The professional training needed to carry out assessments for the Defense Department s unified cybersecurity standard, AKA CMMC, for contractors won t kick off until later this summer.
By Lauren C. Williams
NOTE: This article was first published on FCW.com.
The Army made national news when it announced a deal to buy more than 120,000 augmented reality headsets from Microsoft for $22 billion in order to enhance soldier training and situational awareness.
The Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which has been in the works for more than three years and has functions like radio communications and high-resolution night and thermal sensors, is undeniably cool. But there’s more to the potentially multibillion deal, which could mark a potential shift in how the Defense Department can and should buy new technology.
By Lauren C. Williams
NOTE: This article first appeared on FCW.com.
President Joe Biden will nominate the director of the Defense Department’s innovative acquisition arm to be the Pentagon’s top buyer, the White House announced April 2.
Michael Brown has been the director of the Defense Innovation Unit, which helps DOD prototype and field new technologies with rapid acquisition techniques, since 2018.
DIU recently celebrated its five-year anniversary and has expanded its portfolio under Brown’s leadership, fielding 26 new capabilities.
Brown was previously a White House Innovation Fellow for the Defense Department and was the CEO of two Silicon Valley companies, the cybersecurity firms Symantec and Quantum, which is one of the biggest suppliers of drives for personal computers.
By Lauren C. Williams
NOTE: This article first appeared on FCW.com.
The House Armed Services Committee has launched a task force to investigate defense supply chain vulnerabilities, foreign manufacturing concerns and other issues raised by the pandemic. The experience of our totally disrupted supply chains in the early part of the pandemic was a pretty searing experience, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), co-chair of the Defense Critical Supply Chain Task Force, told reporters on March 10.
Supply chain vulnerabilities have long been a concern in the Pentagon but really gained increased attention in recent years particularly regarding foreign manufacturing of technologies such as small drones, semiconductors and microelectronics.