Perikin Enterprises will construct the $8.7 million REVIL under the supervision of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, with the project to be completed in 14 months, AFRL said on Monday.
The facility will advance nuclear skills development by developing expertise for evaluating re-entry technology and designs, the laboratory noted, adding that the Air Force will build three more laboratories to enhance its nuclear science and technology system integration capability.
When REVIL becomes operational, it is expected to promote collaborative efforts with Department of Defense agencies, Department of Energy laboratories and industry partners.
At the site’s groundbreaking in July, Stephanie Eddy, head of the nuclear deterrence portfolio at AFRL, said REVIL is envisioned as a world-class laboratory to enable advanced research projects on re-entry vehicles.
Col. Jeremy Raley, the director of AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate, added that the facility will enable the development of nuclear-related components and technologies to maintain the United States’ nuclear deterrence capabilities.
For the Air Force, REVIL is an important facility for advanced nuclear research to ensure the United States’ technological advantage and safeguard its national security, AFRL explained.
Defense software company Fuse Integration has received a $16 million contract to supply its Fuse CORE 4.0 virtualized network systems for the software modernization of the U.S. Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft.
According to the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, Fuse Integration’s product will update the external networking systems of the aircraft’s Delta System Software Configuration-5 setup to improve security and battle management controls.
Shawn Thompson, advanced development assistant program manager for systems engineering at NAVAIR’s E-2/C-2 Airborne Command & Control Systems Program Office, said CORE adds another cybersecurity layer through new firewall applications in the Advanced Hawkeye aircraft’s beyond line-of-sight upgrade program.
Fuse Integration’s systems also provide a small and light router with power and cooling features designed to improve platform performance and replace bulky and outdated routers, Thompson added. He also said the CORE router can simultaneously host applications, enhancing the E-2D aircraft’s mission capabilities.
Other E-2D Advanced Hawkeye tooling includes Lockheed Martin’s APY-9 radar for which the company has already delivered 75 units under a contract with Northrop Grumman, the manufacturer of the early warning aircraft.
The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security has proposed a rule that would require developers of artificial intelligence models and computing clusters and cloud providers to provide the federal government with detailed reports about developmental activities, results of red-teaming activities and cybersecurity measures.
BIS said Monday the proposed rule establishing reporting requirements for AI model development would amend the bureau’s Industrial Base Surveys – Data Collections regulations.
“As AI is progressing rapidly, it holds both tremendous promise and risk. This proposed rule would help us keep pace with new developments in AI technology to bolster our national defense and safeguard our national security,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
According to BIS, the proposed reporting requirement will facilitate the collection of information that is key to ensuring that AI tools can withstand cyberattacks, meet stringent reliability and safety standards and have reduced risk of misuse by foreign adversaries.
The proposed rule was introduced after the bureau conducted a pilot survey earlier this year.
A bipartisan pair of lawmakers on Tuesday filed a discharge petition seeking to force a vote on the House floor on a measure that would eliminate a pair of controversial tax rules that reduce the retirement benefits of some ex-government workers.
Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Garret Graves, R-La., are the lead sponsors of the Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), a measure introduced last year that would eliminate Social Security’s windfall elimination provision and government pension offset.
The windfall elimination provision reduces the Social Security benefits of retried employees who spent a portion of their careers in the private sector in addition to a federal, state or local government post where Social Security is not intended as an element of their retirement income, like the federal government’s Civil Service Retirement System. And the government pension offset reduces spousal and survivor Social Security benefits in families with retired government workers.
The windfall elimination provision reportedly affects the Social Security benefits of roughly 2 million former public servants, while the GPO impacts nearly 800,000 retirees.
Though the bill has widespread support in Congress among both parties—with more than 300 cosponsors in the House alone—the chamber’s leadership has balked at allowing the bill to receive a floor vote. If Spanberger and Graves can secure at least 218 signatures among House lawmakers, they can then force such a vote to take place.
“For more than 40 years, millions of Americans who paid into Social Security during their careers have been stripped of their retirement benefits—retired police officers who began second careers after retiring from the force, retired teachers who took a summer job, retired federal employees who spent a portion of their careers in the private sector, retired firefighters who worked a second job or other retired public servants who contributed to Social Security during their careers,” the duo said in a statement. “Our legislation to eliminate these unjust penalties on public servants is supported by a bipartisan coalition of 326 lawmakers—far more than the majority needed for the discharge petition to succeed or for the bill to pass on the House floor.”
In an analysis of the bill released Monday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would cost $195 billion over the next decade. While a 12-figure price tag ordinarily would cause Republicans to balk at such a proposal, Graves had a different outlook on the estimate.
“The CBO has confirmed: if H.R. 82, the Social Security Fairness Act, is not signed into law this year, $195.6 billion in Social Security benefits will be stolen from public service retirees over the next decade,” he said. “And since CBO only looks forward, not in the past, it is staggering to think of the literal hundreds of billions stolen from public service retirees over the last 40 years when they needed it most.”
The measure has widespread support from federal employee unions and other associations representing public servants.
“[The American Federation of Government Employees] is doubling down on our support for a recent congressional push to repeal two controversial rules that have caused public servants to lose two-thirds or even the entire amount of their Social Security benefits,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley.
And William Shackelford, national president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, sent a letter to House lawmakers Monday urging them to support the discharge petition.
“For nearly four decades, the WEP and GPO have taken away the hard-earned income of public servants at all levels of government by penalizing federal workers, teachers, police officers, firefighters and others whose work is not covered by Social Security,” he wrote. “[These] penalties result in thousands of dollars in lost benefits every year simply because these workers chose to serve their nation, state or local community. This type of service should not be punished, yet this is exactly what the WEP and GPO do.”
The U.S. Department of State intends to partner with the India Semiconductor Mission with the aim of exploring opportunities through which the global semiconductor ecosystem can grow and be diversified.
The State Department said Monday that under the initial phase of the partnership, the India Semiconductor Mission will steer a comprehensive assessment of the South Asian country’s semiconductor ecosystem and regulatory framework and the needs of its workforce and infrastructure.
Future joint initiatives will be based on the outcomes of the assessment, which the State Department expects to be joined by various stakeholders from India, including government, private sector and educational organizations.
The partnership will be carried out under the International Technology Security and Innovation Fund. Established by the CHIPS Act of 2022, the ITSI Fund provides the State Department with $500 million for the development and adoption of various initiatives with U.S. allies and partners.
The GovCon International Summit will feature government and industry speakers to discuss how international partnerships, coalition warfare and emerging technologies are reshaping the defense landscape and how the U.S. can stay ahead of the curve. Register now to attend this important event!
Federal agencies have fully met the Biden administration’s initial management and talent benchmarks for the broader adoption of artificial intelligence technologies across government, according to a watchdog review released on Monday.
The report from the Government Accountability Office looked at agency compliance with 13 specific requirements from President Joe Biden’s October 2023 executive order on AI, which outlined governmentwide safeguards around use of the new technology. Agencies were expected to implement the examined mandates by the end of March 2024.
GAO said it reviewed requirements from the executive order that tasked agencies with providing guidance on AI management, working to increase the government’s AI workforce and coordinating implementation of AI-related policies.
Six agencies were tasked with implementing these specific directives: the Executive Office of the President; Office of Management and Budget; Office of Personnel Management; Office of Science and Technology Policy; General Services Administration; and the U.S. Digital Service.
“Federal agencies have taken actions to implement the selected management and talent requirements outlined in [the executive order] that were due by the end of March 2024,” GAO said, noting that all six agencies “fully implemented” the 13 requirements that they were collectively tasked with fulfilling.
OMB, in particular, was charged by Biden with issuing AI guidance to agencies. The office subsequently released a governmentwide memo in March 2024, which included a directive for agencies to designate a chief AI officer to oversee adoption of the emerging technologies across their operations.
OSTP and OMB were also tasked with identifying ways of enhancing AI talent across the government. GAO said both entities “identified priority mission areas for increased AI talent, established the types of talent that are the highest priority to recruit and develop and identified accelerated hiring pathways.”
The report also said that USDS successfully worked with OSTP to establish a hiring page on the government’s AI website that went live in October 2023 and has routed approximately 2,300 job applications to relevant entities, as of this February. OMB officials told the watchdog that it has hired “over 150 professionals into AI and AI-enabling roles” since Biden’s order was issued.
“Since these agencies and talent programs developed and implemented plans for AI talent recruitment, the government is likely to increase AI expertise in high-priority areas quickly and more efficiently,” GAO said.
The watchdog’s report comes after the White House announced in January that agencies had met all of the executive order’s initial 90-day requirements.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is seeking industry proposals to research and develop hardware, software and related technologies that could make high-performance computing energy efficient.
The R&D work will be performed under the $23 million New Frontiers program, which aims to produce the technologies within five to 10 years to enable faster and energy-efficient computing needed to build future generations of computers for addressing challenges in science, energy, health and security, the Department of Energy said Friday.
HPC and data-driven modeling and simulation are essential to advancing DOE’s science missions and are key investment areas for the Office of Science, which employs three of the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world for open scientific research.
However, ORNL’s Christopher Zimmer, New Frontiers project director, said current HPC technology trends “threaten to have a disruptive and costly impact on the development of DOE applications and potentially a negative impact on the productivity of DOE scientists.”
The entities selected through the request for proposals will be awarded two-year contracts to advance HPC.
The RFP, managed by UT-Battelle, provides interested parties until Oct. 21 to submit their responses.
When Lindy Kyzer told her parents what she wanted to study in college, they didn’t think she would be able to find a job.
“As a young person growing up in Iowa, nobody told me that I could support national security. My parents had no idea if I would ever be able to work when I majored in international affairs. They were positive I would be unemployable,” she said. “Maybe that’s true, but look at me now. I’m on a webinar.”
Now the director of content and public relations at clearancejobs.com, a job website for individuals with an active federal security clearance, Kyzer is attuned to helping talent find new roles in national security.
In a Sept. 5 Intelligence and National Security Foundation webinar focused on development of the intelligence community’s workforce, Kyzer spoke with representatives from the government, private and non-governmental sectors who agreed that the future of that workforce will increasingly promote STEM expertise, workers from underrepresented backgrounds and more transitions between the public and private sectors.
STEM
Jo-Ellen Adkins, the deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Human Development Directorate, said college students who want to work in intelligence and are majoring in a subject like political science should also get a certification in something related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, more commonly known as STEM.
“I’m looking right now at what we’re hiring and what our strategic workforce plan is for the future. And I’m going to tell you this right now for NGA it is largely about STEM, STEM, STEM, STEM and STEM,” she said.
Lauren Buitta — who founded and leads Girl Security, an organization that helps girls and women enter the national security workforce — referenced a July report from the Aspen Strategy Group that argued a weak educational system is a national security risk. The document summarized how the U.S. can create and promote career pathways from K-12 into industries that are critical to technological competitiveness,
“The findings are all the same, which is that we need to invest in better STEM education access earlier on for more young people,” she said, noting that her organization prioritizes teaching STEM skills.
Diversity
Buitta warned that recent mishandling by intelligence agencies of sexual misconduct cases also is a recruitment issue.
“There’s no question that the IC has its challenges with respect to workplace safety issues,” she said. “Issues related to sexual violence, those stories make it to girls and women. They read those stories, they hear those stories.”
The House Intelligence Committee in April issued an interim report that found the “CIA failed to handle allegations of sexual assault and harassment within its workforce in the professional and uniform manner that such sensitive allegations warrant.”
“I feel like the DEI backlash has really cut short the opportunity to analyze a return of investment on what DEI — done in the way it’s designed to do — can do for national security and giving the space for companies and institutions to actually measure the benefits of it,” she said. “I hope that despite all of the backlash that there’s still space for us to be able to do that kind of work together.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s annual demographic report for fiscal 2023 found that while the Intelligence Community has made strong gains in minority applicants, attrition has led to workforce diversity declines over the past two years.
The Private Sector
Adkins argued that intelligence employees transitioning between the government and business is not a bad thing.
“The great ideas that are being worked on right now with ODNI is how do you move in and out of government? I love that concept. I love that idea,” she said. “The message shouldn’t be you have to stay in the government or you have to be in the private sector. You should be able to move in and out.”
“I have this dream where we create sort of a civic model where people can serve across sectors,” Buitta said. “Because it really does showcase the actual way in which national security occurs — across the public and private sectors and sort of this collaboration.”
Systecon North America will continue working with the Survivable Airborne Operations Center, or SAOC, to produce predictive models and data analytic services.
In the new partnership phase, Systecon North America aims to enhance software models, including the company’s Open Suite system, that uncover data gaps and support operational preparedness, the company told ExecutiveGov.
Justin Woulfe, co-founder and chief technology officer of Systecon North America, said, “Our partnership with SAOC is a testament to Systecon’s expertise in predictive logistics and operational readiness.”
Systecon North America and SAOC will look to expand on the work done during the first stage of the partnership in 2022 and 2023. An example of this prior work is a pre-acquisition reliability, availability, maintainability and cost, or RAM-C, analysis model, which improved mission readiness, built operational resilience and instilled defense re-optimization.
“We are excited to build upon the foundational work we’ve done and continue to provide innovative solutions that enhance mission readiness and operational efficiency,” Woulfe stated.
Together, Systecon North America and SAOC will further develop the notional/analogous models created by Systecon and continue working under a collaboration endorsed by the Secretary of Defense and flight training programs.
With just three weeks left to avert a federal government shutdown on Oct. 1, lawmakers and the White House remain deadlocked over the terms–and length–of a short-term deal to fund federal agencies.
The GOP-controlled House last weekend unveiled its proposal for a stopgap continuing resolution, which would keep federal agencies funded at fiscal 2024 levels for six months, as well as enact unrelated an unrelated bill requiring Americans provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, a nonstarter for Democrats in part because, they have said, it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote.
The Biden administration and Democratic leadership in the Senate have already rejected the plan. In addition to the voter ID provisions, they objected to the long length of the measure—Biden and his allies prefer a two-month deal—as well as the House’s failure to include proposed budget anomalies that would increase funding at the Veterans Affairs Department and Social Security Administration.
In a fact sheet sent to reporters Sunday, the Office of Management and Budget warned that absent an anomaly to cover a projected funding shortfall for VA, the department likely would be forced to lay off employees.
“Absent fully addressing a shortfall in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ health care, VA would be forced to make difficult tradeoffs in its efforts to preserve quality veteran care,” OMB wrote. “VA would need to undertake reductions in overall staffing levels that may impact access to care for veterans across clinical programs. Veteran experience may be impacted across many different functional areas, including medical care scheduling and coordination, connecting homeless veterans to permanent housing, caregiver support and other programs.”
And for the second time in as many weeks, the administration said that unless Congress adopts the president’s full budget request for the Social Security Administration, the agency’s workforce will fall to a 50-year low, exacerbating the embattled agency’s customer service crisis.
And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a “Dear Colleague” letter Sunday suggesting that his chamber will summarily reject the House’s plan.
“Democrats support a CR to keep the government open. As I have said before, the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way,” Schumer wrote. “Despite Republican bluster, that is how we’ve handled every funding bill in the past, and this time should be no exception.”
Prior to this weekend, lawmakers and observers had speculated that the odds of a shutdown were relatively low this year, in no small part due to the impending 2024 election in November.
Although many initially suspected that the House’s plan amounted to a “messaging bill,” in an effort to force Democrats in vulnerable districts to vote on the GOP’s voter ID legislation, House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly unnerved some of his caucus in comments on a conference call Monday, according to Politico.
“There is no fallback position,” Johnson told reporters Monday. “This is a righteous fight.”
