The Air Force’s proposal to cut the F-22s is part of a broader plan to divest 150 aircraft in fiscal 2023 to free funds for higher priorities such as the B-21 bomber, hypersonic weapons programs and Next-Generation Air Dominance systems.

The House Armed Services Committee’s defense policy bill offered a sharp rebuke of the strategy and of the planned F-22 retirements in particular. Not only did lawmakers reject the plan to cut the aircraft, they called for the older-model jets, which are used primarily for training missions, to be upgraded to the newest F-22 configuration.

The White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement to Congress last month it “strongly opposes” House efforts to block aircraft and ship retirements. Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s top acquisition official, told reporters this week that preventing the service’s divestment plan would slow progress on the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which aims to field a fleet of unmanned aircraft to augment NGAD and other fighter aircraft during combat missions. The program is one of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s top priorities.

“The concern I would have would be on our ability to deliver on a Collaborative Combat Aircraft system to complement NGAD. That’s where I think we start to see impacts,” Hunter told reporters during an Aug. 11 briefing at the Air Force’s Life Cycle Industry Days conference in Dayton, Ohio. “It would limit our ability to dedicate people and resources to an aggressive effort to field that capability.”

The Air Force requested $51.5 million in fiscal 2023 to transition technologies matured through the Skyborg program — the service’s effort to demonstrate the utility of teaming fighters and unmanned aircraft — to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft effort.

Asked whether additional funding from Congress would allow the Air Force to keep the F-22s and stay on track with the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, Hunter said there are infrastructure and manpower constraints that can’t necessarily be addressed with more money.

Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, told reporters during a separate Aug. 11 briefing the service is working with F-22 manufacturer Lockheed Martin to develop a cost estimate for modernizing the 33 older aircraft. A 2019 analysis projected it would cost about $50 million per jet, but White said a number of variables, including supply chain constraints, could change that estimate.

“We’re trying to put our arms around what has changed since the last time we did this,” he said.

The service plans to provide that data to Congress within the next month to inform budget deliberations, he added.

A council of the American Federation of Government Employees said it will seek arbitration over the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s denial of a national remote work grievance.

According to the union’s grievance filed on June 8, management excluded broad groups of employees from remote work without “appropriate consideration of the employees’ duties, assignments, and functions” after it settled an agreement in April. The department, which employs roughly 9,600 staff members, denied the complaint, saying employees are allowed “unprecedented workplace flexibilities” and the maximum approved telework days per the Office of Personnel Management.

“When the pandemic started, our entire workforce was working at home,” said Salvatore Viola, the union Council 22 president. “They were working remotely and successfully carried on the mission of the agency.”

The bargaining unit covers about 5,000 employees.

According to union officials, while the department was rolling out a system to field applications for remote work and telework, it preemptively sent notices that certain employees were only approved for routine telework, meaning reporting to an agency office at least twice in a pay period.

An email sent by the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer announcing applications for remote work and telework said “nothing precludes employees from submitting a request for a different Flexiplace option (i.e., telework, remote work) than the one identified in the notification letter.”

Employees were then able to apply for a Flexiplace arrangement, according to the email. If employees were determined ineligible for the option they requested, they would be provided with a reason for the denial, said union officials.

“It seems to be a managerial preference,” said Ricardo Miranda, the council’s chief steward.

“As agreed to in HUD’s supplement with AFGE, eligibility for Flexiplace arrangements – including remote work, mobile work, and telework – is being determined ‘based on objective, equitable guidelines, function-based criteria, and shall not be arbitrary and capricious,’” said a HUD spokesperson in an email.

The union collected sample applications as evidence of denied requests that lacked reasoning behind the decisions, despite each application having a designated blank section to provide elaboration.

Some of the applications merely cite previous determinations from the department that a position was excluded from fully remote work. Others simply included a variation of the “Your position is not eligible for remote telework” message.

“The boilerplate exclusion of eligibility for remote work and eligibility for only routine telework without providing any reason why employees cannot work remotely failed to consider individual employee requests and the specific position, duties, and assignments of employees,” the grievance said.

Viola said exclusion from remote work fails to consider how reentry imposes commuting costs amid soaring gas prices and hardships on employees who are caregivers.

In a written response to the grievance, the agency denied the allegation, saying most employees were approved for a Flexiplace arrangement of either remote work or expanded telework based on objective, equitable guidelines, function-based criteria, and not arbitrary and capricious reasons.

Ricardo and Viola say that while they recognize a 100% remote environment for every HUD employee is unreasonable, more employees should be eligible for remote work than the agency determined. They said HUD employees are well-equipped to do so because of successful remote work during the last 26 months.

How was hiring impacted by the pandemic?

During the pandemic, HUD hired more employees than the number who retired, a first in many years.

Initially, HUD deployed mandatory telework for its employees nationwide as part of an evacuation order on March 20, 2020.

Since then, a report issued by the HUD Office of Inspector General found that “most processes were only slightly impacted or not impacted at all by mandatory telework.”

Unsurprisingly, the report found that processes dependent on physical paper records and facility access were most disrupted, though as of fiscal year 2018, 91% of HUD employees were eligible for telework participation and 82% were already teleworking.

Made possible by the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, flexible work preceded the pandemic, said Miranda.

“With this existing telework experience and capacity in place, HUD employees are maintaining a high level of service continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the audit found. “Although employees encountered some difficulties and processes were impacted as indicated above, HUD was generally able to quickly adapt and continue performing its essential functions.”

Nevertheless, the report’s findings still allow for office reentry. It encouraged prioritizing plans for reopening offices to account for work processes that are canceled or suspended during telework.

OPM has also advised agencies to leverage telework where possible.

“Employees were able to continue to meet the challenges of their jobs head-on from locations other than their regular duty station, apart from their managers, supervisors, and colleagues,” said OPM Director Kiran Ahuja in a 2021 memo. “Agencies demonstrated that they have been able to continue to carry out their missions effectively.”

Though work flexibility appears to be greenlit at the top of government, agency implementation has not been as smooth.

“HUD management refuses to comply with the President’s agenda of working in partnership with the labor movement to bring the federal government into the 21st century,” the union said in a release. “HUD’s top leadership prefers to manage based on employee attendance in the office rather than focusing on productivity and reducing office space.”

“President Biden has claimed we’re in partnership, and that we do things as partners,” Viola said. “But in the meantime, it’s not happening.”

The Air Force selected the E-7 in April to replace a portion of its E-3 Airborne Warning and Control fleet, a command-and-control platform the service has been operating for more than 40 years. The service’s proposed 2023 budget calls for retiring 15 E-3s, or about half the fleet, and includes $227 million in research, development, test and evaluation funds for the replacement.

Steven Wert, the program executive officer for the service’s Digital Directorate, which oversees the Wedgetail acquisition, told reporters this week that if Congress fails to pass a fiscal 2023 defense budget on time, it would delay the Air Force’s current plan to award Boeing a contract by February of next year.

Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass an appropriations bill, a fast-approaching deadline made more challenging by the August congressional recess. If Congress fails to approve a budget, it must approve a continuing resolution as a stopgap measure to keep the government funded until it does. Continuing resolutions freeze funding at prior-year levels and restrict agencies from awarding contracts to start new programs or increasing procurement quantities.

Agencies can request “anomalies” to shield priority programs from the impact of a CR, and Wert told reporters during an Aug. 10 briefing at the Air Force’s Life Cycle Management Industry Days event in Dayton, Ohio, the service plans to request protection for the E-7 acquisition.

At the same time, the service is also seeking congressional approval to shift, or reprogram, fiscal year 2022 funding from other accounts to speed up the E-7 award. If approved, the Air Force could award the deal to Boeing before February, Wert said.

“That new-start reprogramming would give us the flexibility to potentially speed it up somewhat,” he said. “It’s not going to be a dramatic speed-up, but we’re doing everything we can.”

The Air Force expects to have its first E-7 on hand by fiscal 2027. While the aircraft is an off-the-shelf solution, it will require some software upgrades as well as integration of new hardware.

The Royal Australian Air Force also flies the Wedgetail and Wert said the service is working closely with Australia to identify options to collaborate and accelerate test and evaluation. The U.K. also signed a deal with Boeing in 2018 to buy five E-7s and is considering expanding that procurement and Saudi Arabia has shown interest in the platform, Wert said.

“The potential is there for cooperative programs between the nations that are currently using the E-7,” he said. “We are hearing of a lot of interest from other nations to look to E-7 as well.”

With reporting by Stephen Losey

The scheme worked. The employees successfully had the material shipped, complete with radioactive stickers on the side, then confirmed delivery.

But the workers were actually investigators from the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, and they were testing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s ability to regulate the sale and procurement of dangerous materials.

The act, and a subsequent report from the GAO, alarmed Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who is now calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to overhaul its licensing system as a way to avoid a national security disaster.

“Anyone could open a shell company with a fraudulent license to obtain dangerous amounts of radioactive material that could be weaponized into a dirty bomb,” Torres told Defense News in an interview on Wednesday. “Disperse radioactive material in a city as densely populated as New York, and it could cause catastrophic damage.”

The commission classifies radioactive material into five categories of risk. Only categories one and two currently are subject to its independent license verification system – a loophole that Torres and the GAO fear that an individual or group could exploit to wreak havoc by building a dirty bomb that combines combines conventional explosives with category three radioactive materials.

Torres, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, is pressing the NRC to immediately expand its independent license verification system to include category three quantities of radioactive materials. He formally made the licensing overhaul request in a letter seen by Defense News on Wednesday. This request is in line with the GAO’s recommendations in what Torres called an “alarming report.”

The report notes that the watchdog “provided a copy of a license that GAO forged to two vendors, subsequently obtained invoices and paid the vendors.” It notes that the GAO did not accept the shipment at the delivery point and instead “safely and securely” returned the radioactive material to the vendors.

“While radioactive materials have legitimate medical and industrial uses, the illicit possession, purchase and use of radioactive materials poses an extreme threat to homeland security,” Torres wrote in his letter. “Without additional security protocols, including a more rigorous system of independent license verification, a terrorist could exploit current vulnerabilities to obtain radioactive material and weaponize it into a dirty bomb against a soft target in America’s largest cities.”

The GAO report notes that a malicious actor could use category three materials to build a dirty bomb. For instance, it says that someone “might be able to obtain a category 2 quantity by purchasing and aggregating more than one category 3 quantity from multiple vendors.”

Torres also wrote in his letter that the NRC should “assess the need for independent license verification for category four and five radioactive materials,” which goes beyond the scope of the GAO recommendations.

Category three materials are frequently used in fixed radiation gauges to measure things like moisture and density in soil and asphalt for industries ranging from mining to oil and gas to agriculture. The lowest-tiered categories of radioactive materials are often used in devices such as Xray machines.

David McIntyre, a NRC spokesman, told Defense News that the agency is “taking actions to address the issues identified by the GAO.”

“Upon release of the report, we immediately contacted manufacturers of these radioactive sources to ensure they are vigilant with sales, especially for new customers or unusual activities,” said McIntyre.

McIntyre noted the NRC is “expediting a rule change already in progress” that would include “consideration of multi-factor authentication” for category three radioactive materials.

“In contrast, imposing immediate additional security requirements would risk unintended impacts to important and safe medical, academic and industrial uses of these materials,” he added.

The GAO report acknowledged that “NRC is taking some steps to strengthen its licensing program” but cautioned that “current gaps will remain unaddressed until at least the end of 2023.”

But first, Congress must act.

Many of the recommendations in the February DoD Report, “State of Competition within the Defense Industrial Base,” are clear, thoughtful and urgently needed. However, there are two misguided ideas throughout the report that are worth interrogating — a focus on small businesses instead of startups and a lack of understanding of the role of institutional venture capital in America’s innovation ecosystem.

These two themes reflect commonly held misunderstandings in the defense innovation community.

The first misstep is that the Pentagon report repeatedly emphasizes working with “small businesses” when instead they should be focused on working with “startups.” Many people use these terms interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing. American entrepreneur Steve Blank has a video on the pivotal differences between a small business and a startup.

In short, “small business” describes the universe of commercial entities that have fewer than 500 employees, including restaurants, barber shops, small consulting firms, auto repair workshops or any other type of business. “Startups” are the tiny subset of all small businesses that have the aspiration and have been recognized for their potential to take innovative groundbreaking ideas and become massive companies.

Professional venture capital investors evaluate, recruit and select promising startups, and then fund only the ones they believe have the greatest potential. Top firms often evaluate hundreds or even thousands of companies before selecting one to invest in. As a result, the statistics VC funding are remarkably similar to highly selective National Football League rosters — according to analysis by Stanford University, only two in every thousand new businesses end up securing VC funding.

In business, venture backing is a predictive signal of future potential. Over the past 50 years, only 0.19% of new businesses have been backed by VC firms. However, that tiny sliver have accounted for a whopping 28% of the total number of U.S. initial public offerings.

Said differently, a VC backed startup is roughly 200 times more likely to eventually become a public company than those that are not backed. Similar disparities are true for R&D spend, as that tiny percentage of new companies that are VC backed have gone on to account for an incredible 42% of the R&D spending by U.S. public companies. There are of course notable exceptions to these general trends, but the data demonstrate a stark truth: VC-backed companies are exponentially more likely to be drivers of economic growth and R&D innovation than their non-VC backed peers.

Given this data, you would expect the Pentagon to be rushing to recruit VC-backed startups to join the fight. Sadly, the Small Business Innovation Research program expressly prohibits the government from using VC investment as a criterion for contract awards. 15 U.S. Code § 638 - Research and Development, (7) Evaluation criteria states that “a Federal agency may not use investment of venture capital or investment from hedge funds or private equity firms as a criterion for the award of contracts under the SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research] program.” Despite calling itself “America’s Seed Fund”, the SBIR program expressly ignores the opinions of professional seed investors.

As we look to compile the best team we can to win the future fight, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley need to team up. Ignoring the role of institutional venture capital in identifying, supporting, and scaling the most promising commercial technology firms is at best inefficient and at worst it is grossly irresponsible.

Congress should remove this unhelpful provision of SBIR law and clear the way for the Pentagon to begin aggressively recruiting venture backed startups to join the national security fight.

Andrew Powell is the CEO and co-founder of Learn to Win, a software training company headquartered in Silicon Valley.

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The Defense Health Agency’s Omnibus IV contract is a 10-year, multiple-award contract meant to deliver medical and technical services to the Pentagon, the company said in a statement on Aug. 9.

The Omnibus IV contract addresses four market segments that companies could be selected to provide services to the DoD: research and development; R&D support services; regulatory processes; and translational science and support services. Other contractors to receive work in all four market segments include General Dynamics Information Technology, Military Health Research Foundation and Leidos, according to the DHA ordering guide.

“As a trusted health solution provider, Battelle provides cross-disciplinary scientific and engineering expertise to improve public health and advance medical discoveries,” Nicole Brennan, division manager of health and research at Battelle, said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to working with our team to provide the most innovative solutions to the DoD that will improve health outcomes.”

Battelle conducts R&D, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, since its founding in 1929, the company serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries.

The Military Health System is one of America’s largest and most complex health care institutions. It’s responsible for providing health services through both direct and private care to some 9.6 million beneficiaries, composed of uniformed service members, military retirees and family members.

Not so fast.

When Lauren Weiner speaks with business owners who want her advice, she tells them the truth.

“There’s so much more that comes into it,” Weiner says. “You just being able to perform the service is not good enough.”

Weiner and her business partner, Donna Huneycutt, landed their first contract in 2006. Today, their firm, WWC Global, was recently awarded the largest contract to a woman-owned business in the history of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

Their backgrounds – their knowledge as military spouses and Weiner’s experience working for the government as a civilian – helped them get started. They still had to learn the challenging game of government contracting.

For business strategist Chandra Hunt, the path was similar: she had been a federal employee working on contracts on the government side. Then she began working for a Fortune 500 company that served as a government contractor. Eventually, she began consulting for smaller companies that want to enter this complicated but potentially lucrative market.

Weiner and Hunt, along with Antonio Doss, deputy associate administrator for government contracting and business development at the SBA, were recently asked : What do small business owners really need to know?

Choose your niche.

People often think it’s wise to pursue contracts with a slew of government agencies and departments.

“They’re trying to market themselves to one of the big DOD agencies.,” Doss said. “They’re trying to market themselves to NASA, to Health and Human Services, to the Social Security administration. They’re much better off to say, ‘OK, I’m going to do some research. I’m going to figure out who’s buying what I want to sell, and let me focus on that one particular agency.’”

Hunt agreed. Just as you would in the commercial business world, “you need to identify your target market, she said. “And then laser-focus on that instead of trying to paint a broad stroke.”

Build relationships.

Relationships are everything, Weiner said, but it’s not that just knowing someone gets you the contract. Getting to know people means discovering exactly what they need and how your company can help.

“The ‘knowing someone’ drives the ‘knowing something,’” she said, “and that drives performance.”

So reach out and try to connect with people face to face (or at least face-to-Zoom). This is part of why choosing a specific target market matters: It helps you determine exactly who you want to get to know.

“Get connected with some of the buying activity personnel through the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization,” according to Doss. All federal agencies have that particular office, and often it will offer online programming. “It’s a really great way to get people acclimated into some of the offerings that exist in the federal space.”

Learn the language (and ask if things get lost in translation).

“Government contracting is a little bit antiquated,” Hunt said. “If you’re looking for a commercial proposal, they’ll say, ‘Hey, we need you to do this and this,’ But in government-speak, it’s more like, ‘Thou shalt do this in accordance with the F.A.R. 5.206 and in accordance with the chapter paragraphs A, B and C.’ And you’re like, ‘What? What was that?’”

People who have served in the military or worked for the federal government may have a slightly easier time navigating language. But it varies even across departments, so everyone needs to build in time for learning. In short: If you’re not sure exactly what particular language means, ask someone who knows.

Make sure you can handle the wait.

The turnaround time for winning a contract can be dramatically longer than you’d find in the civilian business world, and it can be “dramatically more involved than a B-to-B or B-to-C sales cycle,” Weiner says. “They’re serving multiple different agendas ... they’re not just trying to quickly buy the right thing.”

And even when the process moves relatively quickly, small businesses have to remember that – unlike a commercial contact – they won’t be paid immediately upon signing.

“With government contracts, they pay you in what’s called a net term,” which could be anywhere from 30 to 60 days later, according to Hunt. So don’t dive in unless you can wait for that payment. (On the bright side, the government generally does pay you on time once that due date finally arrives.)

Don’t underbid – no matter what people tell you.

“One of the pitfalls that some folks run into when they first start out is thinking that they have to lose money on their first contract,” Hunt said.

But you don’t have to bid at a loss in order to be competitive or to land your first contract.

“The government put together the Small Business government contracting system to help uplift small businesses,” she said. “You can offer the lowest cost, highest value to the government without losing your shirt.”

“This acquisition is an important step in the execution of QinetiQ’s five-year ambitions to expand our presence in the US, the largest security and defence market in the world,” the company’s CEO, Steve Wadey, said in a statement Aug. 5.

The deal would double QinetiQ’s U.S. business, according to the release, and is to be completed by the end of this year, subject to regulatory approvals. A combination of existing cash and new debt facilities are expected to finance the acquisition.

QinetiQ was the 64th largest defense firm in 2021, per Defense News’ Top 100 list, which ranks companies according to defense revenue. Its total revenue for the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2022, was about £1.32 billion, or $1.8 billion, per the list. According to the company, its revenue has grown for the last five years.

Avantus, which was not on the list, brought in $298 million in total revenue in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022, and its revenue has grown by double-digit rates over the last three years, according to the release.

Founded in 2016 and based in McLean, Virginia, Avantus provides data and cyber services to the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, among other American military and government entities. QinetiQ also provides products and services to the U.S. government.

In court filings tied to a U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit that seeks to block the merger, Booz Allen said it identified 14 opportunities to unseat competitors and win lucrative government contracts alongside EverWatch, whose services are used by intelligence and defense agencies.

The Justice Department alleges the combination would jeopardize market competition, harm taxpayers and crimp services supplied to the National Security Agency. The merger, the government said in its June complaint, would specifically imperil a signals intelligence and simulation contract known as Optimal Decision. Booz Allen and EverWatch are thought to be the only serious bidders, meaning a merger would produce a monopoly, the government said.

But attorneys for Booz Allen told the court the merger would actually stimulate competition and allow it to take on bigger, entrenched companies.

“The government’s narrative is not only inaccurate — it makes no sense,” the attorneys said in documents filed Aug. 1 in Maryland federal court. “As a matter of basic math, the government’s suggestion that the proposed transaction is a ‘scheme’ to buy off competition for OD is bizarre.”

The 14 potential procurements are worth “billion of dollars” and are the driving force behind the proposed transaction, not the “relatively small” Optimal Decision work, they said.

EverWatch, owned by Maryland-based investment firm Enlightenment Capital, supplies artificial intelligence, cloud capabilities, data science, insider-threat analysis and other products and technologies. It is smaller than Booz Allen, which employs some 30,000 people.

Booz Allen ranked No. 22 in overall defense revenue in 2021, at $5.5 billion, according to the Defense News ranking, developed using information provided by the companies as well as annual reports, analyst expertise and outside research.

Lockheed and Raytheon sat at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, on the Defense News list. Lockheed recorded roughly $64.5 billion in defense revenue in 2021; Raytheon, $41.9 billion.

An inquiry made to EverWatch on Aug. 8 was not immediately answered. To what degree the merger would effect revenue was not clear.

The defense sector has substantially consolidated over the last three decades, forcing the Pentagon to rely on fewer and fewer contractors, according to a report published in February. Having only one or just a few sources to fulfill needs, it added, is risky.

Booz Allen and EverWatch, both located in Virginia, have rejected the antitrust accusations. A spokesperson in June told C4ISRNET the transaction would “bring together two companies with complementary capabilities” and vowed to “vigorously defend” against “any allegation of anticompetitive behavior.”

The potential joining of Booz Allen and EverWatch was announced in March. Terms were not publicized. The deal was expected to close in the first quarter of Booz Allen’s fiscal 2023.

And while many financial and contractual details are redacted in court documents, and some items have been sealed, it appears the revenue generated by Optimal Decision pales in comparison to the price Booz Allen was willing to pay for EverWatch.

“The proposed transaction aims to combine the complementary skills and assets of the two companies,” the firms said in their filing, adding, “The truth makes much more sense.”

Inside an unassuming office building, a few floors up and tucked into a spread of austere rooms, is Operation Cyber Dragon. The brainchild of Chief Warrant Officer Scott Bryson, the hands-on endeavor authorized by U.S. Fleet Cyber Command aims to fix virtual vulnerabilities — shoring up systems bit by bit — while also fostering a new wave of cybersecurity expertise.

“We’re doing it so that we can continue to mitigate and fortify our attack vectors and secure our networks even better,” Bryson told reporters July 22, while standing among computers, cubicles and colleagues.

Cyber Dragon kicked off in March, with the second phase of the program now underway. In its current form, the operation is focused on fortifying unclassified networks and rooting out common, widespread digital weaknesses: lax security settings, easily guessed credentials, unpatched software and more.

Doing so, officials said, makes its more difficult for hackers to break in and wreak havoc. According to the Navy, some 14,500 issues were initially identified on service networks as in need of addressing. Each could be a foothold for an adversary, especially at a time of heightened cyber conflict. Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare Vice Adm. Jeffrey Trussler in a February memo warned sailors that “cyberattacks against businesses and U.S. infrastructure are increasing in frequency and complexity.”

To tackle such a large and evolving workload, manpower was needed. So Bryson turned to the reserves, including to people not necessarily cyber fluent.

“I went to the reserve forces that we have at 10th Fleet, and I requested some bodies, and I came up with a training plan. And I said, ‘Well, if you give me X amount of sailors for X amount of days, I think that we can get after a percentage of our vulnerabilities, patching and scanning.’ The reserve force came through with the manning, they came through with the space,” Bryson said.

“When we did the posting, it wasn’t limited,” he added. “I said I’ll take anybody.”

Among the dozens of participants were, by day, a long-haul truck driver, a banker and a small-business owner. The operation offers reservists the chance to fulfill annual training requirements while also making a tangible difference.

Cyber Dragon teams have thus far identified and remediated thousands of issues — everything from several “high-profile exposures” to default usernames and passwords to discovering “data where we didn’t want data to be,” according to officials involved with the effort.

“A default username and password means that anybody could could log in and execute on here, on these particular machines. Now, they weren’t national security-related. There was no major issue directly to national security,” said Rear Adm. Steve Donald, the deputy commander of Fleet Cyber Command/U.S. 10th Fleet. “But in some cases, it could have caused harm to individuals, identity theft or something of that nature. We were able to shut that down.”

Teams have also zeroed in on potential spoofing certificates, risky software use and cloud management hiccups. Some 50 sailors have been trained on state-of-the-art attack surface management software, used to discover, classify and assess the security of an organization’s assets, with 100 more expected to undergo the same education in the coming months.

Lt. Blake Blaze, a reservist with a cyber and tech background, said the operation has improved both his understanding of the field and the cybersecurity of the Navy.

“My biggest motivation for staying in the reserves was I wanted to be close to the fight in case things get interesting with some of our near-peer adversaries,” Blaze said. “We’re not directly engaging with the enemy, so to speak, but we are trying to prevent their avenues of access to our networks.”

Both Bryson and Donald said they foresee a bright future for Cyber Dragon. As long as there are bugs to fix and the will to fix them, they said, the operation is viable. And Cyber Dragon’s format makes it mobile and replicable, appealing to workspaces and workforces of all sizes across the U.S.

All that’s really needed is floor space, network connectivity and a few tools from third-party vendors.

“The interesting thing in the IT world or the network world is what’s patched and 100% compliant today might not be patched tomorrow, because vulnerabilities ebb and flow,” Bryson said. “So do I think that this has legs to continue on? Absolutely.”

The latest figures from the Federal Salary Council show that federal workers made nearly 22.5% less last year, a slight narrowing from 23% in 2020.

“The Council is well aware of the difficulties that federal agencies face competing for workers who frequently find higher salaries in the private sector, which is why this pay gap is a valuable piece of information for our elected officials to consider when setting salaries for the federal workforce,” said National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon, who is also a member of the Council, in a statement.

The federal budget proposal unveiled by the White House in March included an average pay increase of 4.6% for civilian federal workers, matching a planned military pay raise. Historically, with pay lagging in the federal sector, other factors including steady opportunities, competitive benefits and hybrid work have retained talent.

As many federal employees also served on the front lines of the pandemic, members of Congress have advocated for a higher-than-planned raise for next year.

Who determines how much federal employees get paid?

By law, federal employees’ salaries are set at a level “equitable and comparable” with similar levels of work in the private sector, unless the president proposes alternative federal pay rates.

These salaries are generally determined each year by the President’s Pay Agent, which includes the directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management, as well as the secretary of labor.

Why do federal pay rates fail to keep pace with private sector?

According to a General Accounting Office report from 1984, frequent use of alternative pay rates by the various administrations had “dropped pay significantly” behind that of the private sector.

“Since 1978, the President has consistently set pay using alternative pay rates, which produced an increase less than that proposed by the Pay Agent,” the report said.

The Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act, passed in 1990, law requires an adjustment across the board and for locality pay each year. However, the president has authority to circumvent the rate set by the Pay Agent.

President Joe Biden exercised this authority to propose his own rate, and in August 2021, proposed an overall 2.7% pay raise for federal workers for 2022 that took effect in January.

Otherwise, the act essentially creates automatic annual adjustments based on changes to private-sector salaries, though the NTEU says FEPCA hasn’t been fully implemented.

In his remarks at the time, Biden said that he can lawfully propose his own plan if he views the increases that would otherwise take effect as inappropriate given a “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare.”

What will government pay increases look like in 2023?

The White House’s budget, which was revealed in March, proposed a 4.6% average increase for federal workers and military service members in 2023.

That would be the largest annual increase for both troops and civilian workers in 20 years, Military Times previously reported.

Given the shutdowns, hiring freezes, the economic squeeze imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the highest inflation in decades, some members of Congress have proposed an even higher rate for next year.

Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Government Operations, and Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii introduced a bill that would provide federal employees with a 5.1% increase for 2023. It’s backed by several federal labor unions and other Democrats in the House and Senate.

“Federal employees are our government’s single greatest asset, and they deserve better,” said Connolly. “The FAIR Act is critical step toward recognizing their contributions and providing fair and just compensation.”

When will the federal pay raise go into effect?

It is expected to update in January 2023.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks sent the memo out to senior leaders Wednesday, according to a Thursday release from DoD.

“This memorandum further directs that, effective immediately, all mobile device service providers in DoD will capture and save the data resident on DoD-provisioned mobile devices when devices are turned-in by users,” Hicks wrote.

Officials whose text messages and other data were deleted include former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and former Pentagon chief of staff Kash Patel, CNN first reported. All three were major players in the military’s response to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

The revelation about the wiped phones came Wednesday, after watchdog group American Oversight filed a lawsuit in response to a denied Freedom of Information Act request seeking Jan. 6 phone records of top federal government officials.

“The disappearance of this critical information could jeopardize efforts to learn the full truth about Jan. 6,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a statement calling for an investigation. “I don’t know whether the failure to preserve these critical government texts is the result of bad faith, stunning incompetence, or outdated records management policies, but we must get to the bottom of it.”

A court filing from the federal government asserted that government phones are routinely scrubbed in the course of jobs turning over.

“DoD and Army conveyed to Plaintiff that when an employee separates from DoD or Army he or she turns in the government-issued phone, and the phone is wiped,” the filing reads. “For those custodians no longer with the agency, the text messages were not preserved and therefore could not be searched, although it is possible that particular text messages could have been saved into other records systems such as email.”

In addition to reminding DoD personnel to preserve their communications, Hicks called on the department’s chief information officer and general counsel to report back in 30 days with an assessment of existing DoD policy on communications, as well as recommendations for improvement.

Council 216 of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, initially filed a charge in May against the commission, alleging that EEOC imposed return-to-work in the middle of negotiations. The Federal Labor Relations Authority took up the claim and deemed it a violation of the Federal Service Labor-Relations Management Statute. Now, a hearing for the complaint is scheduled for February unless the parties reach settlement.

“We were surprised because we thought it could’ve been accomplished,” said AFGE Council 216 President Rachel Shonfield in an interview. “It definitely launched chaos.”

It’s another example of federal employees and labor unions calling out agencies for reversing remote work flexibilities. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, all 24 federal agencies reported at least a quarter of employees teleworking by April 2020. Now some departments are reverting to in-person work, though the Office of Personnel Management within the White House has called for maximizing telework. Agencies’ responses to that guidance have been mixed, resulting in a patchwork application of flexibility, and workers and unions firing back through legal action.

The union’s council is calling for EEOC to complete negotiations on a safe reentry agreement.

“The EEOC is strongly committed to good faith bargaining regarding the impact and implementation of reentry following the unprecedented maximum telework period instituted government-wide as an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Victor Chen, director of communications at EEOC. “We view the union as a valuable partner in ensuring a safe and productive return to the agency’s physical workplaces so that we can serve the American people, including the most vulnerable workers, many of whom may have difficulty reaching us virtually.” 

After sharing its reentry plan with the union in March and while bargaining was “seemingly” ongoing, on May 5, the agency sent the union notice of its intent to move forward with implementation of the re-entry plan, according to a unfair labor practice charge submitted on May 6.

“On May 16, 2022, the Agency unilaterally implemented their re-entry plan, requiring an immediate return of bargaining unit staff to offices despite the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, and terminating the 100% telework arrangements for the bargaining unit staff before negotiations on the re-entry plan were completed,” according to an another charge filed against the agency that same day.

To date, the council has filed four ULPs on reentry and one on the issue of safety regarding occupancy ceilings for offices in high-transmission areas.

Are employees willing to come into the office?

“Employees are justifiably upset that EEOC did not work with their union to ensure a safe reentry into a hybrid workplace,” Shonfield said in a statement. “While other agencies are increasing pre-pandemic telework and remote options, EEOC’s plan contains only a short-term telework increase.”

The FLRA complaint from July 28 confirms the commission had not completed negotiations by the time of the reentry, thereby failing to negotiate in good faith.

Prior to the pandemic, certain work at EEOC was already done virtually or by phone. The agency’s website published a report that said its own pivot to virtual mediations was “highly successful.”

“While our pivot to online mediation was necessitated by the pandemic, online mediation, like our in-person mediation program, has proven to be very popular and effective,” EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said in the report.

Virtual work, while initially an emergency provision to keep the government running during the pandemic, has taken on new power as a bargaining chip for both agencies and employees. Employees are willing to walk if they can’t work remotely, and agencies that allow it have a recruiting leg-up on those that don’t.

“I do think there is some kind of resistance to modernizing workforce flexibility at EEOC,” said Shonfield, adding that she and other union officials have already heard about employees who are leaving for other agencies or retiring. That, in turn, exacerbates staffing issues within the agency that also contribute to longer wait times for the public to be served, she said.

“If EEOC is not competitive with other agencies on work-life balance and labor management relations, then this will just be the start of an exodus,” Shonfield said in a statement in May.

“While EEOC employees have continued to work diligently throughout the pandemic, it is important that the EEOC reopen our doors, reestablish our physical presence in the communities we serve, and provide critical services to vulnerable employees and applicants who most need our help,” said Chen.

The EEOC administers and enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. AFGE represents 700,000 workers nationwide and overseas.

The three-year contract accepted by members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 837 had more generous retirement plan benefits than a previous contract proposal, the union said in a release.

Tom Boelling, president of IAM District 837, said in a release that union negotiators worked hard to get a better offer from Boeing.

“We have delivered an equitable contract that will secure the future for the members, their families and future generations,” Boelling said.

In an email to Defense News, Boeing said it was satisfied with the resolution of the contract.

“We’re pleased with the outcome of the vote and we look forward to our future here in the St. Louis area,” Boeing said.

IAW announced July 24 its members had voted to reject that previous offer, largely over what it viewed as an inadequate 401(k) benefit, and planned to go on strike Aug. 1 after a seven-day cooling off period.

At that time, Boeing said if a strike occurred, it would enact its contingency plans to keep its factories operating.

However, talks resumed last week. On July 30, the union announced overnight negotiations with Boeing had yielded results and that the union’s nearly 2,500 members would vote on the revised contract offer Wednesday. The start of the strike was postponed until after that vote.

The IAW said in a release the revised contract offer its members approved included an $8,000 lump sum payment that can be deferred to employees’ 401(k)s.

Under the new contract, Boeing will also continue making 4% automatic contributions to each employees’ 401(k), without any match from the employee, the union said. The union said the rejected contract offer would have dropped the 4% automatic contribution in 2023 in favor of 2% lump sums at the end of the year for employees on the payroll on the last days of 2023 and 2024, after which those lump sums would have gone away entirely.

The ratified contract will also maintain the current 75% match for the first 8% employees contribute from their own salaries. In the contract offer rejected in late July, Boeing proposed a 100% match of 10% of employee contributions.

While that would have been a more generous match, the union prioritized keeping the 4% automatic contribution.

The union said the contract will also include an average 14% general wage increase over the three-year period, plus cost-of-living adjustments; no changes to employees’ existing health insurance plans; improvements to sick, parental and funeral leave; and other changes to the wage and raise structure.

The contract, which takes effect Thursday, covers members at Boeing facilities in St. Louis and St. Charles, Missouri, and Mascoutah, Illinois. Aircraft such as the T-7A Red Hawk trainer, F-15 and F/A-18 fighters and the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned refueling aircraft are built in St. Louis, and St. Charles produces the precision-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, among other weapons.

The Department of Defense on Aug. 2 said it committed $1.77 million to the Open6G industry-university cooperative, which will serve as a hub for development, testing and integration, and “aims to jumpstart 6G systems research on open radio access networks,” or Open RAN.

The Open6G venture is part of the defense community’s Innovate Beyond 5G Program, under the purview of the under secretary of defense for research and engineering.

“The DoD has a vital interest in advancing 5G-to-NextG wireless technologies and concept demonstrations,” Sumit Roy, the IB5G program director, said in a statement. “These efforts represent our continuing investments via public and private sector collaboration on research and development for critical beyond 5G technology enablers necessary to realize high performance, secure, and resilient network operations for the future warfighter.”

Open6G is managed by Northeastern University’s Kostas Research Institute alongside the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Technical work will be housed at the university’s Institute for Wireless Internet of Things. The institute specializes in 5G and 6G, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and unmanned aerial systems for both civil and defense use.

The Defense Department has for years invested in 5G while keeping eyes on the horizon. The fifth generation of wireless technologies — now available to hundreds of millions of Americans, with Verizon, AT&T and other carriers spending billions of dollars to rapidly expand their 5G networks — touts faster speeds and the ability to accommodate advanced devices. Future generations are expected to be even better.

Watchdogs such as the Government Accountability Office have warned of pitfalls, though. They include steep infrastructure costs, difficulties with implementation and cybersecurity woes.

Military leaders have promoted 5G, and what’s beyond, as a means to better connect forces on the battlefield and shuttle vital information between them, a tenet of Joint All-Domain Command and Control. The fifth generation is also being used to improve logistics in so-called smart warehouses, where private networks are powering experiments with virtual and augmented reality, high-definition video surveillance and artificial intelligence extended from the cloud.

The Defense Department secured approximately $338 million for 5G and microelectronics in fiscal 2022. It requested $250 million for fiscal 2023.

The department in 2020 announced a $600 million investment in 5G testing across a handful of U.S. military installations. Follow-up investments were made in 2021.

“The hard part hasn’t begun.”

Feal — who spent years as one of the lead advocates to award federal benefits to Sept. 11 victims, first responders and their families — said work to make sure those payouts and resources are properly funded and administered continues to this day. He cautioned that even well-written bills don’t always mean an easy transition to getting people the help they need.

“Getting a bill passed is easy, you just have to beat up the Senate and the House,” Feal said. “These people behind me, they have to take that and make sure Congress and the VA now do the right thing.”

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — better known as the PACT Act — is set to be signed into law by President Joe Biden on Aug. 8.

When that happens, it will mark a key moment in the 13-year-old fight to expand benefits for burn pit victims sickened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the decades-old quest to fully compensate Vietnam veterans for their exposure to chemical defoliants.

But, advocates say it won’t be the end of their work on the issue. The next step is delivering the benefits to veterans and their families, estimated to cost around $300 billion over the next 10 years.

White House and Veterans Affairs officials promise they have been preparing for that task for months.

“Veterans who were exposed to toxic fumes while fighting for our country are American heroes, and they deserve world-class care and benefits for their selfless service,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement minutes after Feal’s speech.

“Once the president signs this bill into law, we at VA will implement it quickly and effectively, delivering the care these veterans need and the benefits they deserve.”

When will benefits arrive

Separate from the congressional work, VA last year began revamping how it approaches illnesses believed linked to burn pit smoke in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the past, the department stuck to strict scientific evidence before granting presumptive status for illnesses believed linked to military service. Now, the department uses a wider set of metrics to evaluate the claims, which has led to adding 12 respiratory illnesses and cancers to the list of conditions presumed caused by burn pits (a designation that greatly speeds up the process of veterans receiving disability payouts).

Once the PACT Act is signed into law, those new processes will be codified, a move that veterans advocates say will be key in coming years to preventing long waits for department recognition of military injuries.

Other parts of the sweeping toxic exposure legislation will also go into effect immediately. Veterans currently get five years of medical coverage through VA after leaving the service, but will see that expanded to 10 years under the new law.

All veterans who left the ranks in summer 2017 or later will have their eligibility automatically extended. Veterans who left between summer 2014 and summer 2017 will be able to apply for additional years of health care coverage, ending at 10 years after the date they separated.

The benefits for individual illnesses will take longer to process. The law calls for VA to add 23 new conditions to the list of burn pit presumptive illnesses — including asthma, chronic bronchitis and brain cancer — but those will be phased in over the next three years.

For Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, presumptive status for monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) goes into effect immediately.

But new benefits for Vietnam veterans suffering from high-blood pressure (a group estimated to be around 500,000 individuals) aren’t set to go into effect until late 2026.

There are provisions in the bill to speed up benefits for individuals with deteriorating health conditions, or age 80 and older. However, as the bill is written, some veterans expecting to benefit from the PACT Act won’t see any checks in the mail for another four years.

Changing the timeline

White House officials said they are hoping to speed that up.

“The law does provide discretion to the VA secretary to move more quickly than some of the dates, so we’re going to be working collaboratively to see how much we can get done as quickly as possible so that veterans can get the services they need,” said Terri Tanielian, special assistant to the president for Veterans Affairs.

“The department is focused on making sure that they can hire the staff that they need, that they have the resources in the right places. We’re mindful of needing to make sure that the workforce and the infrastructure is ready.”

Lawmakers included funding in the measure for the new hires, aware that sending millions of new benefits claims to VA in coming years has the potential to overwhelm their current systems.

Biden called on Congress to pass comprehensive burn pit legislation in his State of the Union speech last spring. Tanielian said now that it has been done, the administration is focused on making sure it meets its responsibilities to implement the measure.

“This is a major victory for veterans, their families and survivors and those that have cared for them over the years,” she said. “We’re looking forward to the President signing it and then being able to implement it effectively so that we can deliver the health care benefits that we know veterans have earned and that they deserve.”

Veterans advocates said they’ll be lobbying for quicker responses, too. The provisions regarding deteriorating health conditions are written broadly, and some veterans groups said they see opportunities to force VA to respond immediately to certain claims even if the law seems to give them more time.

But much of that will depend on VA’s ability to hire new staff to process claims and respond to veterans’ questions.

The department has hired several hundred claims processors in recent months to deal with the glut of overdue disability claims (cases pending for more than four months). The figure was as high as 264,000 last fall, but now sits at about 165,000, roughly half what it was before the coronavirus pandemic.

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The Department of Defense has estimated nearly 3.5 million troops from recent wars may have suffered enough exposure to the smoke to cause health problems. Only a small portion of that group has signed up for VA’s official burn pit registry, designed to help track health issues in that population.

In his statement on the PACT Act passage, McDonough encouraged eligible veterans to apply for benefits as soon as possible, rather than waiting on the legislation’s official start date. Depending on the case, veterans may eventually be eligible for retroactive pay if they file earlier.

Veterans can visit the department’s online page regarding PACT information or call 1-800-MyVA411 (800-698-2411).

“The PACT Act is perhaps the largest health care and benefit expansion in VA history,” the VA’s benefits site states. “If you’re a veteran or survivor, you can file claims now to apply for PACT Act-related benefits.”

In his statement, McDonough said that department officials “will be communicating with you every step of the way to make sure that you and your loved ones get the benefits you’ve earned.”

As Feal delivered his speech to the celebrating advocates, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., received a text from McDonough offering his congratulations on the legislative victory and promising that “we will execute this.”

Tester said he’ll hold the secretary to that promise.

“We’ll be watching,” he said. “I know they’re committed, and I know the president said we’re going to get this done. But we’ve got to watch them to make sure.”

There was modest change in attrition across the federal government in fiscal 2021 despite turbulence caused by the nationwide health crisis and increased resignations in 2020. In fact, the civil service increased by more than 20,000 people last year and the total workforce is up more than 130,000 positions since 2014, according to a study from the Partnership for Public Service. Of those who did leave government posts in 2021, nearly half did so because they retired.

“While some attrition is natural and can help infuse the federal workforce with new talent and ideas, turnover can also cause a loss of institutional knowledge and cost hiring managers both time and resources,” the nonprofit said in issuing the report on Aug. 2. “Moreover, the federal government continued to grow in fiscal 2021, demonstrating the stability of the career workforce. That said, certain critical elements of the federal workforce are in a state of stress.”

By agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs had the highest attrition rate at 7.1% last year, a full percentage point greater than the government-wide average and an increase from the agency’s 6.4% attrition rate in 2020.

That’s as the department ranked among the top five best federal agencies to work by the the Partnership, which advocates for government service.

The departments of the Treasury, Army and Air Force also recorded high rates of attrition.

By contrast, the General Services Administration had the lowest attrition rate at 4.2%.

Attrition rates by occupation also shed light on recent efforts by the Biden administration and the Office of Personnel Management within the White House to retain and attract new talent, especially for cyber and IT jobs.

The attrition rate in fiscal 2021 was 5.0% for both the cyber and STEM workforce, which is lower than the government-wide average of 6.1%. The report shows that while government struggles to recruit talent for cyber and technology roles, agencies are successfully retaining this talent.

The government’s growing appetite for tech talent manifested in several adjustments to hiring practices, including two OPM initiatives in the last year that allow agencies to re-hire former federal employees at a possibly higher pay scale and graduates to apply for positions that offer up to $72,000.

The Biden administration also outlined a series of training and mentorship opportunities with various technology companies at the National Cyber Workforce and Education Summit in July.

Age may also factor into this lower attrition rate. While the cyber talent in the general workforce skews younger, most of the cyber talent in government is over 40 years old.

By contrast, health-related professions within the federal government saw waves of workers leaving at a rate of 7.1%, likely a reflection of frontline workers feeling burned out from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another key priority for the White House has been marketing federal jobs to younger workers as the rest of the civil service is expected to age out. Indeed, the attrition rate for employees under 30 was 8.5%, significantly higher than the government-wide average and notable for those keeping tabs on a workforce that can bridge institutional knowledge gaps and train newcomers.

That concern is reflected by data showing that entry-level government employees quit in relatively high numbers. The attrition rate was 14.5% for GS 1-4 employees. It was 8.7% for GS 5-7 employees, who are often early-career.

Almost one- third of the federal workforce will soon be eligible to retire, meaning a significant portion of the federal government’s 2.1 civilian workers could leave in the coming years. In addition, recent strong hiring in the private sector and the opportunity for remote work are drawing people away from federal employment.

“Workers are actually changing jobs for higher wages, better benefits, hybrid or working home environments and other factors,” said Soraya Correa, a former Department of Homeland Security executive, at the Professional Services Council Acquisition Conference in June. “This ‘great resignation’ or reshuffle is having an impact on all organizations, including the public sector.”

The addition of six months to the deal accounts for the inclusion of the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, in the zero-trust program and the “complete development, testing and deployment planning for the original unclassified prototype,” DISA said in an announcement July 28.

SIPRNet is a communications network used by the Defense Department to transmit classified information across the world. DISA, the Pentagon’s top IT office, described the framework as “antiquated” and in need of updating.

The agency awarded Booz Allen a $6.8 million contract in January to develop a Thunderdome prototype, its approach to zero-trust cyber protections. Folding in SIPRNet is a significant evolution. The extension lengthens the pilot to a full year, with completion now expected at the start of 2023.

“With this additional time, we can conduct operational and security testing that was not originally planned for in the initial pilot,” Jason Martin, director of DISA’s Digital Capabilities and Security Center, said in a statement. “It will also permit us the necessary time to strategize on the best way to transition current Joint Regional Security Stacks users who will be moving to Thunderdome.”

The Pentagon in 2021 decided to sunset Joint Regional Security Stacks — meant to reduce cyberattack surface and consolidate classified entry points — in favor of the zero-trust Thunderdome approach, C4ISRNET previously reported.

The six-month add-on comes amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was preceded by cyberattacks that jeopardized command and control and forced offline government websites. Ukrainian networks continue to be buffeted, with hackers often targeting the defense, financial and telecommunications sectors.

Such attacks, DISA said in its announcement, highlight the importance of SIPRNet and the Pentagon’s need for a modernized, classified network with steadfast data protections. Defense Department systems are under constant attack, as is the defense industrial base.

“DISA has made clear that we will not forget that the ‘fight’ is fought on SIPRNet,” said Christopher Barnhurst, the agency’s deputy director. “While we have been working on developing a zero trust prototype for the unclassified network, we realized early on that we must develop one, in tandem, for the classified side. This extension will enable us to produce the necessary prototypes that will get us to a true zero trust concept.”

SIPRNet is already undergoing several other renovations. The secure network was among those accessed by Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who provided thousands of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks.

Zero trust is an approach to cybersecurity that assumes networks are always at risk and, thus, continuous validation of users and devices is necessary. The model is often likened to “never trust, always verify.”

President Joe Biden last year ordered federal agencies to move toward zero trust and to produce the requisite plans. His executive order included several other cybersecurity provisions, as well. The Biden administration followed up in January with a memorandum focused on improving the cybersecurity of Defense Department and intelligence community systems.

“Thunderdome will be a completely comprehensive and holistic approach to how the network operates,” DISA said, “a major shift from the current architecture.”

Both the ongoing health crises and the land war again in Europe, once considered unthinkable, are now reality. And as governments grapple with these events and their aftermath, they must consider how to prepare for what could be next.

The use of bioweapons, either by state or non-state actors, should be high on the list. It’s now clear that communicable viruses cannot be contained to one country and that governments need to be making meaningful investments now to prepare for unleashed outbreaks.

The good news is, the tools needed to test, trace and treat both natural and intentional viral outbreaks are similar. But as future bio-attacks may be coordinated with financial, cyber or kinetic actions, the need for the military to sustain robust and dedicated capabilities to counter biothreats is paramount.

Here are three ways the response to potential biothreats can be strengthened:

Support more research for vaccines and treatments

While it is difficult to predict the exact contagion that might be used in a future bioterrorism attack, we know what highly infectious pathogens have the potential for use in a bioterrorism event, such as Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) and Yersinia pestis (plague).

Another such pathogen is the bacteria Francisella tularensis, or tularemia. As it is 1000x more infectious than anthrax, the aerosolized form of tularemia is understood to have a high potential for use in a bioterror attack. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Appili Therapeutics and the Life Sciences Research Center at the United States Air Force Academy entered into a public-private partnership to accelerate product development on a vaccine to protect against this threat, and initiatives like this should be more common.

The Biden Administration’s pledge of $81.7 billion in its FY 2023 budget to better prepare for future pandemics and biological threats is a critical step in the right direction. Similar commitments from global partners are needed to ensure an infrastructure is available to counter future biothreats.

Invest in more threat-reduction technologies

Governments may not know what the next biothreat will look like or where it will come from, but they can make strides in identifying and addressing weak spots and solidifying programs to counter these threats.

Central to this effort is increasing the capability to surveil and predict. This can be accomplished by establishing a robust, agile, and geographically agnostic Public Health surveillance network.

A great example is the Department of Defense, Defense Health Agency, LSRC and Biobot Analytics partnering to detect and monitor SARS-CoV2 across the Air Force Academy. This ongoing surveillance is providing leadership with pivotal and timely medical data to improve force readiness and should serve as a model for other biothreats.

Similarly, advanced ventilation systems that can help us detect and respond to an attack are needed. There is also an urgent need to invest in drone and other remote-sensing technologies that can conduct air monitoring and automated biological agent detection.

Event venues, transportation hubs and other high-volume areas should be prioritized for deployment of these counter-biothreat systems and capabilities.

Finally, while technological solutions are important, a truly effective threat response will require proficient emergency teams and response personnel. The mechanisms for system development and deployment must be established, along with training programs to ensure key personnel develop and maintain proficiency to decisively counter threats when, or ideally before, they occur.

Lean into key learnings from the coronavirus pandemic

COVID-19 has taught us a great deal about leading through a pandemic, especially the importance of clear and direct communication. Unfortunately, approaches to addressing the health crisis became politicized and trust in our long-standing health institutions fell. It will take years to rebuild this trust, but in the face of a silent and hard to trace threat, time is not on our side. We must now look hard at how this happened and begin to actively earn and restore mutual respect and trust across our society and national institutions.

We are a resilient, forward-thinking people. But as we move closer to a new sense of normal, we are still not as prepared as we need to be. We must turn lessons learned into concrete actions and keep our eye on what remains to be done so we can make our emerging biothreat response capabilities stronger. In doing so, we may deter the next threat altogether.

Armand Balboni, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biology and Director of the Life Sciences Research Center (LSRC) at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. He was previously the CEO of Appili Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on drug development for infectious diseases.

Lt. Col. Odaro Huckstep, DPhil, MSc, is an Assistant Professor of Biology and director of operations and research at the United States Air Force Academy.

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The comments came just two days after 25 Senate lawmakers (all Democrats and independents) urged the department to begin offering abortions at VA medical centers to all veterans and eligible family members, in response to a growing number of states outlawing the procedure.

“Last month’s disastrous Supreme Court decision … makes it even more critical that veterans receive access to the reproductive care to which they are entitled,” the group wrote in a letter to the VA secretary. “VA must urgently begin rulemaking to allow veterans and eligible dependents to receive abortions and all abortion-related services.”

Since the Supreme Court in June overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion nationwide, at least 23 states have started to place limits or already imposed restrictions on health care workers from providing abortions.

Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas have near total bans on the procedure.

That has prompted abortion rights supporters in Congress to push administration officials to find ways to make the procedure more easily available to women in those states, including possibly using federal facilities.

But whether VA has the authority to make such a move is in dispute.

During a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on July 27, ranking member Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, reiterated his opposition to the idea and cited the Veterans Health Care Act of 1992, which prohibits abortions at VA medical locations.

But in their letter to McDonough, the senators supporting the idea said that under the Veterans Health Care Eligibility Reform Act of 1996, the department can furnish “needed” medical care to veterans.

“Importantly, the VA has used its authority to provide reproductive care such as pregnancy care and infertility services, even though such care was initially excluded from the health care packages allowed under the [1992 law],” they wrote. “We contend that the VA has the statutory authority and discretion to provide abortions and abortion-related services and resources.”

McDonough has said publicly that VA general counsel has asserted the department is not statutorily prohibited from providing abortion counseling or abortion services, but has chosen not to engage in those practices in the past. Republican lawmakers strongly dispute that claim.

But during an interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, McDonough would not commit to any specific changes to address abortion access for veterans.

“We’re looking very closely at that to ensure that there’s no reduction of services to [women veterans] and no risk to their lives as a result of these decisions,” he said.

“Women veterans are the fastest growing group of veterans that we have in our care,” he added. “My preference is that they not face risks to their lives as a result of this decision from the court. We’re going to make sure that we’re in a position to take care of them.”

In fiscal 2020, about 550,000 women veterans accessed VA health care services, and another 400,000 women dependents and survivors accessed care through related programs.

“If confirmed, my focus would be on making sure we can identify as early as possible key issues and drivers of sustainment [costs] and then include that in early negotiations [with vendors],” she told the Senate Armed Services Committee at her confirmation hearing July 28.

Plumb, chief of staff to Kathleen Hicks, the Pentagon’s No. 2 civilian, also noted that the Defense Department is moving toward a more data-driven approach to tracking the sustainment needs of its weapons systems.

The comments came in response to questions from the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who said the costs are so high the Pentagon is having trouble maintaining the readiness of some of its systems.

Pressed by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, on whether the Pentagon needs to include the intellectual property associated with any major weapons system it buys as a means of controlling maintenance coats, Plumb said the Pentagon needs to do so to better manage its supply chains.

“That includes dealing with part obsolescence, and our ability to produce that in-house in more robust and resilient ways,” she said. “If confirmed, I commit to looking at ensuring that intellectual property and other solutions that can allow us to build in supply chain resilience to enable us to maintain and sustain warfighting capabilities at a much more reasonable cost.”

Before Plumb became Hicks’ chief of staff in February 2021, she was Google’s director of research and insights for trust and safety. Before that Plumb was Facebook’s global head of policy analysis after holding several senior staff positions at the Pentagon, Energy Department and White House National Security Council.

The Pentagon is struggling to control costs associated with sustaining its weapons systems. For the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 jet, sustainment costs are on track to become so expensive that the Air Force will either have to cut its planned buy or flying hours, the the Government Accountability Office found last year.

If confirmed, Plumb would serve with Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante at a time when contractors are reporting problems with supply chains, inflation and labor shortages.

Another nominee, Laura Taylor-Kale, Biden’s pick to be assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, fielded questions about industry’s ability — in light of those problems — to supply the U.S., allies and Ukraine, in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said the Pentagon, with Congress and the defense industry needs to boost production rates so that he U.S. military would be well supplied in the event of a conventional conflict with Russia or China. Taylor-Kale said she would work across the Defense Department to address gaps and critical needs.

“The war in Ukraine and COVID-19 really laid bare some of these vulnerabilities and these critical challenges that we’ve known for a while but are certainly more acute now,” said Taylor-Kale, adding that she’d work with LaPlante and defense firms to build more “hot production lines.”

The nominees aren’t expected to receive speedy confirmation, in part because Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has been denying unanimous consent to advance Pentagon civilians on the Senate floor.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, signaled he could do the same. He took the unusual step of announcing during Thursday’s confirmation hearing that he would block the nominations in connection with Interior Department opposition to a road to the Ambler Mining District in northwest Alaska.

“Until I get answers on Ambler at high levels, unfortunately, I’m not going to help move your nominations forward, even though I think you’re qualified ― and important positions,” he said. “But this is important. The same day the president holds a summit on critical minerals, they shut down on the biggest critical mineral supplies in America, maybe the world, because of their relentless war on the state of Alaska.”

The lessons learned during these challenging times have led to permanent improvements in many operations, making public health more accessible and equitable. At a recent panel discussion, agency leaders from Ventura County, California, and Winnebago, Illinois, spoke about how they transformed their technology infrastructure and processes to handle COVID-19 and how they plan to replicate and scale these changes to impact service delivery beyond pandemic-related needs.

Their experiences demonstrate how important it is for public health agencies to automate manual processes, unify disparate systems, gain efficiencies and improve access to health services for underserved and vulnerable communities.

Automate manual processes

The first lesson from the pandemic is to automate processes. Disease tracking has been a critical component of efforts to understand, predict and better control outbreaks, but public health officials in many communities, including Ventura County, California, quickly found their existing resources ill-equipped to handle the volume and urgency of COVID-19 cases among their residents

“We were woefully unprepared from both a technology and a people standpoint to respond to the pandemic,” said Ventura County Epidemiologist Erin Slack.

Manual processes were no longer an option when her staff of five in the communicable diseases department ballooned to an all-time high of 200 as county employees, many from outside public health, were reassigned to help. The county chose to replace outdated surveillance system and automate operations to address COVID-19. Slack’s team also utilized automation for case investigation and compliance reporting.

Automation technology used by public health systems needs to be easy to use and easily adaptable to meet rapidly evolving needs. That way, it’s not only useful during a disease outbreak, but can be used to address new challenges as they emerge, from natural disasters to rising mental health concerns.

Unify disparate systems

Rather than storing data in disparate systems, having one point of access for data and analytics in real time helps managers and decision makers readjust their processes faster and more effectively.

Ventura County is expanding the use of technology to new areas of public health, like their community health program. Having all their data in one place makes it possible to form new connections and unlock insights.

“We used to get referrals over the phone or via fax,” Slack said. “Now our referral form is a survey.”

Once a survey response comes in, it is routed to support staff, and if more information is needed, the referral nurse is prompted to reach out to the patient or the referring agency directly to get more details. Meanwhile, the county can access robust data on emerging trends in conditions and treatments.

Gain efficiencies

Another impact of the pandemic was the immediate need for better technology to help with scheduling vaccines and treatment, testing for the virus and integrating data among clinical systems. With scheduling in particular, many legacy tools lack the agility to update screening questions and eligibility criteria as understanding of COVID evolves — without involving IT teams. Agencies need systems that are more flexible and easier to use for both employees and residents.

It’s also critical for tech to be scalable to accommodate new users, such as the National Guard troops who were deployed to help manage operations in Winnebago County, Illinois.

Winnebago County wanted to build trust and credibility among residents, so they sent residents a digital survey about their patient experience within 72 hours after vaccination. Those responses were then communicated back to the public.

“There was a lot of mistrust in the beginning,” said Dr. Sandra Martell, Winnebago’s Public Health Administrator. “These responses became a validation of the lived experience of the community, which was a really powerful transparency tool we hope to leverage more going forward.”

Improve access to health services for underserved and vulnerable communities

Finally, the pandemic shone new light on the disparities that continue to exist in certain communities. In some counties, agencies discovered that there were residents who didn’t have email addresses or telephone numbers. A need emerged for self-service functionality so that patients could screen themselves and schedule appointments. This in turn freed up bandwidth for agents to help those who lacked digital access.

A central goal for any public health program needs to be reaching the underserved and vulnerable, and technology can help.

These examples demonstrate how agencies used pandemic experiences to build a foundation for continuous improvement. The transformative processes implemented because of COVID can be a springboard for improving trust, transparency and efficiency on multiple levels, allowing employees and healthcare providers to focus on serving people.

William Hudson is the principal advisor for public health at Qualtrics.

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A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that while most federal funding has an expiration date, with unspent funds returned to the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Energy receives billions of dollars in allocations that are not time-limited, with unspent funds carried over from one year to the next.

For fiscal 2021, a total of $14.1 billion accumulated in carryover balances from the department’s Office of Environmental Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration, it said.

The report found that the offices generally spent older funds before newer ones, these carryover balances can exceed the minimum needed to support programs, thereby tying up resources that could be put to other uses.

“How much is $14 billion dollars? Possibly enough to fill a gold vault,” tweeted Allison Bawden, the director of the GAO’s Natural Resources and Environment team.

EM had about $3.2 billion in total carryover balances, and NNSA had $10.9 billion.

Only 1.4 percent of the total carryover was appropriated more than five years ago, according to the report. The report also showed that carryover balances at the offices increased over four of the past five fiscal years.

These massive rollovers happen because many funds appropriated to EM and NNSA by Congress are available until they are expended. With the authority to keep hold of “no-year” funds, these offices may retain unobligated dollars indefinitely. That’s not as ideal as it sounds; carryover balances can translate to program deficiencies within an agency by bogging down a program with more resources than it can use.

Excessive carryover balances can also threaten to bottle up funds that could be appropriated by Congress for other priorities.

The report identified several reasons for the excessive carryovers. Some can fully explain a large carryover, such as continuing resolutions, long-lead procurements, and the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, an office may keep un-costed balances to ensure that they can continue operations with the limited funds available during a continuing resolution, which can create uncertainty for an agency.

Other reasons offer context for high carryovers, especially when an office faces unanticipated changes to program scope, challenges with construction execution or problems with procurement.

EM works to clean up radioactive and hazardous contamination caused by nuclear energy and weapons production and research. NNSA addresses the corollary by maintaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons cache and supporting nuclear non-proliferation.

Overall in fiscal 2021, the Department of Energy received about $61 billion in budgetary resources.

The department fully anticipates spending its carryover balance eventually.

The offices routinely carries over funds from year to year, “because many DOE-funded activities cannot be completed in a single year,” said a DOE spokesperson in a statement provided to Federal Times.

Administrators “have to fundamentally improve,” said Rep. Mike Bost, R-Illinois, ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, during a hearing on the topic Wednesday. “If we don’t see major progress by early next year, when VA says they intend to roll [the effort] out to larger sites, we will have to seriously consider pulling the plug.”

“I hope the situation can somehow be turned around. But everyone involved in this needs to understand that the consequences are real, and that there are no blank checks.”

The criticism from House members came amid the second tense hearing for VA health records officials in the past week.

On July 20, members of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee grilled department leaders over new delays in the 10-year modernization effort and reports that the $16 billion price tag could more than triple in coming years.

Just a few days earlier, the VA Inspector General’s office released a new report detailing 149 cases of patient harm caused by the implementation of the new Oracle Cerner Millennium records software over a nine-month period at the department’s hospital in Spokane, Washington.

A flaw in the system sent about 11,000 orders to an unknown and unchecked file, where requests for items such as appointments or blood tests went unanswered. In at least two cases, the lost files caused “major harm” to patients.

The health records overhaul was announced by then-President Donald Trump in 2017 as a way to bring veterans health records onto the same system as the military, providing troops with a lifelong medical file.

But the effort has been beset by problems for the past few years. The new software has been deployed to sites in Ohio and Washington, but additional planned rollouts for 2022 have been delayed until 2023 amid the mounting concerns.

In testimony Wednesday, Dr. Terry Adirim, director of the Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, pushed back on the cost overrun estimates, saying they are based on the assumption putting the system in place will take more than 10 years.

“We are still in the process of planning for a 10-year deployment and we should have a schedule out sometime in the fall,” she said. “However, there have been delays, and so it’s reasonable to expect that it could go beyond that, and we are doing that kind of contingency planning.”

Lawmakers called the situation troubling.

Bost said he intends to draft legislation protecting patients and taxpayers from the program spiraling out of control.

If Republicans win control of the House in the November election, he likely will take over as chairman of the committee and would wield considerable legislative power on the issue.

Current committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-California, said he still believes that the department must upgrade its records system but “I will not sit idly by and allow this program to endanger veterans.”

Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana, called the system “fully dysfunctional” and said he believes it is “not safe or suitable to roll out anywhere else.”

Other panel members said they will work with VA officials to “hold program officials accountable,” which could mean reprimands and dismissals in coming months.

VA officials have promised overhauls to the training programs to better prepare staff for future deployments. Leaders at Oracle Cerner have said publicly they are committed to fixing past problems with the system.

“Semiconductors, it’s not an overstatement to say, are the ground zero of our tech competition with China,” Hicks said, adding that they’re vital for technologies from artificial intelligence to hypersonic weapons to next-generation networking.

Hicks said the Pentagon has become largely dependent on the commercial market for computer chips and that 98% of the commercial microelectronics the Pentagon needs are assembled, packaged and tested in Asia. The legislation, she said, would help ensure the military has assured access to chips.

“Just making sure that ... when we [deploy troops] their weapons will operate as intended, and that the United States will retain control of that technology is incredibly important,” Hicks said.

The bill making its way through the Senate is a top priority of the Biden administration. It would add about $79 billion to the deficit over 10 years, mostly as a result of new grants and tax breaks that would subsidize the costs computer chip manufacturers incur when building or expanding chip plants in the United States.

Supporters say countries all over the world are spending billons of dollars to lure chipmakers. The U.S. must do the same or risk losing a secure supply of the semiconductors that power the nation’s automobiles, computers, appliances and some of the military’s most advanced weapons systems.

Jim Taiclet, Lockheed’s chief executive, told Biden continued supplies of semiconductors are “essential both to national security and to the health of the defense industrial base in the aerospace industry as a whole.”

Advanced super-thin semiconductors, he said, are critical to the company’s development of hypersonic weapons and space sensors, its work on stealth aircraft like the F-35 fighter, and the defense giant’s plans to integrate advanced technologies into existing systems.

“We’ve got a lot of emphasis and importance on those latest-technology chips because they are the building blocks of those defense systems of the future,” Taiclet said.

He warned that if China, a major semiconductor manufacturer alongside Taiwan, can constrain global supplies, it would endanger national security.

The virtual meeting also included the chief executives of Cummins, Medtronic, labor leaders, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

With reporting by the Associated Press.