DefenseScoop
More than 220 officials from across the private sector and academia registered to attend the Pentagon’s first-ever Task Force Lima Industry Challenge Day that kicked off Sept. 27—where they’ll learn about certain “gaps” in the emerging and likely disruptive field of generative artificial intelligence that the U.S. military needs their help confronting, DefenseScoop has learned.
POLITICO
Washington’s push to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey may have better odds after a top critic, Sen. Bob Menendez, stepped down from a key congressional post, according to House Foreign Affairs Chair Mike McCaul. Menendez (D-N.J.), sidelined after he was indicted on federal corruption charges, blocked the jet sale due to Ankara’s aggression against its neighbors and internal repression. But he’s only one piece of the puzzle; the U.S. can’t sell the warplanes without buy-in from the top Republicans and Democrats on the foreign policy panels in both chambers.
Breaking Defense
A new electronic warfare kit for the Boeing F-15 fighter jet incurred its second “significant” cost breach due to a decision to slash its procurement, according to a new Defense Department report. The breach was triggered specifically by the Air Force’s decision to cut its planned purchase of Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System (EPAWSS) kits from 217 to just 99 to go on F-15E fighter jets, matching a planned downsizing of the fleet.
Military.com
The Air Force says a pilot program has found that putting resources for survivors of sexual assault, domestic abuse, stalking and cyberbullying in one central base office made reporting and finding support easier. At the beginning of this year, the service ended a program tested at five bases where officials put all the offices to report assault, harassment and domestic violence under one roof. In a press release on Sept. 27, Brian Demer, a program specialist with the Department of the Air Force Integrated Resilience, said they saw successes with the test.
Defense News
The growth of additive manufacturing is a “game changer” for the military—one that can facilitate everything from rapid repairs to aircraft after bird strikes to accelerating the development of hypersonic weapons, a top Defense Department official said Sept. 27. Keith DeVries, deputy director of the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Manufacturing Technology Program, said in a Defense News webcast that additive manufacturing has made “tremendous leaps” in the last few years and opened up novel possibilities for creating new weapons and components.
Air Force Times
The Air Force’s next big IT project looks to transform its online portal for military awards from a clunky mess into a user-friendly home for Airmen’s honors. Revamping myDecorations, or “myDecs,” is part of a broader effort to streamline the Air Force’s sprawling human resources enterprise. The project aims to ease the administrative burden of apps that troops depend on to document their professional lives and make that data accessible worldwide.
Defense One
The U.S. Space Force, looking to up its security posture against cyber threats, has awarded a $17 million contract to cybersecurity company Xage Security, the company announced Sept. 27. The award shows a growing awareness that data in transit from Earth to ground stations is increasingly vulnerable to hacking, but also that some new popular enterprise cloud architectures don’t entirely fix the problem, the company’s CEO told Defense One.
Breaking Defense
The Space Rapid Capabilities Office (SpRCO) is now “finalizing” a plan to acquire software for command and control (C2) of highly mobile satellites and spacecraft being envisioned for future “dynamic space operations,” according to Director Kelly Hammett. SpRCO is building the “acquisition requirements” for the Rapid Resilient Command and Control (R2C2) program based on feedback gathered from “a number of industry days [and] a number of RFIs [requests for information],” he said in a Sept. 22 presentation at the annual Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference.
One More Thing
The War Zone
As the U.S. Air Force pushes to be more prepared to operate on short notice from remote or austere locations with limited support, one simple question may increasingly be on the minds of its F-16 Viper pilots: how will I get in and out of my jet? One of the service's officers currently stationed in Italy is pitching a solution to that problem. For the F-16, which does not have a built-in boarding ladder, a folding one that can fit right in the jet's map case in the cockpit seems like a revelation. Fielding it would also be significantly cheaper than the external ladders now in use, each one of which costs $5,200.
