Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport has demonstrated the ability of the U.S. Navy’s Snakehead large displacement unmanned undersea vehicle prototype to support an end-to-end intelligence preparation of the operational environment mission at the Narragansett Bay Test Facility.

During the mission, the Snakehead LDUUV conducted long-distance ingress, performed a sonar survey box, collected sonar data and then egressed back to the test facility, Naval Sea Systems Command said Wednesday.

The Snakehead LDUUV is the Navy’s modular, reconfigurable and multi-mission system designed to deliver navigation, guidance and control, maneuvering, situational awareness, propulsion and sensors during IPOE missions.

“The success of Snakehead testing is a direct result of the time and energy spent designing the vehicle. In-lab hardware and software simulations are major contributors to the success in water,” said Allison Philips, the test and evaluation lead for Snakehead at NUWC Division Newport.

In 2020, the Navy issued a solicitation for a contract to design, develop and fabricate two prototypes of the Snakehead LDUUV. The service branch christened the first prototype in February.

Snakehead has since conducted 155 in-water sorties and more than 78 hours of runtime using a government-owned and controlled modular open system architecture.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has launched a redesigned interagency online reporting platform that enables federal research funding recipients to report their subject inventions and patents.

NIST said Tuesday the modernized Interagency Edison system, also known as iEdison, now includes an upgraded user interface, new messaging and security features designed to better help grantees and contractors comply with the Bayh-Dole Act’s reporting requirements.

The revamped iEdison also includes an expanded application programming interface to automate some reporting tasks and incorporates information systems from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to update patent information more easily.

According to the agency, more than $150 billion in grants and funding agreements are allocated annually to support research and development projects led by academic institutions and other non-federal organizations.

“The new upgrades to the iEdison system will help inventors, awardees and the government manage these investments efficiently and transparently,” said Mojdeh Bahar, associate director for innovation and industry services at NIST.

The platform was originally created in 1995 and hosted by the National Institute of Health. The responsibility for iEdison was transferred to the Department of Commerce in 2018 and NIST began development of the new system in 2019.

The Department of Energy has launched two new program offices to direct investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to modernize the electric grid and advance clean energy projects.

The Grid Deployment Office will oversee $17 billion in investments to identify and address national transmission, distribution and clean generation needs while the Office of State and Community Energy Programs will invest $6 billion in projects aimed at increasing access to clean energy technologies, DOE said Wednesday.

Maria Robinson will serve as director of the Grid Deployment Office and lead efforts to modernize and upgrade the electrical grid and critical electricity-generating facilities across the U.S.

Senior experts Pat Hoffman and Whitney Muse will also serve as the office’s principal deputy director and chief of staff, respectively.

Henry McKoy will lead the Office of State and Community Energy Programs as director supported by Michael Forrester as acting principal deputy director, Annamaria Garcia as associate director and Chris Castro as chief of staff.

“The new offices announced today will help ensure that the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides states, Tribes, and territories with the best practices and proven approaches to drive down energy costs for American households and deliver cleaner air for their communities,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

The U.S. Army is planning to conduct its first-ever integrated fires test campaign in fiscal year 2023 to advance the deployment of new warfighting capabilities to the battlefield, C4ISRNET reported Wednesday.

Speaking at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium, Maj. Gen. Robert Rasch, program executive officer for missiles and space of the Army, said the service branch is looking to integrate sensor technologies that can support weapon systems like the Army Tactical Missile System, the Precision Guided Munition and the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.

The Army’s Project Convergence 2021 exercise held at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona has showcased the effectiveness of integrating sensors with shooters to achieve both offensive and defensive fires missions.

The Project Convergence, also known as the campaign of learning, informs the Army of what capabilities work to meet the service branch’s mission needs, Rasch.

According to Rasch, his office plans to take ideas from the project and tests them as part of the integrated fires test campaign.

“We’re going to get an opportunity to bring these things out on the range that maybe were not initially designed or thought [were] being designed to work together, but actually have them out on the range and either demonstrate, if it’s early, or operationally test, if it is ready to get to materiel release for new capabilities,” Rasch said.

The Army demonstrated 110 new technologies meant to support joint all-domain command and control as part of the second year of Project Convergence, which took place between October and November.