Already, 3-D printing is capable of producing artificial limbs, guns and even cars. But what is limiting its wide-range use in military?

“Just because a new technology can provide a service, like printing new things, doesn’t mean it necessarily should provide us service,” said Brennan Hogan, program manager of LMI Research Institute, a private corporation that provides management consulting, research and analysis to governments.

A lot of concerns should be taken into account before massively applying this technology. For example, what’s the implication of applying it? How to ensure the quality? How to test different parts of a machine? How big the testing scale should be? And where to test — lab or market?

“Next two or three years would be additive manufacturing. And so the democratization of the ability of manufacturing,” said Jim Joyce, manufacturing strategy and operation specialist leader of Deloitte. “The breaking of the tyranny of the scale of capital machine or people who are manufacturing will be the basis of the profound revolution.”

“We do have the taxpayer in mind, but there seems to be a struggle between those of the current leadership on the Hill and their understanding of what the industrial bases is trying to do,” Hogan said.

The government’s procurement system provides lots of protections to taxpayers, but when it comes to additive manufacturing – which basically is able to reach all aspects of people’s life – some of the requirements don’t actually meet the needs of what things are being proposed.

“The potential for revolutionary advancement is absolutely there. Where we are, though, is that we have an acquisition system that is ill-suited to deal with that,” said James Kenyon, director of advanced programs and technology at Pratt & Whitney. “Why? Because these things cost taxpayers’ money.”

The current stage of additive manufacturing is still evolutionary as DoD is working on determining which hardware out of the hundreds of thousands should be replicated using this new technology instead of using them to do something logistically different.

However, we’ve already seen many 3-D printing use in military. The naval dental school has been printing bridges for people in their mouths for almost 30 years. The customization of an individual’s physiology and the lack of infection makes it a perfect alternative for traditional artificial teeth. It is also used in modification of weapons so that they are more customized for individuals, rather than mass produced. Another typical example for its military use is its rapid equipping ability. Whenever troops need something that they didn’t have at the moment, they can just print it out in a short time.

“The revolution comes by when you can certify the results of additive manufacturing,” Joyce said. “We should break the logistic pressure by unleash the technology in various ways.”

The OPM data breach resulted from a compromise of a highly privileged user’s credential, which also gave them access to the data center of the Department of Interior. Although no data was stolen from within DOI’s system, it triggered a large concern about the department’s computer network protection system.

According to the Federal Information Security Management Act, each deferral agency should develop, document and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security. But in reality, many federal agencies are using information protection services provided by other departments, such as DOI. The reason behind it is for economy purposes, according to Sylvia Burns, chief information officer of DOI. “You can gain economy from the scale. So it’s less expensive and more efficient for a customer to consume services from a provider like that.”

In 2005, OPM first became a customer of DOI’s data hosting service. DOI offers its IT infrastructure and host information, ensures the connection between DOI and OPM, and encrypts the connection between the two agencies.

“Shared service is a concept of creating a more robust, centralized point of service around specific activities,” Burns said, explaining the origin of this concept. According to Burns, a 2001 data breach in DOI resulted in disconnecting five DOI bureaus from the Internet for about six and half years. For the fear of being disconnected again, all the bureaus and offices in the department created separate protections for themselves. In that state, cooperation became hard because they were trying to protect themselves from being associated with trust data. In 2008, DOI reconnected those organizations back to Internet, and it turned out that they had difficulty just doing day-to-day work because of the security controls. That’s when the department began to create the segmented system.

Although this time’s data breach was not a result of technical failure, DOI hasn’t seriously treated the 3,000 critical vulnerabilities in its hundreds of publicly accessible computers that were identified by the Office of Inspector General. But viewing this issue from a broader perspective, OPM fell into a trap of an outdated model of cybersecurity system, which we call “line of sight governance.” This is a belief that I can walk down a corridor to where everybody is working and then I have the control of the security surrounding them. In the era of Internet when everyone is connected with the outside world, it’s just impossible to ensure their security by believing that internal system is absolutely secure.

The new model, called the BeyondCorp initiative, assumes that the internal network is as dangerous as the Internet. Using authentication, authorization and encryption, trust is moved from the network level to the device level. For example, Google staff are required to use a security key when connecting their computers to the Internet. When the security key is plugged into the USB portal, it automatically generates a one-time password. With this one-time password and the staff’s own username and password, the Internet is accessible.

“It’s relatively easy to get online in the company, but it can be very hard to access to the internal system when you are at home because a VPN is needed. And not everyone can get it unless you are at certain rank,” said Jiasong Sun, a Google employee. Some companies including Coca-Cola Co., Verizon Communications Inc. and Mazda Motor Corp. are taking a similar approach.

Several questions about DOI’s role in the breach remain unanswered, including whether or not other agencies may have been compromised, how many breaches took place at DOI and whether or not the attackers are still in the system. But this two factor authentication system is a possible solution that the DOI is considering to take after the data breach.

Rep. Will Hurd (R—TX) urges federal agencies and their CIOs to review past IG reports and address the vulnerabilities that have been identified. “We know what needs to be done, we just need to do it,” Hurd said.

CHANTILLY, Va. — It served Marines in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. For more than half a century, the CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter was a vital part of Marine operations — and on Saturday, the aircraft made its final flight.

“It’s a historic day,” said Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, deputy commandant for Marine Corps aviation, at a ceremony at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington, D.C. “We like to say in the Marines, ‘There is no better friend. No worse enemy.'”

A CH-46E, which Marines affectionately refer to as “Phrogs,” sat at the north ramp outside the Boeing Aviation Hangar here on Saturday next to its replacement: the MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

“The CH-46 has protected combat power, has rescued Marines that were wounded on the battlefield and it has helped in a lot of humanitarian, disaster relief efforts,” Davis said. “We are going to do that and more with MV-22.”

It was a bittersweet day for retired Lt. Col. Bill “Booby” Hatch, who flew the CH-46 during his entire 26-year career with the Marines, including tours in Vietnam.

“I think the best endorsement for the CH-46 as a combat assault helicopter will come from the infantry, the grunts,” Hatch said. “Anytime we got the call, we went. It did not matter what was going on or how much shooting was there. We were going to get the grunts out.”

While the CH-46 represents the past, the Osprey is the future. It goes twice as fast as the CH-46E Sea Knight, and it can transport nearly three times the payload.

“[The] MV-22 is … the most in-demand aviation platform in the entire [Defense Department],” Davis said. “It’s a phenomenal airplane and it’s even better because it has got ‘U.S. Marines’ painted on the side.”

The CH-46 will be loaned to the National Air and Space Museum and remain on display here before being moved to its permanent home, the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Quantico, Virginia.

“It allows American people to connect in a physical sense with our history,” Davis said. “They will not only connect with the machines, but they also get to learn about the incredible people, the incredible Marines and sailors who flew in the airplanes.”

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The Defense Leadership Forum, an organization specializing in defense issues, sponsored a summit Tuesday offering details and insights related to landing contracts with the Department of Defense.

Sylvia Burns, chief information officer of the Interior Department, which provides cybersecurity service to OPM and other federal agencies, said that centralizing data protection service – the model in place when the OPM data breach occurred in April – is affordable and efficient, but has a big downside. When the OPM data was compromised, the hacker also had access to the data center at Department of Interior.

As a consequence, the Defense Department wants tech companies, including small businesses, to propose cheaper, yet still reliable ways of protecting the Pentagon’s vast storehouse of sensitive information. The government still needs a competitive environment for cost reduction purposes, said Kenneth Bible, deputy chief information officer of the United States Marine Corps.

Shawn McCarthy, research director of International Data Corp., a company that provides advisory services on information technology, said the Defense Department’s information technology budget has actually decreased by 12 percent since 2006. That budget includes hardware and software development and IT service. But money spend on IT service – data hosting, data encryption and the like – has seen a significant increase, compared to the other two areas, McCarthy said.

The reason behind that is the emergence of the so-called 3rd platform era, which has cloud as its core. In the coming 3rd platform era, hackers may be able to reach trillions of IP-addressable devices, monitors, and sensors of billions of users through new applications. That’s why government is paying more attention to cybercrime.

It is going to be a big business opportunity for tech companies when the Pentagon’s budget on cloud service reaches to $21.1 billion next year. In order to have a win-win relationship with the government, “IT vendors need to keep a close eye on price points while government is becoming increasingly sophisticated when it comes to comparing price and functionality,” McCarthy said.

ARLINGTON, Va. — After 64 years, Army Sgt. Joseph M. Snock, who went missing in action during the Korean War, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery Monday.

“He was 21 years old when he was wounded, captured and died,” said Kathleen Baker, niece of Sgt. Snock. “He was a son for 21 years; he was a brother for 21 years, but he has been a soldier for 64 years. He needs to be here in Arlington.”

Snock’s identification was finally confirmed through his twin brother John Snock’s DNA, which matched perfectly with that of  Joseph M. Snock, soldier in the U.S. Army.

The Snock brothers – twins — were both in service during the Korean War.“Uncle John actually knew his brother was wounded. He went for help, and when he came back, Uncle Joe was gone,” said Baker.  John Snock survived, dying in 2007. Baker said another soldier, who survived the conflict, said Joseph Snock died during captivity.

The Department of Defense says North Korea gave the U.S. 208 boxes of human remains between 1990 and 1994. They are believed to contain more than 400 U.S. servicemen who fought during the war, including  Joseph Snock. But 7,846 Americans still remain unaccounted for from the Korean conflict.

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WASHINGTON – For 40 years, the United States has sent Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) into orbit, where they are producing images every 15 minutes in geosynchronous orbit, approximately 22,300 miles above Earth. They provide cloud, land, and ocean temperatures; monitor activities of the sun; and relay emergency locator beacon signals to assist with search and rescue activities.

The GOES R-Series, which is the next generation of GOES satellite, is scheduled to launch in March 2016. The joint project by NASA and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has not been without at least some delays and problems, which have been caused by both contracting and technical issues.

But GOES-R will offer a number of significant improvements in geostationary environmental data provided to the National Weather Service and the broader weather forecasting community.

This means users can get much higher resolution pictures of the clouds with faster update speed. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) can take advantage of it to forecast extreme weather more timely and accurately.

Major instruments on the GOES-R series of satellites will be:

• Advanced Baseline Imager. ABI is a huge leap forward over the current imager’s capabilities, which may bring $4.6 billion in lifetime operational benefit to The tracking of developing storms will be more accurate and the warning will be more timely and precise. ABI will allow more and better derived upper level wind observation to inform improved accuracy in global numerical models, however, it could be a challenge to fully exploit the capabilities of ABI in the early stage of the mission.

• Space Environment In-Situ Suite. SEISS provides critical information to assess electrostatic discharge risk and radiation hazard. They affect the communications system and cause other malfunctions to the satellite and astronauts.

• Solar Ultra Violet Imager. SUVI is an evolutionary improvement to the existing Solar X-Ray Imager (SXI) on the N/O/P series satellites. It allows NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SPC) to have an improved capability of solar storm monitoring and space weather predictions and warnings.

• Extreme Ultraviolet and X-Ray Irradiance Sensors. EXIS will be able to detect solar flares that could interrupt communications, reduce navigational accuracy and affect aerial activities. It is critical to monitoring solar radiant energy in the upper atmosphere. The power and telecom companies can take advantage of it to protect their operations.

• Geostationary Lightning Mapper. GLM will be the first-ever operational lightning mapper flown from geostationary orbit. It has major capability of predicting thunderstorms, warning lightning ground strikes, and potentially improves tornado warning lead time of up to 21 minutes. It is also expected to provide improved routing of commercial, military, and private aircraft over limited oceanic regions where observation of thunderstorm intensity are scarce.

One of the biggest challenges at the beginning of the project was contract management. The risk and increasing cost have long been a concern due to the slow progress in the early contracting phase and development delays, according to one private contractor who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was formerly involved in the project.

In 2013, the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that found NOAA had delayed finalizing negotiations for almost a year to two years on its six significant changes to the core ground system contract.

Because of these delays, the government lost the opportunity to negotiate costs on an estimated $79.6 million, according to the watchdog agency of the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA. In 2013, the ABI, GLM, and the spacecraft overran their contracts by $264 million, $86 million and $11 million respectively, resulting from contractors’ underestimating the effort and technical complexity of the instruments, immature designs, and difficulty managing subcontractors’ cost increases and schedule slips, according to OIG reports.

The latest OIG report also points out that the revised launch schedule will still pose a challenge for the program to meet, due to past schedule performance and a complex integration and test process. Those delays could leave the GOES-R on-orbit constellation without a backup satellite for 29 months out of a 33-month period from April 2015 to January 2018.

However, the former project source said, delays in the early stage may not be a bad thing because they are designed to help avoid significant problems that plagued past satellite projects.

“Thankfully separate contracts for the instruments, spacecraft, and ground system as opposed to the discredited NPOESS (The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System) one-contract-for-all failed approach,” according to the former contractor. He said this single-source mode of contract, combined with the absence of oversight by the Goddard contract office, caused soaring costs, delays and other problems that ultimately result in the implosion of the NPOESS contract.

“It was a disaster until NOAA finally pulled the plug on it,” said the source.

Going forward, the agency wanted to avoid a reoccurrence. “The decision was finally made to return to the traditional procurement methods for GOES-R,’’ said the source. “Thank God.”

Given the nature of complicated satellite contracts, GOES-R is not perfect.

According to the latest OIG report, the lack of experienced engineers for key positions in the early stage contributed to schedule delays and core ground system contract cost increase. NOAA replies that they “will continue to review the effectiveness of efforts to ensure staffing for the GOES-R and other programs are properly allocated to meet the mission.”

The measures taken to mitigate the risk and cost, and to prevent further delay, is basically to sacrifice part of the functionality of the whole system. In 2006, NOAA decided to reduce the scope and technical complexity of the GOES-R program for the expectation of huge cost raise.

For example, the Hyperspectral Environmental Suite (HES) was selected to remove from the baseline program because its main function – atmospheric sounding – is not the core requirement for the mission which is improving weather forecasts and warnings. Indeed, HES would have new capabilities in coastal ocean imaging, but data can be obtained via other ocean satellites.

The scope of the GOES-R Series Program was established in 2007 and has met all the requirements. “The program has been providing sample data to users through our Proving Ground project in preparation for the new capabilities for a number of years, and the users are very excited about the new capabilities available once GOES-R becomes operational,” said Leslie.

This May, Harris Corporation, the prime contractor of the ground segment, has successfully completed the final two tests. The ground system is now ready for use after nearly 500 defects were removed since 2014. In addition, the GOES-R ground segment architecture now has a more flexible design after a recommendation by OIG. It will support additional requirements in the future.

On June 3, Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor of the flight segment has completed assembly the satellite. It is now undergoing extreme weather condition testing about what the satellite might experience in space.

Once launched, the GOES-R satellite will be placed into an orbit where the spacecraft and instruments will go through post-launch checkout for approximately six months followed by an extended product validation phase with observational data provided through the 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season, according to Leslie.

Once that process is complete, the data will be accessed by forecasters in the public and private sectors for monitoring hurricane tracks and winds in the Atlantic, and severe storms in the Midwest, said Nancy Colleton, President of Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. The data will eventually be integrated into storm scale forecast models that will significantly reduce the time need to identify weather conditions.

However, Colleton said that it can be big challenge for the community to sift through the great amount of data – approximately 3.5 terabytes per day – to fully exploit the satellite’s capability. The decision on where to place the satellite will be made after analysis of the data from the GOES-R instruments and an assessment of the performance of the existing GOES satellites and in consultation with the needs of the National Weather Service.

“GOES-R will be game changing. There is incredible enthusiasm in the community for what this satellite will deliver and how forecasts will be improved,” Colleton said.