Capitol Hill Week Ahead. The House and Senate are back this week, and the big question is how much work the Senate gets done on the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Before Memorial Day recess, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) held up debate on the bill, which he said would give lawmakers more time to read it. This week, debate is scheduled to start in earnest. SASC Chairman John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) amendment, which would add more than $17 billion in wartime funds, would increase procurement funding by billions of dollars.
DDG 119 Keel Laying. On June 1, Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Ingalls Shipbuilding begins laying the keel for the USS Delbert D. Black (DDG-119), symbolically starting construction of the ship. The vessel is one of five Arleigh Burke-class destroyers currently being built by Ingalls, which splits construction with General Dynamics Bath Iron Works. Destroyers USS John Finn (DDG-113), USS Ralph Johnson (DDG-114), and USS Paul Ignatius (DDG-117) are also in various stages of construction at the Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard. DDG-119 will be built to the IIA configuration, which includes the Aegis combat system and the cooperative engagement capability that provides vessels to link their radars, allowing a more detailed view of the battlespace. 
Navy Shakeups. Rear Adm. Brian Antonio, formerly the program executive officer for carriers, took charge of the Navy’s aircraft carrier programs during a June 1 ceremony. Earlier in his career, Antonio spent four years as the program manager for future aircraft carriers, during which time the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) went from the contract award for full scale production to the steel cutting of the second Ford-class carrier. He takes the place of Rear Adm. Thomas Moore, who this month will become commander of Naval Sea Systems Command.
…More Reorganization. The Navy on June 3 announces that its director of surface warfare, Rear Adm. Peter Fanta, will be assigned as director of warfare integration (N91). Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall, who most recently serviced as commander of carrier strike group three, will take over as the next director of surface warfare.
Clinton on NatSec. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on June 2 gave a foreign policy speech that, in essence, contrasted her planned policies with that of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The speech was low on new information about Clinton’s foreign policy and national security platform, which includes continued cooperation with allies and embracing diplomatic solutions, while also stepping up the fight against the Islamic State though “intensifying the air campaign and stepping up our support for Arab and Kurdish forces on the ground.” Clinton knocked Trump’s comments on how he would stop the terrorist group, which have ranged from a proposed ban on Muslim immigrants to deploying American combat troops. “A Trump presidency would embolden ISIS,” she says.
Blue Origin sRVL. NASA has picked Blue Origin to integrate and fly technology payloads near the boundary of space on its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft in support of the agency’s Flight Opportunities Program. Blue Origin is the sixth company selected for an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contract under the Suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicle (sRLV) flight and payload integration services solicitation, which has a combined value of no more than $45 million, according to a NASA statement. Starting June 1, Blue Origin is competing with other program companies for task orders to deliver payload integration and flight services. All task orders must be initiated within the contract’s three-year performance period. The other companies participating are: Masten Space Systems, Near Space Corp., UP Aerospace, Virgin Galactic, and World View Enterprises.
Blue Origin Test. Blue Origin will likely perform its parachute failure test before the end of June, company founder Jeff Bezos says in a statement. The company plans to demonstrate the redundancies built into its New Shepard crew capsule on this re-flight of the vehicle by intentionally failing one drogue and one main parachute during descent. This should occur around 7 minutes, 30 seconds, into the flight at an altitude of 24,000 feet. Other goals for this test include continuing to learn about New Shepard’s reusable architecture by actually reusing it (this will be the fourth flight of the same hardware) and further demonstrating the predictability and repeatability of vehicle performance and executing pre-planned flight control maneuvers on the booster and crew capsule.
Blue Origin/NanoRacks. NanoRacks announces a new product line for standardized hardware exclusively for Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle. For each locker with NanoRacks interfaces, the new NanoRacks-New Shepard Platform will support up to 12 2U payloads with event sense interface with Blue Origin, DC power isolation and conditioning, single board computer interface to experiment via USB3, additional avionics interface infrastructure as needed to support experiment platforms and one power interface PCB to combine and protect power inputs with diodes, poly-fuses, EMI pre-filter and LED array for status and visual diagnostics.
KSC Development. NASA on June 2 issued a notice of availability (NoA) on Federal Business Opportunities (FBO), publicizing opportunities for commercial entities to develop vacant land on property at Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Fla., in accordance with the KSC Master Plan. The specific land uses NASA is considering for commercial development under this NoA are: launch operation and support; assembly, testing and processing; renewable energy, research and development, vertical launch and vertical landing. NASA is hosting an industry day at KSC on Aug. 30, deadline to register is Aug. 9. No solicitation exists.
Sikorsky DARPA Alias. Sikorsky successfully demonstrated a 30-mile autonomous flight using a S-76 commercial helicopter to complete Phase 1 of DARPA’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program, according to a company statement. This flight highlighted the ability for an operator to plan and execute every phase of an autonomous mission with a tablet device. The objective of ALIAS is to develop and insert new levels of automation into existing military and commercial aircraft to enable those aircraft to operate with reduced onboard crew. With Phase 1 complete, Sikorsky begins Phase 2 of the program. DARPA awarded Sikorsky a $9.8 million contract modification for the competition’s second phase, which focuses on continued maturation of the initial ALIAS system with additional flight tests.
New USCG Four Star. Coast Guard second in command Vice Commandant Charles Michel has been promoted to the rank of admiral, the first time the service has had two four stars at the same time. Historically the Coast Guard Commandant, currently Adm. Paul Zukunft, is the only full admiral in the service. Michel has been vice commandant since last August, in charge of the Coast Guard’s internal organizational governance and serving as the component acquisition executive. Michel was nominated by the president to the rank of full admiral to align the service’s leadership structure to that of the other armed services.
Don’t Come Back. While there are structural and financial impediments to attracting qualified industry personnel to come to work for the federal government, there are also cultural issues that need to be addressed, a Pentagon official says. “We have actually seen some emotional backlash, if you will, as people ‘sold out’ and went to the private sector to make some money and when those kinds of attitudes manifest themselves in a negative way for the person who is taking the next step on their career, the likelihood that they’re going to want to come back into that organization I would suspect goes down significantly,” Kenneth Brennan, deputy director for Services Acquisition and Strategic Sourcing, Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy at the Defense Department, says Friday at a CSIS event on the evolving partnership between DoD and Industry.
…Permeability is a Goal. Having people be able to move in between government and industry regularly as part of their career paths is an aspirational goal, Brad Carson, the former acting under secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness at DoD and the former under secretary of the Army, says at CSIS. He says areas becoming increasingly important for warfare, cyber, signals, space and systems integration, require highly educated people and keeping them will be an “extreme” challenge given the dramatic diversity in pay scales between the public and private sectors. He says it’s difficult to bring people in from the defense industrial base, in part from this “not entirely irrational fear of conflicts of interest,” due to “risk aversion that is hampering our mission effectiveness.”
Confer Cyber Award. Confer wins the Most Innovative Cybersecurity Technology award at the 2016 MITX Awards show. Held in Boston, Mass., the MITX show is the largest annual awards competition in the U.S. for technology and digital innovation. Confer’s primary product is the Converged Endpoint Platform, a cyber defense system that integrates prevention, detection, and incident response across endpoints, servers, and cloud workloads.
OPM CIO Opening. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is looking for a new official to permanently fill the Chief Information Officer (CIO) position after Donna Seymour left in February according to a posting on USAJobs that opened on June 1. The interim CIO has been Lisa Schlosser, deputy federal chief information officer at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). “A key priority for this individual will be to continue the progress of strengthening IT security and modernization at OPM. To carry these efforts forward, the CIO position demands a visionary individual who can lead a dynamic workforce within OPM while coordinating with a variety of key stakeholder,” the job posting says.
DARPA IT Contract. The Defense Advanced Research projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded Agile Defense, Inc. a nearly $28 million contract modification to exercise Option 1 of a previously awarded cost-plus-award-fee task order for unclassified information technology services and support of the DARPA Missions Services Office Information Technology Directorate. Services and support includes office computing, networking, communications services, design and development, and technical support services. The task order is competed among all holders of the GSA Alliant Small Business government-wide acquisition contract. Seven offers were initially received. The contract is expected to be finished by June 2017 with work performed in Arlington, Va. Fiscal 2015 research and development funds of almost $3 million is obligated at award time.
Air Force Information Sharing Software. The U.S. Air Force awarded McKenna Principals, Inc. a $15 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for Data Framework and Access Control Enterprise (DFACE) II software. This means the contractor will provide design and develop an operational prototype capability that will enable the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to share data and information with the Defense Department and other agencies through a robust access control system. This system will protect sensitive data and ensure the responsible sharing and safeguarding of classified information. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition that received four offers. Fiscal 2016 research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) funds of $3 million are obligated at award time. Work will be performed in Herndon, Va., and is expected to be finished by May 25, 2019. The contracting activity is the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y.