DoD Approves $60 Million in Grants Under Defense Community Infrastructure Pilot Program

 

Sept. 22, 2021

The Department of Defense today announced the award of 13 grants totaling approximately $60 million under the Defense Community Infrastructure Pilot Program by the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation.  These infrastructure projects benefit local installations, supporting service members, their families, and the Department’s missions.  The awards derive from Fiscal Year 2021 appropriated funding, and leverage an additional $68 million in non-Federal funding for a total investment of $128 million. 

On August 13, 2021, the office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Sustainment), instructed the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation to invite grant applications from 13 proposers based upon the relative competitive ranking of their proposals by the Defense Community Infrastructure Review Panel to obligate the full amount of the $60 million Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations prior to September 30, 2021. 

The grant awards are as follows:

1. $5,925,150 to the City of Manhattan, Kansas to undertake a $6,729,187 project to reconstruct a runway at Manhattan Regional Airport for Fort Riley, Kansas. The project will support military use of the local civilian aviation facility. 
2. $650,000 to Carteret County, North Carolina to undertake a $1,950,000 project to implement shoreline & infrastructure protection measures on Radio Island. The project will carry out shoreline and infrastructure protection measures on Radio Island. The project supports Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, Virginia, and will include restoration of a beach and dune system to mitigate erosion problems.
3. $4,329,268 to Western Municipal Water District, California to undertake a $12,457,527 project to build a local groundwater resiliency connection to support March Air Reserve Base.
4. $3,500,000 to the City of Oceanside, California to undertake an $18,601,703 project to construct a new fire station to support emergency response resources provided to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
5. $9,840,892 to the City of Minot, North Dakota to undertake a $23,618,141 project to undertake a portion of a flood risk management system along the Mouse River in support of Minot Air Force Base. 
6. $395,118 to St. Mary’s County, Maryland to undertake a $564,454 project to improve pedestrian access across Route 235 to installation gates, supporting Naval Air Station Patuxent River. 
7. $6,440,985 to Escambia County, Florida to undertake an $9,201,408 project to construct emergent and submerged offshore reef breakwaters and twenty acres of sandy beach habitat in support of Naval Air Station Pensacola.
8. $3,000,000 to the City of Milton, Florida to undertake a $4,371,500 project to increase wastewater treatment capacity in support of Naval Air Station Whiting Field. 
9. $10,000,000 to the Kitsap County Sewer Utility, Washington to undertake a $20,300,000 in support of Naval Base Kitsap (Bangor & Keyport). 
10. $4,230,133 to United Water Conservation District, California to undertake a $12,429,191 project to construct a treatment facility for three existing lower aquifer system wells in support of Naval Base Ventura County.
11. $5,254,800 to the Port of Everett, Washington to undertake an $8,758,000 project to support the Port of Everett’s marina facilities in support of Naval Station Everett.
12. $250,000 to the City of Portsmouth, Virginia to undertake a $640,000 in transportation improvements to Naval Support Activity Hampton Road’s Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. 
13. $6,000,000 to the City of Springfield, Ohio to undertake an $8,019,535 project to support the National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence (NAAMCE) at Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport.  The facility will be used by the Air Force Research Laboratory and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Each of the grantees are working with the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation to ensure compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, as amended, and may commence ground disturbing activity upon notification from the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation.  The Defense Community Infrastructure Program is authorized under 10 U.S. Code § 2391 and received appropriations in Fiscal Year 2021.  

For additional information about the Defense Community Infrastructure Pilot program, visit this website: https://oldcc.gov/defense-community-infrastructure-pilot-program-dcip

DoD Approves $25 Million in Grants Under Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program

 

Sept. 22, 2021

The Department of Defense today announced the award of five grants totaling approximately $25 million under the Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program by the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation.  The awards derive from Fiscal Year 2021 appropriated funding and leverage an additional $11.7 million in non-Federal funds for a total investment of $36.7 million.  The Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program makes long-term investments in critical skills, facilities, workforce development, research and development, and small business support in order to strengthen the national security innovation base.

On August 11, 2021, the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment designated five Defense Manufacturing Communities and instructed the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation to invite grant applications from them based upon the relative competitive ranking of their proposals by a Defense Manufacturing Community Review Panel.

The grant awards are as follows:

1. $5 million to the Commonwealth of Virginia Office of Veterans and Defense Affairs-led Defense Manufacturing Consortia to undertake a $7,045,113 project to recruit, train and modernize the Commonwealth’s maritime workforce.  The goal of the Virginia Maritime Industrial Base Consortium is to increase manufacturing capacity, capability, resiliency, and diversity in the maritime industrial base by creating a cross-region K-12 to university training pipeline for skilled workers and manufacturing engineers to support the Navy’s sustainment and shipbuilding needs.
2. $5 million to the North Carolina State University Industry Expansion Solutions-led Defense Manufacturing Consortia to undertake a $7,466,588 project in the area of advanced textiles/autonomous wearables and implement a strategy to address immediate ramp-up needs as businesses transition out of COVID-19 restricted operations to longer-term technological opportunities. 
3. $4.99 million to the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station-led Defense Manufacturing Community Consortia to undertake a $6,947,453 project to inject targeted Smart Manufacturing skills and technologies into the diverse manufacturing portfolio of the Texas defense aerospace manufacturing ecosystem.  The consortium intends to deliver outcomes in the areas of workforce development; structured networking & supply chain development; policy & economic development; and research & infrastructure.
4. $5 million to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville-led Defense Manufacturing Community Consortia to undertake a $8,624,399 project to address next-generation machine tools and smart manufacturing processes; create an education and training pipeline to recruit and prepare the future workforce needed to operate these new technologies; and integrate academic, government, and corporate partners to translate these advances into industry leadership and economic impact.
5. $5 million to the Wichita State University National Institute for Aviation Research-led Defense Manufacturing Community Consortia to undertake a $6,576,590 project to expand capabilities, processes, sustainment planning, workforce, and engineering competencies to prototype development for weapon system parts and assemblies. 

The Defense Manufacturing Community Support Program is authorized by Section 846 of Public Law 115-232, which enabled the Secretary of Defense to establish a program to designate and support consortiums as Defense Manufacturing Communities to strengthen the national security industrial base.

For additional information about these programs visit the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation website at https://oldcc.gov/defense-manufacturing-community-support-program.

Vaccination Time

 

Air Force 1st Lt. Annie Darroch, a registered nurse with the 96th Medical Group, provides a COVID-19 vaccine to an Afghan individual at Fort Pickett, Va., Sept. 18, 2021. The Defense Department, through Northern Command, and in support of the Department of Homeland Security, is providing transportation, temporary housing, medical screening, and general support for at least 50,000 Afghan evacuees.

Statement by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on the Results of Central Command Investigation Into the 29 August Airstrike

 Sept. 17, 2021

General McKenzie briefed me this morning about the findings of his investigation into the 29 August Kabul airstrike. 

The investigation concluded that the strike -- conducted to prevent what was believed to be an imminent threat to Hamid Karzai International Airport -- resulted in the deaths of as many as 10 people, including up to seven children.

On behalf of the men and women of the Department of Defense, I offer my deepest condolences to surviving family members of those who were killed, including Mr. Ahmadi, and to the staff of Nutrition and Education International, Mr. Ahmadi’s employer.

We now know that there was no connection between Mr. Ahmadi and ISIS-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr. Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed.

We apologize, and we will endeavor to learn from this horrible mistake.

To that end, I have directed a thorough review of the investigation just completed by U.S. Central Command.  I have asked for this review to consider the degree to which the investigation considered all available context and information, the degree to which accountability measures need be taken and at what level, and the degree to which strike authorities, procedures and processes need to be altered in the future. 

No military works harder than ours to avoid civilian casualties.  When we have reason to believe we have taken innocent life, we investigate it and, if true, we admit it.  But we also must work just as hard to prevent recurrence -- no matter the circumstances, the intelligence stream or the operational pressures under which we labor. 

We will do that in this case.  We will scrutinize not only what we decided to do -- and not do -- on the 29th of August, but also how we investigated those outcomes.

We owe that to the victims and their loved ones, to the American people and to ourselves.

Show and Tell

 

Airmen demonstrate bomb-building capabilities during an immersion tour at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Aug. 31, 2021.

New Program Helps Dual-Use Hardware Startups Accelerate Product Development

 Sept. 13, 2021 | BY David Vergun , DOD News

To stimulate and access hardware technology innovation in the private sector, the Defense Department launched a program called National Security Innovation Capital.

Located in Mountain View, California, NSIC addresses the shortfall of trusted funding from private venture capital sources for the development of new hardware technologies that have both commercial and national security applications, said Tex Schenkkan, NSIC director.

"This is an effort to protect against adversarial capital and ensure that our national security innovation base continues to be strong," he said, referring to China and other adversarial nations funding and developing hardware for military use.

Less than 30% of private U.S. venture capital is invested in hardware companies, and less than 10% of that is invested at early stages where it's most needed. In many cases, hardware startups were having to turn to foreign sources of capital, which left the startups vulnerable to the loss of their intellectual property to potential adversaries, he said.

The NSIC team identifies technology startups across the country that would benefit from government funding to develop dual-use products and bring them to market. NSIC funding allows such companies to accelerate their product development plans and reduce inherent technical risks, Schenkkan said.

NSIC funding and engagement attract additional private capital, further accelerating company progress to product launch and blocking future investment from untrusted sources, he added.

Since NSIC began in February, it has received $15 million in funding from Congress. It is on track to obligate all of those funds by the end of September. It has awarded prototype development contracts to companies in multiple technology areas. 

Schenkkan said some examples include: 

• Xplore is developing a high-power, ride-share-capable spacecraft providing the infrastructure to execute missions from low-Earth orbit to the moon and across cislunar space for commercial, scientific and national security end users.
• New Frontier Aerospace is developing a new rocket engine design intended for hypersonic vehicles.
• FuelX is developing a manufacturing process that produces a material for the safe storage and transportation of hydrogen.
• Advanced Magnet Lab is a company creating a manufacturing process that will result in a domestic source of novel, high-performance magnets.
• A company to be announced soon is building a domestic manufacturing facility to produce qualification cells based on a next-generation battery chemistry. 

NSIC is a part of the department's innovation ecosystem led by the Defense Innovation Unit. Its streamlined contracting process leverages the Other Transaction Authority already granted to and utilized by DIU.

"NSIC is an important part of accelerating emerging commercial technology into the DOD," said Michael Brown, DIU director. "Funding innovative dual-use technology to improve national security is critical in our nation's strategic competition with China and providing the best technology for our military."

DARPA Looks to Microbes to Process Rare Earth Elements

 Sept. 8, 2021 | BY C. Todd Lopez , DOD News

Rare earth elements — a group of 17 metals, including neodymium — are used in lasers, precision-guided weapons, magnets for motors and other devices that are at the heart of many critical technologies the Defense Department depends on.

While the U.S. has domestic access to rare earth elements, it doesn't have a strong domestic base for processing that supply, Stefanie Tompkins, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said during an online discussion today at the 5th Annual Defense News Conference.

To get after that, Tompkins said DARPA recently embarked on a new program called the Environmental Microbes as a BioEngineering Resource, or EMBER program, to secure America's rare earth elements supply chain.

"From a DARPA perspective what we're looking at are what are some of the barriers that have made it difficult for the U.S. to maintain dominance in rare earth processing," she said. "One of the things we just launched a new program in is related to bio-mining. The program is called EMBER, and that is about actually designing microbes who can more efficiently and at scale and in an environmentally sound way, separate out these rare earth elements from the ore in which they're actually found."

Right now, the most common practices for processing rare earth elements are chemically intensive and frequently toxic to the environment, she said.

"Because of all of that, it's caused the U.S. to sort of back away ... from those sort of expensive and environmentally painful processes. And so we need to find new ways," she said. "Biological is one of the things that we're exploring."

Rare earth elements aren't the only thing the Defense Department depends on and needs a more secure supply of. Microelectronics are at the heart of nearly every modern technology used by the Defense Department, and Tompkins said that with the DOD's Electronics Resurgence Initiative, DARPA is working to ensure America's warfighters continue to have access to the latest technologies.

"This is focusing on sort of transforming the space of semiconductors, bringing it back to being a national strength, and at the same time moving into sort of the ... next generation of what microelectronics will really look like," she said.

While military capabilities like aircraft rely on mechanical technologies to make them fly, Tompkins said what really makes something like a fighter jet a truly powerful tool in the U.S. military's arsenal are the microelectronics it has on board.

"Microelectronics are really sort of what make all of our different platforms and systems operate the way they do," she said "If you think about an aircraft, there's the part of it that actually flies — there's sort of the aeronautical piece of it. But almost everything that really gives it the power and capability of a U.S. defense capability will come from the microelectronics."

Those capabilities include sensors, communications, avionics, radars and more. Tompkins said industry is approaching a "plateau" in electronics capability now where it's getting more difficult to put more capability onto microchips.

"We have to start innovating and moving into different directions," she said. "That might mean completely new materials ... it might mean moving from what has typically been a flat, two-dimensional structure where you're sort of putting things side-by-side on a chip into three dimensions, where you're building them up, more and more."

Another element factoring into how the DOD stays on top of the latest advancements in microelectronics is how it differs from the commercial sector in what it purchases, Tompkins said.

"A really interesting difference between sort of a lot of commercial thinking and the DOD thinking is that in commercial thinking you're going to be looking heavily for general purpose capabilities, general purpose processing," she said. "In the national security world, we often have to think about applications for which we could actually do much better if we specialize. Those are all areas in which we're putting a lot of investment."