Page 94 – Defense Daily

Leidos Launching Efficiency Initiatives To Complement DOGE; Boasts Strong Fourth Quarter

To help its federal customers implement a new efficiency effort across the government, Leidos [LDOS] is moving quickly with its own initiative to improve the success of its clients, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday.

At the company’s investor day this summer, Leidos will unveil its new strategy, dubbed NorthStar 2030, that will outline its growth pillars that align with the direction of its customers, enjoy profitable returns, and where the company is differentiated from its competitors, Tom Bell said during a fourth quarter earnings call with investors.

“Our new [presidential] administration is moving quickly with its efficiency agenda, and Leidos is positioned to be a major contributor to the success of that agenda, building on the bold vision of our NorthStar 2030 strategy, and in light of the new administration’s priorities and the core competencies I’ve outlined, we’ve developed a set of fast paced initiatives in the Spirit of DOGE to make our customers outcomes smarter and more efficient,” Bell said.

Bell is describing Leidos as a “positive disruptor” and said the company’s current market position has it “exceptionally well placed to be a critical part of the solution, so seizing this opportunity remains our top corporate priority.” The company is “executing a purposeful campaign” to this end, he said.

DOGE refers to the Department of Government Efficiency, a task force led by President Donald Trump’s confidant Elon Musk charged with rooting out waste, streamlining operations, and in some cases either privatizing or shifting to fixed-price contracts within the federal government.

Bell’s support for the DOGE mirrors that spouted by other aerospace and defense corporate leaders the past month as the legacy defense industry aligns itself with the messaging of the Trump administration.

Leidos initiated its strategy review a year ago and at the time Bell called out disruptive technologies already in Leidos’ wheelhouse that include trusted mission artificial intelligence, autonomy, full spectrum cyber, secure rapid software, hypersonics, and electronic warfare (Defense Daily, April 30, 2024). The growth pillars will be areas for “over investment” by Leidos, Bell said on Tuesday.

Of the focus areas being pursued by the DOGE and administration, Leidos is already strongly positioned, including the modernization of government information technology infrastructure, rapidly delivering transformational warfighting capabilities such as unmanned and autonomous solutions and affordable mass, and more public-private partnerships to boost outcomes, he said.

Leidos is also well positioned to pursue emerging opportunities in two key administration priorities, the Iron Dome of America homeland missile defense system, and border security, Bell said. The company’s Indirect Fires Protection Capability Increment 2 that is being purchased by the Army, initially as part of the Defense of Guam system, can be deployed to U.S. borders to protect against cruise missiles and drone threats, he said.

Bell also highlighted the company’s missile tracking sensors that are part of the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Leidos is answering a new information request by the Missile Defense Agency for thoughts on the Iron Dome, he said.

Leidos offers a variety of security detection systems used in border and transportation security that Bell said fit with the administration’s demands.

“So again, another reason we’re so optimistic that this environment and this administration’s priorities present tremendous opportunities for Leidos’ growth in the future,” he said, adding that the company is “seeding that field with our ideas” and finding a “very receptive set of stakeholders who want to hear from us and are eager to advance that conversation at pace. So, very exciting times indeed.”

Leidos ended a handsome 2004 with strong fourth quarter financial results led by its work managing federal health services combined with increased revenue across its operating segments.

Net income rose 23 percent to $282 million, $2.12 earnings per share (EPS), in the quarter from $230 million ($1.66 EPS) a year ago. Excluding certain non-operating costs, adjusted earnings of $2.37 per share in the quarter beat consensus estimates by 10 cents. Adjusted operating margin increased 20 basis points to 11.6 percent.

Sales in the quarter increased 10 percent to $4.4 billion from $4 billion a year ago, driven by managed health services, security detection products, commercial energy, Australian IT, airborne solutions and surveillance, digital modernization, and C5ISR work.

For the year, net income climbed five-fold to $1.3 billion ($9. 22 EPS) from 2023 in large part due to a hefty goodwill impairment charge in 2023 related to the security detection business. Adjusted per share earnings were $10.21 in 2024, and adjusted margin jumped 2.1 percent to 12.9 percent. Sales in 2024 increased 8 percent to $16.7 billion.

Leidos tallied a robust $23.4 billion in orders in 2024, representing a book-to-bill ratio of 1.4 times sales, helping to drive backlog to $43.6 billion, up 18 percent from a year ago. Free cash flow for the year was $1.2 billion.

For 2025, Leidos is forecasting growth of up to 4 percent to between $16.9 billion and $17.3 billion, and adjusting earnings of between $10.35 and $10.75 EPS. The company expects adjust operating margin this year to be in the mid- to high 12 percent range, and free cash flow of about $1.2 billion.

Anduril Would Take Over Building Army’s IVAS Under New Arrangement With Microsoft

Anduril Industries will take over as the prime contractor for the Army’s potential $22 billion Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program pending approval of a new agreement with Microsoft [MSFT], the companies said Tuesday.

Under the arrangement, Anduril would be responsible for building IVAS and leading future hardware and software development of the new mixed-reality headsets while Microsoft would shift over to managing the cloud computing and artificial intelligence-related aspects of the program.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril Industries, wears a VR headset

“We are signing a strategic partnership [with Anduril] that will take IVAS into the future. And as we enter this next phase, of course pending government approval, Anduril will assume oversight of the program to lead for the remainder of this current contract, focusing on both production manufacturing as well as future development. Microsoft will continue to play a key role [as the] cloud supplier and AI development partner supporting Anduril in this,” Robin Seiler, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for mixed reality, told reporters. “We’re excited about this because this arrangement brings the best of both companies to support the future of IVAS and the Army and it positions the program for continued success.”

The announcement is a significant update for a major Army modernization program that has faced technical challenges in the development process, and as the program heads into an upcoming operational evaluation that will inform the service’s decision this year on whether to move into production on the latest version of the system.

“If you think about what the [IVAS] program needs, it needs all of the deep thinking that Anduril has in the space of the entire ecosystem. It also, though, needs an ability to scale into production, which is another strength of Anduril,” Seiler said in a briefing ahead of Tuesday’s announcement. “We’ve been really focused on meeting the Army requirements for the IVAS program, and we believe we’ve done it well. However, if you look at the future, there are a set of capabilities that Anduril brings to this space that benefits the program and allows Microsoft to focus where we have the most strategic intent.”

In March 2021, the Army awarded Microsoft a deal worth up to $21.9 billion over the next 10 years to move the IVAS program from rapid prototyping into potential production (Defense Daily, March 31, 2021).

Following an operational test with the initial 1.0 version of IVAS in June 2022, Army officials detailed a plan to adjust the program’s timeline to address reliability, low-light sensor performance and form factor issues identified during the evaluation, and in early January 2023 awarded Microsoft a $125 million deal to work on developing an upgraded IVAS 1.2.

Microsoft is submitting a novation request to the Army for approval of the new arrangement with Anduril, with Seiler noting that the agreement to have the latter company take over as prime would not require restructuring of the current IVAS contract.

“The Army has known about this. We have very open conversations with the Army on both where we are and where we believe Microsoft and the program need to go. And they have been supportive through those conversations,” Seiler said.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, told reporters the Army is “very excited” about the new IVAS strategic arrangement.

Anduril was already a partner with Microsoft on IVAS, and this past September detailed its work to integrate its Lattice software into the program, which it said could assist in warning soldiers of autonomously-detected incoming airborne threats, enhancing situational awareness and survivability (Defense Daily, Sept. 19 2024).

Luckey at the time said IVAS was his “top priority” at Anduril, citing it as “one of the Army’s most critical programs being fielded in the near future.”

The upcoming operational test with IVAS 1.2, potentially slated for the third quarter of this fiscal year, is expected to inform the Army’s plan to make a decision before the end of FY ‘25 on whether to move into production and begin fielding the system by early FY ‘26 (Defense Daily, Feb. 6).

Seiler said the Army completed the most recent user assessment with IVAS 1.2 last week and that it “performed very well.”

If the Army decides to move forward on production of IVAS 1.2, Luckey told reporters Anduril has a manufacturing plan in place that would utilize its future Arsenal-1 facility to handle large-scale production of the headset.

“We’ve got it all figured out,” Luckey said. “We’ve been putting a lot of our own money into this program. We’ve been working on this actually for years now, internally, [on] a lot of the capability that we’re bringing to bear. And the same thing goes with the manufacturing facility. We’re not going to the Army and saying, ‘Hey, give us money to build a manufacturing facility.’”

Anduril last month announced it has selected Columbus, Ohio as the location for its Arsenal-1 hyperscale production factory, noting the company plans to invest $1 billion in private capital to fund the project that will eventually be a five-million square-foot facility with production work to start by mid-2026 (Defense Daily, Jan. 16).

“We’re going to hugely expand the number of things that you can do with [IVAS]…not just around the night vision side of things or the command and control side of things but in terms of tying in awareness from other sensors, other platforms, building a three-dimensional model of the battlespace that’s fed by every IVAS user, every robot, every weapon, every sensor so that all the robots and all the people on the battlefield are working with a common picture of where the good guys are, where the bad guys are and the best way to react to those,” Luckey said.

Beyond the large-scale manufacturing planned for Arsenal-1, Luckey said Anduril’s plans for IVAS include further research and development efforts, technology enhancements and software updates.

“For example, we’ve been doing multi-week sprints in tandem with Microsoft to demonstrate integration of counter-UAS capability, drone attack alerting capability, the ability to see through walls [and bringing in] information that’s fed from remote sensors. And like that work’s not going to take place at Arsenal-1,” Luckey told reporters.

Meanwhile, the Army is currently exploring a potential IVAS Next effort to inform its future path for the program that could include a possible recompete or focus on how the service will prioritize technology upgrades for the headset (Defense Daily, Jan. 22).

“I think the Army has been pretty smart in tackling where this stuff eventually is going to go far down the road today. Normally, you would see something like IVAS Next not even being thought about until long after the first IVAS had been deployed,” Luckey said.

Luckey told reporters he believes the Army is looking at taking a “family of systems” approach with IVAS Next, that could involve building out an ecosystem with a “proliferation of different devices that share a common architecture and common application layer.”

“My personal vision for IVAS, and one that I have walked through with Army leadership and they are very supportive of, is that IVAS as a whole, whether it’s through this contract, IVAS Next or something else, is it is going to become a family of systems made by a variety of different companies. So I’m already leveraging a lot of my contacts, a lot of my relationships, to bring in that even normally would never consider working on something like IVAS or IVAS Next so that we can get the best of this consumer AR/VR revolution brought to bear on these problems for warfighting,” Luckey said.

“I think you’re going to see things that range from glasses that look a lot like the Oakleys you wear everyday all the way up to things that look like an Iron Man helmet,” Luckey added.

Microsoft, in its announcement, noted Luckey “previously revolutionized the VR industry with Oculus” and he brings “unparalleled expertise and vision to this effort.”

In its new focus for the program, Microsoft said its “advanced cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities” will continue providing the “robust backbone for [IVAS], enabling seamless data integration and real-time insights critical to soldier effectiveness.”

Beyond IVAS, Microsoft said the new strategic agreement establishes its Azure cloud computing platform as “Anduril’s preferred hyperscale cloud for all workloads related to IVAS and Anduril AI technologies.”

“Azure, through its commercial, U.S. government and classified clouds, provides high resiliency, sophisticated capabilities, flexibility and advanced security, designed to meet the stringent compliance requirements of the nation’s most sensitive data,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Trump Familiar With and Supportive of AUKUS, Hegseth Says

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Friday President Trump would support the AUKUS agreement with Australia.

The defense secretary made the remarks while meeting his Australian counterpart, Defense Minister Richard Marles, at the Pentagon.

Hegseth said this after Australia made its first payment of $500 million last week toward the $3 billion investment promised to the United States.

“The president … recognizes the importance of the defense industrial base,” Hegseth said about AUKUS in opening remarks at the meeting, according to the Department of Defense. “It enhances our ability in the [subsurface] space, but also our allies and partners … this is not a mission in the Indo-Pacific that America can undertake by itself. It has to [include] robust allies and partners. Technology sharing and subs are a huge part of it.”

There has been uncertainty about how Trump would approach AUKUS given his “transactional” governing style and promise to cut government spending, according to the Australian Lowy Institute in a December interview with the Biden-era head of the National Security Council Jake Sullivan. However, Sullivan said he “has confidence” the agreement can endure under Trump.

“Australia is directly contributing to the U.S. submarine industrial base so that we can build out this submarine capability, supply Australia in the nearer term with Virginia class submarines and then in the longer term with the AUKUS class submarine,” Sullivan said of the AUKUS agreement. “The United States is benefiting from burden sharing, exactly the kind of thing that Mr. Trump has talked a lot about.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) had also told sister publication The Exchange Monitor in January that AUKUS would “probably” be in a “good position” under Trump.

AUKUS is a trilateral agreement among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. In the 2030s the U.S. plans to sell Australia three to five used and new Virginia-class submarines. Australia plans to build its own SSN-AUKUS boats the following decade.

All three nations are to develop a platform called “SSN-AUKUS,” which is expected to be ready in the U.K. in the 2030s and Australia in the 2040s, according to the Department of Defense.

Courtney Slams Trump Steel/Aluminum Tariffs Right After Australia Sends Sub Industry Money

The ranking member of the House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee criticized President Trump for his announcement of new steel and aluminum tariffs days after Australia sent its first increment of hundreds of millions of dollars of AUKUS submarine industrial base funding.

On his way to the Super Bowl on Sunday, Trump told reporters his administration this week would unveil a blanket 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum.

AUKUS logo (Image: Australia Department of Defense)

Courtney called this an insult to Australia days after it announced contributing the first $500 million of a planned $3 billion influx of investment into the U.S. submarine industrial base to support AUKUS submarine efforts.

Speaking on the House floor, Courtney noted the U.S. has a trade surplus with Australia, so America exports more to Australia than they export here.

“They have been a signatory with a free trade agreement with no tariffs going back to 2002 and again as the Secretary of Defense stated [Friday] over at the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth, said when he met with the Australian Deputy Prime Minister: Our alliance between our two countries going back to World War One is probably the most deep and strong of any other nation in the world,” he said.

Courtney noted at the meeting Hegseth also received word Australia made its first industrial base payment.

“Again, the first check was delivered on Friday by the Australian Government for $500 million and two days later what do we see now? A 25% tariff on steel and aluminum products coming from Australia into the U.S. at a time when we have a surplus with Australia. Australia is a key strategic ally for our country,” he continued.

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee. (Photo: U.S. Congress)

During a meeting between Australian Deputy Prime Minister of Defense Minister Richard Marles and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Feb. 7, Marles noted they are willing to pay for the increase in defense that comes with the AUKUS agreement.

“We really understand the importance of building our capability, but [also] in paying our way. That is a very important principle that we bring to bear, and one of the aspects of that is the contribution that we’re making to your industrial base,” Marles said.

Courtney said while the U.S. needs the help of Australia as a strategic ally in the Indo-Pacific region, “instead, what we’re seeing is a completely needless, almost insult to the people of Australia by raising tariffs of Australian products coming into this country.”

He argued this is just as Australia is working to buy three submarines, “cash on the barrelhead, full price, no gimmes, no giveaway. So again, by all the measurements that President Trump talks about trade issues that we’re being ripped off by other countries, in this case, every one of those arguments fails.”

Courtney noted he is co-chair of the bipartisan Friends of Australia Caucus and they will try to change the administration’s mind.

The total planned $3 billion investment by Australia is in addition to the country’s plans to buy at least three used and new U.S. Virginia-class attack submarines in the 2030s as a bridge for when the Collins-class boats retire.

Australia plans to start producing the new nuclear-powered SSN-AUKUS class submarines in the early 2040s, after the U.K. will have started production on its own submarines of the same design in the 2030s. The plan allows Australia to buy up to five total U.S. submarines if SSN-AUKUS runs into significant problems or delays.

DARPA Accelerating In-Space Manufacturing Demonstrations

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in early 2026 plans to move two projects out of the lab and into space to demonstrate the manufacture of raw materials and assembly processes to construct “mass-efficient structures” on-orbit, the agency said on Monday.

California Institute of Technology, teamed with Momentus Inc. [MNTS], and the Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, teamed with Voyager Space, will demonstrate their respective technologies under DARPA’s Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program. Begun in 2022, NOM4D aims to move away the construction of structures built on Earth and designed to survive the trip into space in a payload fairing, to structures designed to be built and operated on orbit.

DARPA originally planned for the third phase of the program to be about doing things more precisely in the lab environment but Caltech and the Univ. of Illinois have proven their solutions are mature enough to speed up plans, the agency said.

“Pushing the performers to do a demo in space means they can’t just sweep challenges under the rug like they could in a lab,” Andrew Detor, DARPA’s NOM4D program manager, said in a statement. “You better figure out how it’s going to survive in the space environment.”

Caltech will demonstrate the use of a gantry robotic device that autonomously assembles lightweight composite fiber longerons into a 1.4-meter diameter truss to simulate the architectural structure of an antenna structure, DARPA said. The demonstration will take place aboard Momentus’s Vigoride orbital services vehicle that is scheduled to be launched into low-Earth orbit in February 2026 as part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-16 mission.

The operation will be monitored in real-time using onboard cameras.

The Illinois-led team will demonstrate its solution aboard Voyager’s Bishop Airlock module attached to the International Space Station following a planned April 2026 launch aboard NASA’s Commercial Resupply Mission NG-24. Illinois will demonstrate an in-space composite-forming process.

“The University of Illinois team will be conducting demonstration of their technology using a sleeve of carbon fiber that lays flat, sort of like one of those finger traps you played with as a kid, but it’s made of carbon fiber that becomes the hardened reinforces structure later in the process,” Detor said. “Then they have a liquid monomer, which are molecules that have not polymerized, so they’re not solid yet. The chemistry of those monomers is really engineered for space launch—it’s got the shelf life you need and it’s able to survive the temperatures in space.”

DARPA is also advancing a Univ. of Florida team into the third phase to continue lab work on laser sheet metal bending techniques that could be used for manufacturing in space. The university is working with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, which also has capabilities around welding and cutting metals with lasers for use in space.

If NOM4D is successful, the program will pave the way to in-space manufacturing at scale to “eventually build space-based RF antennas with 100-meter or greater diameter that would significantly improve our situational awareness of activity in the cislunar region and beyond,” Detor said. “We can also envision NOM4D technologies enabling other massive structures in orbit, such as refueling stations for commercial or government spacecraft, space-based solar array farms, and many other commercial and national security applications.”

Pentagon Will Partner With DOGE To Find Cuts, Hegseth Says

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the Pentagon will partner with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to take a look at where cuts can be made at the department.

“We welcome Elon Musk and DOGE coming into our department to help us identify additional ways in which we can streamline processes, fast track acquisitions, cut waste, cut tail to put it to tooth,” Hegseth said during an interview Sunday on Fox News.

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk meets with U.S. Air Force Academy Cadets in Mitchell Hall during a tour hosted by Superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark on April 7, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by Justin R. Pacheco)

In a conversation with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Hegseth was asked whether he expects if DoD will find “hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful spending” across the department.

“Unfortunately, I think so. The president is right, he’s setting the pace. And he’s also correct that American taxpayers deserve to know exactly how and where their money is spent,” Hegseth responded.

Trump, during a press conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Feb. 7, said he has instructed Musk to have DOGE look at finding wasteful spending and inefficiencies at the Pentagon.

A day after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order renaming the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service, under which Tesla [TSLA] and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is leading the temporary DOGE task force to find spending cuts across the government (Defense Daily, Jan. 21).

Musk has taken steps to gut offices such as the United States Agency for International Development and had members of the DOGE task force gain access to sensitive databases at the Treasury Department, which has raised concerns from Democratic lawmakers, including House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) (Defense Daily, Feb. 7).

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter recently to David Harris, the acting general counsel of SpaceX, outlining concerns on whether DOGE has gained access to trade secrets of the company’s potential competitors (Defense Daily, Feb. 10).

“SpaceX, including Starlink, has received approximately $19.8 billion in federal contracts from the federal government, with at least $3.8 billion in fiscal year 2024 alone,” Blumenthal wrote in a Feb. 5 letter to Harris “Mr. Musk’s dual roles—running a for-profit corporation while serving in public office—not only create glaring conflicts of interest that pose grave risks for America’s most sacred institutions, but may also violate federal law.”

DOGE has not yet specified when it will arrive at the Pentagon to begin its review, how such an audit will be conducted and what specific funding areas the task force will look at.

“I think you’re going to see some terminations for convenience,” Robert Burton, a partner at Crowell and Moring and a former deputy administrator at the Office of Federal Procurement Policy under former President George W. Bush, said during a virtual forum last week hosted by George Mason University’s Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting. “This is one way the government is different than the private sector. They have the power of termination for convenience, and they don’t really need to give much of a reason as to why they’re doing it. It’s an incredible power. I think they will de-scope or reduce the scope of contracts and terminate some contracts that they don’t feel have been productive or have not gone well” (Defense Daily, Feb. 5).

At a town hall discussion with DoD personnel at the Pentagon on Friday, Hegseth said he wants to focus on where spending “can be targeted efficiently” at the department.

“There are thousands of additional Pentagon positions, headquarters positions, other positions that have been created over the last 20 years that don’t necessarily translate to battlefield success,” Hegseth said. “Additional staff, additional layers of bureaucracy, additional flag officer positions, that we would be remiss if we did not review.”

“And it’s not just the fraud, waste and abuse stuff. It’s systems, it’s hierarchies, it’s layers that we can review, reduce [and] recommend those reductions. That then allows us to ensure that training and readiness in the frontline units and the COCOMs is even increased,” Hegseth added.

At the town hall event, Hegseth also said his focus on “rebuilding the military” will include rapidly fielding new technologies and scrutinizing the effectiveness of legacy programs for future deterrence and potential conflict (Defense Daily, Feb. 7).

“There’s a lot of programs around here that we spend a lot of money that when you actually war game it [they] don’t have the impact you want them to,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth, during Sunday’s interview, also reiterated his priority for the Pentagon to pass a financial audit within the next four years.

“That will be a focus. When we spend dollars, we need to know where they’re going and why. That’s simply accounting and that has not existed at the Defense Department. We’re going to fix that,” Hegseth said.

After the Pentagon fell short on passing an audit for the seventh consecutive year, Mike McCord, DoD’s comptroller during the Biden administration, said the department is showing progress on its goal to achieve a clean opinion by 2028 (Defense Daily, Nov. 18 2024).

SpiderOak Wins AFRL Contract to Develop Control Plane for CASR

SpiderOak has won a new U.S. government contract as it looks to help theU.S. Space Force take advantage of commercial satellite capabilities. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) selected SpiderOak to enhance the Space Force’s ability to integrate commercial satellite networks during emergencies.

SpiderOak received a Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) to develop a secure, automated control plane for the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) program. SpiderOak announced the contract win on Feb. 6.

The CASR program, managed by Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office, seeks to ensure the USSF has immediate access to commercial satellite capabilities during peacetime and crises, for flexible surge capacity to meet increased mission demands when needed. SpiderOak said its technology will address the need to automate and secure the activation and coordination of commercial assets in real time, for collaboration between government and commercial partners.

“This effort represents a forward-leaning approach to bridging commercial and military capabilities, creating a reliable and efficient framework for operational continuity during emergencies. SpiderOak’s solution leverages our existing policy enforcement and secure distributed ledger technology to ensure trust, transparency, and accountability in CASR activation scenarios,” Matthew Erickson, vice president of Solutions for SpiderOak, said in a statement.

Sen. Blumenthal Looking Into Possible Musk Conflicts of Interest in DOGE/SpaceX Work

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the investigations panel of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and a senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said last week that he has begun a preliminary look into whether the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) has gained access to trade secrets of competitors to SpaceX whose founder, tech billionaire Elon Musk is heading DOGE.

The latter, a temporary organization under the U.S. DOGE Service–a Trump administration renaming of the Obama-era U.S. Digital Service–is to expire on July 4 next year after providing recommendations on federal spending to the White House (Defense Daily, Feb. 5).

“SpaceX, including Starlink, has received approximately $19.8 billion in federal contracts from the federal government, with at least $3.8 billion in fiscal year 2024 alone,” Blumenthal wrote in a Feb. 5 letter to David Harris, the acting general counsel of SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas. “Mr. Musk’s dual roles—running a for-profit corporation while serving in public office—not only create glaring conflicts of interest that pose grave risks for America’s most sacred institutions, but may also violate federal law.”

“Pursuant to Senate Resolution 59 (118th Cong.) and Rule 1 of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (“PSI” or “the Subcommittee”), PSI is conducting a preliminary inquiry into DOGE and the ramifications of its conduct,” Blumenthal wrote.

Passed by the Senate via unanimous consent on Feb. 13, 2023, Senate Resolution 59 established Senate committee funding levels and gave PSI investigation powers, including subpoenas, through this February.

“Mr. Musk has used DOGE to interfere with or encourage the elimination of federal agencies or programs that his companies, or his competitors, have had direct interest in,” according to Blumenthal’s letter. “This access may violate federal law and may also allow Mr. Musk to gain a competitive advantage in his numerous businesses, including SpaceX.”

Musk spearheaded the proposed elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development and said last week that “as we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but that we have actually just a ball of worms.”

“USAID is a ball of worms,” he said “There is no apple, and when there is no apple, you’ve just got to basically get rid of the whole thing.”

Yet, his rhetoric conceals that the USAID inspector general had been investigating since last May the possible misuse of 5,000 Starlink terminals provided by USAID to Ukraine in its war with Russia. Musk has given contradictory signals about his support for Ukraine or Russia.

“Musk may also have the power to withhold payments or hinder government programs without having to provide any explanation or notice,” according to Blumenthal’s Feb. 5 letter to Harris. “DOGE’s operations will also provide its employees with substantial information and influence over government contracts and plans that are commercially material to Mr. Musk’s businesses.”

Musk requested that Harris provide by Friday details on SpaceX and DOGE links to help determine “the extent to which the information and influence Mr. Musk has obtained is being used to the commercial benefit of SpaceX, and whether SpaceX personnel are working on behalf of DOGE.”

On Sunday, Blumenthal issued a further warning about DOGE’s coming examination of Pentagon spending, including contracts to defense companies.

“Musk’s wrecking crew is unleashed to slash and trash our nation’s military and access our most classified security secrets–all without proper clearance or protection against foreign adversaries or breaches,” he said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has yet to indicate how or whether Musk and his young DOGE acolytes will gain dispensation to view classified program information.

DIU Seeks Digital Platform To Help Speed Design And Validation Of Analog Chips

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) on Monday released a solicitation for a digital engineering platform that would accelerate the design and validation of analog, mixed-signal, photonic, and hybrid chips.

The design of these chips is a lengthy process, making it a bottleneck in the supply, DIU said. Additional challenges include design processes that are manual, slow, and “error-prone,” high prototyping costs, and a shortage of skilled designers, all of which create “bottlenecks in the development pipeline,” it added.

DIU said the primary interest for the engineering platform is analog integrated circuits, and a secondary interest is the mixed-signal, photonic, and hybrid chips, and “heterogeneous integration structures like interposers.”

Analog computer chips are older than digital chips but remain important for certain applications, DIU said. The unit wants solutions that address one or more objectives, including automation of chip design process steps, allow for faster or more accurate verification of chip design and behavior, reduce non-recurring engineering costs, support multiple applications, redesign or reverse engineer legacy chips due to manufacturer obsolescence, and design in radiation hardening or verify radiation hardening more quickly and cheaply.

Proposals under the “Chipweave” solutions opening are due by Feb. 21.

ICEYE To Leverage AI-Based Analytics For Satellite Radar Imagery

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite operator ICEYE on Monday said is partnering with SATIM to leverage the Polish company’s artificial intelligence-based solutions to enable automatic target recognition on satellite radar imagery.

The agreement between the companies includes a pilot phase followed by the release of products his year.

“Our partnership with SATIM is an important step on our journey towards becoming the global source of truth,” Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of Finland’s ICEYE, said in a statement. “By combining our world-leading SAR imagery and capabilities with SATIM’s powerful AI-driven SAR image analytics, we will be able to serve our customers with easy, direct access to actionable intelligence and insights. Improving situational awareness with satellite-based intelligence will enable informed and rapid decision-making where it is needed most.”

ICEYE says it owns and operates the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation. The Helsinki-based company has launched 44 satellites for its own and customers’ use and plans to launch more than 20 new satellites annually in 2025, 2026, and after. The company provides SAR imagery to the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office through a study contract.