Defense Hypersonic Program in Development at DARPA
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Defense Hypersonic Program in Development at DARPA

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing a hypersonic missile system for defensive purposes called Glide Breaker, Breaking Defense said in a report on Friday. 

Glide Breaker aims to intercept hypersonic weapons during their glide phase. The apparatus’ program manager Major Nathan Greiner explained that the system is similar to the standard missile 3 system, which dispenses a kill vehicle to achieve a hit-to-kill engagement. 

The defensive hypersonic program will be divided into two phases. The initial phase will revolve around the formation and demonstration of a divert and attitude control system. Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman have presented designs for the first phase and are now in the testing period.

Meanwhile, the second phase will focus on wind tunnel and flight testing to gather information on future kill vehicle designs from both control and design standpoints, Greiner attested.

In September 2021, Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman jointly exhibited their scramjet engine-powered Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept for the U.S. Air Force and DARPA as part of a hypersonics program for offense. 

A Lockheed Martin-developed hypersonic missile system under a different DARPA program also completed an initial flight test in July in New Mexico.

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SPA Initiates Leadership Reorganization Under New CEO; Rich Sawchak Quoted
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SPA Initiates Leadership Reorganization Under New CEO; Rich Sawchak Quoted

Systems Planning and Analysis has announced the reorganization of its leadership team to attain newly appointed CEO Rich Sawchak’s vision.

John Quigley, the company’s chief operating officer, will remain corporate secretary and lead additional areas while Terry Benedict will now serve as president of SPA, the Alexandria, Virginia-based organization announced on Monday.

“I am thrilled for John and Terry to undertake these critical positions on our executive team. Their tremendous leadership and experience will be instrumental as SPA continues to grow and serve an expanding list of clients while remaining laser-focused on the government defense, security, and advanced technology services sector,” said Sawchak.

Quigley’s expanded responsibilities include leading the company’s acquisitions, integrations and business operations processes.

As a SPA leader for over two decades, Quigley has propelled the company forward across all of its operations. During his time with the company, he spearheaded five significant acquisitions, established and grew its Australian business and directed an operating division that supervises a portfolio of analytic capabilities aiding national security clients with requirements, investments, strategy and other decisions.

His career has spanned over 40 years and began in the U.S. Navy, where he served as a submarine officer.

Meanwhile, Benedict will transition to the president role, where he will oversee all SPA programs and technology differentiation to deliver high quality offerings to the company’s clients.

The latter executive joined SPA in April and has since presided over the enterprise’s naval, nuclear and critical infrastructure sector as executive vice president.

Prior to joining SPA, Benedict held leadership positions in numerous companies and in the Navy, where he served as technical director for strategic systems programs and more recently as program executive officer for integrated warfare systems.

He is currently a member of X-Bow Systems’ Strategic Advisory Board and Draper’s Board of Directors. Benedict also guides mid-grade Naval Officers as a mentor and senior adviser for Severn Leadership Group.

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Deep Water Point Finalizes Agreement to Acquire Wolf Den Associates; Kevin Robbins Quoted
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Deep Water Point Finalizes Agreement to Acquire Wolf Den Associates; Kevin Robbins Quoted

Federal management consulting and advisory firm Deep Water Point and its investment partner, Renovus Capital Partners, have finalized an agreement to acquire Wolf Den Associates.

The deal will combine Wolf Den Associates’ specialization in full lifecycle growth with Deep Water Point’s expertise in market opportunities and go-to-market strategy to serve their clients, the two companies announced on Monday.

“This was the deal we always wanted – a clear way to better serve our customers by pairing Deep Water Point’s extensive network of government and industry SMEs and expertise working ‘left of the RFP’ with Wolf Den’s depth of practitioner experience in capture and proposal, strategy and management consulting, and transaction advisory services,” Kevin Robbins, co-founder of Wolf Den Associates and a Wash100 Award winner, told ExecutiveGov.

Both organizations hold backgrounds in federal contracting operations. Honoring its mission to aid businesses in supporting the public sector, Deep Water Point has worked alongside the federal civilian, defense and intelligence communities. Wolf Den has provided capture and proposal, strategy, management consulting and transaction services to numerous clients in the federal realm.

“By combining the immense expertise of the Deep Water Point and Wolf Den teams, we will bring unmatched experience to clients and seamlessly support their accelerated growth in the federal market,” said Deep Water Point Founder and CEO Howard Seeger.

Renovus Capital Partners invested in Deep Water Point in January of this year to support the company’s expansion in the areas of service additions, talent recruitment and strategic acquisitions.

Deep Water Point also began an additional partnership with Winning Strategies Washington in 2021, which aims to support the enterprise in informing its clients about Capitol Hill events that could impact their business by leveraging Winning Strategies Washington’s government relations and grants procurement expertise.

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Rancher Government Solutions Teams with Linux Foundation for Training, Certification Programs; Ben Zifrony Quoted
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Rancher Government Solutions Teams with Linux Foundation for Training, Certification Programs; Ben Zifrony Quoted

Rancher Government Solutions, a company focused on delivering secure, open source technology to the public sector, has teamed with the Linux Foundation, an open source technology consortium.

The collaboration allows RGS to add the complete portfolio of the Linux Foundation’s e-Learning courses to specific support subscriptions, the Reston, Virginia-based company announced on Monday.

“Cloud Native technology like Kubernetes require new skills. We are committed to enabling our customers to build those skills as part of their application modernization journey,” said Ben Zifrony, regional vice president of channels and alliances at RGS.

The Linux Foundation’s open source model promotes software enhancement by allowing freely available code to be modified and updated, unlike private architectures, which can impose limitations on change and growth in technology.

“Partnering with RGS to support the U.S. Government in their adoption of open source through secure tools and training is critically important,” said Clyde Seepersad, senior vice president and general manager of training and certification at the Linux Foundation.

The partnership follows RGS’ confirmation of multiple Security Technical Information Guide validations from the Defense Information Systems Agency for its Kubernetes technologies.

In April, the company’s Multi-cluster Manager version 2.6, which allows Department of Defense information technology specialists to integrate cluster deployment of bare metal, public and private clouds, vSphere and at the edge, received STIG approval.

RGS also received STIG validation for its RKE2 Kubernetes distribution, which made the organization the sole company offering a DISA-approved Kubernetes distribution STIG.

The Linux Foundation has also been working to bolster software security. In a collaboration with the Open Source Software Security Foundation, the organization has helped create a plan to enhance the security of open source software.

Priorities within the plan include securing open source security production, enhancing vulnerability discovery and remediation and accelerating ecosystem patching response time.

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OMB Sets Deadline for Inventory of Federal Assets With Quantum-Vulnerable Cryptographic Systems
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OMB Sets Deadline for Inventory of Federal Assets With Quantum-Vulnerable Cryptographic Systems

The Office of Management and Budget has issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to submit by May 4, 2023, an inventory of information systems and related assets containing cryptographic systems that could be decrypted by quantum computers as part of the transition to post-quantum cryptography.

OMB Director Shalanda Young wrote in the Friday memo that agencies are expected to submit the inventory of such assets on an annual basis through 2035.

Agencies should appoint an official to oversee cryptographic inventory and migration efforts within 30 days of the memo’s publication.

The document directs the Office of the National Cyber Director to issue instructions concerning the collection and transmission of the inventory and procedures related to funding assessments within 90 days.

According to the memo, the National Institute of Standards and Technology should develop within 60 days a mechanism to facilitate the sharing of PQC best practices and testing data among agencies and with industry partners.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency should introduce within a year a strategy on automated tooling and support for the assessment of agencies’ progress when it comes to PQC adoption.

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Data Capture Tech on Air Force F-35s Advances Crowd-Sourced Flight Data
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Data Capture Tech on Air Force F-35s Advances Crowd-Sourced Flight Data

The U.S. Air Force’s 59th Test and Evaluation Squadron has made a contribution to Crowd-Sourced Flight Data by equipping the initial set of Combat Air Forces F-35 fighter jets with the Quick Reaction Instrumentation Package.

QRIP is a device that can collect a terabyte of data each flight, providing developers access to large volumes of data within minutes to accelerate software development and mission reprogramming changes and speed up the development and delivery of data products to pilots and intelligence officers.

“QRIP captures data that is currently not being recorded, or being discarded at the cutting room floor, and makes it available and accessible at the speed of relevance,” Lt. Col. Nathan Malafa, 59th Test and Evaluation squadron commander.

QRIP has been installed in 19 CAF F-35 jets and the Air Force said it plans to expand the deployment of the instrumentation package to other fighter planes and platforms.

“The more data we can collect from the Air Force’s diverse portfolio puts the ‘crowd’ in CSFD and amplifies data sets we can use to gain competitive advantage against our adversaries and competitors,” noted Malafa.

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DHS Releases 7 Small Business Innovation Research Program Topics; Dusty Lang Quoted
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DHS Releases 7 Small Business Innovation Research Program Topics; Dusty Lang Quoted

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a presolicitation notice inviting small enterprises to submit questions on seven topic requirements for the fiscal year 2023 Small Business Innovation Research program.

DHS said Friday six of the seven topics deal with science and technology and the remaining topic focuses on countering weapons of mass destruction.

The six S&T topics are accurate and real-time hardware-assisted detection of cyber attacks; air cargo manifest analysis to aid screeners; first responder credentialing; machine learning based integration of alarm resolution sensors; mission critical services server-to-server communication, voice communications, 3GPP-standards; and reduced order modeling of critical infrastructure protect surfaces.

The CWMD topic focuses on theoretical classification methodologies to enable detection with predicted signatures.

“The SBIR program provides an opportunity for small businesses, including those that have never partnered with us before, to engage with DHS and make a real-world impact by addressing some of our most pressing homeland security challenges,” said Dusty Lang, director of DHS SBIR.

DHS will host a webinar on Dec. 13 to discuss the upcoming solicitation with interested offerors.

Technical questions should be submitted through Dec. 15.

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Department the Air Force Preps for AFWERX 3.0 Transition
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Department the Air Force Preps for AFWERX 3.0 Transition

AFWERX, the Department of the Air Force’s innovation arm, is set to release a series of efforts representing its updated priorities aimed at expanding technology, workforce and capabilities across the U.S. Air Force and Space Force. 

Col. Elliott Leigh, the incoming commander of AFWERX, said the unit’s new approach will support innovation within DAF and industry commercialization by building on the foundation set by the current AFWERX team, the Air Force Research Laboratory reported Friday. 

The AFWERX 3.0 evolution will focus on five specific lines of effort: increase funding opportunities aligned with DAF operational imperatives; bridge the “valley of death” in innovation; expand existing tools through AFWERX AFVentures, AFWERX Spark and AFWERX Prime; widen industry’s access to classified work with DAF; and enhance the data architecture for process improvement. 

“It has been incredible to see so many Airman and Guardian innovation experiments evolve into institutionalized programs that are not only adding amazing new capabilities to the force, but maybe more importantly, they are creating more agile structures for how we accelerate the development of the future force,” said Col. Nathan Diller, the outgoing AFWERX director. 

Diller and Leigh will provide further details on the AFWERX 3.0 approach at an event scheduled for Dec. 14.

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Report: Biden Admin Working on EO Prohibiting Spyware Operational Use
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Report: Biden Admin Working on EO Prohibiting Spyware Operational Use

Top legislative affairs officials from the Departments of Commerce and State have revealed in a letter to Reps. Jim Himes, D-Conn., and Jackie Speier, D-Calif., that the Biden administration is planning to issue an executive order to prohibit the U.S. government from using spyware that poses counterintelligence and security risks, CyberScoop reported Friday. 

Susie Feliz, assistant secretary of commerce for legislative and intergovernmental affairs, and Naz Durakoglu, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, sent the letter in response to a September request from a bipartisan group of lawmakers to address threats posed by foreign commercial cyber surveillance technologies.

According to the officials, several regulatory and diplomatic measures have been implemented to counter spyware threats. Among them are the inclusion of foreign companies on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List and the launch of the Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative.

Two of the designated companies are NSO Group and Candiru, which were added to the list in November 2021 for developing and supplying spyware to foreign governments.

The State Department is also working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the implementation of a 2022 National Defense Authorization Act measure that “involves the identification of contractors that have knowingly assisted or facilitated certain cyberattacks or conducted surveillance activities on behalf of relevant foreign governments against the United States or for the purposes of suppressing dissent or intimidating critics.”

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DOE Opens $13B in Funding Opportunities for Grid Resilience, Transmission Projects
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DOE Opens $13B in Funding Opportunities for Grid Resilience, Transmission Projects

The Department of Energy is awarding $13 billion in grants for projects that will support the Grid Resilience Innovative Partnership and Transmission Facilitation programs.

Part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the funding opportunities are are open to states, tribes and utilities, DOE announced Friday.

The GRIP program includes projects to increase capacity and create new technologies to improve the transmission of electricity. It accounts for $3.8 billion of the new funding round, dedicated for fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

Through the Transmission Facilitation Program, the Energy Department is authorized to borrow up to $2.5 billion to help fund initiatives focused on the construction of sustainable and high-capacity transmission lines. The initial round of solicitation is slated to enable DOE to offer capacity contracts and own 50 percent of a transmission line’s generated power in order to minimize the risk of under-sizing or under-building such projects.

“We are moving swiftly to deliver cleaner, cheaper energy to every American community by building a modern and reliable electric grid,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

DOE will provide additional information on the two programs through a public webinar on Nov. 29 and 30. Concept papers for GRIP are expected to be submitted by Jan. 13, while proposals for the Transmission Facilitation Program are due by Feb. 1, 2023. 

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