The Insider

This Thursday INSIDER Daily Digest has news on the Air Force's KC-46 tanker aircraft, plus the recent findings of an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study group, the Navy's Aegis combat system and more.

Mike Hafer, senior manager of KC-46 business development at Boeing, spoke to reporters this week about the first block of Pegasus Combat Capability, or PC2, upgrades to the Air Force's airborne refueling aircraft:

Boeing anticipates KC-46 Block 1 mod contract in 2021 as program works toward new RVS

Boeing expects to be on contract for the first block of KC-46 modernization work by the first quarter of 2021 -- the first phase of a 10-year, $5.7 billion post-production contract the Air Force awarded the company last year.

An Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study group earlier this week presented findings on best practices for selection and management of future vanguard programs:

Air Force to invest $100 million in transformational vanguard programs in FY-24

The Air Force is eyeing an investment of about $100 million in its vanguard programs -- which strive to accelerate transformational capabilities to the battlefield -- in fiscal year 2024 to meet the demands of the service's 2030 Science and Technology Strategy.

Inside Defense recently interviewed Navy Capt. Andrew Biehn, program manager for the Aegis Integrated Combat System:

Navy's 'Forge' prototype will try to rapidly update Aegis combat system software throughout fleet

The Navy is moving forward with an experiment to rapidly develop, test and distribute software upgrades to the fleet's Aegis combat system by establishing a "software factory" prototype for surface combatants.

A new controlled unclassified information guidebook will build off DOD Instruction 5240.48 issued by the office of the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security in March:

Pentagon acquisition office to develop guidebook for industry on controlled unclassified information

The Defense Department is working on a guide to help industry and the acquisition community understand how to handle controlled unclassified information, addressing a foundational component of the Pentagon's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program.

Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Accreditation Body leaders Ty Schieber and Mark Berman are leaving the board of directors, marking a significant change in leadership as the accreditation body enters a new stage of training and assessments:

NDIA questions expected timeline of Pentagon cyber certification program, intent of potential sponsorships for assessors, consultants

Recent developments at the independent authority overseeing accreditation of assessors for the Pentagon's cyber certification program are raising concerns at one of the nation's largest defense associations, which represents a wide variety of contractors who make up the defense industrial base.

Naval shipyards must retain the increased focus on fire safety that has followed the July fire aboard the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6), according to the head of Naval Sea Systems Command.

Vice Adm. William Galinis said Wednesday that every shipyard had reviewed its fire safety procedures in recent months.

"It's something you can never let up on," Galinis said Wednesday at the American Society of Naval Engineers' Fleet Maintenance & Modernization Symposium.

"You kind of take the traditional model, where you have an event and you do the investigation and there is a series of corrective actions, you take the action, and over time, focus on those areas tends to die off a little bit," he said. "We've got to keep that attention level on this area."

The July 12 fire caused serious damage to the Bonhomme Richard, which was undergoing maintenance at Naval Base San Diego. Galinis said he would not comment on the investigation into the fire, which is ongoing.

The Navy is considering its repair options for the ship, the admiral said.

Shipyards should continue to look at the condition of temporary services and ensure that quick disconnect fittings are in the right location as they transit through an access opening, according to Galinis.

Shipyard leadership should focus on procedural compliance, assessing real-time risk and eliminating any unsafe work practices, he said.

The Army's Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing Cross-Functional Team announced today the approval of the service's first ever PNT requirement, the Mounted Assured PNT System Capability Development Document.

MAPS, an anti-jamming capability for soldiers in global positioning system-contested environments, "simplifies the Army's mounted PNT capability by distributing PNT data to multiple systems, eliminating the need for multiple [GPS] devices on a single platform, while allowing multiple users to access an assured GPS signal, and other sources of PNT, from one central point," according to a Sept. 16 press release.

The CDD requirement approval will lead the way for an Army Program of Record to develop and field an advanced PNT capability to soldiers.

“Throughout the requirement approval process, our priority was to ensure that our soldiers get the capabilities and systems they need to operate successfully on the battlefield,” Willie Nelson, director of the APNT CFT, said in a statement. “Our ability to streamline and expedite the requirement process is a success story for the Army’s modernization strategy, getting advanced, modernized technologies to our soldiers rapidly."

The Army in 2019 started fielding the first generation of MAPS, which includes anti-jam antennas, to soldiers with the 2nd Cavalry Division in Europe and equipped more than 60 Stryker vehicles with the capability.

Soldiers are continuing to provide feedback on the equipment and the service is “currently testing vendor prototypes and will select the next generation device for final development and production,” the press release states.

A vendor for phase three of the second generation of MAPS, which will focus on product maturation, is expected to be selected by the end of this month.

Col. Nickolas Kioutas, project manager for PNT, told reporters Sept. 11 during a telephone roundtable the service envisions the C4ISR/Electronic Warfare Modular Open Suite of Standards, or CMOSS, to be the third generation of MAPs.

A CMOSS chassis, which Kioutas said acts as a “receptacle” to put capabilities into which allow the service to swap out ones that aren’t working, is currently in a prototyping phase. The system will act as a plug-and-play model, where the service can replace pieces instead of an entire system.

Kioutas said a CMOSS chassis was integrated onto a Stryker platform with a PNT card and an anti-jamming antenna during a recent test at White Sands Missile Range, NM. The results of the test are still being assessed.

“MAPS is expected to continue fielding through 2028 and will take place in USAREUR and U.S. Army Pacific,” the press release states.

Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, has stepped down as the first chairman of the Defense Innovation Board, with former Sierra Nevada executive Mark Sirangelo taking over as head of the influential panel.

Sirangelo announced the news during the board’s virtual meeting today. He said Schmidt and several others were coming to the end of their four-year terms on the board.

Schmidt "has led as the first chairman of this board, helped form it, helped organize it, helped really set the tone for what we’re doing and how we’re moving forward," Sirangelo said.

Schmidt served as chairman of the board since it was established in 2016 by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

"When we started this four years ago, I had no idea the DIB would be as impactful or as successful has it has come to be," Schmidt said today. "I figured that we would make recommendations and that nobody would particularly listen."

Schmidt noted how the board's recommendations have led to the creation of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the shift to an emphasis on agile software development within the Defense Department, and the adoption of AI ethical principles for the military, among other developments.

And while the Pentagon's relationship with the commercial technology sector has been rocky at times, Schmidt and the board have served as one of the Pentagon's main lifelines into Silicon Valley.

"We adopted more of a contact sport view and what we did is we developed relationships within the DOD with key decision makers, and we said we serve you," Schmidt said.

Schmidt also leads the congressionally established National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

Meanwhile, Sirangelo has served on the DIB since 2018. Most recently, he served as head of Sierra Nevada's Space Systems division. He was the former chairman and chief executive of SpaceDev prior to its merging with Sierra Nevada. Sirangelo is currently "entrepreneur scholar-in-residence" at the University of Colorado.

Sirangelo also leads the innovation board's new Space Advisory Committee, which he said was established in May at the direction of Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist.

Michael Kratsios, the acting under secretary of defense for research and engineering, also addressed today's DIB meeting. Kratios, who also serves as chief technology officer at the White House, specifically praised the board's work to develop AI ethics recommendations

"When I'm starting to think a little bit with [Sirangelo] about the types of projects the DIB can work on in the coming years, that one is front and center in my mind," Kratsios said. "What can the board offer the Defense Department that the Defense Department itself can’t do on its own? That was a huge, successful example, and it's making waves globally."

Sirangelo said he would be meeting with Kratsios to discuss the board's agenda for the coming year.

In addition to Schmidt, several other members are coming to the end of their four-year terms this year, according to Sirangelo. They include Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Jen Pahlka, founder and executive director of Code for America; Adam Grant, professor at the Wharton School of Business; Marne Levine, vice president of global partnerships and business development at Facebook; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; and Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute.

Meanwhile, Stanford University's Drew Endy, president of BioBricks Foundation, recently joined the board.

This Tuesday INSIDER Daily Digest has news on the Air Force's KC-46 airborne refueling tanker plus a look at China's strategic forces modernization plans.

Air Mobility Command chief Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost recently made her first visit to Boeing's KC-46 production facility, where she observed progress the prime contractor has made to replace the aircraft's existing Remote Vision System with a new system, RVS 2.0:

AMC chief awaiting final testing data on interim KC-46 RVS upgrade

The new head of Air Mobility Command said today that while she has seen progress in Boeing's proposed interim KC-46 Remote Vision System upgrade package, she needs more testing data and assurance that the near-term value the capability could bring to the warfighter outweighs the time it would take to upgrade existing tankers.

U.S. Strategic Command chief Adm. Chas Richard told reporters this week that China's strategic forces modernization plan appears at odds with its stated "no-first-use" policy -- and that this drives an imperative for the United States to modernize its offensive strategic forces as soon as possible:

STRATCOM preparing for China to join Russia as U.S. nuclear peer adversary

China's military modernization -- particularly development of its strategic forces -- is driving the U.S. military to begin preparing for the advent of Beijing as a nuclear competitor on par with Russia, a development that will require a different deterrence strategy from the playbook the Defense Department has long maintained to counter Moscow, according to a senior U.S. military official.

A Treasury Department COVID-19 rescue fund, which has gone almost entirely unspent because most contractors disliked the terms, is also the subject of behind-the-scenes debate on Capitol Hill:

DOD scrutinized over role in bailout fund that has drawn little interest from big companies

The Pentagon is being pressed by a congressional watchdog to explain its role in recommending to the Treasury Department companies to receive loans from a $17 billion COVID-19 rescue fund.

The Air Force Research Laboratory and contractor SRC for several years have been developing the Agile Condor high-performance embedded computing architecture to quickly and in real time process large amounts of sensor data with relatively little power:

DOD plans more demos of Agile Condor edge computer for autonomous drone ops

The Pentagon is planning more tests of the Agile Condor pod that enables an MQ-9 Reaper to autonomously surveil targets with artificial intelligence -- such as algorithms developed by Project Maven -- for extended periods, even if connection to the ground station is lost.

Inside Defense recently interviewed Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies executives about the case they've made to the Missile Defense Agency for their Next-Generation Interceptor proposal:

Northrop, Raytheon pitch NGI proposal that stresses incumbency backed by innovation

Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies are pitching a Next-Generation Interceptor design backed by what they say are engineering teams with unparallel experience knocking down targets in space and knowledge of today's Ground-based Midcourse Defense system -- promising a unified, "seamless" corporate team to deliver a new booster and kill vehicle as if from a single company.

Army Contracting Command-Orlando is hosting an online industry day next week for a new requirement "to provide threat and target development, support and hardware of multiple programs for test and training events," according to an industry notice.

The Sept. 22 industry day will support the upcoming Target & Threat Hardware for Readiness, Evaluation, and Testing (TTHREATS) requirement.

The Program Manager for Cyber Test Training's Threat Systems Management Office is looking to award an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a five-year base and two two-year option periods with task orders "issued against the ID/IQ as needs arise," the Army's notice says.

The anticipated award date for the ID/IQ is the third quarter of fiscal year 2022.

"Requirements for the TTHREATS contract are for the design, development, [and] integration of [3D] full and subscale targets and threats," the notice states. "This effort could result in the production of prototype targets and threats or procurement of existing targets or threats. ‘Targets and threat products and services’ is applicable to both blue force weapons systems and threats to those systems. The contractor shall also have the ability to operate any target or threat system needed to support the use in a test environment. Targets and threats exist in a multidomain environment. These environments compose live (air-land-sea) and virtual domains. Supplies and services may be procured for operations within the continental United States or overseas."

Invitations for the industry day will go out on Friday.