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USS Gerald R. Ford Ship Receives Final Advanced Weapons Elevator Unit
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USS Gerald R. Ford Ship Receives Final Advanced Weapons Elevator Unit

USS Gerald R. Ford now has a full set of advanced weapons elevators following the 11th unit’s delivery on Dec. 22.

The carrier’s AWEs use electromagnetic motors and other various technologies to move ordnance to the flight deck with less manpower requirement, Naval Sea Systems Command said Thursday.

“The Navy-Industry teaming provided the opportunities for hundreds of craftsmen, technicians and engineers, working around the clock—through multiple underway and holiday periods—to get these advanced systems on line and operational,” said Rear Adm. James Downey, program executive officer for aircraft carriers at the Navy.

The team achieved this milestone within the aircraft carrier’s half-year planned incremental availability period at Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding’s Virginia-based facility.

Downey said the ship is on track to complete the PIA then move forward to sea trials and follow-on tasking.

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NASA Sought 4 University Teams’ Help for Advanced Air Mobility Research
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NASA Sought 4 University Teams’ Help for Advanced Air Mobility Research

NASA has tapped four university teams to receive up to $31.5 million for research on various aeronautical challenges in support of its Advanced Air Mobility campaign.

Under the University Leadership Initiative, participating students and faculty members will explore methods of reducing aircraft emissions with different engines and autonomy tools for air travel in complex airspace, the space agency said Thursday.

The five-year effort will help advance NASA’s aeronautical research goals while providing participants with experience working on real-world technical topics and leading diverse and multi-disciplinary groups.

“Aviation of the future has to be climate friendly to keep the world flying, and a great way to do that is to allow tomorrow’s top minds to begin making contributions to these goals while still in school,” explained Koushi Datta, project manager for ULI.

The winning teams hail from:

  • University of Central Florida
  • Florida State University
  • Georgia Institute of Technology
  • University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Ball Aerospace’s Mirror System, Optics Tech Launched Aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope; Mackenzie Lystrup Quoted
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Ball Aerospace’s Mirror System, Optics Tech Launched Aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope; Mackenzie Lystrup Quoted

A mirror system and optical technology built by Ball Aerospace has launched aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is meant to detect light from the first stars and galaxies to exist.

The Webb telescope, which uses a Ball Aerospace-built 269 square-foot lightweight mirror system, will be the first segmented telescope deployed in space and will provide infrared imaging of distant stars, Ball Aerospace said Saturday.

Makenzie Lystrup, vice president and general manager of civil space for Ball Aerospace, said the company was honored to play an integral role in the “next great space observatory.”

“Today’s launch is the culmination of a lot of hard work by a closely integrated team that spanned across multiple mission partners and NASA,” said Lystrup.

Ball Aerospace worked with Northrop Grumman and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on the innovation of the Webb Telescope, which launched on Saturday.

Additionally, Ball Aerospace developed 132 cryogenic actuators which were mounted on each mirror segment to control positioning and curvature radius. 

The company also designed and built electronic flight control boxes that can withstand extremely cold temperatures in space and will control the actuators to maintain proper telescope segment alignment.

This launch continues Ball Aerospace’s partnership with NASA. Earlier this month, NASA launched the Ball Aerospace-built Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, which will study X-Rays from supernova remnants, supermassive black holes and other high-energy objects in space.

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Installation of Exascale Supercomputer ‘Frontier’ at Oak Ridge National Lab Now Underway
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Installation of Exascale Supercomputer ‘Frontier’ at Oak Ridge National Lab Now Underway

An exascale supercomputer called Frontier is now being installed and integrated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Leadership Computing Facility in Tennessee and some researchers are expected to gain access to the machine in the summer of 2022, Nextgov reported Thursday.

“Some early users will get access to Frontier this summer to help harden the system for full user operations on Jan. 1, 2023,” Justin Whitt, program director for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, told the publication Wednesday.

In May 2019, the Department of Energy awarded Cray a potential $600 million contract to build the Frontier supercomputer, which will incorporate technologies from Advanced Micro Devices. 

In September of the same year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise closed its acquisition of Cray four months after it first announced the deal.

Whitt said Frontier will not only provide simulation and modeling capabilities, but will also offer “unprecedented opportunities to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for issues of global importance, like discovering new patterns in patient data for precision medicine uncovering the origins of disease, shedding light on new properties of materials, and advancing research in high-energy physics.”

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John Benner Named Los Alamos National Lab Weapons Production Lead
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John Benner Named Los Alamos National Lab Weapons Production Lead

John Benner, executive officer for weapon programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, will assume the role of associate laboratory director for weapons production on Jan. 3.

He will succeed Dave Eyler, who retired from the role in the fall, and LANL said Friday Benner will take over responsibilities from David Dooley, who serves as acting ALDWP, in January.

In this role, Benner will work with other officials across the lab as he oversees a team of approximately 1,400 employees responsible for producing and evaluating plutonium pits, nuclear weapon detonators, non-nuclear components and power supplies for materials management, surveillance and NASA’s deep space missions.

“The scope of ALDWP’s work is vast; not only do we have the technical challenge of achieving pit first production and rate production, but we also have multiple ongoing programs of national importance that must be executed while the equipment and infrastructure for the pit mission is installed — all under the operational constraints of an active nuclear facility,” Benner said.

Benner has held various leadership roles at LANL, including associate director for weapon engineering and experiments and chief engineer for nuclear weapons and weapon systems engineering division leader.

He also served as a senior technical adviser to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s deputy administrator for defense programs and vice president and chief operating officer for MSTS, the Nevada National Security Site’s operating and management contractor.

“John is a proven leader who can provide strategic vision, maintain stability, and meet deliverables for Weapons Production as we continue to ramp up our 30-pits-per-year and other important national security missions,” said Bob Webster, deputy laboratory director for weapons programs.

Webster added that Benner brings to the role nearly three decades of experience in weapons engineering across the nuclear security enterprise.

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Report Examines How Terrorists, Criminal Groups Launder Money, Traffic Goods
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Report Examines How Terrorists, Criminal Groups Launder Money, Traffic Goods

The Government Accountability Office looked at how terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations launder money, engage in human trafficking and move illegal drugs and found that these groups perform phony trade deals, conduct real estate purchases and use virtual currencies to launder the proceeds of trafficking activities.

GAO said Thursday such strategies can involve the use of professional networks for money laundering and service providers in law and other legitimate professions.

Moreover, transnational crime and terrorist groups use electronic means to transmit money or perform bulk cash smuggling across borders.

The report listed several examples of human trafficking-related red flag indicators that have been provided to financial institutions, including frequent receipt or sending of funds through cryptocurrency, frequent customer transactions from various U.S. geographical regions and customer accounts sharing a telephone number or other identifiers with escort agency websites.

The congressional watchdog also found that federal agencies have launched efforts to counter money laundering and trafficking activities. 

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the Department of the Treasury, for instance, facilitates information sharing with over 160 financial intelligence agencies overseas and works with law enforcement agencies to share data on trafficking-related “red flags” with financial institutions.

“FinCEN also coordinates a voluntary program that allows financial institutions to share information with one another to better identify and report suspicious activities that may be related to money laundering or other illicit financing,” the report reads.

POC - Digital Currency and National Security Forum

On Jan. 27, the Potomac Officers Club will bring together distinguished government and industry leaders to offer the GovCon community an insight into the national security aspect of digital currencies. 

POC’s Digital Currency and National Security forum will feature National Cyber Director Chris Inglis as the keynote speaker.

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GovCon Expert Jerry McGinn Discusses Center for Government Contracting Impact on Research, Education, Collaboration Training
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GovCon Expert Jerry McGinn Discusses Center for Government Contracting Impact on Research, Education, Collaboration Training

The George Mason University School of Business’ Center for Government Contracting has released its 2021 Report on Thursday breaking down the year’s achievements and features a foreword from GovCon Expert Jerry McGinn, executive director of the center and a 2021 Wash100 Award winner. 

“It’s been a tremendous year of growth for the Center. While COVID continues to affect us all, we are grateful that our work is becoming more and more impactful in the government contracting community,” said McGinn. “As we conclude our third program year, we have continued to focus around our three lines of effort: research, education & training, and collaboration.”

GovCon Expert Jerry McGinn highlighted the Center’s three million dollars in DoD-funded research studies in areas such as defense finance, pricing, small business, and intellectual property. He discussed the expansion of the Center’s board of advisors, its collaboration efforts and the launch of its GovCon Student Ambassadors in education and training. 

You can read the full 2021 Report from the Center for Government Contracting right here. 

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CIO Raj Iyer on U.S. Army’s 2021 Digital Transformation Strides
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CIO Raj Iyer on U.S. Army’s 2021 Digital Transformation Strides

Dr. Raj Iyer, chief information officer for the U.S. Army, said the service branch has made significant strides in the Army’s first digital transformation strategy over the past year in the face of drastic changes in the geopolitical environment.

In a Profiles in Excellence CIO Achievements interview with the Federal News Network, Dr. Iyer identified the establishment of accredited cloud environments, network modernization and the deployment of remote collaborative environments among the Army’s key achievements in 2021.

Regarding the Army’s cloud transition efforts, Dr. Iyer said the initiative was “critical because it was not just about moving apps to the cloud, but for us in the Army, it was about us leveraging the cloud as a war fighting platform.”

Citing the cloud as the Army’s next-generation solution for exchanging operational and mission data across tactical and enterprise networks, Dr. Iyer said, “We established those accredited environments, and we actually were successful in migrating over 300 systems to the cloud just in one year, and that included three of our most complex SAP ERP systems.”

Dr. Iyer was named the Army’s first civilian CIO in Nov. 2020, following his post at Deloitte Consulting as managing director of government and public services. He noted that because he assumed the newly created CIO role during a complex era of significant global shifts, he had to prioritize the Army’s emerging issues as well as long-term ones.

“It was really important to kind of balance the near-term priorities and ongoing operations with the reason why the office was stood up in the first place, which was for us to be forward-leaning and for us to keep up with the changing pace of technology,” Dr. Iyer commented.

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Air Force, Northrop Showcase Tech Converting Sunlight Into RF Energy
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Air Force, Northrop Showcase Tech Converting Sunlight Into RF Energy

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Northrop Grumman have demonstrated for the first time a sandwich tile that can convert solar power into radio frequency for a future space-based energy system. 

The tile, which consists of one layer of photovoltaic cells and another with RF transformation and beamforming components, will serve as the base of a conversion panel that will fly with the Arachne experimental satellite in 2025, AFRL said Tuesday.

During a recent Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research event at a Northrop facility, the tile turned sunlight from a solar simulator into RF energy in front of on-site and virtual stakeholders.

“The successful conversion of sunlight into RF energy in a lightweight and scalable architecture is a significant step forward in delivering the technology building blocks to achieve the Arachne mission,” explained Jay Patel, vice president of Northrop’s remote sensing programs business unit.

In November 2019, Northrop received a contract valued at over $100 million for the development of the solar power conversion technology.

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Secret Service Appoints Special Agent Roy Dotson as Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator
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Secret Service Appoints Special Agent Roy Dotson as Pandemic Fraud Recovery Coordinator

The U.S. Secret Service has selected Roy Dotson, assistant special agent in charge, to coordinate investigations into deceitful COVID-19 relief applications as the agency’s national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator.

Dotson will work with financial institutions, money services businesses, U.S. attorneys and other federal agencies to seize pandemic relief funds that were received using illicit means, USSS said Tuesday.

He will also lead the organization’s cyber fraud task forces in looking into money laundering schemes involving cryptocurrencies and unwilling victims.

“The Secret Service is hitting the ground running, trying to recover everything we can, including funds stolen from both federal and state programs,” explained Dotson.

As of Dec 21, the Secret Service has arrested over 100 fraudulent individuals and recovered more than $1.2 billion and returned over $2.3 billion in unemployment insurance and Small Business Administration loan and grant programs.

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