NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy announced the establishment of a new space sustainability division that will consolidate the agency’s orbital debris-related activities, SpaceNews reported Saturday.
At a conference held Thursday, the previous Wash100 awardee stated that the space agency received the needed congressional approvals to form the division, which she said will serve as a “unified organization that will integrate our operational, research and policy functions.”
The newly established division will be led by former astronaut Alvin Drew and operate as part of the Space Operations Mission Directorate, which includes the International Space Station.
“If you have an operational mission, having it under operational control is really helpful,” Melroy said. “That’s the day-to-day urgent mission. We’re keeping astronauts and our spacecraft safe.”
According to the deputy administrator, the division will have access to approximately $40 million in funding spread across the agency.
The center will build upon the computer codes the laboratory’s researchers have developed and indicated effective and rapid structure search methods through artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, Ames said Thursday.
The new center will tap exascale computers at other national laboratories to find the right materials from the large and complex list of potential choices, the Iowa State University-operated laboratory added.
To harness the various processors and hardware of the exascale computers, reputed as among the most powerful in the world, the center will use software from the Exascale Computing Project, a joint effort of the Energy Department’s Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory will collaborate with Ames on the center, which will draw funding from the Energy Department’s Office of Science.
In the private sector, SandboxAQ is using AI to discover and develop new compounds and chemistries that could be combined to produce new materials for potential use by the U.S. Army and other defense and government customers, Jen Sovada, the company’s president of global public sector and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, told Federal News Network recently.
The General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service is working to streamline the government procurement process through several efforts, including reducing the procurement acquisition lead time, or PALT, Federal News Network reported Thursday.
Mark Lee, assistant commissioner for the Office of Policy and Compliance at FAS, told FNN in an interview how the Commercial Platforms program is helping GSA improve PALT.
“One is our recent award of the Commercial Platforms program, which is like the second generation of the program. Basically this streamlines for purchase card holders the buying process to access commercial online marketplaces,” Lee said. “So we’ve pre-negotiated agreements across the federal government with eight commercial marketplaces, and we’ve seen significant time savings for our customers.”
He cited the use of oral presentations and how it helps GSA facilitate the source selection process as part of its PALT improvement efforts.
“A lot of times we’re using oral and video presentations to do technical evaluation. So rather than get a 200 page volume of technical material for a source selection panel to read through — it’s voluminous — we invite people to come in and they do about typically a 90 minute presentation,” Lee commented. “We’ve seen the use of oral video presentations have dramatically streamlined the source selection process. We needed a better experience for industry partners and this helped us streamline getting to contract award.”
The GSA official also discussed FAS’ efforts to update GSA Advantage, particularly the FAS catalog platform, and initiatives to improve the user experience.
Rear Adm. Heidi Berg, the deputy commander of Fleet Cyber Command, recently underscored the need to provide credible counterspace capabilities as a deterrence to China and Russia, which are developing counterspace technologies themselves.
Berg, who also serves as deputy commander of the Navy Space Command, made the remark on Monday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference, where she attended as part of a panel featuring U.S. Space Force and U.S. Navy leaders who discussed the increasing importance of space operations, according to the USSF on Wednesday.
In Berg’s opinion, space warfare is currently in the same state cyber warfare was in 10 years ago, and integrating space into military operations should be guided by lessons learned from how cyber was integrated into operations.
Also part of the panel was Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, assistant chief of space operations for future concepts and partnerships, who underscored the need for a responsible manner of conducting space operations.
The Space Force official advocated for “reversible effects” that would prevent the proliferation of debris in orbit.
“I think collectively, we all need to [have] policy discussions,” Godfrey said.
The Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. Space Force will establish a new framework for logistics support and develop metrics to measure performance in parts availability and order response time, among other areas, under a new agreement.
In a statement published Thursday, Greg Ogorek, national account manager to the Space Force at DLA, said the metrics will help DLA better meet supply requirements, particularly for parts that have no producer or are in low demand.
“It’s those hard-to-get parts keeping weapons systems down that we need to better position ourselves from a stock perspective and predict what’s going to be needed to keep the mission going,” Ogorek noted.
Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly, head of DLA, and Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, chief operations officer at the Space Force, signed the agreement Wednesday at a conference in Maryland.
According to Simerly, the agreement establishes the standards for optimizing the effectiveness of the agency’s logistics support for the military branch worldwide.
The agreement will also create an Executive Steering Group for the general officer level and a Partnership Agreement Council for colonels and below.
“With these working groups, we’ll bring together leaders from both sides and all the supporting actors to go over topics and work around emerging concerns as we agree on future endeavors,” Ogorek stated.
The Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy missed the deadline to implement laws designed to protect national security from the risks brought by consulting services providers that serve potential U.S. adversaries such as China, according to the Government Accountability Office.
From 2019 to 2023, Congress enacted five laws to revise federal acquisition regulations and policies to address the potential risks related to organizational conflicts of interests and foreign ownership, control or influence linked to the awarding of contracts to consultants but the DOD and the OFFP have yet to implement three of the said laws, namely the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act Section 847, the Preventing Organizational Conflicts of Interest in Federal Acquisition Act and the FY 2024 NDAA Section 812, GAO said in a report published on Thursday.
The government watchdog found that the DOD and the Department of Homeland Security accounted for over half of the $500 billion spent on consulting services contracts from FY 2019 to 2023, raising national security concerns as the contracts involved work related to defense analyses or intelligence.
To address the issues, GAO recommended that the secretary of defense take steps to ensure prompt updates are made in response to legislation on how acquisition personnel use FOCI information when awarding or modifying contracts and that the OMB director ensure prompt updates are made to the Federal Acquisition Regulation.
The National Treasury Employees Union on Thursday became the latest federal employee union to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign.
NTEU joins the American Federation of Government Employees and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, both members of the AFL-CIO, on the list of labor groups representing federal workers to endorse Harris following her ascension to become the Democratic nominee this summer. AFGE and IFPTE had both endorsed President Biden in 2023, and then updated those endorsements after his withdrawal in July.
In a statement, NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald touted Harris’ record supporting federal workers and empowering unions at federal agencies.
“When it comes to treating federal employees with respect, valuing their service and investing in their work, Kamala Harris is the clear choice,” Greenwald said. “She shares our values and our commitment to making sure that the federal government works for all Americans. She has been a strong advocate for the issues that matter most to federal employees: fair pay, paid family leave, adequate agency funding and staffing and robust collective bargaining rights.”
Though the endorsement makes no mention of Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump, his own record on workforce and labor issues likely played a large part in NTEU’s choice. While in office, the Republican nominee sought to reduce labor’s influence on the federal workplace and to strip tens of thousands of federal workers in “policy-related” positions of their civil service protection; he has vowed to revive the latter initiative if elected in November.
Greenwald also noted that Harris has cultivated a working relationship with the union throughout her political career, and values the non-partisan civil service.
“Harris has a long career in public service, which has given her a keen understanding of how the skilled civil servants who perform the day-to-day work of government are vital to our democracy,” she said. “She is a powerful voice for workers and their unions, recognizing that taxpayers are better served when the federal workforce is organized and empowered to help agencies meet their important public service missions.”
The House Administration Committee and the Chief Administrative Officer for the House of Representatives have announced the implementation of a new policy that seeks to establish a framework for the use of artificial intelligence in the lower chamber while addressing cybersecurity risks.
The committee said Thursday the House-wide AI policy seeks to create methods for assessing and prioritizing AI technologies and enable all House personnel to present ideas or AI tools.
“The policy is based on a reliable framework which will continue to evolve as AI technology continues to develop,” said CAO Catherine Szpindor.
“The policy is to assist Members and staff to safeguard potentially sensitive information while also empowering them to leverage AI to better serve the American people,” Szpindor added.
According to the fact sheet, the House AI Policy outlines the principles, guardrails and prohibited and permissible use cases for responsible AI use and provides a foundation for members to use approved AI tools.
The new policy, which took effect Aug. 28, also defines a process for the CAO to assess and the House Administration Committee to approve AI tools for defined use cases as part of efforts to reduce privacy and security risks associated with AI.
The Air Force is planning a tabletop exercise to gauge U.S. readiness to react to a wide spectrum of nuclear-related scenarios, part of a larger effort to prepare for them, a service leader said on Wednesday.
“What if, God forbid, there was a low-yield [nuclear weapon] use in Europe tomorrow?” Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Gebara, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration, said at the Air & Space Forces Association conference outside Washington, D.C. “Or what if there was a demonstration of nuclear use, or a nuclear test? What if we had to adapt the INDOPACOM regional fight because a nuclear power had a red line [that meant] we couldn’t fly in certain areas?
“These are the kind of things that our warfighters need to understand from the beginning. It doesn’t need to be just at the presidential level with no other discussion,” Gebara said.
That represents a big change in the way the military has historically talked about the possibility of nuclear war. It used to be that intelligence or analysis about the effects of such weapons on a given conflict was held at the highest possible, “strategic” level. That was a reflection of the times, when two great powers were engaged in a largely conventional arms race with knowable “rules” or at least principles of play. That doesn’t represent the modern role of nuclear weapons in conflict, which may include far more players and means of delivery of nuclear effects.
“When I was younger, at the end of the Cold War, the biggest threat we had was no-notice-1,000 ICBMs just coming over the North Pole, and how would you handle that?” Gebara said. “That’s horrific to even think about. But it’s actually a pretty simple tactical problem. There’s only a couple things you can do with something that bad.”
Today, ICBMs look quaint compared to new types of missiles and weapons that can deliver nuclear effects, including some that don’t even appear to be weapons at first. If the Soviet Union’s 100-megaton Tsar Bomba was the epitome of the Cold War arms race, the new race is best represented by the lower-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons that Russia has threatened to unleash on Ukraine or, possibly, in space.
Gerbera said weapons instructors at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base are already teaching these kinds of lessons to more pilots.
“So what does it mean if you’re flying through this area and there’s a radiological threat? What’s it mean for the airplane?” he said.
Now, Gebara said, he’s working to broaden training for such scenarios across the Air Force.
“I think at all levels we need to build that experience, not just at the tactical level and not just at the strategic,” he said.
The results of the tabletop exercise, which is slated for later this month, will be briefed at a CORONA commanders conference.
Boston, Massachusetts-based Tomorrow.io and Orbital Micro Systems of Boulder, Colorado, have secured contracts valued at $4.3 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide Microwave Sounder—or MWS—data for new Commercial Weather Data Pilot studies.
The Office of Space Commerce said Tuesday NOAA will purchase MWS data collected by the two commercial satellite companies from the low earth orbit platform.
Under the agreements, Tomorrow.io will receive $2.3 million while Orbital Micro Systems will get $2 million.
The agency will use the data to determine the potential utilization of commercially developed MWS products and to identify possible benefits of enhancing numerical weather prediction with commercial capabilities.
The MWS observations, which include temperature and moisture profiles, precipitation and land and hydrology products, will be evaluated by NOAA based on the quality, characteristics and impacts on weather forecasting.
The CWDP pilot studies will last for 12 months and will be divided into three phases. The first three months will be for preparation, the next six will be for data delivery and the last three will be for evaluation.
