Page 16 - Future Combat Systems News Today

By Lauren C. Williams Apr 27, 2021 Divesting of legacy systems to make way for new technologies is expensive and at the heart of the Defense Departments budget debate. But even when modernization makes fiscal sense, there are key dilemmas DOD and Congress will have to overcome. For House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.), that, in some ways, comes down to the right incentives for both those inside the Pentagon and defense contractors. "You have to be incentivized. And if y...

By Nick Wakeman Apr 27, 2021 The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing new fabrics and protective equipment that can reduce the risk of chemical and biological threats to service members and responders. FLIR Systems was awarded a contract potentially worth more than $20 million under DARPA’s Personalized Protective Biosystems program. Under the PPB award, FLIR will rapidly develop fabrics with embedded catalysts and chemicals that can be incorporated into boots, gloves and e...

By Lauren C. Williams Apr 27, 2021 U.S. Space Command is launching a dedicated joint cyber center for better integration with U.S. Cyber Command, said its commander Gen. James Dickinson. "We are standing up a joint cyber center within the command as we speak," the general testified during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with the U.S. Strategic Command and Space Command to review the fiscal 2022 budget request and Future Years Defense program. "I also have, as a result of the command ...

Apr 27, 2021 The Defense Department launched the Commercial Virtual Remote environment to accommodate telework during the COVID-19 pandemic. It quickly became the largest Microsoft Teams deployment in the world and brought department-wide collaboration tools to DOD after years of less successful attempts. DOD employees have embraced the tools and the silo-spanning interactions they enable, but CVR was always intended to be a temporary fix. Therefore, the Defense Information Systems Agency is wo...

By Justin Katz Apr 27, 2021 The Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI on Monday issued a new advisory describing ways to counter tactics and techniques used by Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, the attackers behind the intrusion involving SolarWinds.   The advisory describes how the agencies noticed the SVR shift its tactics from using malware to targeting the cloud and email servers as a way to gather information, which...

Who Reaped the Soft Power Benefits from the U.S. Invasion of Iraq? The Iraq war was an unexpected gift to America’s adversaries. Here’s What You Need to Know: Every player of the popular video game Civilization knows to hit the save button before engaging in the risky, stupid invasion of foreign country. In the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it became apparent after the first few months that the war was not working out as its framers had envisioned.  The failure to find weapons of mas...

The White House is suspending the two interagency groups tasked with managing the governments response to the cybersecurity incidents involving SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange, citing improving trends in patching.

By Justin Katz Apr 21, 2021 Senate lawmakers on Wednesday continued to press Army Gen. Paul Nakasone for solutions that might prevent another massive cybersecurity intrusion into federal networks, but the director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command insisted the answer cannot be boiled down to a single authority or investment. “Senator, I’m not seeking legal authorities either for NSA or for U.S. Cyber Command,” Nakasone told Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) during a ...

The White House announced a range of sanctions against Russia, and security agencies warned of software vulnerabilities that Russian intelligence services are actively exploiting.

By Lauren C. Williams Apr 21, 2021 The Army is putting its new counter small unmanned aerial systems strategy to the test with its first demonstration at Yuma Proving Ground, focusing on how to limit damage when facing direct threats. Leland Browning, the deputy director for the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO), said the Army has completed its first small drone demo, testing intercept capabilities from three different platforms. This first demonstration, which was a jo...