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JAIC Launches AI Educational Pilots for Defense Personnel; Greg Allen Quoted
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JAIC Launches AI Educational Pilots for Defense Personnel; Greg Allen Quoted

The Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) has released new training pilots to provide defense personnel across all levels with artificial intelligence education, FedScoop reported Monday.

Greg Allen, JAIC’s policy and strategy chief, told FedScoop that his center partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to produce educational offerings ranging from AI courses to a coding boot camp.

According to Allen, the center aims to transition learning materials to other defense institutions by 2023 to reach up to hundreds of thousands out of nearly three million DOD employees and service members.

“These are folks who actually need all the skills to meet their current and future operational needs,” explained the official.

The JAIC pilots are borne out of a congressional mandate to develop an AI workforce and educational strategy as part of the fiscal 2022 defense policy bill.

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US, French Military Leaders Discuss Cyber Collaboration in Georgia Meeting; Gen. Lloyd Austin Quoted
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US, French Military Leaders Discuss Cyber Collaboration in Georgia Meeting; Gen. Lloyd Austin Quoted

Cyber officials from U.S. and France’s militaries recently met at the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence in Georgia to advance the two sides’ partnership in cyberspace.

The representatives discussed cyber interoperability and shared capacity between the two countries and shared concerns that both are facing in an effort to improve cyber agility and support related objectives and decision-making, the Army said Monday.

Heading the two sides’ delegations are Brig. Gen. Paul Stanton, Army CCOE commander, Brig. Gen. Ryan Janovic, deputy commander of Army Cyber Command’s Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber, and Brig. Gen. Philippe de Montenon, deputy chief of the French Cyber Command.

The meeting is part of an ongoing U.S.-French cyber partnership, which Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III previously pointed out as a valuable asset in fighting against malicious hackers.

“Our countries have a strong shared interest in protecting our critical infrastructure and that of our allies, including cyber infrastructure, and that’s a foundation for our future cooperation in the area of technological infrastructure more broadly,” explained Austin, a 2022 Wash100 Award recipient.

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Coalition for Government Procurement Urges GSA to Address Inflation Under Federal Contracts
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Coalition for Government Procurement Urges GSA to Address Inflation Under Federal Contracts

The Coalition for Government Procurement has asked the General Services Administration about its plans to address inflation on government contracts.

“Inflation is negatively impacting GSA’s contractor and customer bases, limiting access to the commercial market and reducing competition at the task order level for customer agency product and/or service requirements,” CGP President Roger Waldron wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to GSA.

“The impact is especially significant on small businesses, including small-disadvantaged businesses,” Waldron said in the letter addressed to Mark Lee, assistant commissioner at GSA’s office of policy and compliance.

The coalition is calling on GSA to speed up efforts in developing a framework to streamline assessment, administration and implementation of price modifications under its programs to address the pricing squeeze facing Multiple Award Schedule contractors.

GSA should come up with a plan to streamline the Economic Price Adjustment process, according to the letter.

CGP is also inviting GSA to meet its coalition members through a listening session that would serve as a venue for the agency to discuss its considerations in creating the plan and for its members to share their challenges and experiences in the current economic environment.

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Doug Cossa on DIA’s Modernization Plan for Top-Secret Network
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Doug Cossa on DIA’s Modernization Plan for Top-Secret Network

Doug Cossa, chief information officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the five-year modernization plan for the top-secret network used to support intelligence operations, known as the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), will start with technology refresh.

“The first part of modernization is the tech refresh — replacing the old hardware, the infrastructure that makes up the top-secret network,” Cossa told FedTech Magazine in an interview published Thursday.

“Routers, switches, encryption devices, everything that you think of in terms of what makes up a commercial network,” he added.

Cossa said the modernization plan also involves resiliency and redundancy.

“We have smart routing that can route around problems automatically. We also have backup lines, so if a primary line goes down, we have a backup line that we can fail over to, eliminating single points of failure,” he explained.

He highlighted the importance of zero trust and encryption on JWICS and other networks and the need for threat isolation and digital policy to ensure the security of information. Cossa also cited DIA’s preference for multi-cloud capabilities and how a common DevSecOps platform could support the agency’s cloud adoption efforts.

“One of my priorities as CIO is to have a common DevSecOps platform where we create one pathway to getting to the cloud and hosting applications and data, and where we have complete oversight of our cloud usage and making sure we’re using the right capabilities for the right purpose,” Cossa noted.

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CISA Issues ‘Shields Up’ Notice to Warn of Potential Russian Cyber Intrusions
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CISA Issues ‘Shields Up’ Notice to Warn of Potential Russian Cyber Intrusions

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning federal agencies, companies and other critical organizations to be prepared for potential cyberattacks amid imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, C4ISRNET reported Monday.

CISA noted in its Shields Up warning that cyber has been used by Russia as a key element of its force projection in the past 10 years.

“The Russian government understands that disabling or destroying critical infrastructure—including power and communications—can augment pressure on a country’s government, military and population and accelerate their acceding to Russian objectives,” CISA wrote in the Shields Up notice.

CISA recommends several measures organizations should take to improve their cybersecurity posture and protect critical assets. These steps are reducing the likelihood of a damaging cyberattack; taking steps to detect a potential intrusion; ensuring that the organization is prepared to respond in the event of an intrusion; and maximizing the organizations’ resilience to a destructive cyber incident.

To reduce the chances of a damaging cyberattack, organizations should validate all remote access to networks using multifactor authentication and prioritize software updates to address known exploited vulnerabilities, among other actions.

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SPA Taps Former DoD Exec Thomas Troyano as VP for Nuclear Modernization; CEO William Vantine Quoted
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SPA Taps Former DoD Exec Thomas Troyano as VP for Nuclear Modernization; CEO William Vantine Quoted

Thomas Troyano, a Department of Defense veteran, has been named vice president and technical fellow for nuclear modernization at defense and space contractor Systems Planning and Analysis.

The Alexandria, Virginia-based company announced Monday that Troyano’s new role will include strategizing, concept development and product quality assurance, as well as liaising with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.

“Mr. Troyano’s unique experience and expertise in the nation’s critical nuclear modernization programs will be an invaluable asset to SPA and our customers and will further enhance our ability to help them solve their most challenging problems,” commented SPA President and CEO William Vantine.

At SPA, Troyano will also be expected to develop and broaden the company’s nuclear program portfolio. To do so, he will draw on his 28 years of experience in the Department of Defense, where he held a number of positions.

Troyano worked in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment as the head of portfolio management for its nuclear modernization acquisition programs.

His last DoD role was deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategic, space and intelligence portfolio management. In this position, Troyano directed the department-wide attainment and evaluation of warfighting capability portfolios. This work spanned from nuclear weapons systems to nuclear command, control and communication as well as missile defense and space.

Troyano is known for his skill with creating partnerships among different branches of the government and military and for a facility with transition risk management.

While at the DoD, he earned the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive in 2008 and 2017, in addition to the DoD Exceptional Civilian Service Medal in 1997 and 2020.

SPA was recognized as a Top Workplace by the Washington Post in 2021, an honor it has received for eight consecutive years.

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Navy Performs Snakehead Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Prototype Christening at Rhode Island Facility
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Navy Performs Snakehead Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Prototype Christening at Rhode Island Facility

The U.S. Navy has christened the first prototype of its largest submarine-launched large displacement unmanned undersea vehicle at a test facility in Rhode Island.

The Snakehead LDUUV is the service branch’s modular, reconfigurable and multi-mission system that will deliver guidance and control, navigation, situational awareness, propulsion, maneuvering and sensors during underwater operations, the Naval Sea Systems Command said Friday.

Snakehead features a government-owned architecture, vehicle software and various mission autonomy technologies designed to improve the Navy’s endurance, depth capability and payload capacity.

Representatives from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport and the Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants performed the christening at the Narragansett Bay Test Facility in Rhode Island.

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FAA to Begin Testing UAS Traffic Management in Spring
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FAA to Begin Testing UAS Traffic Management in Spring

The Federal Aviation Administration is preparing to begin field-testing new air traffic management technologies and services designed to support the integration of unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System.

FAA said Friday it plans to commence the UAS Traffic Management field test in spring 2022 with the goal of helping the government refine UTM’s cybersecurity, standards and data exchange capabilities.

UTM consists of services that support but are detached from the air traffic management services used for traditional, manned aircraft.

Tests will simulate realistic scenarios and assess how the newest traffic management technologies can support actual drone traffic management in various environments.

FAA will use the testing’s results to inform policymaking and with the goal of normalizing drone flights beyond the operator’s visual line of sight.

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NOAA Extends Commercial Satellite Weather Data Contract With Spire Global
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NOAA Extends Commercial Satellite Weather Data Contract With Spire Global

Spire Global has secured a contract to continue to deliver commercial radio occultation satellite weather data to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for use in operational weather forecasts.

The company said Friday it received a fourth delivery order under a previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to provide NOAA with 5,500 radio occultation profiles per day.

The near real-time data provided through the $8 million delivery order will be available to federal government agencies and national and international meteorological organizations to support weather forecasting.

Contract work will commence on March 16, 2022, and end on Jan. 18, 2023.

NOAA selected Spire Global for the Commercial Weather Data Pilot project in 2016 to help demonstrate the impact of commercial space-based data on weather forecast models.

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Air Force Research Lab to Release Solicitation for Cislunar Domain Awareness Solicitation in March
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Air Force Research Lab to Release Solicitation for Cislunar Domain Awareness Solicitation in March

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory is planning to solicit offers in March for a satellite experiment that will track space objects between geostationary orbit and the moon, Defense News reported Monday.

Col. Eric Felt, director of AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate, said in a recent C4ISRNET interview that an award for the Cislunar Highway Patrol System is expected in summer ahead of a planned launch in 2025.

CHPS is among the various programs that reflect the Department of Defense’s increased interest in the cislunar region amid a rise in what Felt described as adversarial and commercial activities related to the area.

“That pace of activity then causes us to say: ‘Well, we had a plan to get after cislunar space domain awareness, but now we need to accelerate our plan because things are happening much faster than we expected,’” explained the colonel.

In January, Chief of Space Operations and 2022 Wash100 Award recipient Gen. John Raymond revealed during a Mitchell Institute Event that he expects the Space Force to send a space domain awareness capability in the cislunar region within the next decade.

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