NOAA office with expanding space surveillance responsibilities names new chief

Space industry executive and former two-time White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Space and Aeronautics Director Richard DalBello is set to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Space Commerce, or OSC.

His appointment as director, announced by the agency on Wednesday, comes nearly 16 months after OSC’s last chief stepped down—and also as the office confronts weighty new responsibilities and prepares for what could be a massive budget boost proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration. 

“Richard DalBello officially starts his new role on May 9, 2022,” NOAA Spokesperson John Leslie told FedScoop on Thursday.

OSC has operated as the government’s main coordinator and hub for space commerce activities for decades, and Its key mission is to foster technological advancement within the commercial space industry. The office also maintains operating licenses for private space systems.

More recently though, the office’s responsibilities have expanded to include a greater focus on modernizing and managing America’s systems for space situational awareness.

An influential memorandum on space policy signed by former President Donald Trump in 2018 essentially transferred the authority of monitoring space traffic and warning of potential orbital collisions from the Defense Department to OSC, within NOAA and the Commerce Department. That switch came partly because the number of satellites, tools and debris in that realm is growing exponentially as space commercialization booms. With all those items increasingly hovering around Earth, the Pentagon opted to move on from that mandate so it could place an even deeper focus on its space-based national security missions. 

So far, Commerce has not acted so swiftly on this transition to governing Earth’s orbit, but Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2023 commits roughly $88 million to OSC to make it happen. That marks an almost eight-fold increase from its 2021 enacted level of funding.

“This is an exciting opportunity and I appreciate the support and encouragement OSC is receiving from NOAA, the Department of Commerce, the White House and Congress,” DalBello said in the agency’s release. “Space safety and sustainability are two of the most critical issues facing the international community today and I am pleased the Biden administration has made these issues a priority.”

Having a new permanent director to help manage those millions, provided Congress approves that money, will also likely make a notable difference in this space surveillance operation. NOAA’s Leslie noted that the office’s last director, Kevin O’Connell, stepped down in January 2021, with the transition from Trump’s team to Biden’s. Mark Paese, the deputy assistant administrator of NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service, is serving as acting OSC director until DalBello assumes his fresh position. 

Leslie said the agency will share more information regarding DalBello’s early priorities after his first day on the job.

Former Chief of Staff at the National Space Council Jared Stout told FedScoop that he has known DalBello for nearly 10 years and that he is a “brilliant, dedicated and extremely hard-working” official.

Commenting on OSC’s evolving responsibilities, Stout added: “I think we are going to have to see, ultimately, what they decide to do with the funding, but my sincere hope is that the roles and responsibilities of the Office of Space Commerce will continue to grow and that Congress will continue to empower the office.”

DalBello will enter the position with more than 3 decades of experience in the space industry, according to his LinkedIn profile. From 2013 to 2015, he was OSTP’s lead for space and aeronautics under former President Barack Obama—a position he also held during the Clinton administration. Most recently, he was the vice president of government affairs at space consulting firm GXO. And prior to that, he served as Virgin Galactic’s vice president of business development and government affairs, among other roles.

Stout, who is now the director of congressional and regulatory policy at Meeks, Butera and Israel, said OSC’s first priority under its new leadership “absolutely must be to stand up the civil space situational awareness system as soon as possible, with U.S. industry leading the way.”

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Army adding more procurement dollars for major electronic warfare programs

After zeroing out procurement funding last year for an important electronic warfare program that would allow brigade commanders to conduct jamming and limited cyberattacks from the air, the Army added $3 million for the project in its fiscal 2023 budget request.

The 2022 budget saw a cut in what previous budget plans had forecasted would be $12 million in procurement for Multi-Function Electronic Warfare-Air Large, a pod mounted to an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone. The system is capable of serving as the first brigade-organic airborne electronic attack asset, and providing limited cyberattacks.

The system was designed to be used by combat aviation brigades.

It is the only long-range EW sense-and-attack program of record in support of long-range precision fires and assured positioning, navigation and timing, which is critical to closing capability gaps in the electromagnetic spectrum for multi-domain operations, according to the Army.

The $3 million will support the procurement of engineering and logistics services for two fielded systems, which are built by Lockheed Martin.

The Army didn’t include any other procurement funding for Multi-Function Electronic Warfare (MFEW) across the future years defense program (FDYP), a five-year budget projection of the Department of Defense’s investments.

The shift to multi-domain operations and evolving threats from sophisticated adversaries have pushed the Army to rethink many of its programs, MFEW included. The Army’s top acquisition official for the electronic warfare portfolio described a “prove it” phase for MFEW after the service zeroed out procurement.

“We’ve got to show that the MFEW capability can operate in a robust environment and potentially on platforms, not just the Gray Eagle, but looking at diversified platform set … and looking for how MFEW will operate before we make a commitment on how we’ll necessarily go after a capability like MFEW in the future,” Mark Kitz, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said last year. “I think over the next year the Army is going to get some data and learn how this MFEW capability will enable how we want to operate in the future, and I think that data will then inform how we go forward with an MFEW-like capability.”

Despite the procurement cut last year, the Army still dedicated $12 million in research and development funding to the program.

Last year, the Biden administration did not provide FYDP numbers for any of its programs, making it impossible to compare what the Army thought it was going to spend in the out-years versus what was actually requested in the follow-on budget.

Now, the Army is looking to potentially update the requirements based upon the maturing concept for multi-domain operations, Ken Strayer, program manager for electronic warfare and cyber at Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, told FedScoop.

The potential update was first reported by Breaking Defense.

Officials had previously alluded to a change in platform and units for the pod. The pod is platform agnostic and the Army had been working with other units such as the Multi-Domain Task Force in the Pacific to outfit them with it.

Strayer said the requirement is still for the pod to be mounted on the Gray Eagle, but demonstrations have proven it can operate from other platforms.

The requirement is to outfit combat aviation brigades with MFEW, Strayer said.

As for activities in the next fiscal year, Strayer said MFEW is scheduled to complete developmental and limited user tests to assess the system’s capability to operate in support of multi-domain operations. Based upon the results of the tests, scheduled for early fiscal 2023, the Army will make a limited fielded decision.

Fiscal 2023 Army budget documents note the service is not asking for any R&D funding for MFEW.

Officials have said that MFEW is part of an overall family of systems that when used in tandem are integrated to provide needed electronic warfare and cyber effects.

Another key program within this broader family is the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team (TLS-BCT), a Stryker mounted platform that will serve as the first integrated electronic warfare, signals intelligence and cyber platform for brigades. According to budget documents, it will provide “Indications and Warnings, Force Protection and Situational Awareness to influence the commander’s decision cycle, improve targeting timeliness and accuracy, and provide the maneuver commander with electronic attack and offensive cyber warfare options to deny, degrade, disrupt, or otherwise manipulate the targeted force.

The Army asked for $88.9 million in procurement dollars for fiscal 2023 for six TLS-BCT systems and $1 billion across the FYDP.

The Lockheed-made system is expected to begin fielding to units in fiscal 2022.

The Army is asking for $21.4 million in 2023 for R&D for the program, with an expected spend of $122.6 million over the FYDP.

In addition to TLS-BCT, the Army is also developing a program called TLS-Echelon Above Brigade (TLS-EAB). This system is capable of signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber operations and will be used by the Multi-Domain Task Force. As advanced adversaries are forcing the Army to operate across greater distances, it needs to be able to sense farther at higher echelons such as division and corps.  

There are no procurement dollars for the system as it is still being developed, but the Army is asking for $29.6 million in R&D funds in 2023 and $85.7 million across the FYDP, which would go towards continued prototyping and integration.

The Army is also working on fielding its Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool (EWPMT).  

Described by officials previously as the glue holding all aforementioned electronic warfare capabilities together, EWPMT is a command-and-control planning capability that allows forces to visualize the potential effects of electronic warfare in the field and chart courses of action to prevent jamming.

Last year, the program underwent its initial operational test and evaluation and will be approaching a deployment decision scheduled in fiscal 2022.

The fiscal plan does not request any procurement dollars for the program but does designate $2 million for research and development in 2023 and $50.9 million across the FYDP.

Moreover, the program is nearing the end of its first contract where it delivered a series of capability drops, which were incremental software that built upon previous iterations.

Strayer said the program intends to award a follow-on contract for fielding, training, support and product improvement in late fiscal 2023.

The R&D funds will be used to maintain relevancy of the software, which includes sensor integration and networking capabilities, he added.

Following the deployment decision, the program will seek to upgrade units that have earlier versions of EWPMT to a baseline capability subject to availability of funding, Strayer said.

White House wants $550M for new critical munitions acquisition fund

President Biden is asking lawmakers for $550 million to establish a new Critical Munitions Acquisition Fund plus billions of dollars to replenish U.S. military stocks in the wake of multiple security assistance packages for Ukraine.

The initiative is part of a broader request for $33 billion in supplemental funding request for security, economic and humanitarian aid that the White House submitted to Congress Thursday.

The $550 million would help to “procure high-demand munitions for the U.S. and approved coalition partners, build critical war reserves, and expedite availability of munition systems,” according to the White House.

During a press conference Thursday afternoon at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III said the fund will allow the department to purchase and establish a “strategic reserve” of vital capabilities like anti-aircraft and anti-tank munitions, and enable the department “to surge for this crisis, and quite frankly, crises to come.”

Earlier this week after meeting with allies and partners at Ramstein Air Base in Germany to discuss long-term security assistance to Ukraine, Austin had noted the “tremendous demand that we’re facing for munitions and weapons platforms.”

There is a need to provide “staunch support to Ukraine while also meeting our own requirements and those of our allies and partners,” he said at Ramstein.

Of the $33 billion in supplemental funding requested Thursday, $20.4 billion would go toward additional security and military assistance for Ukraine and other U.S. efforts to strengthen European security in cooperation with NATO allies and other partners in the region.

That includes $5 billion in additional drawdown authority for transferring DOD stocks, $6 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and $4 billion for the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program.

The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative directly supports Ukraine by funding the acquisition of critical defense capabilities and equipment.

A total of $5.4 billion in the package would help replenish DOD stocks of weapons and other systems provided to Ukraine.

Another $1.9 billion would go toward cybersecurity, intelligence and “other defense support.”

“This funding supports ongoing operational surges across multiple national defense components, including accelerated cyber capabilities, weapons systems upgrades, increased intelligence support, improving industrial base production capabilities for missiles and strategic minerals, and classified programs,” the White House fact sheet said.

An additional $50 million would go toward establishing a Defense Exportability Transfer Account to enable the Department of Defense to make more systems exportable and interoperable with coalition partners.

In a letter to Congress, Biden said: “Additional security assistance will put urgently needed equipment into the hands of Ukraine’s military and police, including ammunition, armored vehicles, small arms, demining assistance, and unmanned aircraft systems.”

He added: “There is no doubt that continuing to support Ukraine in this war against Russian aggression will require a substantial additional investment on our part. What I want to make clear to the Congress and the American people is this: the cost of failing to stand up to violent aggression in Europe has always been higher than the cost of standing firm against such attacks.”

The funding in the supplemental request would dwarf the $3.4 billion in security assistance that the United States has provided to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24

According to the DOD, as of April 22 U.S. security assistance committed to Ukraine included: more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems; 5,500 Javelin anti-armor systems; 700 Switchblade tactical unmanned aerial systems; 121 newly developed Phoenix Ghost drones; an undisclosed number of Puma drones; an undisclosed number of mysterious “unmanned coastal defense vessels”; and a slew of other capabilities.

There has been bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for providing security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. However, lawmakers and others in the national security community have also expressed concern about the pace of the drawdown of DOD munitions stocks. They have called for additional investments to replenish them and bolster production capacity. The supplemental funding request put forward by the Biden administration is partly aimed at addressing those concerns.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a Thursday afternoon press conference at the Pentagon.

VA clarifies scope of latest electronic health records outages 

The Department of Veterans Affairs has clarified that two outages at Cerner’s electronic health records system earlier this week affected all federal government customers using the platform.

In a statement to FedScoop, a spokesperson for the department said a first incident on Monday lasted for 127 minutes, and that a second incident on Tuesday occurred for a total of 355 minutes.

During the downtime, users across the Department of Defense and Coast Guard as well as clinicians at VA centers were unable to access patient records through the system.

The outage on Tuesday occurred as lawmakers at a congressional hearing grilled VA technology leaders and Cerner executives over the future of the electronic health records systems. Cerner and the department are preparing this weekend to continue a previously delayed rollout of the EHR system to a third location at a medical center in Columbus, Ohio.

VA and Cerner define a system outage as an “unscheduled system event where the entire EHR solution becomes unavailable to users and/or downtime procedures are implemented.”

During the hearing, witnesses confirmed to lawmakers that outages had affected the VA’s Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center in Walla Walla, Washington.

VA Deputy Chief Information Officer for Electronic Health Record Modernization Laura Prietula said: “There was an outage today at Walla Walla … and an outage yesterday for 127 minutes due to load imbalance.”

According to the VA, all systems are now up and running, and Cerner is carrying out an analysis to determine what caused the issue.

According to the VA, a performance degradation occurs when “all EHR systems and applications are available, but users experience the system as ‘run slow’ (when compared to the baseline performance).”

The spokesperson added: “VA takes any instance of EHR degraded service seriously. No patient safety issues have been reported, to date, because of these two incidents. 

The department “has protocols in place that allow providers to continue administering safe and effective care during downtime,” the spokesperson said.

DISA setting direction for Thunderdome cybersecurity initiative

The Defense Information Security Agency is fleshing out plans for its Thunderdome program, which is aimed at helping the Pentagon implement a zero-trust cybersecurity model, a DISA official said Wednesday.

A meeting scheduled for next week could be pivotal.

“Monday we have an agencywide technical and direction-setting discussion … to ensure that we are building out … the most optimal way ahead,” Jason Martin, digital capabilities and security center director at DISA, told reporters on the sidelines of AFCEA’s TechNet Cyber conference.

“We’re going through a rack and stack of where we are, what the priorities are, and then what resources we need to align to put out a given MVP [minimum viable product] and associated capabilities,” he said.

DISA has already established a program office for Thunderdome.

Earlier this year the agency awarded the first contract for a Thunderdome security solution prototype to Booz Allen Hamilton, which was valued at $6.8 million.

DISA is leveraging Other Transaction Authority agreements (OTA) for the initiative. OTAs are intended to cut through bureaucratic red tape and help federal agencies such as the Pentagon acquire new technology faster.

“We’re moving forward with sitting down with the vendor on a daily basis to work through, you know, where are we going to go when, what are the milestones, what are the critical performance periods that we’re going to tackle,” Martin said.

“We’ve also started to build out what the prototype will look like for the year, which includes, you know, multiple parts of the agency, which I think will be really good at helping us understand also the various use cases across the agency [and] really what we need to support,” he said. “I think that will really help us build out a set of … parameters to help us get to that initial set of MVPs.”

Unlike some previous cybersecurity models, zero trust assumes that entities already operating inside a network can’t automatically be trusted. The model is already being adopted by organizations in the private sector.

In an executive order last year, the White House directed federal agencies to develop plans for implementing zero trust.

The directive was part of a larger push to modernize the U.S. government’s cybersecurity in the wake of cyberattacks that compromised federal agencies through the exploitation of software.

Thunderdome “will fundamentally change the way DISA operates,” Martin said. “It will fundamentally change the DISN [Defense Information Systems Network] and it will fundamentally change the way that DODIN [Department of Defense Information Network] interoperates with the DISN. So, I think those are all obviously critically important to what we’re trying to do across the department.”

Report: CDC Data Modernization Initiative remains largely unplanned

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacks a detailed Data Modernization Initiative framework due to projects’ complexity and COVID-19 response being a competing priority, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday.

While the Department of Health and Human Services agreed CDC needs to provide actions and deadlines for data modernization projects, the agency continues to look for subject matter experts up to the task.

CDC received $1.1 billion for its Data Modernization Initiative beginning in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic made clear its infrastructure was lacking, but there’s still no plan for allocating those funds.

“Without more specific, actionable plans, CDC may not be able to gauge its progress on the initiative or achieve key results in a timely manner,” reads the GAO report. “In addition, such lack of progress to implement enhanced surveillance systems could affect the quality and timeliness of data needed to respond to future public health emergencies.”

CDC managed to launch a COVID-19 Electronic Laboratory Reporting system in 2020 and has plans to modernize the National Syndromic Surveillance Program, National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System and National Vital Statistics System, but it still has more than 100 surveillance systems that require continued updates, maintenance and IT innovations.

Many of these systems are plagued by outdated data collection and transmission methods like manual entry and faxing, a lack of common data standards across state and local systems leading to data inconsistencies, and a lack of interoperability hindering data sharing. The traditional federal funding model led to the rise of disparate surveillance systems among states and localities, the health departments of which struggle to maintain the IT workforces that tend to such systems.

“The federal government lacks an interoperable network of systems for near real-time public health situational awareness 15 years after federal law first mandated that the Department of Health and Human Services establish such a network,” reads the report.

While lawmakers passed three such laws since 2006, the latest being the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019, GAO found HHS had made “little progress” planning a network since 2017  — hindering the ability of public health officials to monitor and respond to COVID-19 or future pandemics. HHS hasn’t even established an integrated planning team and didn’t comment on GAO’s finding.

GAO further found that CDC could be better positioned to coordinate national COVID-19 surveillance if it included in its approach objectives and ways to measure progress, which HHS agreed with.

Some public health officials have called for CDC to update its surveillance strategies to reflect the COVID-19 pandemic shifting from a crisis to control situation.

GAO suggested CDC might set an objective of relying on wasterwater surveillance where clinical testing is limited, to achieve its goal of identifying disease outbreaks, and then set targets for measuring how well it’s filling in reporting gaps. Other objectives and measures might be tied to disease variant surveillance.

HHS noted in its response that defining objectives won’t solve all its surveillance woes.

“Progress toward meeting surveillance goals is affected by agency efforts, as well as jurisdictional activities, funding, data use agreements and reporting authorities that are outside of the control of the agency,” reads the response.

EPA awards $661.6M digital modernization and managed services contract to GDIT

The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a $661.6 million task order for digital modernization and managed application services to General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT).

The contract, which has a one-year base plus six one-year option periods, is for managed application, infrastructure, networking, enterprise and security services.

As part of the task order, GDIT will develop and operate the agency’s enterprise IT infrastructure and application platforms. This includes cloud computing, application platform management, enterprise network and security operations, enterprise identity access management and cybersecurity.

Commenting on the award, GDIT President Amy Gilliland said: “GDIT will partner with the EPA to deliver a reliable, secure and technologically advanced IT infrastructure that will support agency initiatives fundamental to protecting human health and the environment.”

The latest managed services contract comes as the EPA continues work to modernize IT infrastructure and telecommunications across the agency.

Late last year, the department said it intended to resubmit disconnection orders for 268 services rendered unnecessary by the GSA’s Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) contract.

EPA‘s Office of Inspector General at the time found services like analog phone and digital subscriber lines still weren’t disconnected as of May 2021, and eight disconnection orders took between one and 61 months to complete — costing the agency $7,850.

NSA re-awards $10B WildandStormy cloud computing contract to AWS

The National Security Agency has re-awarded its $10 billion WildandStormy cloud computing contract to Amazon Web Services.

The contract award comes after the Government Accountability Office in December last year found that the agency had improperly assessed technical proposals from Microsoft and recommended that it reassess the procurement.

In a statement, an NSA spokesperson said: “NSA recently awarded a contract to Amazon Web Services that delivers cloud computing services to support the Agency’s mission. This contract is a continuation of NSA’s Hybrid Compute Initiative to modernize and address the robust processing and analytical requirements of the Agency.”

They added: “The same cloud services were competed last year and the previously awarded contract was protested to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO sustained that protest in October 2021. Consistent with the decision in that case, the Agency has reevaluated the proposals and made a new best value decision.”

The NSA’s Hybrid Compute Initiative is understood to be a program run by the security agency to assess what sensitive national security data can be stored in commercial cloud infrastructure.

GAO in its prior bid dispute decision found that it was unreasonable for NSA to view the role of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) as an approving authority gateway for top secret and unclassified services that would be provided under WildandStormy as a weakness for Microsoft.

According to the watchdog’s opinion, NSA objected to DISA’s role as an authorizing agency because it had concerns that services on Microsoft’s cloud environment may not be processed according to NSA priorities.

GAO at the time also found that NSA’s assessment of cloud network latency calculations unfairly benefitted Amazon Web Services. Despite sustaining this element of the protest, the watchdog denied Microsoft’s argument that NSA unreasonably evaluated offerors’ management proposals. It dismissed also Microsoft’s protest that the agency failed to evaluate price proposals on a common basis, saying that this was an untimely challenge.

An AWS spokesperson said: “We’re honored that after thorough review, the NSA selected AWS as the cloud provider for the Hybrid Compute Initiative, and we’re ready to help deliver this critical national security capability.”

SABRE military software tool approaching initial operational capability

A new software tool viewed as a key enabler for U.S. military collaboration with allies and partners is expected to reach initial operational capability in the coming months, according to a top Defense Department IT official.

The software tool, known as the Secret and Below Releasable Environment (SABRE), was designed to facilitate information sharing between the computer networks of the U.S. and other militaries during joint operations, and it will be integrated into the DOD’s Mission Partner Environment.

“The initial operation operational capabilities for what we’re calling SABRE … will be delivered this spring or summer. I think it is the summer. And then we need to continue to work with the combatant commands — [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] being the first — to be able to start with their implementation paths,” said Danielle Metz, chief information technology strategist in the office of the secretary of defense.

Combatant commands and international partners will need to migrate their mission applications into that environment, she noted during remarks at AFCEA’s TechNet Cyber conference.

The Pentagon’s CIO “needs to ensure that we’re working with the mission partners to be able to refactor and decide how they’re going to move those mission applications into SABRE, because that’s how this is all going to work. It’s not enough just to have the technology. We need to make sure we have mission applications in there, and that the users know how to use it, and that it is all working together,” Metz said.

SABRE will tie into what the Pentagon calls the Mission Partner Environment (MPE), which aims to facilitate collaboration between combatant commands and foreign allies.

“The Mission Partner Environment provides the ability for DOD and mission partners to exchange information with all participants within a specific partnership or coalition, as well as supports commanders’ execution of critical jointwide warfighting functions,” Metz said.

The initiative requires intensive collaboration between the U.S. and partner governments across vast geographic divides, multiple time zones and a diverse technology set, she said.

The Pentagon has struggled with the MPE, she acknowledged.

“The combatant commanders have been screaming for the need to be able to seamlessly be able to collaborate not only internally … but across the mission partners. And that mission partner can mean anything to anybody, depending on where you are located and depending on what that actual mission is. And so, quite frankly, the department has struggled for years to be able to articulate what was meant by Mission Partner Environment and then to be able to transition from a very physically network-centric type environment to a more cloud-based one,” she said.

The Pentagon has been working on the initiative for the past three years. The secretary of the Air Force has been serving as the executive agent, while the DOD CIO is the principal staff adviser working with the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

“The idea is that we want to be able to blend the intel aspects as well as the [command and control] aspects together in a cloud-based approach,” Metz said.

She added: “I think that we’ve moved along from having a perfect solution, or what we thought would be a perfect solution, and then delivering it to being able to set minimum viable products that we can easily build upon and get that user feedback so that we can improve when and where it’s needed.”