CSAF Brown’s “Accelerate Change or Lose” Action Orders Could Drive Changes to FY-22 POM. (Inside Defense) Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown today released a list of action orders guiding the implementation of his “accelerate change or lose” mandate, including the creation of new force presentation plans that could drive changes to fiscal year 2021 and 2022 program execution and planning.
Congress wants to boost the promience of Pentagon’s AI center. (C4ISRNET) “Finding available contracting vehicles can be a big challenge for technology development efforts,” she said in an email. “You may have identified a mission need and have a great solution, but no available contract vehicle. And it can take years to get something in place. This NDAA would clear that roadblock by giving the JAIC its own acquisition authorities to get technology in the door.”
Creating an infrastructure for procurement innovation at DHS. (FCW) “Two of the major procurement techniques the PIL has been promoting are two-stage downselects in competitive procurements and oral presentations as part of source selection.”
White House-led Navy shipbuilding plan will push boundaries of Pentagon budgets, industry capacity. (USNI News) “… by FY 2025 would spend nearly $34 billion a year on shipbuilding, build three attack submarines a year even though industry is currently struggling to build two, buy four Large Unmanned Surface Vessels a year even though Congress isn’t comfortable starting the program of record at all, add a second shipbuilder for the frigate program whose detail design isn’t yet complete, and retire almost half the cruiser fleet to free up funds for the modernization efforts.”
Air Force’s next hack of the federal procurement system: one-year funding. (Federal News Network) “Why can’t we just attach the cost and overheads inside that digital environment so that there is ultimate transparency and you can turn on or off people’s views of what they can see to protect cost and proprietary information?”
Pentagon preparing first comprehensive strategy for joint all-domain command and control. (Federal News Network) “Lt. Gen. Dennis Crall, the top technology official on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, said the JADC2 strategy is his number one priority, and it’s about 80% complete. When it’s released, he said, it will outline between nine and 11 separate lines of effort.”
JADC2 spurring changes to fighter jets, ops centers. (Air Force Mag) Tim Grayson questions how to create an Air Force inventory that pairs more traditional aircraft with things like data-crunching artificial intelligence algorithms, autonomous drones, and cross-platform communications. He envisions that war could eventually entail, for example, a pilot picking apps that best suits their missions as they fly.
Navy Shipbuilding Plan Calls for 400-Ship Battle Force Fleet by 2045. (Inside Defense) The Navy’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan calls for an over 400-ship battle force fleet by 2045, driven largely by increases in amphibious warfare ships, small surface combatants, submarines and logistic ships. The plan, released Thursday, features a growth from the current 296-ship fleet to a battle force fleet of 403 ships in fiscal year 2045. Shorter-term, the plan calls for a 316-ship fleet by FY-26.
DOD Evolving Acquisition, Operational Processes for EMS Warfare. (Inside Defense) Concern about threats in the electromagnetic spectrum is driving the Pentagon to refine its internal acquisition processes to enable faster development of new weapons and set up operational units to leverage these new capabilities against adversaries in the field, according to several military officials speaking at a Mitchell Institute virtual event Wednesday. The presentation slides are available.
OTAs Soar and Army Leads the Way: CSIS Report. (Breaking Defense) The Pentagon’s use of Other Transaction Authority, which bypasses what this article calls “a sclerotic contracting system,” rose 75% in fiscal 2019 alone, according to a new analysis of Defense Department data by CSIS. Since 2015—the year Other Transaction Authority first took off, spurred on by congressional reforms—the annual value obligated under OTAs has soared 712%.
DARPA’s CODE autonomously flies General Atomics’ Avenger UAV. (Flight Global) “In theory, autonomous flight would allow many more UAVs to be flown simultaneously and protect the aircrafts’ incoming control signals from being jammed or spoofed.”
Software runs the world, but at what price? (DCMA CIG, Ryan Connell) “It is a reasonable assumption that defense technology will rely on advancing software and technology; therefore, the need to understand value & price is crucial. This paper can serve as an informational list of elements, creative approaches, and considerations to include when evaluating price in software procurements.”
Lockheed Martin CEO: Here’s how we’ll beat SpaceX. (Motley Fool) “Lockheed is moving to address SpaceX’s incursion into its satellite business by building a $350 million, 266,000-square-foot “Gateway Center” to “build a spectrum of satellites from micro to macro that communicate with front-line troops, explore other planets, and support unique missions” — and to build them “faster, smarter and more affordable for our customers.”
Pentagon Plans to Launch Virtual Trusted Capital Marketplace This Month. (Defense Daily) The Pentagon is planning to launch its virtual “Trusted Capital Marketplace” this month, a department official said Thursday, as it aims to bolster opportunities for U.S. venture capital (VC) firms to invest in emerging defense technologies. Lord made her remarks during a virtual Hudson Institute discussion.
Research leads to better modeling of hypersonic flow. (PhysOrg) “Due to the relative velocity of the flow surrounding the vehicle, a shock is formed in front of the capsule. When the gas molecules cross the shock, some of their properties change almost instantaneously. Instead, others don’t have enough time to adjust to the abrupt changes, and they don’t reach their equilibrium values before arriving at the surface of the vehicle. The layer between the shock and heat shield is then found in nonequilibrium. There is a lot that we don’t understand yet about the reactions that happen in this type of flow.”
DoD taking renewed interest in blockchain amid COVID-19. (Federal News Network) “You certainly want to be in a situation where you are able to track, whether it’s from Pfizer or Moderna, all the way to delivery to the patient, what is actually the quality of that series of steps.”
Army computer models unveil secret to quieter small drones. (Army) “It is not as simple as applying existing noise models for full-size rotorcraft to smaller ones, she said. Full-size rotorcraft, with large rotors moving at high speeds, operate in aerodynamic conditions where their acoustics are dominated by the sound of the rotor blades passing the observer; however, the smaller and slower rotors used on small UAS operate in a different aerodynamic regime, where acoustics are dominated by the noise created by the blades passing through and disturbing the air around them. Because this noise occurs across a range of medium and high frequencies, it is referred to as broadband noise.”
Space Force opens SpaceWERX technology accelerator in Los Angeles. (Space News) Known as SpaceWERX, the new organization will be the “space arm of AFWERX,” Roper said during a virtual event in a joint appearance with Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center.
White House Shipbuilding Plan Would Shrink Ford Carrier Class Over Navy Objections. (Defense One) “Critics say the bulked-up fleet plan will cut dangerously into Army, Air Force budgets—if Congress and the Biden administration follows it.”
Washington Braces for Clash Over Defense Budget (The Hill) A clash over the $740 billion defense budget is poised to erupt in 2021, with Democrats set to battle among themselves over whether to reduce funding. After years of growth, the Pentagon has projected a relatively flat budget through 2025 with funding “averaging about $707 billion per year in 2021 dollars,” according to a September analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
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