The change came about from concerns that the nuclear command, control and communications systems, or NC3, lacked a clear chain of command under the current structure. The system is comprised of satellites, radars and fixed or mobile command posts.

“The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has appointed the commander of U.S. Strategic Command to be the NC3 enterprise lead, with increased responsibilities for operations, requirements, and systems engineering and integration,” a U.S. STRATCOM spokeswoman told SpaceNews.

The Pentagon’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review found the NC3 system “subject to challenges from both aging system components and new, growing 21st century threats” such as cyber warfare. The report also warned that “Russian nuclear or non-nuclear strategic attacks could now include attacks against U.S. NC3.”

“The Secretary [of Defense] has told me multiple times,” Gen. John Hyten, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in a recent speech at the nuclear submarine base in King’s Bay, Georgia. “Besides your day-to-day operational responsibilities … your next highest priority is to make sure we get nuclear command and control right.”

The House bill repeals a previous statutory requirement that the Department of Defense name an executive agent (EA) for printed circuit board technology. That role is to oversee the supply chain and “facilitate access to reliable, trusted, and affordable print circuit board fabrication” to meet future military requirements, according to a DoD description.

The Senate version does not remove the requirement for an EA, and instead directs the EA to conduct a report for the secretary of defense on the “health of the defense electronics industrial base,” according to the bill language. The Senate legislation also includes a call for “a plan to formalize long-term resourcing for the executive agent.”

Circuit boards act as “road maps” for defense items ranging from F−35 planes to missile guidance systems and in the wrong hands would allow enemies to “understand, replicate, even sabotage” American technologies, said Chris Mitchell, vice president of global government relations at the Association Connecting Electronics Industries.

Mitchell worries that the potential elimination of the position will shake the confidence of domestic circuit board producers and will hurt private research and development spending. He calls the language “a symbolic punch in the gut to the industry.”

In a letter, Reps. Trey Hollingsworth, R-Ind., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., urged House and Senate defense leaders to oppose the proposal in the must-pass bill, writing that “for the EA to be stripped of its statutory authority … would send a dispiriting signal to the U.S. printed circuit board industry by calling into question the government’s commitment to a robust domestic defense electronic industry to serve DoD requirements.”

The number of American circuit board producers has dropped from 500 in 2005 to fewer than 200 today due to global competition, with the risk of reliance on foreign producers for sensitive tech motivating lawmakers to take notice of the issue, explained a staffer for Hollingsworth.

The idea to eliminate the requirement of an executive agent arose from a Section 809 recommendation, a committee dedicated to streamlining acquisition regulations. Dropping the mandate for the position of EA for circuit boards will “facilitate freedom of action” during reorganization of the department, a January 2018 committee report said.

“Designating a senior official to serve as executive agent limits the secretary’s flexibility and is overly prescriptive” wrote the committee, noting that the “effectiveness” of the EA role “in action has not yet been determined.”

Mitchell and Lentz said the EA has had little time to provide results, as the DoD did not move to officially incorporate the EA position until 2016, even though it was first called for in the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act.

The two chambers are meeting in conference to resolve differences between their versions of the defense policy bill.

The program is meant to “enable substantially more efficient maintenance by drilling into the wealth of data acquired by new generation helicopters and aircraft,” according to a company news release. The company added it will “more rapidly perform root-cause analysis and faster trouble shooting.”

The use of artificial intelligence to make sense of data has become a growing focus for the defense and intelligence community, as has cloud computing for handling the massive volumes of data.

“Our digital analytics services support the goal of enhanced mission readiness of our operators’ aircraft,” said Stephan Miegel, head of military aircraft services at Airbus Defence and Space, “and they provide predictive solutions which all contribute to reduced workload and costs.”

The ‘Spider’ communications intelligence system promises to “detect, intercept, identify and geo-locate complex target communcations” in real time, according to the company. The array, designed to fit on drones or manned aircraft, weighs less than 20kg (44 lbs) and fits in a 1.5 x 0.5 x 0.5m pod.

The Grifo E-Scan system, the latest model of electronically-scanning radars, uses a matrix of hundreds of tiny radar modules to ‘steer’ an electronic beam, rather than the radar physically moving to point a beam at a target. This allows the beam to move quickly and for “the radar to perform multiple tasks simultaneously” according to a company announcement.

A recent request for information from the U.S. Defense Department agency solicits ideas on “potential payloads to use in conjunction” with the Launch Challenge, with a maximum allowable weight of 500 kilograms, or 1,102 pounds.

The challenge seeks to “demonstrate the ability to launch payloads to orbit on extremely short notice, with no prior knowledge of the payload, destination orbit or launch site, and do it not just once, but twice, in a matter of days,” according to the agency’s description.

As space becomes an increasingly important security domain, DARPA is hoping to spur development of launch vehicles that will allow the Pentagon to more frequently and more easily bring cargo, such as satellites, to orbit than larger rocket contracts allow.

In a clue to what assets the Pentagon would like to carry into space, the RFI specifies that payloads “that consist of multiple quantities of small spacecraft (e.g., CubeSat-class) with a single interface (ie: dispenser) to the launch vehicle are also of interest.” CubeSat satellites are less than 10-by−10-by−10 centimenters, and such small satellites can be used for studies on space technology and Earth observation.

Responses for payload suggestions to use in the challenge are due July 27.

The $49 million Other Transaction Agreement, inked June 22 and announced July 9, will provide a model for the National Background Investigation Services (NBIS). The governmentwide IT service is used to “conduct suitability, security, and credentialing investigations for all federal civilians, military members, and government contractors” according to an agency description.

The National Background Investigations Bureau that currently conducts security clearance background investigations has more than 710,000 applications waiting to be processed.

The new system promises to “expedite the time to process investigations by automating and optimizing key processes from request initiation through investigation completion,” said Raju Shah, the NBIS program manager.

A July 9 DISA press release also noted that the new system will be “deployed into a scalable, cloud-based architecture.”

The Enterprise prototype will face the challenge of implementing a streamlined system across the federal government while retaining key capabilities such as fingerprint and biometric processing.

“We’re building a first-of-its-kind enterprise system that brings together the complex integration of a number of disparate systems on an unprecedented scale,” Shah said.

WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Navy has awarded a grant to an underwater drone producer to help the service locate “unexploded ordnance.”

The $78,000 grant from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center assigns Aquabotix’s SwarmDiver technology to support Navy and allied vessels.

The SwarmDiver can record temperature, depth and salinity, and can be used for “external navigation and positioning, mine countermeasures, port security, harbor management and torpedo countermeasures,” according to Whitney Million, Aquabotix CEO.

The 3.7-pound, 30-inch drones are deployed into the water from a boat, and then centrally controlled from a human operator to move in coordination with each other. The SwarmDiver can drop to a depth of up to 164 feet.

The Navy has been expanding its unmanned underwater vehicle use. Near-peer competitors like Russia and China have also invested in this field.

“Aquabotix’s products are the platform for the solution to this immediate military need,” Million said, “and we look forward to this first phase of our cooperation with the Navy.”

Attendees of the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington June 21 heard warnings that obsolete and slow approaches are driving up costs of time and resources for the Navy’s newest technologies that interact with one another in combat.

“It’s really a matter of making System A talk to System B,” said Richard Jack, a lead engineer and project director at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific. “A logistics system that needs to be able to interact with a weapons system.”

Software superiority is an important part of the Navy’s plan for a global competitive edge, from unmanned underwater vehicles to drones operated from ships. Unless the Navy wants to get an error message at a crucial combat moment, they will have to search outside their own technology labs for the solution to the interoperability challenge, Jack said.

“The Navy can’t do this alone, as 99 percent of the brain trust is in the cloud service providers and the industry,” Jack stated. He expressed the need to “take advantage” of lessons learned by cloud industry leaders on big data collection and interpreting results to make predictions .

Jack suggested accelerating operations with increased cloud computing, creating shared infrastructure to make sure data centers are connected, eliminating duplicative investments across some programs, and further expanding AI and machine learning advancements.

The software engineer expressed confidence that learning from cloud service providers will result in the Navy enhancing warfighting abilities, envisioning a cloud to allow instant data sharing “between a weapons system, an airframe, a UAV, and a logistics system” at the same time.

Jack also praised cloud computing as important to the “compile to combat” program, in which the Navy is experimenting with ways to deploy new software capabilities to ships at sea in less than 24 hours.

While the cloud can “be super fast and super efficient” for accessing large amounts of data anywhere, Jack also promised that it also allows the Navy to “really push the boundaries of machine learning,” even though “we are behind the curve” at the moment.

Through “strategic partnerships” with the “Amazons, Googles and IBM Watsons of the world,” Jack promised the Navy could accomplish even more in the areas of AI and machine learning that will dominate warfighting in the era of the cloud.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Air Force Space Command will send a new military satellite into space in 2020 with the help of SpaceX.

The AFSC’s Space and Missile Systems Center announced Friday a $130 million contract with the rocket design and manufacturing company.

The relatively low-cost price tag secured the deal for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, beating out main rival United Launch Alliance (composed of Boeing and Lockheed Martin) by tens of millions of dollars and earning praise from the Air Force.

Lt. Gen. John Thompson, program executive officer for the Space and Missile Systems Center, approved the contract, saying it “directly supports [the Center’s] mission of delivering resilient and affordable space capabilities to our nation while maintaining assured access to space.”

The agreement for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle service contract includes “launch vehicle production, mission integration and launch operations” from SpaceX, according to a news release.

The Heavy Falcon can deliver a payload of 70 tons to low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell highlighted the price savings in a statement, saying her company’s services offer “the American taxpayer the most cost-effective” and “reliable” services for national space missions.

Viorica Dăncilă announced Romania’s participation at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, Estonia.

The move comes amid an increasingly dangerous security environment in the online world, both for Europe as well as the United States. Finland specified cyber as a crucial domain of national defense, while American defense contractors continue to be targeting by Chinese-based hackers.

NATO conducts yearly live-fire exercises such as Crossed Swords to prepare for attacks on critical infrastructure, including communication networks and power grids.

“Enhancing cyber defense is all about teamwork, and we welcome the decision of Romania to contribute to the strength and capability of our unique team,” said Merle Maigre, director of the CCDCOE.

Maigre also praised nations in NATO who “want to be also strong allies in our cyber defence hub.”

Romania’s arrival in 2019 will bring the total number of members at the center to 22.