Pentagon

Several Senate Democrats are criticizing the Defense Department for spending too little, too slowly to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Pentagon says it intends to send lawmakers a plan today for  using the $10.6 billion in coronavirus relief funds Congress provided in March.

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Accreditation Body is developing standards for assessment that are adaptive to changes made to "source documents" coming from the Defense Department, according to CMMC AB board member Regan Edens.

The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee say they plan to include a new initiative in their version of the fiscal year 2021 defense authorization bill that would deter Chinese military action in the Indo-Pacific region.

The director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center says his organization needs its own acquisition authorities because relying on third parties is too slow.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's two high-profile hypersonic weapon technology efforts -- one a boost-glide vehicle the other an air-breathing missile -- are both "going well" despite an apparent delay in planned first flight tests, according to the Pentagon's top technology official.

Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, said he is concerned that weapon system research and development spending will soon be squeezed as the federal deficit mounts in the wake of the novel coronavirus outbreak and pressure grows to rein in federal spending -- a view he said should come as no surprise to anyone.

Without fanfare, the Missile Defense Agency in late January posted on the front page of its public website a new organizational chart that marked the culmination of a project last year to retool bureaucratic structures to now account for a wider array of challenges to U.S. forces, allies and the homeland.

The Missile Defense Agency is eyeing formation of a third-party entity dedicated to managing rapid prototyping of missile defense projects, following a pivot by the Army, Navy, and Air Force from traditional acquisition rules to a new pathway called “middle-tier” acquisition intended to experiment with and potentially deliver new weapons in two to five years.

The Pentagon is proposing changes to the law that would require "operationally critical" contractors to let Defense Department investigators access their unclassified information systems in the wake of a cyber incident.