All posts by : Shamima A

The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office wants small businesses to get a piece of a 10-year, $15 billion indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract supporting Advana, the Department of Defense’s enterprise-wide data analytics platform. 

Announced at an industry day in September, the plans to bring small businesses into the Advana fold are designed to help nontraditional vendors showcase their individual capabilities.

“You don’t have to do every part of the tech stack … if you do a single piece and you do it really well, you can have a contract,” Bonnie Evangelista, deputy chief digital and AI officer for acquisition, told Breaking Defense at the event.

Find out more about the ways in which the DOD is leveraging data to transform its decision making capabilities at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Defense R&D Summit on Jan. 23. Secure your spot at the 2025 Defense R&D Summit to meet public and private sector defense technology experts and help pave a pathway for future mission success.

What is Advana?

Managed by the CDAO, Advana is a DOD-wide, multi-domain data analytics and artificial intelligence platform that delivers information to both military and civilian analysts and decision makers. With data drawn from over 400 DOD business platforms, Advana is currently the department’s largest enterprise data system.

Through the upcoming IDIQ, the CDAO aims to scale the platform to reach a wider range of users and cater to new demands that have sprouted from its expansion.

An Evolving Approach to Advana

The introduction of this IDIQ marks a shift toward a new way of contracting for Advana. For the past seven years, Booz Allen Hamilton was the sole company operating the platform, but a senior defense official told Breaking Defense that a single-provider strategy can no longer support Advana’s expanding service offerings and user base. 

The new contract will embrace the principles set forth by CDAO’s Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories, known as Open DAGIR, a “multi-vendor ecosystem with supporting business models that enables industry and government to integrate data platforms, development tools, services and applications in a way that preserves government data ownership and industry intellectual property.”

Announced in May, Open DAGIR’s current objective is to support the Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative — the Pentagon’s comprehensive effort to elevate communications capabilities across the U.S. military, allies and other partners. 

“Open DAGIR ensures the department can leverage the innovative solutions from the world-class software developers in both the traditional and nontraditional industrial base to create capabilities for our warfighters and decision makers,” CDAO Radha Plumb said.

According to the DOD, the upcoming Advana IDIQ will follow the ideals of interoperability and vendor competition that have characterized Open DAGIR.

Plumb called the contract the “largest acquisition of digital and AI enabling capabilities” in DOD history and an “unprecedented opportunity for industry to get involved.”

Get an inside look at the ways in which the Pentagon is exploring new contracting approaches at the 2025 Defense R&D Summit, where you will have the opportunity to hear defense technology experts discuss topics such as AI, data and more. Register for the 2025 Defense R&D Summit to join the conversation.

The nature of global conflict has changed, extending the battlefield beyond the physical realm and into the cyber domain. As physical barriers continue to fall and global tensions rise, the United States has recognized the need to master cyber combat, but so have its adversaries.

“Russia is a hurricane — you see them coming, you feel them. China is climate change. We are all starting to feel that now when you look at what’s happening in the world,” Kristina Walter, chief of the Cybersecurity Collaboration Center within the National Security Agency, said of today’s cyber threat landscape in her opening keynote address at the Potomac Officers Club’s GovCon International Summit on Thursday.

Today, Walter said, these competitors are leveraging the digital space to disrupt critical infrastructure, steal technologies from U.S. businesses, discover new cyber vulnerabilities in U.S. systems and conduct information warfare.

China, she said, is “unequivocally” the largest and most sophisticated threat in the cyber arena.

“We have seen over the last decade, while we were focused on counter-terrorism, that they have used cybersecurity as a means to an end that goes just below the threshold of war,” she continued. 

What NSA has seen with Russia is the use of cyber means to enable kinetic effects, a tactic that has been displayed throughout the conflict with Ukraine, said Walter.

The nation has also been “heavily involved in information operations,” such as attempts to interfere with U.S. elections. Iran, she said, has conducted similar activities, and the physical separation between conflict in the Middle East and U.S. borders has become much less relevant.

“We are all being impacted by the conflict of the Middle East, and we are all being impacted by Russian and Ukraine, even if we don’t have boots on the ground, which means we have to change the way we understand the cyber activity that’s happening, understand what could overflow into the United States or our critical infrastructure and counter against that,” she said.

Cyberattacks against infrastructure and businesses can cause major national security threats. Walter emphasized that it is the U.S. government’s job to help companies secure their digital assets to prevent ransomware attacks or extortion, which are “a threat to all of us.”

Russia, China and Iran are just a few of the many actors the U.S. is “playing whack-a-mole” with across the cyber domain. The way to address this vast array of threats, said Walter, is partnerships.

While NSA has had cybersecurity on its radar for years, what was missing until recently was the ability to take the intelligence it has on attacks against the defense industrial base and share it with industry partners directly. Information on how these attacks were carried out was present, but in the past, the agency was unable to make it available to partners.

“If we can’t see all the pieces, we can’t connect all the dots and we can’t understand this activity,” Walter said.

NSA established the CCC four years ago as an unclassified center of collaboration to help change the culture surrounding information sharing. Since then, the organization has gathered 1200 industry partners and released over 70 public cybersecurity advisories with detailed information on what China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and ransomware actors are doing against U.S. companies, according to Walter.

As the future unfolds, Walter hopes to sharpen NSA’s focus on artificial intelligence, which —- has major implications for cybersecurity — and counter China’s attempts to degrade international internet protocols.

Learn more about the U.S. government’s top national security priorities at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Homeland Security Summit on Nov. 13, where public and private sector leaders will come together to weigh in on the nation’s most important homeland security objectives. Secure your spot at the 2024 Homeland Security Summit to gain access to all the insights these experts have to offer.

Jane Cys Zentmyer, the former director and chief enterprise architect at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, or OIG, has been appointed as the chief technology officer of the Department of the Interior’s OIG. Zentmyer announced her appointment in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

According to the Interior Department’s CTO recruitment notice earlier published in the website usajobs.gov, the position’s major duties include serving as a senior OIG adviser on organizational strategies for systems technology and infrastructure modernization. The role also calls for extending technical expertise to the assistant inspector general for management.

Before her six-year stint at HHS, Zentmyer worked in the private sector, which included serving as content strategist for digital services provider DMI and as senior communications specialist, web content strategist at information technology company NCI.

Her previous private sector experience also included writing for American Medical News, the American Hospital Association and the Illinois State Medical Society.

A B.S. Journalism graduate from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Zentmyer holds a master of arts in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois Springfield. 

Scott DeBoer and Mark Papermaster have been respectively appointed chair and vice chair of CHIPS for America’s Industrial Advisory Committee.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology said Wednesday the new appointments come on the heels of the addition of five new members and the return of five others to a second term with the IAC.

Scott DeBoer, the executive vice president of technology and products at Micron Technology, was elevated from his previous vice chair role, where he oversaw the company’s global technology development and engineering efforts. He succeeds Mike Splinter who has served as chair since 2022.

DeBoer has been with Micron for almost 30 years having joined the company in 1995 as a process technology engineer. He also served in various leadership roles including vice president of process research and development. He also serves as site leader for Micron’s Boise area facilities.

Papermaster is the executive vice president and chief technology officer at Advanced Micro Devices, where he spearheaded the development of the Zen x86 CPU family, Infinity Architecture, and the re-design of AMD’s engineering processes.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released the National Spectrum Research and Development Plan.

The purpose of the document is to ensure that the U.S. maintains its leadership in spectrum R&D by providing shareholders a common reference, shaping private sector efforts and guiding decisions regarding spectrum-related research, the White House said Wednesday.

The document will also help ensure that the benefits of the radio frequency spectrum, deemed by the White House as an important resource, are enjoyed by everyone in the U.S.

The document proposes four categories for spectrum-related R&D: fundamental research, like agile front ends and antennas and spectrum utilization optimization; research accelerators, like public datasets and testbeds and testing frameworks; organizational improvements, like focused research to inform regulatory decisions; and current or likely operational spectrum use cases, like advanced spectrum management processes and regulatory options.

The National Spectrum Research and Development Plan was prepared by the Wireless Spectrum R&D Interagency Working Group within the Subcommittee on Networking & Information Technology Research & Development of the National Science and Technology Council.

The National Institutes of Health is seeking industry input for enhancing the operations of the National Institute on Aging, or NIA.

According to the updated notice published on Sam.gov Tuesday, the NIH is soliciting information for possible vendors to provide maintenance for the existing NIA Clinical Research Operations & Management System and develop new components.

Interested parties should consider the agency’s cloud migration and transition efforts in their responses.

The government intends to award a firm fixed price contract with a base period of one year and four option periods of one year each.

Responses to the RFI should be submitted by Oct. 15.

NIA is responsible for conducting and supporting research on aging as well as the health and well-being of older people. The CROMS system has boosted NIA’s research information capabilities by providing administrative and scientific information management, including real-time collection, tracking, reporting and management of its clinical research data and portfolio.

The NIA CROMS is currently supported by Digital Infuzion.

Register now to join the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Healthcare Summit and catch industry luminaries, thought leaders and experts as they discuss the trends, innovations and critical issues surrounding the healthcare sector.

The Air Force Research Laboratory plans to perform in-flight testing of prototype antennas and radio receivers in late 2025 and early 2026 to evaluate their capability to provide multiorbit satellite connectivity, Breaking Defense reported Tuesday.

The devices, developed under the Global Lightning program, are designed to enable switching between different space architectures — a capability critical to addressing challenges brought by signal jamming technologies and implementing the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control network.

Brian Beal, principal aerospace engineer at AFRL’s Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office, said the antennas and radio receivers are built to connect to commercial and government-owned constellations, including SpaceX’s Starlink and the Transport Layer, which the Space Development Agency is developing.

While the equipment trials are focused on aircraft connectivity, the AFRL also works with the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and Army to integrate the capability into ground vehicles, ships and stationary applications.

According to Beal, if the Global Lightning program returns positive results, different program offices are expected to adopt and field the satellite communications products.

Various companies, including L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, SES Space and Defense, RTX and Viasat, are involved in the satcom antenna and receiver development.

Beal said the in-flight tests will include ensuring the devices can keep reliable, stable connections to any constellation, determining whether aircraft maneuvers could impact connectivity and measuring the transition time when switching between constellations.

Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., have introduced the AI Grand Challenges Act, which would require the National Science Foundation to hold prize competitions for artificial intelligence innovations.

The legislation would incentivize AI development and encourage AI researchers and developers through prize competitions, Lieu said in a Wednesday statement.

“We must maintain American leadership in AI research, innovation and implementation while minimizing potential risks associated with the technology,” he noted.

Obernolte added that the Act would incentivize AI breakthroughs and advance the emerging technology’s potential capabilities to solve the most complex challenges that the United States faces.

The bill would direct NSF to conduct $1 million grand challenges that use AI to solve problems in several categories, including national security, cybersecurity, health, energy, environment, education, manufacturing, space and quantum computing.

Under the proposal, NSF is also mandated to collaborate with the White House and the National Institutes of Health, to oversee $10 million grand challenges for AI-enabled cancer breakthroughs.

The competitions will focus on detection, diagnostics, treatments and therapeutics for cancer and related comorbidities.

The House bill would be paired with companion Senate legislation filed by Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., in May.

The United Arab Emirates has become an extremely contested zone for semiconductor chip manufacturing and innovation. The country itself wants to be known as a go-to producer of both chips and artificial intelligence technology and this has caught the attention of multiple nations, including the U.S. and China, the Wall Street Journal said late last month.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics are eyeing UAE as a destination to build new “megafactories,” which could directly compete with the homegrown factories the U.S. is pushing right now, depending on the organizations’ cooperativeness.

At the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Defense R&D Summit, top Department of Defense officials will discuss how the U.S. is working to stay out in front of the global pack with its technology production and studies. You don’t want to miss this day — Jan. 23 — of networking, learning and GovCon collaboration. Save your spot before they sell out!

Last week, President Biden ratified the Building Chips in America Act, designed to break down barriers that might delay or prevent the U.S. from constructing its own chip megafactories. Among other measures, the bill excludes such factories from having to undergo environmental reviews prompted by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

As top brass at TSMC and Samsung visit UAE and the Gulf region to scope out a home for their factories, they are also holding court with U.S. federal officials about China’s potential involvement and investments in the region. The U.S. is particularly concerned about China gaining access to “advanced AI-related chips” that TSMC and Samsung are in talks to pump out.