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Navy’s Aaron Weis & Illuminate’s Tameika Hollis Featured as 2023 Wash100 Winners
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Navy’s Aaron Weis & Illuminate’s Tameika Hollis Featured as 2023 Wash100 Winners

On Monday, Executive Mosaic shone a spotlight on Aaron Weis, chief information officer for the U.S. Department of the Navy, and Tameika Hollis, CEO of Illuminate, as winners of the 2023 Wash100 Award. 

The Wash100 was established in 2014 as a comprehensive list of the most influential and powerful executives poised to shape the future of the government contracting landscape. 

Weis and Hollis each earned the prestigious accolade this year through their exceptional demonstrations of leadership, innovation, vision, reliability, achievement and impact in the consequential and ever-changing GovCon ecosystem.

As Navy CIO, Weis has been foundational to the service’s digital modernization and information superiority initiatives. During his time in the role, Weis has spearheaded information technology architecture improvements, network enhancements, cloud migration efforts and other leading-edge technology programs designed to strengthen the Navy’s power against rising peer and near-peer threats. This marks Weis’ fourth consecutive year of recognition.

Click here to read Aaron Weis’ full Wash100 profile.

Hollis won her first Wash100 Award this year in acknowledgement of her elevation to CEO of the data collection and analysis services provider, Illuminate, at the end of 2022. Hollis was chosen to receive the forward-looking Wash100 Award because her newly-earned top role at a growing GovCon organization positions her for what Executive Mosaic anticipates to be great success in 2023 and beyond.

Read Tameika Hollis’ Wash100 profile here. 

Don’t forget to vote for your favorite Wash100 winners as part of the 2023 popular vote competition! In April, the vote standings will be announced — will you, your colleagues or your role models be in the top 10? Cast your votes at Wash100.com and stay tuned for the big reveal!

A Look into David Appel, Vice President of Amazon Web Services
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A Look into David Appel, Vice President of Amazon Web Services

Photo of David Appel at LinkedIn

David Appel is the incumbent Vice President of National Security at Amazon Web Services (AWS). His role entails taking charge of the cloud-computing branch that supports the national security community.

Appel leverages more than 30 years of experience in the defense sector for private, commercial, and federal government customers. Get to know more about David Appel.

Who is David Appel?

David Appel assumed the position of Vice President of National Security at Amazon Web Services in June 2022. A Raytheon Technologies veteran, he has extensive competence in utilizing artificial intelligence, modern software tools, and machine-learning services for defense technology, intelligence, and related services.

Appel is a natural leader adept in program leadership, financing, business development and execution, managing digital solutions, mission system modernization, surveillance support, range and infrastructure solutions, and global mission operations and defense.

David Appel finished his bachelor’s degree in Accounting at Pennsylvania State University in 1992. He earned his Master of Business Administration in Logistics and Operations Management from The George Washington University School of Business in 1998.

Appel also took certification courses related to leadership and management. He finished his Certificate in Advanced Management Program from the National Defense University – Information Resources Management College in 2003. Appel also earned a Certificate in Senior Executive Fellows from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2012.

Leadership and Expertise Background

As Vice President for Raytheon’s Intelligence and Space business, Appel was responsible for modernizing and sustaining command and control, weather and ground systems, cyber, DevSeCops, and Agile Development.

As the previous Vice President of Raytheon’s Defense and Civil Solutions (DCS), a product line built for command and control, intelligence, and space and weather portfolios, David Appel is able to prove his expertise in programs and solutions for the Department of Defense and federal, civil, and international governments.

Appel’s 28-year stint at Raytheon Technologies includes the following work experiences:

  • Vice President of C2 Solutions, from July 2019 to April 2020
  • Senior Director of Mission Support and Modernization – Mission Systems, from January 2017 to June 2019
  • Senior Director of Mission Support and Modernization – Global Mission Operations, from September 2014 to December 2016
  • Senior Director of Mission Support Solutions – Defense and Federal, from March 2014 to September 2014
  • Senior Director of  Mission Support Solutions – Defense, from September 2013 to March 2014
  • Senior Director of  Surveillance, Range, and Infrastructure Solutions, from April 2012 to August 2013
  • Senior Director of Operations, Training, and Logistics, from April 2011 to May 2012
  • Director of UK Government and Defense Training, from 2006 to March 2011
  • Staff Executive, from November 2004 to November 2006
  • Program Manager, from 2000 to November 2004
  • Functional Specialist and Manager, from May 1994 to 2000Besides his work as Amazon’s Web Services’ Vice President of National Security, David Appel recently rejoined Virginia Tech National Security Institute’s advisory board.

Besides his work as Amazon’s Web Services’ Vice President of National Security, David Appel rejoined Virginia Tech National Security Institute’s advisory board. In this role, he is helping the organization in becoming the United States’ most distinguished academic center of interdisciplinary research, technology policy, and talent development to further national security. Appel is also a member of the board of directors for the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA).

David Appel’s Awards

Appel has also garnered awards that reflect his competence in the defense solutions industry. Some of his accolades include Raytheon’s Program Leadership Award of 2008 and the Leadership Award – Competitive Advantage of 2015.

David Appel is a qualified Raytheon Six Sigma Specialist. He continues to exercise his knowledge and skills to bolster his leadership portfolio.

About Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services

Photo by logoboom from Shutterstock.com

Amazon Web Services is a cloud-computing platform designed by Amazon that provides on-demand services and application programming interfaces (APIs) to individuals, companies, and the government on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis.

Amazon Web Services provides various services used for networking, computing, storage, middleware, IOT, and processing capacities and to classify and declassify intelligence. Notable AWS products include Amazon Connect, Amazon Chime, Amazon Lambda, Amazon EC2 (Elastic Cloud computing), and more.

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PNNL Study Demos Deep Reinforcement Learning AI as Proactive Cyber Defense Tool
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PNNL Study Demos Deep Reinforcement Learning AI as Proactive Cyber Defense Tool

Deep reinforcement learning, a form of autonomous artificial intelligence, proved effective in preventing 95 percent of cyber attacks in a study conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The results show promise in the use of smarter cybersecurity in proactive cyberdefense, PNNL said.

MITRE’s ATT&CK framework was reportedly employed to develop the DRL algorithms, while the Open AI Gym helped in creating the attack simulation environment.

An algorithm called Deep Q-Network outperformed three variations of actor-critic approach algorithms in training cyberdefense agents on simulated attacks. 

DQN stopped 79 percent of least sophisticated attacks midway through the process, and 95 percent during the final stage of the intrusion. In sophisticated attacks, DQN blocked the process midway through in 57 percent of the cases and in 85 percent during the final stage.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Washington, D.C. this month.

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NSC Advisory Group Holds Meeting on Pentagon’s Use of Commercial Space Services
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NSC Advisory Group Holds Meeting on Pentagon’s Use of Commercial Space Services

The White House National Space Council’s users advisory group held its inaugural meeting on Thursday to discuss options for how the Department of Defense can better use commercial space services, Breaking Defense reported.

Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force, said the service branch considers the use of the commercial sector in two ways and one is supporting its missions and operations through the direct use of commercial space services and the second is adapting the approaches and technologies coming from the sector.

“The commercial sector is now also serving as an engine of innovation, and the technologies that they’re developing, the new and innovative operating concepts, the way they are thinking about space also spurs us on to think about, can we use those technologies and operating concepts …  perhaps we can adapt them to some of the military roles and missions,” Thompson said.

Chirag Parikh, executive secretary of the National Space Council, talked about the emergence of new technologies and space applications and what ways it has blurred the lines between national security, commercial and civil space sectors.

“As we think about the Venn diagram of space, we think about it in the three sectors, civil, commercial and national security. And what’s interesting about that Venn diagram … of civil, commercial, and national security is becoming more and more overlapped,” he noted.

“And a real reason for that is actually … the value that commercial space services are providing to the economy, it’s providing to our civil capacity, and it’s providing to our national security capacity,” Parikh added.

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DARPA, Partners Showcase Automated Battlefield Airspace Deconfliction Capability
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DARPA, Partners Showcase Automated Battlefield Airspace Deconfliction Capability

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force and Army, has demonstrated automated flightpath-planning software designed to facilitate airspace deconfliction in contested environments.

The demonstration showcased the seamless integration of the Raytheon Technologies-developed Air Space Total Awareness for Rapid Tactical Execution software with the Army’s Integrated Mission Planning and Airspace Control Tools suite to deconflict friendly missiles, artillery fire, drones and manned aircraft in a simulated battlefield, DARPA said Thursday.

Launched in 2021, the ASTARTE program aims to provide an accurate common operational picture of a contested airspace, enabling planes, missiles and uncrewed aircraft to operate simultaneously.

“There are many reasons this integration helps the warfighter. Coordinating and consolidating services at the user level greatly reduces procedural burden, which speeds the enterprise. ASTARTE also increases accuracy by automating tasks and reducing inherent human error,” said Paul Zablocky, program manager of ASTARTE within DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office.

Raytheon built the automated flightpath-planning capability for rotary and fixed wing aircraft while General Dynamics‘ Mission Systems division developed the Army’s IMPACT suite.

AFRL Stands Up New Directorate Focused on S&T Partnerships
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AFRL Stands Up New Directorate Focused on S&T Partnerships

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory has established a new directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to oversee the Department of the Air Force’s strategic partnerships focused on expanding its science and technology enterprise.

AFRL said Thursday the newly launched Strategic Partnering Directorate includes personnel from the Small Business Directorate and Plans and Programs Partnerships division and serves as a “one-stop shop” for S&T partnership across the department.

Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle, commander of AFRL, shared that the development of the new unit will “scale best practices and deliver efficiencies across the enterprise.”

According to Tim Bunning, chief technology officer of AFRL, the directorate will work to unify individual research requirements throughout the DAF’s technological focus areas. 

“In today’s environment, there is an increased need to shift to an integrated approach that leverages and evaluates S&T needs across the entire enterprise. A more holistic approach to partnerships will accelerate the advancement of S&T for both the Air Force and the Space Force,” Bunning added.

NAVAIR Finalizes 5th Iteration of Hardware Open Systems Technology Technical Standard
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NAVAIR Finalizes 5th Iteration of Hardware Open Systems Technology Technical Standard

The Naval Air Systems Command’s Air Combat Electronics program has completed the Hardware Open Systems Technology 5.0 technical standard.

HOST 5.0, which will be released later this year, was presented by NAVAIR’s Avionics Architecture Team at the Embedded Tech Trends media forum in Arizona, the service branch said Tuesday.

The HOST framework serves as a guide in ensuring modularity and interoperability of fielded aircraft component production, design and redesign. The open architecture standard streamlines and expedites a production’s lifecycle, avoiding one-time engineering expenses and reducing overall costs in the process. 

The latest version of the standard was presented at the forum “to keep our partners up to date on Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) practices, which are critical to the overall success of Open Architecture in NAVAIR,” said Capt. Margaret Wilson, Air Combat Electronics program manager.

“MOSA progress like the newly completed HOST 5.0 standard will allow NAVAIR programs to save money on embedded technologies and allow industry the opportunity to expand potential work across the enterprise,” she added.

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NIST to Update Guidance on Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information
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NIST to Update Guidance on Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is updating its guidance on protecting the confidentiality of controlled unclassified information to include insights gathered from industry.

NIST said Wednesday it is considering several changes to its Special Publication 800-171 outlining cybersecurity requirements and standards for non-federal organizations that handle non-classified government data.

Among the proposed changes are the withdrawal of outdated and redundant requirements and addition of new standards based on updates to the moderate security control baselines in SP 800-53B.

Industry partners also recommended revising the structure of the document’s acronyms, glossary and references sections for greater clarity; streamlining the introduction and fundamentals portions; and changing key words and terms to remain consistent and achieve greater clarity.

NIST announced its intent to update its series of special publications in July 2022 and subsequently requested industry input to gather insights on streamlining the security requirements.

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White House Unveils Conventional Arms Transfer Policy
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White House Unveils Conventional Arms Transfer Policy

The White House has issued a memorandum updating its policy on conventional arms transfers as part of efforts to enhance the security of allies and partners, improve global deterrence, promote research and development efforts and adhere to international nonproliferation norms.

Under the new policy, the U.S. government will not authorize an arms transfer if it finds that it is “more likely than not” that the recipient will use the weapons systems to crimes against humanity, genocide, breaches of the Genova conventions or serious violations of the international human rights law, the White House said Thursday.

The U.S. will continue to promote arms transfer control and transparency, including the development of controls on the international transfer of weapons systems containing sensitive technologies.

“The United States will exercise restraint in international arms transfers that may be destabilizing or threaten international peace and security and will also exercise restraint in transfers involving materials that might be used as delivery systems for WMD or result in adversaries obtaining capabilities that could threaten the security of the United States or of our allies and partners,” the memo reads.

According to the document, the U.S. government will pursue arms transfers “when they are in the United States national interest, in line with the considerations of this policy, and consistent with defense trade advocacy procedures.”

A senior official with the State Department said the current administration intends to “focus on four areas in particular where we haven’t seen much progress in ensuring our competitiveness on a global stage” when it comes to arms transfers, according to a report by Defense News.

Those areas are competitive financing, exportability, non-program of record and technology, disclosure and foreign release system.

PSC Report Details GovCon Industry Services to Ukraine
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PSC Report Details GovCon Industry Services to Ukraine

The Professional Services Council has published a compendium of partnerships between PSC’s member companies and federal agencies to assist Ukraine during the Russian invasion.

PSC’s report provides an overview of support services from Amazon Web Services, Amentum, ECS Federal and other U.S. government contractors in the first year of the conflict.

An Amentum “tiger team” supported the delivery of tactical equipment, critical medical supplies and personal protection equipment to Ukraine through the U.S. Department of Justice’s International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program.

Meanwhile, AWS facilitated the migration of more than 10 petabytes of Ukrainian public and private sector data to cloud infrastructure.

Fairfax, Virginia-based ECS has been working with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s 24/7 Global Crisis Support Team in GEOINT data collection and analysis of warzone events.

“Our analysts provide around-the-clock monitoring of the conflict and develop detailed daily intelligence reporting of the disposition and status of combatant forces for U.S. and coalition policymakers,” said John Heneghan, president of ECS and a 2023 Wash100 awardee.

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