Pentagon

Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's top technology officer, has recruited a senior NASA appointee to head the Strategic Capabilities Office, setting the stage for the start of a new chapter for an organization that was the subject of a bureaucratic turf fight during much of 2019 that Griffin waged and lost.

Congress has shifted the Defense Department's chief data officer position away from the endangered chief management office, while Pentagon officials say the first department-wide data strategy is awaiting Defense Secretary Mark Esper's signature.

The next two months could be crucial for the federal government's landmark efforts in setting cybersecurity requirements for contractors and agencies to protect national security and other information from foreign adversaries, with a proposed rule later this month and comments due in February on banning Huawei and other China-based tech products.

An influential Pentagon advisory panel is launching a new study to investigate potential new dimensions of conflict that China and Russia might employ to impose their will on other states beyond conventional military force, and seeks recommendations for a modernization blueprint that, in turn, puts the U.S. military at the vanguard of innovating new forms of conflict.

The Pentagon's independent cost estimator has been directed to assess the implications of the 2019 Missile Defense Review, the Trump administration's new blueprint for defending against ballistic, cruise and hypersonic threats and brief lawmakers in January on the estimated price tag for expanding the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The Air Force is preparing to move "expeditiously and judiciously" to stand up the Space Force as soon as President Trump signs the fiscal year 2020 defense policy bill at a ceremony scheduled for Friday evening.

Congressional appropriators are calling on the Defense Department to craft an integrated overhead persistent infrared architecture strategy due to concerns about overlap among programs managed by the Air Force, Missile Defense Agency and Space Development Agency.

The Air Force this week is spearheading a project with the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and industry entrepreneurs to emulate the kind of rapid software and hardware development pioneered by Silicon Valley start-ups in a bid to incubate Joint All Domain Command and Control -- an envisioned technical backbone to link sensors and shooters across air, land and sea.

The compromise fiscal year 2020 defense spending bill includes $100 million for the Pentagon to establish a Joint Hypersonics Transition Office, marking a win for Indiana lawmakers who have pushed for the office to oversee a university consortium tasked with accelerating the development of hypersonic technologies and systems.