule for public comments for a period of 60 days.

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DOD Selects 31 Teams for Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative; Heidi Shyu Quoted
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DOD Selects 31 Teams for Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative; Heidi Shyu Quoted

The Department of Defense has awarded $220 million in grants to 31 teams of researchers selected as part of the fiscal year 2023 competition for the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative.

Each research team will receive approximately $7.1 million over five years to conduct their basic research projects under the MURI program, which was launched in 1985, DOD said Tuesday.

“Not only does the program enable scientific breakthroughs with direct relevance for DoD applications, it also has been used to create and sustain new fields of inquiry,” said Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.

“It is a program with a powerful legacy of scientific impact and remains a cornerstone of DoD’s basic research portfolio,” added Shyu, a 2023 Wash100 winner.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Army Research Office and the Office of Naval Research requested proposals and reviewed 259 white papers covering 24 topic areas of interest to DOD. A panel of experts selected the 31 teams located at 61 universities out of a pool of 90 proposals.

Some of the topic areas the selected research projects cover are control theory for novel quantum error correction, climate change, cognitive security and quantum phononics.

Click here to see the full list of selected teams.

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GSA, DOD Partner to Make Sustainable Technologies Available to Federal Agencies; Sonny Hashmi Quoted
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GSA, DOD Partner to Make Sustainable Technologies Available to Federal Agencies; Sonny Hashmi Quoted

The General Services Administration has partnered with the Department of Defense to expand the federal government’s access to sustainable technology products.

Under the memorandum of understanding, GSA will use product performance and pricing information from DOD’s Sustainable Technology Evaluation and Demonstration program to streamline federal acquisition programs, the agency said Tuesday.

STED coordinates with military installations to verify the performance of sustainable technology alternatives. When the program identifies a more sustainable alternative that meets DOD requirements, GSA will help vendors secure a new Federal Supply Schedule or a National Stock Number.

“It’s so important that we help agencies more easily find and buy products that not only meet mission needs but are also better for the environment,” said Sonny Hashmi, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service and a previous Wash100 awardee.

The MOU was signed by Erv Koehler, assistant commissioner of general services and supplies at FAS, and Richard Kidd, deputy assistant secretary of defense for environment and energy resilience.

“The backing of the STED program provides us with the resources to test, evaluate, and bring environmental innovations to market faster,” Koehler said.

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