Three procurement directorates from Hanscom Air Force Base directly awarded a total of more than $1.4 billion to small businesses in fiscal year 2021.

This amount exceeds the directorates’ joint goal of $840 million in small business awards under the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, Air Force Materiel Command said Thursday.

The Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence and Networks (C3I&N) Directorate and Digital Directorate are parts of AFLCMC; and the Nuclear Command, Control and Communications Integration Directorate operates within the AFNWC.

The base’s FY 2021 awards include Digital’s $19.3 million to Tomorrow.Io for 3D weather and ocean data and nearly $300,000 from C3I&N’s PlatformOne group to Black Label for cyber and information warfare software factory support.

“From Small Business Innovation Research programs to COVID-19 projects, through production and sustainment efforts, here at Hanscom there is a strong desire to support small businesses across the entire spectrum,” said Jeff Emmons, director of small business programs at Hanscom.

The leaders of the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and the European Commission have committed to removing selected Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system as part of efforts to cut off Russia from the international financing system in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

The countries also commit to implementing restrictive measures to limit the Russian Central Bank from fielding its international reserves and launching measures against individuals and entities that facilitate the war in Ukraine and participate in Russian government’s harmful activities, according to a joint statement published Saturday.

Other measures are introducing a transatlantic task force to effectively implement financial sanctions by determining and freezing the assets of sanctioned companies and individuals and stepping coordination efforts to counter disinformation and other types of hybrid warfare.

“Even beyond the measures we are announcing today, we are prepared to take further measures to hold Russia to account for its attack on Ukraine,” the statement reads.

The latest economic measures came days after the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced additional economic sanctions on Russia’s financial institutions and expanded debt and equity prohibitions in light of Ukraine invasion.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is working on a commercial buying guide for intelligence, defense and federal civilian agencies as NGA shifts to commercial imagery analysis and GEOINT capability sources, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Dave Gauthier, director of commercial and business operations at NGA, said the “commercial supplier matrix” will help NGA gain access to information on commercial capabilities to better match platforms from industry suppliers to the needs and requirements of users.

“With so many different types of suppliers, and so many opportunities to pull in these services, we really have to provide a catalog of capabilities to our user community,” Gauthier added.

He noted that NGA is making a “fundamental shift” toward commercial analytic services.

“It’s this idea that companies themselves, either the imagery providers or in partnership with analytics companies, will work to extract information from imagery, and provide us what I like to call the box scores instead of the game tape,” Gauthier added.

He said the supplier matrix platform is still in the testing phase and that some parts of it could be made available to the public.

“It’s still being built in [and] populated today,” Gauthier said of the platform. “We do have a community of beta testers to help us understand and make sure we’re answering the questions and can anticipate the questions that those users would have when they want to research this information for their own decision making.”

The Department of Defense wants to engage companies, academic institutions and government laboratories to set up regional innovation hubs for microelectronics development and education.

DOD issued a request for information Friday to solicit input on the Microelectronics Commons initiative and interested parties can view information about the process for submitting ideas through the official website of the department’s chief technology officer.

A cross-functional team under Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, proposed the new public-private partnership to encourage microelectronics prototyping work and train college or university students in semiconductor technology.

The team envisions semiconductor company facilities or federally funded research and development centers hosting the prototype hubs.

“Microelectronics are vital to every aspect of our lives from delivering power to our homes to securing our nation’s infrastructure,” said Shyu, an inductee into Executive Mosaic’s Wash100 for 2022.