According to Barry Duplantis, vice president and general manager of Mattermost’s North American public sector business, the wide variety of technology solutions needed by different military stakeholders has posed a challenge to the services as they work to maintain their preparedness for modern conflicts.

In a piece published to Homeland Security Today late last month, Duplantis said that the U.S. military must embrace a unified collaboration platform that streamlines technology tools, data and communication in a “secure, user-friendly way,” to bridge the gaps between stakeholder demands.

Duplantis shared three steps the military can take to diminish the political and technical barriers slowing the deployment of a centralized platform, the first of which is providing teams with technology tools that can remove bottlenecks.

Understanding the communication styles of younger talent is also essential. Duplantis noted that there is a generational gap between military leaders and technical users, who communicate and organize and consume data “in radically new ways.”

“If military leaders want to recruit and retain the technical talent that will help advance their missions, they need to equip them with the devices, apps, and instant-message functionality they’ve been using their entire lives,” he said.

Successfully implementing a unified platform requires confidence in its ability to satisfy military security demands. To meet these standards, Duplantis said that the platform should operate privately in an on-premises data center or private cloud and be deployable in Department of Defense environments.

“That gives military organizations complete data sovereignty and control to meet the strictest compliance requirements,” he explained.

“These collaboration technologies have been tested, proven, and are already in use by military ‘software factories’ such as Platform One, the innovation hub of the U.S. Air Force,” he added.

Duplantis said that connecting every stakeholder in one digital location will boost understanding, empower informed decision-making and help the warfighter respond with the right actions at the right times.

“A unified collaboration platform can help ensure the military isn’t trying to fight the next war with the last war’s information technology,” wrote Duplantis.

The National Nuclear Security Administration has renewed an advisory committee tasked with providing recommendations on counterterrorism and counterproliferation programs, nuclear weapon modernization initiatives and nuclear nonproliferation and arms control regimes.

The Advisory Committee for Nuclear Security, formerly known as the Defense Programs Advisory Committee, will provide insights on building and implementing the nation’s mission to counter emerging nuclear threats, the Department of Energy said Friday.

In addition, the committee will advise the NNSA administrator on the technical approach to nuclear security and other topics, including workforce development and pipeline activities.

According to NNSA, the renewal of the committee is essential to ensure that the agency performs its duties and complies with rules and regulations related to nuclear security.

ACNS will operate in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Vice President Kamala Harris presided over a ceremony for the promotion of Jacob Middleton, director of national security space policy at the National Space Council, to the rank of brigadier general.

In his new rank, Middleton will continue to support the development and implementation of policy and strategy to synchronize civil, commercial and national security space initiatives, the U.S. Space Force said Thursday.

“As these sectors become more overlapped, it is critical there is a national entity that looks across all these sectors to ensure we get the most out of our space sectors and drive towards synergies that benefit people across the Nation and the world,” Middleton said.

Middleton previously served as the director of Space Forces, U.S. Air Force Central Command, vice commander of the 50th Space Wing at Schriever Air Force Base and commander of Aerospace Data Facility Colorado.

He was selected to transition into the Space Force in 2019 following nearly three decades of service in the Air Force.

Lloyd Austin, defense secretary and a 2023 Wash100 awardee, announced Middleton’s appointment to the rank of brigadier general in May 2022.

The Department of Defense should consider accomplishing some steps in the acquisition process in parallel rather than in sequence in order to speed up supply procurement, U.S. Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted as saying in DOD News.

Grady, a Wash100 inductee, made his remarks during an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

He recommended the agency’s Adaptive Acquisition Framework and Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve as two pathways to expedite the acquisition of capabilities needed by warfighters. AAF includes five decision routes that can be combined or tailored by decision authorities and program managers according to the capability to be purchased. RDER, meanwhile, is an initiative to encourage, expand and accelerate prototyping and experimentation among different DOD components.

Grady cited the testing phase as an ideal stage for parallel processing. “We can do and embed the testing apparatus in the acquisition process as we work our way along, such that when we’re ready at the very end, all we have to do is that final test, as opposed to then starting the whole testing process,” he suggested.