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Navy-led Trident Warrior Exercise Runs 27 Technology Tests
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Navy-led Trident Warrior Exercise Runs 27 Technology Tests

Naval Information Warfare Systems Command gathered partners to conduct 27 technology tests in this year’s iteration of an annual large-scale information warfare exercise, DVIDS Hub reported Tuesday.

Trident Warrior 2021, the annual event’s 19th iteration, consisted of fleet experimentation activities conducted at shore-based facilities and aboard naval ships in Southern California.

Experimented technologies included the Cooperative Autonomous Systems for Standoff Maritime Inspection and Response (CASSMIR), which uses unmanned surface vehicles to help remotely operated vehicles perform reconnaissance in the water.

NAVWAR experimented with a USV and a tethered ROV to investigate, search and neutralize objects that simulated seabed mines at the Imperial Beach Mine Range.

The command will use the exercise’s results to inform a report scheduled for a January 2022 release. NAVWAR also hosted the TW22 mid planning conference from Nov. 10 to Dec. 6 in preparation for next year’s Trident Warrior exercise.

TW22 will take place between operating areas in Hawaii and Southern California during the larger Rim of the Pacific multinational exercise.

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State Department: 3-Year Rolling Average of Authorized Foreign Military Sales Hit $47B in FY 2021
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State Department: 3-Year Rolling Average of Authorized Foreign Military Sales Hit $47B in FY 2021

The State Department has announced that the three-year rolling average of foreign military sales (FMS) of defense weapons implemented between fiscal years 2019 and 2021 by the Defense Security Cooperation (DCS) Agency was $47 billion. 

The department said Wednesday the total value of implemented FMS cases dropped from $50.78 billion in FY 2020 to $34.81 billion in FY 2021. From FY 2019 through FY 2021, direct commercial sales of weapons systems had a three-year rolling average of $114.1 billion.

The total value of approved DCS cases in FY 2021, including the value of services, technical data and hardware, was $103.4 billion, compared with $124.3B during the previous fiscal year.

Data also shows that the rolling average over three years for the combined DCS and FMS cases in FY 2021 was $161.1 billion, down from $179.1B in FY 2020.

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Alexander Macgillivray Named OSTP Principal Deputy CTO
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Alexander Macgillivray Named OSTP Principal Deputy CTO

Alexander Macgillivray, a technology law and policy expert, has rejoined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to serve as principal deputy U.S. chief technology officer. He said in a tweet that growing the team of technologists at OSTP will be his top priority.

Macgillivray previously served as deputy U.S. CTO during the Obama administration. In this role, he worked with then-CTO Megan Smith with a focus on key priority areas, including the intersection of big data, privacy and technology and internet policy.

Prior to joining the government, Macgillivray served as general counsel at Twitter and deputy general counsel at Google.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School.

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Nonprofit Calls for Government-Industry Panel Formation to Ensure 5G Deployment Safety
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Nonprofit Calls for Government-Industry Panel Formation to Ensure 5G Deployment Safety

The Flight Safety Foundation has urged the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration to form a panel of government and industry representatives who will devise strategies to ensure the safety and efficiency of 5G wireless service rollout.

The Alexandria, Virginia-based nonprofit said Wednesday it believes that FAA’s restrictions on the use of certain aircraft systems due to potential interference from C-band 5G communications will harm critical missions such as helicopter emergency medical services.

FAA expects telecommunications companies to activate the spectrum-based service on Jan. 5.

“We urge the formation of a government-industry expert panel to collaboratively develop viable and sustainable solutions for safe deployment before 5G activation,” said Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation.

“Working together, sharing and analyzing data, is going to result in the best outcome.”

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Executive Order to Implement 2.7% Average Federal Pay Raise for Civilian Employees
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Executive Order to Implement 2.7% Average Federal Pay Raise for Civilian Employees

President Biden signed an executive order that will give federal civilian employees a pay increase of 2.2 percent and an additional locality pay adjustment of 0.5 percent, effective Jan. 1, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.

In August, the president announced plans to implement an average pay raise of 2.7 percent for General Schedule employees.

The move marks an increase from the 1 percent rise in federal pay that civilian personnel received in 2021. In 2020, General Schedule employees received a 3.2 percent salary increase.

Although Congress has included in its omnibus spending package a proposal to increase federal pay in recent years, it has yet to pass any spending measures for 2022, according to the report.

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Gunnison’s CEO Gil Dussek on Achieving Success in Collaborative Digital Transformation
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Gunnison’s CEO Gil Dussek on Achieving Success in Collaborative Digital Transformation

Gil Dussek, CEO of Gunnison Consulting Group, said close collaboration and communication are key to achieving rapid success in digital transformation initiatives across public and private sectors, regardless of access to resources.

“We’ve often conveyed to our teams that through working shoulder-to-shoulder with our customers, we can shift the mindset from ‘doing more with less’ to ‘doing more, without more and faster,’ which compels us to find creative ways to drive value creation with a similar amount of funding and in quicker increments,” Dussek told the Association for Corporate Growth’s Capital Style blog.

Dussek also shared the insights he gleaned from spearheading Gunnison’s acquisition of Global Solutions & Services Frameworks, or G2SF, which closed in Nov. of 2020.

“One of the major lessons learned included the fact that constant communication is paramount – not only between those involved in integration, but with all of Gunnison, both existing employees and the newly acquired entity,” said Dussek.

He added that robust and widespread messaging protocols help not only through the acquisition and integration processes, but also in ensuring that employees are thoroughly informed and unified in their collaborative efforts with each other and with their clients in the public and private sectors.

In a recent Executive Spotlight interview with ExecutiveBiz, Dussek also elaborated on the G2SF acquisition, which marked his first buy as CEO of Gunnison, as well as the core values he and his leadership team established to shape the company’s culture.

“When thinking about the combination of these new additions with longtime Gunnison leaders who played a material role in helping Gunnison achieve its initial growth phase, I’m extremely excited about our prospects for 2022 and beyond,” Dussek told ExecutiveBiz.

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GSA Awards New Electric Bus Models to 5 Firms Including 3 Small Businesses; Robin Carnahan Quoted
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GSA Awards New Electric Bus Models to 5 Firms Including 3 Small Businesses; Robin Carnahan Quoted

The General Services Administration has selected five firms to help the agency implement 10 electric transit bus models in support of the Biden administration’s zero-emission vehicle goals.

These models, awarded under the agency’s five-year Transit Bus program, include the first GSA-offered fuel cell electric buses and seven that run on battery electricity, the agency said Tuesday.

The three hydrogen fuel cell bus models combine hydrogen with oxygen to generate power for electric motors.

“We look forward to continuing to help our agency partners meet their missions with the latest zero-emission vehicle technology and leverage government buying power to create clean energy jobs across the country,” said Robin Carnahan, GSA administrator.

Federal agencies may lease the newly awarded buses or directly order them via GSA’s AutoChoice portal. The buses can accommodate between 34 and 46 passengers.

The government wants to achieve a full percentage of zero-emission vehicle procurements by 2035. 

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DHS Launches New Technology Solicitation for Small Businesses
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DHS Launches New Technology Solicitation for Small Businesses

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has opened a small business solicitation that seeks research proposals on 11 technology topics.

DHS said Tuesday its Small Business Innovation Research 22.1 solicitation calls for projects that apply artificial intelligence, push-to-talk, biological hazard detection and other modern technologies to homeland security.

“A strength of the DHS SBIR program is that each year we can partner with innovative small businesses from diverse backgrounds that specialize in a variety of technological interests that can help DHS execute its mission,” said Dusty Lang, director of the department’s SBIR Program.

Interested parties may submit proposals to sbir.dhs.gov through Jan. 19, 2022.

The solicitation’s specific topics are:

  • A Step Towards Agent Agnostic Detection of Biological Hazards
  • Automated Artificial Intelligence (AI) Distress Alerts and Monitoring
  • Broadband Push-to-Talk Interoperability Platform
  • Field Forward Detection Platform for High Consequence Toxins
  • From Port-Side to Pen-Side: Low-Cost Detection/Diagnostics for High-Consequence Transboundary or Nationally Reportable Animal Diseases, Particularly Those with Zoonotic Propensity
  • Mass Fatality Tracking System (MFTS)
  • Next Generation High-Performance, Low Cost, Semiconductor-Based Spectroscopic Personal Radiation Detectors (SPRDs)
  • Non-invasive and Real-time Detection of Counterfeit Microelectronics
  • Person-worn Detector for Aerosolized Chemical Threats
  • Rapidly Deployable Countermeasures at Protected Perimeters and Structures
  • Streamlined Airport Checkpoint Screening for Limited Mobility Passengers
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FedRAMP Seeks Feedback on Draft Rev. 5 Baselines
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FedRAMP Seeks Feedback on Draft Rev. 5 Baselines

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program is seeking public comment on the initial draft of its baseline security measures that align with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s updated cloud security guidance.

In a blog post published Tuesday, FedRAMP said its Program Management Office worked with the Joint Authorization Board to develop draft high, moderate and low baseline security requirements for cloud services providers.

In September 2020, NIST released the final version of Revision 5 of Special Publication 800-53, which provides a catalog of security and privacy controls to protect federal information systems and organizations from cybersecurity threats.

NIST also unveiled a companion document, SP 800-53B, to outline control baselines for identifying the risk level of organizations and their information systems.

FedRAMP used the threat-based methodology for scoring each NIST SP 800-53, Rev. 5, control against the MITRE ATT&CK Framework version 8.2. By applying the threat scoring methodology, FedRAMP included one additional control in the low baseline, 17 in the moderate baseline and 22 in the high baseline. The public can submit feedback until April 1, 2022.

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DARPA Initiative Open Sources Tools Repository for AI Adversarial Defenses Evaluation
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DARPA Initiative Open Sources Tools Repository for AI Adversarial Defenses Evaluation

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Guaranteeing Artificial Intelligence Robustness to Deception (GARD) initiative has opened to public use a virtual testbed, toolbox, benchmarking dataset and training materials used for assessing AI and machine learning defenses against adversarial attacks.

Among the available assets is a virtual platform, dubbed Armory, that runs repeatable evaluations of adversarial defenses in relevant scenarios using a Python library for ML security called Adversarial Robustness Toolbox, DARPA said Tuesday.

The toolbox provides resources for evaluating ML models and applications against various adversarial threats such as inference, evasion and extraction. The Armory testbed relies on ART library components for attacks and model integration and MITRE-generated datasets and scenarios.

GARD also uses the Adversarial Patches Rearranged In COnText, a publicly released benchmark dataset that focuses on real-world examples of physical adversarial patch attacks.

“The goal is to help the GARD community improve their system evaluation skills by understanding how their ideas really work, and how to avoid common mistakes that detract from their defense’s robustness,” said GARD Program Manager Bruce Draper.

GARD includes researchers from Two Six Technologies, IBM, Mitre, Google Research and the University of Chicago.

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