/
Lt. Gen. Bill Liquori: Space Force’s Mix of Offensive, Defensive Capabilities Up for Discussion in ‘Strategic Space Review’
Published on
Lt. Gen. Bill Liquori: Space Force’s Mix of Offensive, Defensive Capabilities Up for Discussion in ‘Strategic Space Review’

Lt. Gen. Bill Liquori, deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs, requirements and analysis at the U.S. Space Force, said the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community have begun a “space strategic review” and one of the two things being considered is the need for the service branch to have a balance of defensive and offensive weapons and capabilities in deterring and defeating adversaries, Breaking Defense reported Thursday.

“Everybody sees a growing threat, and we recognize the need for not only resilient architectures, but the Unified Command Plan tasks US Space Command with offensive and defensive operations, and now our own Capstone Doctrine document highlights that,” Liquori said at an event Thursday.

“But we’ve got to work that through the process. And so we’ll work force designs to talk about what mix of capabilities are needed,” he added. He also noted that identifying that weapons mix has to be carried out “within the bounds of policy.”

Liquori said the declassification of information about U.S. capabilities and adversary threats is the second critical issue the Pentagon and the IC need to discuss as they work on the new strategic review.

He noted that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tasked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Intelligence Director Avril Haines with overseeing the review, which should be submitted to the White House by late June or July.

Austin and Haines are both 2022 Wash100 Award recipients, the most prestigious award in all of government contracting (GovCon) that recognizes the accomplishments of its winners but also anticipates each executive as a critical name to watch in the year to come. 

/
Christopher Wray: FBI Sets Sights on 3 Factors to Impose Costs on Cybercriminals
Published on
Christopher Wray: FBI Sets Sights on 3 Factors to Impose Costs on Cybercriminals

FBI Director Christopher Wray said amid the acceleration of cyberattacks in the past two years, the bureau has focused on three factors to impose costs on cybercriminals and these are identifying the people involved, targeting their infrastructure and going after their money.

“First: To go after the people, we work with like-minded countries to identify who’s responsible for the most damaging ransomware schemes and take them out of the game. That may mean arresting and extraditing them to the U.S. to face justice. Or it may mean prosecution by a foreign partner,” Wray said Wednesday during a cybersecurity conference in Boston.

He highlighted the importance of disrupting the operations of threat actors by taking down their technical infrastructure.

He also cited the need to shut down illegal currency exchanges to disrupt the operations of cybercriminals.

“Third: By going after their money, when we seize virtual wallets and return stolen funds, we hit them where it hurts, taking resources away from the bad guys, helping to prevent future criminal operations,” Wray noted.

Wray discussed the cybersecurity threats posed by Russia, China, North Korea and Iran; the ransomware attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure; the importance of accumulated investigative work against Russian cyberthreats; and the need for speed and scope of attribution.

/
Sharon Woods: DISA Completes Migrating 95 Applications Off of milCloud 2.0
Published on
Sharon Woods: DISA Completes Migrating 95 Applications Off of milCloud 2.0

Sharon Woods, director of the hosting and compute center at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said DISA completed moving the remaining 95 applications out of the milCloud 2.0 platform ahead of the June 8 deadline, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

Twenty-five accounts of the total 120 applications that were initially on milCloud 2.0 did not need to be shifted since they were already in a commercial cloud platform.

“Of the 95, 60 of those went to Stratus, DISA’s private cloud offering, 18 of them went to commercial cloud, and then there were 17 whose accounts they just let expire. They were typically research and development or sandbox environments that had already served their purpose. In total, it’s over 1,700 terabytes of data and 820 virtual machines,” Woods told FNN in an interview. 

“milCloud 2.0 is sunsetting and milCloud 1.0 is sunset as well. That, as a capability, no longer exists. For Stratus, we did consume some of that very basic underlying infrastructure of milCloud 1.0, but then immediately layered on a lot of new capabilities so that it became a new capability unto itself,” she added.

In December, DISA decided not to exercise the third option period in the milCloud 2.0 contract and allow the contract to sunset in May.

In June 2017, DISA awarded the potential eight-year, $498 million milCloud 2.0 contract to CSRA, which was acquired by General Dynamics’ information technology business for approximately $9.7 billion in 2018.

/
DOD’s Office of Chief Digital and AI Officer Achieves Full Operating Capability
Published on
DOD’s Office of Chief Digital and AI Officer Achieves Full Operating Capability

The office of the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Department of Defense achieved full operating capability status on Wednesday and will manage DOD’s policy formulation and strategy development for AI, data and analytics.

The office of CDAO will directly report to Kathleen Hicks, deputy secretary of defense and a 2022 Wash100 Award winner, and expects to complete administrative alignment of resources and personnel by Oct. 1, DOD said Wednesday.

DOD made recent appointments at the newly created office. In late April, Craig Martell, formerly head of machine learning at Lyft, was named CDAO weeks after the appointment of Sharothi Pikar as deputy CDAO for acquisitions. In March, Margaret Palmieri, founder and former director of the Navy’s digital warfare office, was appointed deputy CDAO.

In May, Diane Staheli, an AI ethics and research expert, was named head of the responsible AI division within the CDAO office.

Other officials serving on the newly established office are Clark Cully, deputy CDAO for policy, strategy and governance; Greg Little, deputy CDAO for enterprise platforms and business optimization; Joe Larson, deputy CDAO for algorithmic warfare; Katie Savage, deputy CDAO for digital services; Dan Folliard, chief operating officer; Bill Streilein, chief technology officer; and Jane Pinelis, chief of AI assurance.

With the FOC designation, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, Defense Digital Service, Chief Data Officer and Advana or the Office of Advancing Analytics are now part of the CDAO office and will cease operating as independent organizations.

The office of CDAO, which achieved initial operating capability on Feb. 1, will address barriers to data and AI adoption and establish digital infrastructure and services that support the deployment of AI, analytics, data and digital-enabled platforms.

/
DARPA to Host Proposers Day on Undersea Vehicle Propulsion Development Program
Published on
DARPA to Host Proposers Day on Undersea Vehicle Propulsion Development Program

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will sponsor an event later this month to discuss an upcoming broad agency announcement on DARPA’s Advanced Propulsion Experiment program.

According to a special notice posted on SAM.gov, the APEX effort will focus on the maturation and demonstration of propulsion technology concepts that look to power submarines and other undersea platforms.

DARPA said it will require security clearance and accept registrations on a first-come, first-served basis for the APEX Proposers Day on June 22nd at the agency’s conference center in Arlington, Virginia.

Interested participants in the event are required to register online by June 15th.

/
Dutch Chip Machine Builder to Invest $200M in US Branch Expansion; Commerce Department’s Don Graves Quoted
Published on
Dutch Chip Machine Builder to Invest $200M in US Branch Expansion; Commerce Department’s Don Graves Quoted

Dutch company ASML plans to invest $200 million to expand its facility in Wilton, Connecticut, for the development of chipmaking machinery.

The U.S. Department of Commerce said Tuesday it expects the expansion project at ASML Wilton, which is the company’s largest research and development and manufacturing site in the country, to generate as many as 1,000 jobs in the next couple of years.

“Semiconductors power everything from our homes and cars to lifesaving military and medical technology,” said Don Graves, deputy secretary of commerce.

“ASML is a valued member of the coalition of private sector companies from around the globe who are choosing the United States as their home for semiconductors, and for that, we are immensely grateful.”

The company employs approximately 2,000 personnel at its Wilton facility and spent $100 million on offices, laboratories and cleanrooms there.

ASML’s investment plan came as members of Congress are considering a bill that would inject $52 billion into domestic semiconductor R&D and production efforts.

/
BigBear.ai Promotes Josh Kinley to Newly Created Role, Julie Peffer Appointed CFO; GovCon Expert Reggie Brothers Quoted
Published on
BigBear.ai Promotes Josh Kinley to Newly Created Role, Julie Peffer Appointed CFO; GovCon Expert Reggie Brothers Quoted

Analytics and cyber engineering company BigBear.ai has made two new appointments to its senior leadership team, further expanding on the company’s growth maneuvers.

Julie Peffer has been tapped to lead the company’s financial profile as chief financial officer, succeeding Josh Kinley, who has been elevated to the newly created role of chief corporate development officer, the Columbia, Maryland-based company said Thursday.

“Josh and Julie’s appointments truly represent a ‘win-win’ situation that will help accelerate our momentum and ensure we are positioned to capitalize on the rapidly growing demand for AI and ML solutions in the federal and commercial sectors,” remarked BigBear.ai CEO and GovCon Expert Reggie Brothers, who is also a an two-time Wash100 Award recipient Reggie Brothers.

Throughout her career, Peffer has occupied executive leadership positions such as CFO of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance division of Raytheon Space & Airborne Systems, vice president of finance in the flow control division at Flowserve and distinguished roles at ITT, Lennox International and Textron, among others.

Most recently, Peffer was CFO at healthcare analytics organization MedeAnalytics. Before that, she was vice president of finance at Amazon Web Services, wherein she developed and oversaw international finance operations in collaboration with client-collaborating divisions of sales, marketing and customer service.

Brothers cited Peffer’s fitness for CFO as “her significant experience driving revenue growth and margin expansion through effective SaaS modeling and pricing.”

Kinley’s career includes over two decades of experience working in the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense, starting as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. Subsequently, he co-founded PCI, where he was chief financial officer for 12 years until it was acquired by BigBear.ai in 2020.

The executive additionally served as senior director of acquisition support at SI International where he liaised with Intelligence Community personnel and provided management consultancy. Kinley’s specialties include program and project management, strategic planning and systems engineering.

In his new position as chief corporate development officer, Kinley will widen BigBear.ai’s market reach throughout the public and private sectors, assessing potential mergers and acquisitions and spearheading integration strategy and execution.

“Josh has been instrumental in executing and integrating the mergers that formed BigBear.ai, establishing our public company infrastructure and leading the IPO workstream,” commented Brothers.

Both executives will report directly to Brothers.

//
KBR Announces Investment in Mura Technology; CEO Stuart Bradie Quoted
Published on
KBR Announces Investment in Mura Technology; CEO Stuart Bradie Quoted

KBR announced on Wednesday that the company has entered into an agreement to invest $100 million in Mura Technology to provide the capital necessary to accelerate the development of its plastics recycling projects.

The announcement and renewed investment, in two separate increments, brings KBR’s total investment in Mura to 18.5 percent, which also enables KBR to participate more fully in this sustainability-focused, high-growth sector.

“Building on our strong partnership of collaboration and innovation, we are very excited to announce our expanded investment in Mura,” said Stuart Bradie, KBR president and CEO. “With a strategic approach to commercializing and scaling its proprietary, differentiated plastics recycling solution, Mura is very well positioned for profitable growth and value creation as the plastics circular economy develops and matures.”

Mura’s mission is to commercialize its differentiated plastics recycling solution to enable a plastic-neutral, sustainable future by providing an end-to-end process to convert mixed waste plastic back to high-quality chemical feedstocks. Mura licenses its technology through KBR to a global client base and is also developing its own portfolio of global sites.

“The combination of Mura’s game-changing Hydro-PRT℠ technology with KBR’s scalable engineering and licensing expertise has now established a world-leading alliance in the advanced recycling of plastics,” said Dr. Steve Mahon, CEO of Mura Technology.

About KBR

We deliver science, technology and engineering solutions to governments and companies around the world. KBR employs approximately 28,000 people performing diverse, complex and mission-critical roles in 34 countries.

KBR is proud to work with its customers across the globe to provide technology, value-added services, and long-term operations and maintenance services to ensure consistent delivery with predictable results. At KBR, We Deliver.

/
CGI Federal’s Horace Blackman Talks Technology Strides With Potomac Officers Club
Published on
CGI Federal’s Horace Blackman Talks Technology Strides With Potomac Officers Club

Senior Vice President of CGI Federal’s defense, intelligence and space business, Horace Blackman, was featured recently in an Executive Spotlight interview with the Potomac Officers Club to talk about his unique journey through the federal information technology market.

Since he began his career with America Online, Blackman has helped agencies like the IRS, the VA and the FDA modernize their IT systems, and he continues this work in his role at CGI Federal today.

In this excerpt from his interview, Blackman outlines the progress made thus far across the federal landscape, and the technologies that can enable us to continue innovating:

“For me, it’s always about looking at how to continue the evolution that has taken place in the last 20 years and imagining what the next 20 years will likely hold. We’ve come a long way, but we don’t realize it. Once upon a time, the idea of doing your taxes on a tablet was unthinkable (even having a tablet back then would be unthinkable)! Being able to use a mobile device to file your taxes efficiently and in a manner that doesn’t cost you a lot of money is certainly a big thing.

Filing an application for benefits for the VA used to require you to put together a C file that included hundreds of pages of paper comprising all of your military, healthcare and personnel records — some dating as far back as 30 to 40 years. We’ve gotten to a point now where you could actually file a claim electronically. It’s a big deal. As we go forward, we’re going to look at leveraging things like artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotic process automation to continue this evolution.”

To read the full Executive Spotlight with CGI Federal’s Horace Blackman, visit PotomacOfficersClub.com, where you can learn more about the platform’s membership options.

/
Army Tests Weapon Systems to Enable Long Range Precision Fires; Maj. Gen. John Rafferty Quoted
Published on
Army Tests Weapon Systems to Enable Long Range Precision Fires; Maj. Gen. John Rafferty Quoted

The U.S. Army is conducting a series of tests to evaluate the ability of next-generation weapon systems to meet the service branch’s requirements for long-range precision fires.

Army Futures Command’s cross-functional team for LRPF is leading efforts to demonstrate precision-strike missiles, missile launchers, long-range artillery and other weapons included in the military’s top modernization program.

Among the weapons included in the LRPF portfolio is the Lockheed Martin-built Precision Strike Missile, which was flight-tested at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to showcase its ability to cover range beyond 499 km.

The service branch is also assessing the Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher, an unmanned C-130 transportable launcher designed for remote fire control operations and autonomous navigation, and the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, a self-propelled artillery system that can hit targets at a far distance.

The Army plans to deploy the operational systems in 2023.

“Improving the strength and agility of the Army’s field artillery systems and munitions will allow our Soldiers to deliver more precise and punishing effects on future battlefields,” said Maj. Gen. John Rafferty, Director of the Army Futures Command Long Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team.

1 … 806 807 808 809 810 … 2,621