Jan. 7, 2021 | BY David Vergun , DOD News

The Defense Information Systems Agency and Joint Force Headquarters Department of Defense Information Network serve on the department's digital frontlines in cyber and information technology at all levels of classification.

Some 19,000 people around the world work in that agency to ensure secure and seamless communications for the warfighters.

"The safety of our employees is forefront in all of our decisions," Navy Vice Adm. Nancy A. Norton, DISA director, said at an AFCEA virtual luncheon today.

"Our primary goal is to preserve and protect the ability of our workforce to conduct mission central operations that we support on national defense and current worldwide military missions," she said. "We have not just survived through COVID-19, we have thrived. From the beginning of [the] pandemic, our workforce has enabled the Defense Department to accomplish its high-stakes missions, while maximizing remote work."

Spotlight: Coronavirus: DOD Response

Over the last 10 months, DISA has been working on "cloud-based internet isolation," an initiative which pairs industry-leading technologies with a rapid-acquisition strategy, she said.

"CBII is proving to be a game-changing solution in our ability to protect department networks against web browser-based threats, making them more secure from the office or from home," Norton said. 

It essentially creates a video stream of the browser, she explained. Malicious activities are isolated to the cloud, where they can more easily be contained and eliminated, rather than on personal computers and DOD networks. CBII also reduces bandwidth requirements through the very busy virtual private networks, or VPN.

VPNs were really put to the test in 2020, she said. In response to the pandemic, the "joint regional security stacks remote access virtual private network" enabled a more than 1,000% increase in telework connections for joint mission partners around the globe. 

Fortunately, over the past few years, the department has made significant investments in its remote work capabilities. There are a number of tools available to the workforce that support team collaboration spaces conferencing and file sharing, Norton noted.

The COVID-19 emergency drove us to enhance our telework tools for our workforce, she said. Many service members, civilians and contractors didn't have government-furnished equipment, so they relied on commercial virtual remote, or CVR, using Microsoft Teams that enabled them to telework using their personal equipment.

"I don't think it's just DOD, I think the world has probably recognized the value of telework and the ease at which we can telework," she said. "And, as I said, we haven't just survived through the pandemic, we have thrived. So we have learned how to work with our workforce and trust our workforce in ways that we never did before. And I think this is something that, across the DOD, is going to continue."

Cyber Beacon Provides Venue for Sharing Innovative Approaches to Top Strategic Challenges

 Jan. 6, 2021

Last month the College of Information and Cyberspace at National Defense University, located on historic Fort McNair in the nation's capital, hosted their 7th annual Cyber Beacon Conference. 

Due to the global pandemic, this was the first year the event was hosted virtually and allowed for a broader audience to participate. This closed event welcomed hundreds of attendees from throughout the national security community, including the U.S. government, industry and academia, as well as allies and partners.

The purpose of the conference was to gather today's top thought leaders and experts on strategic cyberspace issues for discussion and learning. This purpose directly supports the lines of effort of the National Defense Strategy, especially regarding reform and partnership, Joseph L. Billingsley, director of strategic engagement at CIC, a lead planner of the event, said.

Spotlight: National Defense Strategy

This year's conference theme was "Disruption in an Era of Great Power Competition: Pandemic, Infodemic, Space, Cyberspace and Beyond" and builds off of last year's theme of "Preparing for Disruption," Dr. Cassandra C. Lewis, acting chancellor of CIC, said.

"We're very proud of the different organizations and senior leaders who participated in sharing their unique perspectives," Billingsley said, noting that there was good representation from U.S. Cyber Command, the Office of the Chief Information Officer and, for the first time, representation from the Space Force.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Kevin Kennedy, director of operations (J3) for U.S. Cybercom, challenged the audience to think about how the U.S. competes in cyberspace with an evolving strategic and operational environment, Billingsley said. Other speakers at the event highlighted the importance of competing with adversaries in a highly contested cyberspace domain, including Thomas Wingfield, Esq., deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy and former acting chancellor of CIC. 

Another speaker, John Sherman, the DOD principal deputy chief information officer, said: "History has taught us that advantages are constantly eroding. Nothing gives us the preordained right to supremacy in cyberspace and global competition." 

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, the executive director of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, spoke about the many recommended reforms which have been adopted by the U.S. government and signed into law. Congressman James Langevin, cyberspace solarium commissioner and co-chair of the Congressional Cyber Caucus, echoed Montgomery's focus on reforms that better position the U.S. to compete in cyberspace. Both Montgomery and Langevin thanked CIC for its enduring support of the commission. CIC hosted the commission's capstone gathering in 2019.

Space Force Maj. Gen. Kim Crider noted the importance of developing the educational pipeline of cyber professionals that can help support the mission of the newest military service. Recent engagement between Space Force and CIC, leveraging existing space domain expertise within CIC, has led to a new pipeline of students, said Billingsley. 

Jeff Moss, who also spoke, is a top leader in the global hacker community. He discussed the role of civil society as allies and force multipliers in pursuit of national security. Moss, who has served as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, also commended the "herculean effort" that Montgomery and Langevin have taken on with the commission.

The hacker conventions that Moss founded, "DEF CON and Black Hat, provide DOD personnel a powerful educational and engagement opportunity, especially with 'villages' dedicated to learning about election security, air and maritime safety and much more," Dr. Joseph H. Schafer, chair of the Information Strategy and Disruptive Technology Department at CIC and retired army lieutenant colonel, said. 

CIC students also played a prominent role in the event, which included a student panel for the first time. The panel had U.S. military, interagency, and allied representation. The students at CIC, known as the "Cyber War College," are experienced national security professionals focusing on strategic issues. "As an educator, highlighting our students and their insights was a point of pride," Lewis said.

The conference was also helpful for those across the professional military education community, Billingsley said. For instance, Navy Cdr. Dan Brown, an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College said: "The knowledge I gained will be an immense help in building my lesson plans and leading classroom discussions."

One attendee, Paul de Souza, president of the non-profit Cyber Security Forum Initiative, described the event as "historic, based on the involvement of the Space Force and so many recognized national leaders in this community, especially Moss, Montgomery and Langevin." 

Billingsley agreed with the historic nature of this event and put it into a larger context, saying "our college was first established at the dawn of the computer age in the 1960s as the DOD Computer Institute and included instructors like the legendary Grace Hopper. The school has evolved over more than half a century to meet the evolving challenges our nation faces. If there was one 'take away' from this event, it is that we have much work to be done, and with urgency." 

Statement by Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller on Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Doses Delivered Today

 Jan. 6, 2021

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"On behalf of Operation Warp Speed, I am proud to report that today, 811,600 additional vaccines were distributed to the American people. Today's great work brings the total number of vaccine doses distributed to 19,633,525."

Statement by Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller on Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Doses Delivered Today

 Jan. 5, 2021

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“On behalf of Operation Warp Speed, I am proud to report that today, 3,087,100 vaccines were distributed to the American people. Today’s great work brings the total number of doses distributed to 19,141,175 over the last 21 days since the first vaccine doses showed up at administration sites.”

DOD's Inaugural Foray Into 5G Experimentation on Track

 Jan. 5, 2021

The United States Department of Defense has taken historic action to advance the application of 5G communications for America's warfighters. 

In October 2020, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Kratsios announced $600 million in award contracts to 15 prime contractors to perform testing and evaluation of 5G technologies at five military installations across the country. This initial Tranche 1 effort represents the largest full-scale 5G test for dual-use applications in the world. 

Since then, the Department has made important progress in establishing the Tranche 1 sites and preparing the upcoming Tranche 2 requests for proposals. 

"With these test beds, the Department of Defense is at the forefront of cutting-edge 5G research that will strengthen America's warfighting capabilities and accelerate advancements in commercial 5G technologies," Mr. Kratsios said.

Dr. Joseph B. Evans, principal director for 5G in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, provided an update on the Department's 5G testing and experimentation efforts, as well as its 5G Strategy Implementation Plan. The latest information can also be found at the newly launched CTO.mil/5G.

"So far, the Department's 5G experiments are coming together as expected," Evans said. "In addition to the Tranche 1 sites getting stood up, we also have the Tranche 2 sites that are in the process of releasing requests for proposals ... the Department is on track for 5G testing in 2021."

The 5G wireless communications technologies in development now offer great improvements in speed, connectivity and reduced latency, Evans said. He also said it's critical for the DOD to be involved in accelerating the development of that technology, as well as in ensuring those systems are robust, protected, resilient and reliable.

"5G is important to the Department because it will enable new capabilities, such as machine-to-machine communication, that will help us to improve our efficiency and our processes, and enable us to react more quickly," Evans said.

In the same way traditional telecommunications and the internet have enhanced DOD operations, 5G is going to do the same — but to a much, much greater extent, Evans said.

Establishing the Tranche 1 Sites

Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, Georgia; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; Naval Base San Diego, California; Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada; and Hill Air Force Base, Utah, were designated as "testbeds" where commercial 5G technology would be evaluated for its ability to enhance military and service-specific operational challenges. Together, the five installations make up "Tranche 1" of the department's efforts.

"We've formulated these experiments as three- to four-year projects," Evans said. "We've built them as multiyear projects with iterative development. After a year, we'll look at the initial experimental results and metrics and then go forward in future years based on how those technologies are evolving, reviewing on an annual basis."

Further down the road, Evans said, the department will be able to identify what particular technologies and systems are able to make a useful transition into the services or the broader Defense Department.

"Our 5G prototyping and experimentation effort is an ongoing, iterative evaluation of the different uses cases and technologies, and how they can transition," Evans said.

So far, more than $600 million has been awarded in over three dozen prime contracts, with more than 100 companies participating, to evaluate 5G technology at those testbed installations. There, 5G technology will be applied to problems and challenges identified in collaboration with the military services.

At Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany, experimentation will focus on efficiency improvements within warehouse operations, including receipt, storage, inventory control and tracking, issuance, and delivery. There, Federated Wireless has signed a contract to deploy 5G within and around an existing Marine Corps warehouse to provide the platform for a 5G-enabled "smart warehouse."

Other partners at MCLBA include GE Research, KPMG LLP, Scientific Research Corporation, Virginia Tech Applied Research and Alion Science.

Also involved in smart warehousing is Naval Base San Diego. There, AT&T has signed a contract to deploy 5G infrastructure, including millimeter wave technology. In San Diego, the 5G-enabled smart warehouse experiment will be a proving ground for, among other things, real-time asset tracking, predictive analytics, environmental sensing, robotics and augmented reality.

Partners there include GE Research, Vectrus Mission Solutions Corporation, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Perspecta, XCOM, Parallel Wireless, Qubitekk, Secure G and GenXCom.

It's early in the Tranche 1 experiments, with contracts just having recently been awarded. The next big step for Tranche 1 installations, Evans said, will be to get those testbeds set up and running. It's expected that all Tranche 1 testbeds will be operational by the fall of 2021, he said.

Preparing for Tranche 2

The Department has also announced a second set of installations where 5G experimentation would take place. Those installations include Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia; Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii; Joint Base San Antonio; the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and Fort Hood, Texas; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California; and Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.

"What we are really focused on with Tranche 2 is getting those solicitations out so that we can get the best industry performers and industry players involved in these projects," Evans said. "We're really trying to reach out to the entire 5G industry — from the big companies to the traditional defense industrial base, and to small businesses and startups that are trying to create new and interesting technologies in 5G that can support DOD missions. We're focused on getting those solicitations out and making sure we get the best players providing technologies to DOD."

Already, Evans said, solicitations for some of the Tranche 2 installations have taken place. A white paper solicitation was released for work at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Camp Pendleton, and for Naval Station Norfolk.

"The solicitation for white papers closed on December 15," Evans said. "We're in the process of evaluating those. The next step — hopefully late January or early February — will be a request for proposals for those three bases."

Evans said the Department is also working with the National Spectrum Consortium on solicitations for four other Tranche 2 sites.

"We hope those will be out in a similar time frame, early in the new calendar year," he said. "Those solicitations will be for experiments at Joint Base San Antonio, for experiments at the National Training Center and Fort Hood, as well as an experiment at Tinker Air Force Base. We are looking forward to getting exciting responses."

The DOD's Strategy Implementation Plan

In addition to launching the test sites, the Department released its 5G Strategy Implementation Plan. The plan discusses DOD's work to carry out its 5G Strategy, signed in May, outlining four lines of effort, including promoting technology development; assessing, mitigating, and operating through 5G vulnerabilities; influencing 5G standards and policies; and engaging partners. 

"The strategy is an across-the-board plan for what DOD can do with 5G and how it can advance DOD's capabilities and U.S. capabilities in 5G," Evans said. "The implementation plan then goes into each of those areas and describes how we'll be going about each of those lines of effort. It's comprehensive view of what we should be doing and will be doing to implement that 5G strategy."

Space Force Senior Enlisted Advisor Talks Future of Enlisted Force

 Jan. 5, 2021 | BY Jim Garamone , DOD News

The development of the culture of the Space Force, the training Space Force personnel (now called guardians) will receive, the balance between enlisted and officer ranks in the new service, and how the force will be constituted were among the issues that Chief Master Sgt. Roger A. Towberman, the new service's first senior enlisted advisor, discussed in a recent interview.

The U.S. Space Force celebrated its first anniversary on Dec. 20. There are now roughly 2,300 uniformed members of the new force and it is projected to grow to around 6,500. Currently, there are about 100 new accessions in the service, and the remainder of the military members transferred from the Air Force. This year, the service will transfer about 3,500 more members from the Air Force and begin merging personnel from the other services into their units. There are currently 16,000 military and civilians assigned to the Space Force, and that number is expected to grow to about 20,000 in the next couple of years.

Spotlight: DOD Space Strategy

A third of the assigned force today is enlisted personnel, and typically the non-commissioned officers are the custodians of a service's traditions and culture. 

This is rocket science, and the Space Force requires personnel with technical expertise right off the bat, Towberman said. 

"I heard [SpaceX chief] Elon Musk talk recently and he said one of his secrets was a maniacal sense of urgency," Towberman said. 

The Space Force needs to mirror this. "I think there's an excitement right now that a smallish group of people can wrap themselves around and really ensconce themselves in this excitement and this energy," he said. 

By its nature, the Air Force is a very specialized technical service. When established in 1947, it was the epitome of high-tech service and that only increased as the service moved into advanced aircraft and avionics and into the world of missiles and space. 

Different aircraft require different maintainers. Different systems require different technicians. That kind of specialization doesn't lend itself to overarching enculturation. It is not like the Army or Marine Corps where every soldier or Marine is a rifleman. A challenge the Air Force has had is to develop this larger more inclusive culture, Towberman said. 

The Space Force faces the same challenges, but Towberman believes leaders can use the missions to bind personnel together. "I think, maybe, we can have the best of both worlds," he said. "Maybe we can all get very excited about a very specific and special role that we have to play, and have this culture bind us around space and space operations. It is a great warfighting niche." 

So, the mission and the environment can bind together the service, building a unique culture for the 20,000 guardians.

The entire Space Force will be about the same size as a Marine Corps division. The Space Force wants to be small to be agile and flexible. Towberman sees small teams being the core of the service's future. Space Force aims to eliminate layers of command where possible, and emphasize being agile and quick, the chief said.

Space Force is a separate service under the Department of the Air Force and — like the Marine Corps to the Navy — will look to the Air Force for support. Medical, personnel, security and administration — and more — will all come from the Air Force. 

The Space Force will also examine the missions to see what jobs can be done by DOD civilians. "The uniformed force will be very precisely focused on operations, intelligence and cyber," Towberman said. "So, literally everything else has to be done either by Department of the Air Force civilians that are assigned to the Space Force, or airmen." 

Enlisted personnel in some Air Force specialty codes in operations, intelligence and cyber are being transferred to the new service. Training for personnel in these specialty codes is typically done in what the Air Force calls technical schools. For the time being, Space Force personnel will continue to train alongside their Air Force compatriots. 

Towberman and his boss, Space Force Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, visited San Antonio to meet the first Space Force basic training graduates in mid-December. There were seven and they were interspersed in a Basic Training Flight at Lackland Air Force Base. The chief said that through the rest of the winter that six or seven Space Force personnel will be in training flights. "In the summer, we will have larger classes and we anticipate having full Space Force flights," he said

The Space Force has changed about nine hours of instruction in basic training for Space Force personnel. He said the service will make incremental changes as needed, moving forward. He does not anticipate the Space Force getting its own dedicated basic training program. 

Most of the Space Force will be based in the United States, but small guardian teams will deploy to overseas hotspots, as needed, he said. 

The Air Force has no warrant officers — a decision made when the service was formed. The Space Force will study the warrant officer program to see if it is something they want to adopt and adapt to their circumstances, the chief said.

Other personnel aspects include possibly giving former enlisted personnel a higher officer rank once they finish officer training. "If I take a senior NCO with 15 years of experience and he/she goes to OTS, am I really going to make that person, with that experience, be a second lieutenant," Towberman asked. "Maybe there can be a sliding scale for personnel like that."

The Space Force will probably walk away from Air Force enlisted professional military education. Space Force has "inherited" the NCO Academy at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. That will become the Space Force Leadership School to start, and Towberman anticipates a Space Force senior NCO Academy growing out of this in the years to come. 

Right now, the Space Force is made up solely of active duty personnel. "The reality is that we need the [National] Guard and [Air Force] Reserve today," he said. "We can't get our mission done without them." Space Force leaders are looking for ways to incorporate these important assets into the force, he said.

Another aspect the leadership would like to address is the fact that it has been 20 years since there's been a targeted pay raise. This means "while the talent and the abilities of our enlisted force has grown year by year-by-year, the difference in pay between E-5 and O-5 has also grown," Towberman said. "That needs to be addressed."

Space requires highly educated guardians. The force must be willing to pay for that expertise. Towberman said the service will look at special incentives and skill-based pays. 

"I believe a lot in the concept that if you take care of people well enough so that they can leave, many of them will decide that they don't want to," the chief said. "That's going to be our focus. Our focus is going to be on culture, our focus is going to be on giving them the kind of autonomy, the kind of training and development they need."

The Space Force could give its guardians "an opportunity to change the world," the senior enlisted advisor said. "That's an important mission, and we should all be proud to have this opportunity."

Director’s Message: Replication Studies are Vital to Science We Can Count On

 

The dependability of the science NIJ nurtures has been a point of emphasis for this agency throughout its half-century history. Now, with the scientific enterprise accelerating as never before, in volume and complexity, NIJ has redoubled its commitment to fostering science as reliable as it is relevant. One measure of that commitment is NIJ’s push in recent years for wider use of randomized controlled trials, or RCTs, the gold standard of evaluation. NIJ’s recent and upcoming grant solicitations have place a premium on research proposals built around RCTs, wherever feasible. In fiscal year 2021 solicitations, NIJ is inviting new replication research. Select solicitations will welcome proposals to replicate seminal studies in several research areas. These solicitations will also encourage study proposals to revisit programs rated “promising” or “effective” in the CrimeSolutions repository, by applying rigorous RCTs where less rigorous quasi-experimental evaluations had initially generated those ratings. Read the new message from the NIJ Director to learn more about the importance of this focus. READ THE MESSAGE