Smarter Gov Tech, Stronger MerITocracy

The Department of Defense (DoD) has put a lot of emphasis on speeding up the acquisition and development of new technologies out of a need to keep pace with new advances and potential adversaries. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO)–evaluating the Army Futures Command modernization effort–throws in a word of caution, saying there is such a thing as going too fast. […]

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Military Data Center

The United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) released a request for information yesterday for IT support services for the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC), with a focus on shifting to cloud. Responses are due by January 24. […]

Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point will upgrade its email services to a cloud-based model, which the academy said will help facilitate projects and information sharing anywhere, rather than restricting email service to network-capable devices. […]

The Pentagon is a very large building that houses a lot of the authorities for the U.S. Military. It's big. This photo doesn't do it justice, but they're kinda rightly concerned about people flying drones around there.

The U.S. Army, continuing a Pentagon trend of scouring the front lines of technological innovation for tools that can help warfighters, has launched a second competition among small businesses that don’t usually fall into the world of defense acquisition. […]

Army DoD military Defense AI

In a scene from the movie “The Matrix,” Carrie Anne Moss’ character calls to get a flight program for a certain kind of helicopter, and after a few blinks of the eyes, the program is installed in her brain and she’s ready to roll. The Pentagon’s lead research arm isn’t quite at that point yet, […]

army fitness apps

On Thursday, the Defense Digital Service (DDS) announced the expansion of its pilot program to support and utilize talent within the Army Cyber Command alongside private sector talent with the creation of a new workspace in Augusta, Ga., named Tatooine, of Star Wars fame. […]

DoD Pentagon Military
Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The U.S. Army on October 18 issued contract awards to 198 companies for its potential 10-year, $37.4 billion Responsive Strategic Sourcing for Services (RS3) contract, which covers a wide range of government programs with Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) mission requirements. […]

Military Cyber Soldier modernization DoD Department of Defense
army fitness apps

Greg Garcia became the Army’s new deputy CIO on Monday. Garcia replaces Gary Wang, who retired from the position in May. […]

Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity and personnel subcommittees held a joint hearing today to examine the cyber operational readiness of the Department of Defense and heard from leaders of both the military and civilian side of the DoD cyber force about the mounting challenges they face. […]

Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The Army Futures Command (AFC) is ready to start working on modernizing the U.S. Army. As MeriTalk reported last month, the new AFC is headquartered in Austin. John Murray, who will lead the new command, was promoted to four-star general last Friday at a ceremony in Austin, following Senate confirmation of the promotion early last week. […]

Army DoD military Defense AI

Brian Sadler, senior scientist for intelligent systems at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, today discussed how the expanse of artificial intelligence (AI) research activities across the Army is bringing to light even greater challenges. […]

Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology
Modernization, Army, cybersecurity, technology

The Army needs help from academia and the private sector to modernize its workflow, explained Maj. Gen. Garrett Yee, acting deputy CIO for the U.S. Army, during an Avaya webinar today. Yee specifically stressed an interest in industry helping to make the Army’s workflows interoperable and said that “workflows at the installation level must be scalable” to achieve true modernization. […]

Federal IT leaders discussed the ways their organizations are tackling the proliferation of more and more endpoints on Federal networks at MeriTalk’s Cyber Security Brainstorm Thursday. In particular, ever-increasing mobile connectivity is creating the potential for further headaches, but the officials advised that next-gen technologies and proper network and data governance provide avenues to expand the ways employees work without compromising security at the network edge. […]

As it looks to get new technologies developed and into the field as quickly as possible, the Department of Defense has been making greater use of Other Transaction Authority (OTA), a quick-strike contracting mechanism that has gone in and out of fashion since the 1950s, but is now seeing a resurgence. […]

Alexander Kott, chief scientist at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, said Wednesday at the Defense Systems Summit that creating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions for complex battlefield environments requires different prioritization than commercial solutions, and offered four tips for defense organizations looking to implement. […]

The latest edition of the Army’s annual Cyber X-Games exercise is designed to let Reserve and other cyber warriors team up to train in dealing with real-world situations. It is focused on protecting U.S. infrastructure, an area somewhat outside the norm for the exercises, but one that reflects an emerging potential battleground on the cyber landscape. […]

The possibilities of quantum computing have been floating on the horizon for a while now, at least since renowned physicist Richard Feynman dreamed up the idea in 1982. But like the horizon itself (at least in a world that isn’t flat), it always seems to recede despite all efforts to close in on it. Until now. […]

Army Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone is taking over this afternoon as chief of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency.  At the same time, U.S. Cyber Command is being elevated to the level of a full unified military command, the Defense Department said today. […]

The Pentagon’s vision of future warfare involves teams of small autonomous and semi-autonomous unmanned vehicles–in the air, on the ground, and in the water–operating in coordinated swarms to support troops on the battlefield. […]

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