On DoD

From modeling airflows aboard medical evacuation aircraft to simulating vaccine candidates, the Defense Department's supercomputing resources are being brought to bear on various aspects of the government's pandemic response. Dr. Will McMahon and Dr. Kevin Newmeyer from the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program join Jared Serbu to share some examples. Later, we talk with Dr. Piyush...

Last week, the Defense Department released its latest in a series of requests for prototype proposals (RPPs) to help pave the way for incorporating 5G technologies into military networks. Depending on how the project pans out, it could lead to significant improvements in how 5G networks operate in the commercial sector too. Sal D’Itri, the chairman of the spectrum consortium joins Jared Serbu to d...

Because of the coronavirus crisis, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences is conferring medical degrees early so those new clinicians can get to work right away. 150 M.D.s and 33 advance practice nurses got their degrees on Wednesday. Dr. Art Kellerman, the dean of USU's Hebert School of Medicine at USU joins us to talk about how the early graduation was accomplished. Also: a loo...

The Navy is jumping on the bandwagon of federal agencies who are reforming their IT security processes to speed new capabilites through the approval process in as little as a day. That’s a far cry from the 13-18 months it currently takes new capabilities to make their way through the Navy’s implementation of the Risk Management Framework. Capt. Susan BryerJoyner joins Jared Serbu to talk about the...

A little over three years ago, when the forerunner to what’s now called the Defense Innovation Unit was still in its infancy, one of the first projects the Pentagon asked its new Silicon Valley outpost to tackle was the emerging problem of threats from small drones. That’s partly because several well-funded startups had already started to emerge to help companies and other non-Defense customers, l...

A little over three years ago, when the forerunner to what’s now called the Defense Innovation Unit was still in its infancy, one of the first projects the Pentagon asked its new Silicon Valley outpost to tackle was the emerging problem of threats from small drones. That’s partly because several well-funded startups had already started to emerge to help companies and other non-Defense customers, l...

After its first two years of full-scale financial audits, the Defense Department is starting to get some of its first concrete indications of how much work likes ahead of it before it can finally earn a clean audit opinion. And according to DoD’s inspector general, there are clear signs of progress – though they’re not necessarily to be found in the number of audit findings the department has been...

For almost a decade now, Congress has been pressing the Defense department to modernize and consolidate the IT systems it uses to write contracts. This is a pivotal year in accomplishing that: The Army is beginning to roll out its new Army Contract Writing System, and the Navy is expected to follow shortly thereafter with one that's based on the same commercial product. On this week’s show, we tal...

It’s been five years since the Defense Department adopted the Risk Management Framework to assess the cybersecurity of its IT systems. It was a rough ride at first, but DoD organizations have started to work the bugs out. The Army has just launched a three-phase RMF reform effort called Project Sentinel. Nancy Kreidler, the director of cybersecurity and information assurance in the Army CIO’s offi...

The Defense Department Inspector General has released its annual list of the top ten management challenges facing the Pentagon. Most of the items in the 2020 edition are familiar: shoring up financial management, countering challenges from China, Russia, and global terrorist networks, and defending DoD networks from cyber threats. But there are two new entries this year: One deals with taking care...

It’s been a little more than two years since the Army’s chief information officer memorably declared that the battlefield network it has is not the network it needs. Now the service is nearly ready to start buying significant quantities of equipment to start constructing a network it believes will keep pace with technology and survive on a modern battlefield. On this week's show, Maj. Gen. Peter G...

The Army’s newly-christened marketing office is set to launch its first ad campaign on Monday, and if there’s one consistent theme that ties the multi-platform messaging strategy together, it’s that the Army wants to pivot from reinforcing what people already know about military service to educating them about what they don’t. Brig. Gen. Alex Fink, the chief of the Army Enterprise Marketing office...

Dr. Bruce Jette, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology sits down with Jared Serbu for a wide-ranging discussion on the Army's intellectual property strategy, advanced manufacturing, and how the service's modernization bureaucracy has changed with the standup of Army Futures Command See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice...

On this edition of On DoD, Lt. Gen. Bruce Crawford, the Army's Chief Information Officer/G6 talks with Jared Serbu about the Army's forthcoming data strategy -- and the new standards the service will use to enforce it. Later, Scott Maucione talks with Molly Dunigan and Steve Dalzell, two senior political scientists at the RAND Corporation, about new research into methods the military's reserve com...

On this week's show, an extended discussion with Matthew Donovan, the undersecretary of the Air Force, and Gen. Stephen Wilson, the service's vice chief of staff. They discussed the rollout of the "Digital Air Force" initiative with Federal News Network's Scott Maucione. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

For decades, the Navy’s relationship with its spare parts suppliers has been relatively straightforward: when the service needs a batch of items, it places an order, and industry fulfills it. But officials at Naval Supply Systems Command say they’ve come to realize that arms-length transactional approach doesn’t give the Navy nearly enough insight into the health of its supply chain, nor does it g...

In the Defense world, formal investigations rarely substantiate whistleblower retaliation claims, especially those from contractor employees. But a new alternative dispute resolution program has already resolved more than 80. Nilgun Tolek, the DoD OIG's director of whistleblower reprisal joins Jared Serbu to discuss the ADR program. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Pr...

First on this weeks show, officials from Army Cyber Command and the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems join Jared Serbu to talk about the kickoff of the Army's Enterprise IT-as-a-Service pilot, which will begin the process of outsourcing network services on Army installations. Later, Lt. Gen. Dorothy Hogg, the Air Force Surgeon General joins us to discuss the new health ca...

The Army is front and center in this episode. We begin with an exclusive interview with Mark Esper, the Army secretary. Later, Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins from the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command discusses where artificial intelligence fits in with the Army's near-and-long-term modernization plans. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://ar...

A special edition of On DoD, featuring an abridged version of a panel discussion Jared Serbu moderated at this year’s Navy League Sea-Air-Space expo in National Harbor, Maryland. This conversation is focused on personnel, and specifically, what the sea services say is a coming revolution in how military training is conducted. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy N...

Like the other military services, the Air Force has knowingly underfunded its facility maintenance accounts in recent years while its O&M budgets have been squeezed. But officials have come to the conclusion that they'll never reverse the trend of buildings steadily falling into disrepair without both more money and a new scheme to prioritize funds. Richard Hartley, the Air Force’s principal d...

It’s not easy for DoD contracting officers to determine whether they’re getting fair and reasonable prices, particularly when they’re dealing with relatively small-dollar value transactions where there is only one supplier. That's according to a new DoD IG audit, which found one supplier, Transdigm, marked up its parts by as much as 4,400 percent. Theresa Hull, the assistant inspector general for...

We’re turning this week’s show over to Federal News Network’s Jason Miller, who recently talked to several experts about a recently-released DIA report that listed more than three dozen research reports the agency funded as part of something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program. The technologies ranged from the somewhat-plausible to physics-defying. On the far end of the...

On this week's program, two senior Navy IT officials join Jared Serbu to talk about the service's latest plans for identity and cloud computing. Capt. Ben McNeal, the program manager for Naval Enterprise Networks (PMW-205), discusses the Navy's move to derived credentials on mobile devices and the role identity will play in network security going forward. Later, Travis Methvin, the project manager...

The documentation accompanying DoD's first-ever financial audit is tough for non-auditors to decipher. But as part of its work this year, the DoD Inspector General also released an explanation of the results in layman's language; it also pointed out what the IG believes are the six most significant material weaknesses the audit uncovered.  Carmen Malone, the Deputy Assistant Inspector General for...