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DARPA Concludes Final Drone Swarm Control Tech Experiment; Timothy Chung Quoted
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DARPA Concludes Final Drone Swarm Control Tech Experiment; Timothy Chung Quoted

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has concluded the final field experiment of a program intended to test the ability of small-unit infantry forces to operate a swarm of unmanned aircraft vehicles and autonomous ground systems in urban environments.

The sixth Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics field experiment was held at the Cassidy Combined Arms Collective Training Facility in Fort Campbell, Tennessee, and tested open swarm architecture systems with hundreds of unmanned platforms, DARPA said Thursday.

Under the OFFSET program, systems integrators Northrop Grumman and Raytheon BBN Technologies developed swarm systems architectures with immersive interfaces for human-swarm teaming and physical testbeds.

The latest experiment demonstrated the use of immersive interfaces, including virtual reality, augmented reality, sketch tablets and mobile phones, to command and control swarm agents.

“We have demonstrated in the field that these swarm capabilities are rapidly nearing availability for future operations, and the lessons learned from OFFSET will certainly contribute to future swarm advancements,” said Timothy Chung, the OFFSET program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office.

Sentien Robotics also exhibited its HiveXL drone carrier units designed to automate all aspects of drone operations. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory exhibited multiple fixed-wing aircraft built to operate in complex urban environments and Michigan Tech Research Institute supported the virtual part of the experiment.

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Army Generals Discuss Future of Synthetic Training Environment at Inter-Service Training Conference
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Army Generals Discuss Future of Synthetic Training Environment at Inter-Service Training Conference

A panel of five U.S. Army generals recently talked about the use of live, virtual, constructive and gaming environments for future training of soldiers during the Inter-service/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Florida.

The Army said Wednesday the service leaders pointed to an interoperable and open architecture Synthetic Training Environment (STE) as a tool to support the modernization of soldier preparation.

Maj Gen. David Francis, commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence, noted that the STE should use a modular open systems architecture to enable STE to communicate with other systems within a joint force.

Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of the Army Futures Command’s Network Cross Functional Team, added that the service should adopt cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities and standardize procedures to facilitate data movement across platforms.

“As we develop and field new capabilities to our Soldiers, we must strive to protect embedded training capability that can be used at home or to rehearse with while deployed,” said Brig. Gen. Larry Burris, the acting commandant of the Army Infantry School.

“What the STE will provide us and what you can help deliver is a natural persistent environment where we can do that every month,” added Brig. Gen Charles Lombardo, deputy commanding general of the Army’s Combined Arms Center-Training.

Brig. Gen. William Glaser, director of the STE Cross Functional Team, stressed that a future simulation technology should be easy to use so that military leaders could spend less time on planning exercises and focus more on conducting training sessions.

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RAND Political Scientist Agnes Schaefer Set to Lead Army Manpower, Reserve Affairs Office
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RAND Political Scientist Agnes Schaefer Set to Lead Army Manpower, Reserve Affairs Office

Agnes Gereben Schaefer, a senior political scientist at global policy think tank RAND, has been nominated to become the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs.

The White House said Wednesday that Schaefer is a specialist in various areas such as military personnel policy, reserve component issues, national security strategy, emerging threats and homeland security issues.

Once confirmed by the Senate, she will replace Mark Lewis, the deputy ASA(M&RA) who has been temporarily leading the organization since April.

A RAND member since 2005, Schaefer provided over 50 studies for military and civilian leaders within the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force and the Marine Corps.

She previously served as the associate director of the organization’s International Security and Defense Policy Center from August 2018 to July.

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FDIC Deploys FedRAMP-Authorized Workforce Management Platform From Questionmark
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FDIC Deploys FedRAMP-Authorized Workforce Management Platform From Questionmark

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has deployed Questionmark’s OnDemand for Government online assessment platform to measure the skills, attitudes and learning of employees across the agency. 

Questionmark said Thursday that the tool is approved for government use under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and is listed on the FedRAMP Marketplace as a cloud-based workforce management software.

OnDemand for Government is built to enable government agencies to create reports on employees’ strengths and weaknesses, measure the effectiveness of compliance training and identify the development needs of their workforce.

FDIC is the fourth government agency to use the software-as-a-service platform, which is also deployed at the Customs and Border Protection and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

DOD has granted the platform an authority to operate at impact level 2 to manage public or non-critical mission information.

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Tish Long Unanimously Re-Elected for 3rd Term as Chair of INSA Board, Foundation
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Tish Long Unanimously Re-Elected for 3rd Term as Chair of INSA Board, Foundation

Letitia “Tish” Long, a key Intelligence Community veteran and a previous Wash100 Award winner, has been re-elected for a third term as chair of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s (INSA) board of directors as well as the INSA Foundation’s board of trustees.

Long, who has served as chair since 2016, was unanimously re-elected and will commence her next three-year term upon the expiration of her current term, effective January 1, 2022, INSA said Wednesday.

Commenting on her re-election, Long said, “I look forward to continuing to support the INSA leadership team as we provide national security stakeholders with vital information on policy issues, innovative approaches to challenges, and an unparalleled forum for relationship building and information sharing.”

She added that as chair of the Foundation, she intends to expand the reach and impact of its scholarship fund as well as the INSF’s other workforce initiatives.

Earlier in her career, Long became the first woman to lead a major U.S. intelligence agency upon her appointment as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s fifth director in 2010.

Her other extensive experience as a leader in the IC includes serving as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s deputy director, the first deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence for policy, requirements and resources, as well as deputy director of naval intelligence.

“Tish’s commitment to the national security mission, values-based leadership, and belief in the power of public and private partnership are an inspiration to us all,” said Suzanne Wilson Heckenberg, president of INSA, adding that the organization is “fortunate” to have Long as a leader in the years ahead.

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Tech Executives Attend Meeting With Government Officials on Cybersecurity Partnerships
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Tech Executives Attend Meeting With Government Officials on Cybersecurity Partnerships

Top cybersecurity officials of the Biden administration and technology company executives discussed ways to increase collaboration between the federal government and industry to strengthen U.S. cyber defenses in a meeting held Monday.

Government leaders including Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient Alejandro Mayorkas and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly met with senior leaders representing a group of tech companies to include AT&T, Google, Cisco, Microsoft and VMware.

The meeting also involved members of CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC) program, which aims to facilitate collaboration between the public and private industry to address emerging cybersecurity threats.

“The JCDC brings together in one place the talent, expertise, and capabilities of the federal cybersecurity ecosystem with the ingenuity, innovation, and imagination of the private sector to plan and exercise against the most serious threats; and drive down risk to the nation at scale,” Easterly said.

Increasing the U.S. cybersecurity resilience is one of the top priorities at DHS, according to Mayorkas.

“We are taking proactive steps to elevate our operational cooperation with the private sector to new heights, prioritizing our shared goal of defending a secure digital future,” he added. 

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Army, IARPA Begin Search for New Computer Architecture Via AGILE Program
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Army, IARPA Begin Search for New Computer Architecture Via AGILE Program

The U.S. Army and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) have issued a broad agency announcement to seek new computer architectures that could help the Intelligence Community carry out its data analysis missions.

The Advanced Graphic Intelligence Logical Computing Environment (AGILE) program seeks to come up with new mechanisms to access, store and move data streams and structures that enable data analytic algorithms and foster the predictive analysis of large data volumes from various sources and methods, among others, IARPA said Thursday.

“Clean sheet designs are needed to address today’s era of explosive data growth,” said William Harrod, IARPA program manager.

“Current computers are designed for yesterday’s compute-intensive applications, not today’s data-intensive problems. Our ability to collect data far outpaces our ability to extract meaningful, timely insights, and AGILE seeks to address this problem,” Harrod added.

AGILE is a three-year program composed of two phases. Phase 1 is an 18-month effort that seeks to provide an architectural design in the form of a model that will meet the performance metrics, including data ingestion rate and time to classify vertices and edges. Phase 2 is also an 18-month initiative that intends to come up with a register transfer level design of the AGILE system developed in the initial phase, according to the BAA.

Interested stakeholders should propose a research project based on the program’s four workflows, derivative kernels and industry standard benchmarks.

IARPA and the service’s DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory may launch a follow-on program to advance the development of prototypes of the proposed computer architectures.

Proposals are due Jan. 18th.

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GAO: DOD Should Provide Industry Timely Communication on CMMC Implementation
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GAO: DOD Should Provide Industry Timely Communication on CMMC Implementation

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended that the Department of Defense improve communication with industry on the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program and come up with outcome-oriented performance measures to assess CMMC’s effectiveness as a component of DOD’s efforts to improve cybersecurity for the defense industrial base. 

GAO made the recommendation after it found that DOD has not supplied sufficient details and communication on CMMC implementation, according to a report published Wednesday. 

“Until DOD improves this communication, industry will be challenged to implement protections for DOD’s sensitive data,” the report reads. 

DOD should create a plan to evaluate the CMMC pilot’s effectiveness and GAO said such a plan should state how the department plans to collect relevant data and establish measurable objectives, among others.

In November, the Pentagon unveiled the CMMC 2.0 program to simplify the program standard and further clarify cybersecurity regulatory, policy and contracting requirements.

According to the congressional watchdog, DOD announced plans to suspend the CMMC pilot and launch a new rulemaking period to implement the updated CMMC framework.

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GSA Needs Market Info for Authentication Broker Service
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GSA Needs Market Info for Authentication Broker Service

The General Service Administration seeks market information for the creation of a federated authentication service.

GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) team requires a service that would authenticate users from multiple agencies to log into a federal website, GSA said Dec. 1st in a SAM.gov notice.

TTS’s Cloud.gov platform-as-a-service would onboard user agencies onto the site, which would employ an authentication broker to accommodate users.

GSA seeks an authentication broker that supports multiple federal agency identity providers and at the same time aligns with federal encryption and security standards.

If the authentication broker is a software-as-a-service, it must also comply with Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) standards on a high or moderate level by the middle of 2022.

Interested parties may submit market information through Dec. 15th.

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US, UK to Launch Prize Challenges for Privacy-Enhancing Technologies; OSTP Director Eric Lander Quoted
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US, UK to Launch Prize Challenges for Privacy-Enhancing Technologies; OSTP Director Eric Lander Quoted

The U.S. and the U.K. have announced new bilateral innovation prize challenges aimed at innovating technologies that use data while protecting privacy and intellectual property.

Starting in the spring of 2022, the two countries will task participants from the academe, industry and government to address technical gaps and challenges related to adopting privacy-enhancing technologies, the White House said Wednesday.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards will work with the U.K.’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation to develop the PET challenges.

“It is imperative that we come together as democracies to develop approaches to unlock the economic, scientific, and societal benefits of emerging technologies while protecting shared values such as privacy, accountability, and transparency,” shared Eric Lander, OSTP director.

“This prize challenge will build on the UK’s comprehensive National Data Strategy and help to raise the profile of these technologies on both sides of the Atlantic, laying the foundations for future collaboration,” added Nadine Dorries, U.K. state secretary for digital, culture, media and sport.

The two countries first announced the partnership at the Summit for Democracy, a part of the International Grand Challenges on Democracy-Affirming Technologies. Initial results of the effort will be released at the second summit.

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