Hughes Network Systems has secured a three-year, $18 million contract from the U.S. Department of Defense for the installation of a 5G network at a Navy air station.

The other transaction agreement tasks Hughes as a prime contractor establishing a 5G network built for day-to-day operations, repairs and flight traffic management at Washington state’s Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, the company said Monday.

“This award is a testament to Hughes leadership in engineering and managing smart networks that enable the military to exchange information with the right people at the right time with an any-network approach,” remarked Hughes Defense Vice President and General Manager Rick Lober.

Lober added that the organization’s strategy will be “hardware agnostic and transport independent” and said they will utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to create the stand-alone network.

Deployment of the network started in September 2021 and incorporates spectrum and engineering services from DISH Wireless as well as support from Boingo Wireless, Cisco, Dell, JMA Wireless and Intel. The network is aimed to be highly secure under a zero trust architecture.

Hughes Advanced Programs Vice President Dr. Rajeev Gopal stated the technological fleet in play “including a packet processing core, radio access, edge cloud, security and network management,” will have a paradigm-shifting effect on the base’s functionality.

In addition, Gopal shared that automation and optimization will be key in evolving the base’s current methodologies from “walkie-talkies, paper-trails and telephone conversations” to a continuously operating and reliable communication network.

A Navy and Marine Corps technology advocacy group called the Information Warfare Research Project funded the contract and the project is a function of a DoD 5G experimental initiative. The latter is headed up by the undersecretary of Defense for research and engineering at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

SHINE Technologies has partnered with the Department of Energy to produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 in the U.S. without using highly enriched uranium while meeting nuclear nonproliferation requirements.

SHINE will help establish a domestic supply chain of the isotope required in thousands of daily medical procedures in the U.S. under the Uranium Lease and Take-back Program, Los Alamos National Laboratory said Thursday.

As part of the program, the nuclear technology company signed separate contracts to borrow low-enriched uranium from the National Nuclear Security Administration for MO-99 production and return any resulting radioactive wastes that were not commercially disposed of to the Office of Environmental Management.

“Once SHINE begins production, our country will be that much closer to creating a reliable and sufficient supply of these life-saving materials right here at home, while also increasing nuclear security by reducing the use of highly enriched uranium,” explained Corey Hinderstein, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at NNSA.

The Uranium Lease and Take-back Program was mandated into existence by the American Medical Isotopes Production Act of 20212, which directs the DOE to loan uranium to domestic medical isotope producers.

The U.S. Department of State has awarded Accenture Federal Services a five-year, $118 million contract calling for data management assistance.

Under the contract, Accenture Federal Services will be expected to aid the branch’s passport and visa system as well as their homeland security database hub, the Arlington, Virginia-based company said Monday.

John Goodman, Accenture Federal Services CEO, commented on the integral nature of embracing updated technology in order to gain more insights from data at a faster rate.

“AFS is thrilled to support the State Department with automating and standardizing the way data is shared to enhance operational speed and quality for the agency,” Goodman, who is a five-time recipient of the Wash100 Award, continued.

The State Department is looking at cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for Accenture’s data replication duties with passports and visas. The department hopes these upgrades will mitigate fraud.

Additionally, they are considering implementing said technologies for the company’s data engineering efforts with the homeland security database. The latter is an architecture network through which information travels to other branches of the U.S. government.

Accenture Federal has fostered a longtime working relationship with the State Department. According to Susie Rainey, client account lead at AFS, the collaboration is in the interest of strengthening foreign policy and serving the collective good of the country.

The new contract, especially the homeland security database improvement, is not unlike the assignment AFS received from the Transportation Security Administration earlier this month to streamline their credential system. The TSA award is $199 million over seven years.