First off, the National Parks Service posted this on their Twitter account reminding everyone of all the monuments and parks that they manage. This evening, the National Mall, managed by NPS, will be host to fireworks in Washington, DC.

National parks are home to many of the nation’s most beloved monuments, historic sites, & landscapes. They tell stories from the road to revolution & creation of a new nation, to the journey of people continuing the fight for the freedom & liberty that our nation was founded on. pic.twitter.com/AG6T7Kf7ga

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) July 4, 2022

The armed forces also wished everyone a great holiday:

Celebrating independence on watch around the globe, and at home. 🇺🇲⚓️ #HappyIndependenceDay #4thofJuly pic.twitter.com/dW3R9ljqwh

— U.S. Navy (@USNavy) July 4, 2022

Happy 4th of July from the world’s greatest Air Force 💥 pic.twitter.com/Mw6qxkidx2

— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) July 4, 2022

We wish you all a very happy, but most importantly safe, 4th of July! 🇺🇸 🎆#coastguard #4thofJuly #semperparatus pic.twitter.com/vX0JowIACf

— U.S. Coast Guard (@USCG) July 4, 2022

#DYK
John Adams believed July 2nd was the correct date to celebrate and would reportedly turn down invitations to appear at July 4th events in protest.

Adams & Thomas Jefferson both died July 4, 1826 – the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. pic.twitter.com/MnVkqUnQdB

— U.S. Army (@USArmy) July 4, 2022

Elsewhere in the government, the National Archives and Records Administration celebrated in style. Pictured below is the Acting Archivist of the United States, Debra Steidel Wall standing with a few costumed colonists.

In Boston, the USS Constitution set sail in celebration of Independence Day.

In Poznan, Poland, U.S. soldiers celebrated with lunch and a cake.

In Asunción, Paraguay, Marines prepared for an Independence Day celebration at the U.S. Embassy.

The new policy states that service members who commit sexual assault will be subject to immediate initiation of discharge procedures. Only in very few circumstances can an airman or guardian be considered for an exception.

Those exceptions are what DAF is updating; under previous policy there were more situations where assaulters would have an opportunity to stay in the service.

Exceptions are now strengthened for and bar exceptions when an airman or guardian assaults a child or if that person has a prior assault or harassment charge.

“Sexual assault is incompatible with our core values, the Guardian Ideal, and military service. These revisions will significantly improve our ability to discharge those unworthy of calling themselves airmen and guardians,” said Air Force Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones. “Our policies must set clear expectations and consequences for the force. Everything we do, and everything we say communicates the value that we place, or do not place, on one’s service.”

There are also factors that DAF will no longer consider when making an exception. Those include personal, family or financial circumstances, good military character and medical or mental health condition.

What DAF will still consider, according to the new separation guidance, is if the member’s continued presence is consistence with “the interest of DAF in maintaining proper disciple, good order, leadership, morale and a culture of respect for the safety, dignity and personal boundaries of all service members.”

The change adds mission-focused criteria to the exception consideration.

“These new objective criteria reflect our commitment to justice for sexual assault survivors and accountability of offenders,” added Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. “We are determined to maintain a culture of respect for the safety, dignity and personal boundaries of every airman, guardian and civil servant.”

DAF and the Defense Department are putting a large emphasis on combating sexual assault. DAF is asking Congress for increased funds in 2023 to strengthen sexual assault and integrated violence prevention programs.

Nearly a year ago, DoD announced it was changing policy to address issues with its sexual assault and prosecution process.

DoD is in the process of removing sex crimes and related crimes like domestic and child abuse from the military’s oversight and giving them to independent civilian agencies. DoD added sexual harassment as an offense in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and is creating offices in each military department to handle the prosecution of special crimes with appropriate legal oversight and guidance from the Pentagon.

Military personnel analysts told Federal News Network the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case could make it harder for service members and civilians in states banning abortion to seek reproductive health care and could jeopardize their privacy.

The repercussions of the case make it especially trying for people who want an abortion and work in a career field where their bodily fitness is paramount and where stigmas against pregnancies are still prevalent. Despite efforts from DoD to give service members an opportunity to start a family, take parental leave and allow troops to recover fully from childbirth, pregnancy can still be disruptive to careers. That compounds with the same stressors those in the civilian world face around pregnancy and abortion.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on June 24 that DoD will continue to provide seamless access to reproductive healthcare as permitted by federal law.

The Pentagon released its first guidance on the issue four days later.

“Federal law restricts the department from performing abortions or paying to have them performed unless the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest,” Gilbert Cisneros, Defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

The Supreme Court decision does not prevent DoD from performing those “covered abortions” in its medical facilities, even in states where abortion in any form is banned.

Things become more complex for service members who are not in those situations, but decide an abortion is right for them.

As of June 30, seven states have banned abortions. A total of 17 states are expected to ban most abortions if legal challenges in those states do not hold up. An additional six states would restrict abortions, such as Florida which bans abortion after 15 weeks.

Some pregnant service members seeking uncovered abortions would have to travel hundreds of miles to find care.

However, the Pentagon’s hands are largely tied from doing more to aid service members in those cases due to federal law, Katherine Kuzminski, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security told Federal News Network.

Cisneros’s memo states service members can still take leave to find abortion care.

“Access to emergency convalescent leave remains unchanged for all service members,” he wrote. DoD civilian employees may continue to request sick leave and other forms of leave as necessary to meet the health care needs of the employee and his or her family members.”

Cisneros added that the implications of the decision are complicated and “must be evaluated against various state laws, together with the views of the Department of Justice.”

Taking that leave can be a complex and time sensitive issue for service members, however.

“If a person needs to leave the area for this type of medical care, then there has to be a conversation with the chain of command because you can’t just leave,” Tammy Smith, former Army personnel chief, told Federal News Network. “There’s a leave form where there’s a process, there’s accountability, there’s all these things unique to our military community.”

The bottom line is that service members must get permission from their commanding officer before taking time off to go get an abortion in another state. Otherwise, they risk criminal punishment.

“The leadership answer to that is that there needs to be some signaling and some conversation,” Smith said. “Commanders need to be speaking up and saying that there is a place where you can have these conversations. These are difficult conversations to talk about human sexuality. That’s one of the most awkward conversations that you can maybe have with somebody who is a coworker or somebody is a member of your squad or platoon.”

Kuzminski said leave requests can lead to uncomfortable situations. If someone needs to take leave quickly to get an abortion, they may need to disclose that they are pregnant to their superior officer to explain the reasoning for the leave.

“The decision rests with the unit level commander,” she said. “There could be challenges there as well depending on the needs of the military and the needs of the unit. It could also bring into question the individual commanders flexibility for such a decision.”

Another issue for pregnant service members taking leave to travel to another state for an abortion is the incurred costs. DoD is prohibited from reimbursing service members for getting that care. Travel plus the procedure and prescription drugs can easily get into the thousands of dollars.

“I don’t necessarily know that DoD has much in the way of options,” Kuzminski said in terms of financially aiding service members.

The costs could be unsustainable for many service members. In 2021, Feeding America estimated that 160,000 active duty service members were food insecure due to poverty.

The organization estimated that nearly 30% of junior ranks were food insecure, the same service members who are in their childbearing years. E-1s to E-4s make between $19,000 and $41,000 a year.

Smith said there may be some relief for service members. Organizations like Army Emergency Relief (AER), a nonprofit that offers grants and loans to soldiers for emergencies, could provide funds. Federal News Network reached out to AER, but they did not respond by the time of publication.

The Dobbs ruling is just one of the handful of recent battles between conservative state laws and the military this year.

In March, the Air Force offered medical and legal help to military families living in states clamping down on LGBTQ+ and transgender children.

“The health, care and resilience of our Department of the Air Force personnel and their families is not just our top priority — it’s essential to our ability to accomplish the mission,” said Air Force Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones. “We are closely tracking state laws and legislation to ensure we prepare for and mitigate effects to our airmen, guardians and their families. Medical, legal resources, and various assistance are available for those who need them.”

The center will focus on tactical autonomy, meaning systems that act independently under the bounded authority of human support. The systems support missions like situational awareness, force protection, cyber defense and logistics. The center will also focus on system collaboration and man-machine learning.

The collaboration will be the first academic research center affiliated with the Air Force and the 15th connected to the Defense Department.

“It’s a gap in our suite of research institutes right now that we don’t have one focused on this area of autonomy,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at the Pentagon Monday. “I’m very focused on the threat of Chinese military modernization and what that means in terms of our viability of our forces for the future. Part of the future of the military is going to be autonomy, there’s no doubt in my mind to that. We’re seeing increasing evidence, evidence for almost in every conflict that occurs.”

The Air Force is committing $12 million per year for the next five years to the collaboration. DoD will be adding an extra $2 million per year.

The Air Force and DoD are currently working with the 11 HCBUs that qualify as high-research activity schools as designated by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education to decide which school will lead the center. That school will be responsible for building a consortium of educational institutions to conduct research.

The collaboration is also working a secondary goal of increasing diversity and inclusion, a mission DoD has been working on since the national response to the murder of George Floyd.

“This is an opportunity to tap into universities that have enormous amount of capability in science and technology,” Kendall said. “The HBCUs put out about 30% of the scientists and engineers that are that are produced by that community.”

DoD will also work on growing the STEM community within HBCUs. The center will not work like other academic research consortia. The Pentagon wants the consortium to build capabilities, but also build its research abilities.

“We understand that there are historical inequities, and we want help them build capacity, as well as deliver results to us,” said Victoria Coleman, DoD’s chief scientist. “We want to advance their efforts to move at least one, hopefully more than one, institution from the Carnegie Foundation Research Classification from ‘R2,’ which means a high research institution, to an ‘R1,’ which is very high research.”

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This year’s Secretary of Defense Environmental Award winner in the environmental quality individual team category went to the Air Force Radioactive Recycling and Disposal Team. As part of the 88th Civil Engineer Group, AFFRAD handles low-level radioactive recycling and low-level mixed waste management in the Air Force and provides radioactive material recycling for the entire Defense Department. To learn more about this mission, Federal News Network’s Eric White spoke with Zack Olds, AFRRA team supervisor, and Chris Anthony, radioactive material program manager, on  Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript: 

Chris Anthony: We’re the belly button for the United States Air Force on all radioactive waste in recycling. So that covers Space Force, Air Reserve, Air National Guard and active duty worldwide. Basically, our mission is to see what we can recycle first. Does the radioactive material have some sort of use that we don’t have to dispose of? So we always look to see what we can recycle, and anything that that’s not viable for reuse, then that’s what we actually send for waste.

Eric White: And where does most of the radioactive material come from, not that I’m not trying to divulge any secrets or anything, but what how do you guys come about it? What steps are you guys in the process?

Chris Anthony: We are actually listed in several Air Force manuals or, I guess the Air Force equivalent to regulations. And even in Department of Defense instructions and things like that, as the disposition outlet. So when things are being trimmed out of the system, and if they are flagged as being radioactive, something like a compass, then the supply system will recognize that and relay that information to whatever installation RSO is trying to turn this stuff in, that they need to go through AFRRAD for the disposition of that. And I might add, we are also the recycler for Department of Defense. So we don’t handle any of their waste, but things that we know we can recycle like compasses and exit signs and things like that. We will take from specifically the Army since they are the lead agent for low level radioactive waste, and they use us for the recycling part. So a lot of this relies on every installation’s radiation safety officer to be aware of what’s on their base, and whenever it needs to be turned in, that they know where to go. And we’re outlined in regulations and manuals and things like that.

Zack Olds: And that, too, I’d add, basically what Chris was alluding to is these guys are plugged in with the radiation safety officers across the Air Force. So they are a resource for those RSO’s. And so they provide consultative services to those individuals. So because they’re specifically listed, because AFRRAD – I say “they” – but because AFRRAD is plugged into that community listed in the Air Force manuals and instructions and DoD instructions, they’re inherently part of that disposition process. So they are the subject matter experts as a result. And so they’re regularly consultated for that types of questions that come up, with respect to radiation material, radioactive material disposition.

Eric White: So basically, they know you guys can handle any kind of waste. So they come to you even when it’s not you directly handling material, do they ask you for consulting and things like that as well?

Chris Anthony: By Air Force regulation, all disposition has to go through our office. Whether we handle it directly, like remediation waste, where there may be a facility that needs to be cleaned up or demolished or whatever. We wouldn’t necessarily handle that waste, physically. But we provide the consultation to those agencies to get rid of the waste, specifically radioactive, right? So we have to know. We keep the records for the Air Force. So anything that’s recycled or waste, it goes through our office and we do manage those records.

Eric White: Who’s actually handling this stuff. I mean, you guys are pretty small team. Are you guys putting on the gloves and grabbing the thing? Are you just telling who should be handling it?

Chris Anthony: Well, it’s it’s not as glamorous as like “Silkwood” or something like that. But there are four of us. We have the capability to go worldwide to assist in the installation that would have things that we couldn’t necessarily package and ship back to Wright-Patterson [Air Force Base], but we would actually go out and inventory and package it and then get a contract broker in to ship it out to a waste processor, or a disposal site. Mainly our personal protective equipment is gloving, lab coats, things like that. Very rarely do we have to crawl into the Tyvek suit and respirators. So it’s not as – we have the precautions in place. And there’s a lot of training that’s involved with that, as you can imagine.

Eric White: And Zack, what is your role as far as environmental compliance comes? Are you, the job title describe it pretty well?

Zack Olds: Fairly well. So AFRRAD is just one of the programs that I supervise. I’m also over the hazardous material, hazardous waste program, solid wastes and toxics, infectious waste programs. So I’ve got a team of folks that manage each of those. AFRRAD is unique, it’s unique to Wright-Patt, unique to the Air Force. And so it’s kind of, it’s a fun diversion from the standard environmental media programs that I deal with.

Eric White: Yeah, what are just a few of the considerations you have to have when dealing with radioactive material, not just around Wright-Patterson, butmin other projects that you’re working on?

Zack Olds: So, obviously, the radioactivity and the exposure, that these guys have a potential hazard, for us is a consideration. That’s unique to AFRRAD. It’s essentially the considerations I have, that are unique to AFRRAD is really the radioactivity and the exposure that these guys can potentially, be. So that’s the uniqueness that I have to consider with AFRRAD. I mean, they deal with low level radioactivity, so for the most part, they’re not really dealing with things that that can be an acute hazard. But definitely, the chronic hazards and chronic exposure is a consideration that we have to be mindful of in the work that we do.

Eric White: Yeah, Chris, can you expand a little bit upon, handling that material and what that’s like?

Chris Anthony: I’ve been doing this close to 40 years. So it’s normal to me. There’s respect. And as long as you respect what you’re dealing with, things work out. I always tell Zach – he has a chemistry background, I, my education, my major was in chemistry, but chemicals scare me to death. And so I can deal with radioactive material. And, we kind of laugh at that. And I guess it’s all perspective. So, you respect what you’re doing, respect what you’re dealing with, and ultimately, you get the job done, but being very mindful of the protection of the people that are performing the function, protect the environment and protect the base populace, and community. And that’s our goal.

Eric White: Forty years, I mean, I imagine you’ve had to see some changes in the safety procedures. Were things a little bit more cowboy back in the day, or were they still pretty tight?

Chris Anthony: I don’t think things have become more cowboy. I mean, there’s always that sense of respect, but it’s more scientific now. Equipment, instrumentation, requirements are regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And so we’re able to track doses better. We’re able to, better instrumentation and detection and things like that. So in that respect, it’s gotten a lot better than 40 years ago, but as far as the safety aspect that’s always been there.

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SAN DIEGO – The government hasn’t had it easy when it comes to predicting what world events will be thrown its way over the past few years, and in turn, that has an impact on budgeting, businesses and their supply chain.

The Air Force and other military organizations are dealing with a handful of “black swans” as Maj. Gen. Camron Holt, Air Force deputy assistant secretary for contracting, called them. The war in Ukraine, supply chain shortages, COVID and inflation are all throwing a wrench in pricing and contracting.

Holt said the Air Force is exploring multiple options to ensure the service gets the products it wants and helps industry where it is struggling along the way.

One option that could benefit both sides is to change the way the Air Force approaches supply chains.

“Running inventories on the ragged edge of how low you can get it is always best for a balance sheet and a business,” Holt told Federal News Network. “But, when you have the possibility of the several black swans coming or the dynamics of inflation or war in Ukraine or other disruptive influences, I think that there’s ways to start examining our supply chains in ways that we haven’t done before.”

Holt said the service can take the burden off suppliers by using tools that analyze the fragility of supply chain and then directly funding additional inventories beyond what would be normally acceptable.

The process wouldn’t go as far stockpiling goods, but it would add some cushion for the Air Force and suppliers to ensure airmen get what they need and businesses aren’t hit too hard on their bottom line.

“It may not be very expensive, but the resilience that it adds in the supply chain without harming the balance statement of that company could be enormous,” Holt said. “If we analyze and understand our supply chains better, then I think we’ll see a lot of those kinds of opportunities to improve the resilience and drop the cost while companies maintain a healthy profit.”

While keeping larger inventories might help supply chains become more resilient, Holt said government needs to rethink its budgeting process in general if the military wants to keep up with a world that is changing faster than ever.

Holt said the military’s demands to buy faster are in high demand, but the ability to do that runs up against constitutional and congressional resistance.

Congress has already charged the Defense Department with looking at its planning, programing, budgeting and execution (PPBE) process. The 2022 Defense authorization act sets up a commission to review how the Pentagon plans out its financial situation.

“Let’s say you find a great prototype someplace and you want to buy it. Well, did you have the foresight two years ago to plan it into your POM? If you didn’t, guess what? You have no authority to buy it,” Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering said in an interview with Federal News Network last fall. “And let’s say you’re going to plan it into your POM. Well, in two years time, maybe you’ll get the money, but the technology is already several years old. The PPBE process is too sequential, too linear, too old-fashioned. It works really well if you’re moving at a very slow, very methodical, very risk-averse pace. But in today’s world, when competition against your adversaries is key, it’s got to change.”

Holt said changing the PPBE process, while staying true to the statues of oversight may be critical to ensuring U.S. military dominance.

“I think the budgeting process definitely needs to change. I’m really proud of the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee for recognizing that,” he said. “I think the appropriators need to be involved in that discussion as well. The effort is to make sure that we don’t defy our own constitution. I think there are private sector models that can change incentives and keep insight and oversight solid, but modernize that oversight in a way that at first may be a little bit concerning, but I think would be effective.”

Holt noted that rivals like China can move funds quickly, while the United States has a time consuming process.

“I’m actually more urgently interested in the oversight inside of execution year,” Holt said. “I do understand these arguments. I know that the executive branch hasn’t always been the greatest actors in terms of meeting the will of Congress in terms of what buckets of money we spend and how we spend it. I don’t think that friction is going to change. I do think that we as a nation have got to start thinking about how do we allow for some judgment and some decision making at the point of attack at the point of execution. Where we can avoid holes in maybe dozens of acquisition programs that we did not anticipate? Can we rapidly move money to an emerging technology we had no idea existed a year ago?”

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The return of in-person conferences still is a bit weird. As most attendees will say, it’s great to see people in person, but it’s less fun to wear “real” clothes and shoes. The “business on the top and vacation on the bottom (dress shirt and shorts)” doesn’t work well when you are in a hotel or conference center for most people.

Maybe the best part of the return to in-person events, at least for intrepid reporters, is the ability to ask follow-up questions after a presentation or speech. That is when you turn a story that is likely to be a lemon into sweet lemonade.

At the recent Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference sponsored by ACT-IAC in Cambridge, Maryland, the lemonade was flowing thanks to the bevy of speakers who were willing to talk about all the good things happening in their agency.

From Army chief information officer Raj Iyer offering an update on his digital transformation efforts to Sonny Hashmi, the commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service in the General Services Administration, talking about the latest contract to buy cloud services, to Stacie Alboum talking about her new job at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as deputy director of enterprise strategy, the news flowed like, well lemonade.

But here are three items you may have missed from the event.

AFWERX moving back to DC

The Air Force’s innovation arm missed the Washington, D.C. metro area after all.

AFWERX closed its offices in Arlington, Virginia during the pandemic, figuring it would use its offices in Las Vegas and Austin, Texas as places to recruit innovative companies.

But like in Godfather Part III, AFWERX may have been screaming  “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” to Washington, D.C.

Garrett Custons, a Spark cell director at AFWERX, said the organization is looking for new space in the D.C. metro area.

“It’s really a blank slate with what it could look like,” Custons said. “We want to build out an incubator in the D.C. area. We’d love it to be co-located with other organizations in the government innovator space. We don’t just the space, but a place where tools and products can be tested.”

AFWERX, which the Air Force launched in July 2017, focuses on accelerating agile and affordable capabilities by teaming innovative technology developers in the private sector with Airman and Guardian talent.  In 2020, the Air Force split AFWERX into three different branches: AFVentures, Spark and Prime. The Spark branch is focused on empowering innovation at the operational edge.

Custons said the decision to rethink the need for an office in the D.C. area is based on two factors. The first is internal growth of staff. The second is number of vendors in D.C. metro area.

“This is where the decision makers are,” he said. “It’s a logical progression of the lifecycle of AFWERX to help companies get into the federal market.”

AFWERX has money set-aside for the office space, but isn’t against the idea of sharing space with other agencies or innovation cells.

Custons said one option would be to share space with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the National Security Innovation Network in Arlington, Virginia.

“If a government organization has office space, we’d like to talk to them. It’s hard to know what is available and what’s out there,” he said. “We are talking to the General Services Administration because they have collaboration space that isn’t being used as much as they thought, so maybe partnership play there.”

Commerce BIS sprint to the cloud

You’d think moving to the cloud would by now would be passé. Agencies have been talking about it for more than a decade.

For the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, cloud services represent an entirely new way of doing business.

Mike Palmer, associate chief information officer for BIS, said the goal of moving to the cloud is, of course, IT modernization. But the bigger win will for BIS is how the cloud services will free up data and break down silos.

“We’ve focused over the last six months on upgrading our infrastructure. In January, we decided to take our entire infrastructure to the cloud and out of this archaic on-premise based infrastructure,” he said. “By July 1, our six month move of our entire infrastructure to the cloud should be complete. In the meantime, in parallel, we are starting to do some interesting things with data. It gives us more flexibility to make quicker decisions.”

Palmer said BIS is launching a pilot program around a data warehouse and data sharing platform to improve how they work with the intelligence and law enforcement communities as well as conducting a pilot to take some of its data from licensing offers and turn it into export control impact.

“One of the things we believe in is trying things on a smaller scale and expand it from there so  quick, small investment to prove out a concept,” he said. “The next phase of our product lifecycle modernization effort is to do a lot of user research over the summer as part of our enterprise modernization activities.”

A BIS spokesperson offered a few more details by email.

The spokesperson said the move to the cloud will set the foundation for a broader modernization journey that includes creating new data sharing capabilities, public-facing digital services and a zero trust cybersecurity architecture.  The move to the cloud is expected to improve BIS’s operational resiliency and security, reduce costs, and provide modern tools for developing new software applications that will improve the BIS customer experience.

Palmer said at the event that one of the biggest challenges for BIS is getting the workforce comfortable with using cloud services and no longer being in a physical environment.

BIS expects the infrastructure modernization to save money, but Palmer said the CIO’s office still is finalizing those details.

Coast Guard less disconnected

The Coast Guard Commandant’s tech revolution will not be televised, but it now will be on Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

That’s right, major cutters now have enough bandwidth to use video teleconference platforms.

Brian Campo, the Coast Guard’s deputy CIO, said the service recently upgraded the communication bandwidth for all major cutters, which are out to sea 180 to 200 days a year.

“The Coast Guard has been going out with Navy fleets for the last several years into places like Indo-PACOM and around the horn of Africa, but also going up into the Arctic. These are places were communications are really challenging. So one of the thing we have been trying to do is upgrade equipment, working with industry partners and looking at different communications links we could use,” he said. “One of the most amazing things have done in about the last year is we’ve doubled connectivity to the major cutters. What we have been able to do is upgrade them so that they have enough bandwidth so now on the morale side in some of the mess decks and personnel areas, they can actually get what we would call ‘dirty’ internet to be able to send email back to loved ones. Just recently we just doubled their internet again so they can actually do video teleconferences using Teams and Zoom to actually reach back and talk with their loved ones.”

Former Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz, who retired on June 1, made the increase of bandwidth to cutters a central part of his Tech Revolution plan.

The Tech Revolution Plan includes four other priorities: Data to decisions, software, mobility and the cloud, cyber readiness and command, control, communications, computers, cyber and intelligence (C5I).

Campo said the Coast Guard now is adding two new lines of effort command and control and navigation.

“Each of those two new systems are game changing to the Coast Guard. They are systems we have been leveraging from the Defense Department that we will be retiring in the next few years,” he said. “We are trying to build out some new replacements for those systems and taking a different approach. We are leveraging what we did in the first half of the tech revolution bringing in things like data, making data part of what we do for our C2 systems, making sure as we develop navigational systems we are leveraging the technology through commercial satellite communications. We are thinking about how we can use artificial intelligence to actually build out navigation systems that can manage these over congested ports and work with the shippers to give them more information as they come into a port.”

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The Air Force’s decision to pick Huntsville, Alabama, as the new headquarters of U.S. Space Command has been controversial from the start. And a new review by the Government Accountability Office says the selection process had a lot of problems. GAO doesn’t opine on whether Huntsville was the right or wrong decision. But the office says the Air Force made some fundamental missteps when it deviated from its own base selection framework. Instead, the ad hoc version it used for the Space Command selection had serious credibility and transparency problems. Elizabeth Field is director of Defense Capability and Management Issues at GAO. And she joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk more about the findings.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: Elizabeth, thanks for doing this. And before we dive into the bulk of the report, I want to set this up a bit by just pointing out to listeners that there is kind of two different versions of this report. The publicly releasable one does not have as much detail in it, because the Defense Department considered a lot of those facts and figures to be privileged and did not want them in the final report. First of all, how unusual is that in the context of this sort of information, and then maybe you could describe a little bit to us what’s not in the final report?

Elizabeth Field: Sure. It’s it’s not that unusual for us to issue two versions of a report, one that is sensitive or even classified, that is available to members of Congress, and then one that is fully unclassified and available to the public. And it’s certainly not unusual. And in a situation like this one, where we were looking at a very sensitive strategic basing decision for the department to designate information as being sensitive. In this case, some of the information that we have had to omit from the report includes things like the number and names of candidates that the Air Force would have considered under an amended enterprise definition. Certainly some of the specific numerical candidate scores and rankings, that the Air Force concluded where their rankings during part of the process have been omitted. And also certain input to some deliberations that happened before a meeting at the White House in January 2021, that we talked about in our report. So those are just a few examples.

Jared Serbu: Got it. I just wanted to make that clear before we dig into the meat here. Okay. And then as far as the meat, essentially, as I understand what’s going on here is Space Command basically borrowed the Air Force’s strategic basing process and then sort of partway through the Air Force modified that process, essentially, at the direction of the Secretary of Defense. Have I got that about right?

Elizabeth Field: Pretty much. So the Air Force does have an instruction. It’s called an Air Force instruction, that guides strategic basic decisions. And it was a process that it was following for the most part, up until about March 2020. Then to your point, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper directed the Air Force to reopen the process and revise the process to model the Army’s future command basing process that it had used. I should note that that process was also not consistent with an existing policy. So there really wasn’t policy that the Air Force was or could follow at that point. The memo from Secretary Esper essentially superseded the Air Force instruction.

Jared Serbu: But I think the point here is that the Air Force could still have built a process or followed a process that used all of the best practices that GAO’s identified whenever you’re doing any kind of analysis of alternatives. And you found some serious shortcomings there. You want to briefly take us through what those were?

Elizabeth Field: Sure, well, and first, I want to very much affirm your question about whether the Air Force still could have followed best practices? And the answer is absolutely. And in fact, that’s the reason that GAO created these best practices back in 2016. We recognize that there was not a broadly recognized set of guidelines that federal government agencies or even private sector entities could use to help consider different options and alternatives when they were faced with a question like the one that the Air Force was faced with in this instance. So we applied what we call our analysis of alternatives criteria to the Air Force’s process for selecting the SPACECOM-preferred location. And what we found, were quite a number of weaknesses. So those criteria that I just mentioned, are grouped into four characteristics of a high quality, reliable process. And those characteristics are comprehensive, well documented, credible, and unbiased.

And we went through a fairly methodical approach of applying our criteria where we actually come up with a numerical score that we can give to the Air Force for each of those characteristics. And what we found is that the Air Force substantially met the comprehensive characteristics. So in that case, there were some good things that the Air Force did, but it only partially met The well documented and unbiased characteristics, and it minimally met the credible characteristic. And just to give you a few examples of some of the problems that we identified, the Air Force changed the definition of some of the criteria that it used over time as it was trying to evaluate the candidate locations. The Air Force also changed how it was weighting different criteria, which is important because you want to maintain however you are weighting different criteria across the board. There was no independent review conducted of the process, which typically the Air Force would do, and so on, and so forth. So there really were quite a lot of problems.

Jared Serbu: I wonder to what extent if at all, the Air Force deserves a bit of a pass here in the sense that they were directed to deviate from what would have been their normal practice, again, by the secretary, in a pretty heavily politicized environment, and in a situation that’s really kind of a one-off for them, right? Because they’re not making a basing decision for one of their own bases. They’re acting as the executive agent for someone else. There’s a lot of uniqueness about this event that in some ways, it’s understandable that they would deviate from their own processes, isn’t it?

Elizabeth Field: Well, it’s certainly understandable that they might deviate from their own process. I think where things went south is that in doing so, they made some mistakes that are really pretty fundamental problems that if you don’t have those sort of boxes checked, you’re gonna have a problem at the end of the day. But that is why we, our recommendation in this report is that moving forward, the Air Force, establish guidance that is consistent with our practices that it can apply to future basing decisions such as this one, so that it doesn’t run into the same problems that it did this time around.

Jared Serbu: Well one thing I do want to make clear is it didn’t seem like any of the people that you talked to, or that were stakeholders in this process, had the sense that Huntsville was a bad choice in the end. It was always considered among the top tier of possible locations for Space Command. So whatever one thinks of the process and how the Air Force got there, there’s not really a risk, that Space Command is going to end up in a bad place for its needs. Is that fair?

Elizabeth Field: That is fair. So there are six final candidate locations, all of them are considered what is termed reasonable alternatives to the selected location, meaning, any of those six the Air Force has determined could meet the mission need.

Jared Serbu: But the process is still problematic, right? And I think you make this point in your conclusion that the public needs to have confidence that the process is sound, so that things don’t go off the rails next time and where a bad choice really could be made.

Elizabeth Field: That’s right. I mean, ideally, even if someone disagrees with the final decision and doesn’t like the location that was picked for reasons that are pretty obvious, they should still have competence that the process was handled appropriately and responsibly. And that just didn’t happen here.

Jared Serbu: What more specifically, could the Air Force do? I mean, did they need to design and write down a process that is tailorable for something like this, where they’re called upon to go outside of the way they would normally use a basing process for their own bases, for their own needs?

Elizabeth Field: Well, our best practices that we recommend they adopt in guidance for future processes allow for tailoring to whatever the question is that you’re approaching. And so, and this is really important to point out, a certain amount of professional judgment is always going to be part of any process like this, and our criteria account for that. So it’s really more about making sure that you have a methodology that you have clearly defined from the outset that you don’t deviate from, in the middle of the process, that you clearly document, the assumptions that you’ve made, the methodology that you’re using, the decisions that you’re making along the way. And then you do things like having an independent review to ensure impartiality, and conducting something called a sensitivity review, where you test the assumptions in your model and see how changes to those assumptions affect your outcomes. The Air Force really didn’t do any of those things.

Jared Serbu: And I think maybe this is just a piece that’s not in the final report. But I think one of the big missing pieces were cost differentials between possible alternatives, how much they would save or spend if they went with a different location.

Elizabeth Field: That’s right. So one of our best practices is that the body that is conducting the process considered sort of full lifecycle costs of whatever the decision is that they’re trying to make. And we found that there were some costs that were not considered at all, such as any cost that might be incurred for relocation of Space Command. Right now it is provisionally located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. So those costs weren’t considered, maintenance of infrastructure costs were not considered. We also found that there were costs that the Air Force just couldn’t document how they calculated them. So there’s something called high altitude, electromagnetic pulse shielding. It’s also known as hemp shielding. And it’s really important though, because it protects communications technology from high intense energy attack, essentially. And the Air Force told us they had some experts who came up with those cost estimates, but they couldn’t show us where that was documented. So all of those things are problematic.

Jared Serbu: Elizabeth, pretty strong language in this report by GAO standards, and you found what you’ve talked about are serious problems. Why is there not a recommendation here for the Air Force to go back and redo its work the right way?

Elizabeth Field: Well, I appreciate that question. And there are a couple of answers to that. The first and most important here is that that is ultimately a judgment call. It is a policy call. And GAO is not a policymaking body. This decision has not yet been finalized. And so it is up to the Air Force, along with Congress and others to weigh the costs and benefits of potentially redoing the process. The second reason is, we did not in this report seek to validate the decision that the Air Force made. We don’t suggest whether the Air Force made the “correct decision” or not, or even whether the Air Force would have come to a different conclusion had it fully applied our best practices. And so the lack of a recommendation to redo the process should not be taken as an endorsement of Redstone Arsenal as the preferred location, or denigration of Redstone Arsenal as the preferred location.

Jared Serbu: And I guess that brings up one last question, which is, would it be possible for the Air Force to work backwards here a little bit? Fill in some of the missing data, do some of the the legwork that wasn’t done as part of the process in order to solve some of the credibility and transparency problems that you identified without going all the way back to the beginning? Or is the problem just that the data doesn’t exist and can’t be recreated at this point?

Elizabeth Field: Well, it’s certainly the case that some of the data cannot be recreated. When we tried to collect the documentation that the Air Force had compiled to do the analysis. We weren’t able to collect it in many cases, either because it never existed, or because it had been lost. The Air Force pointed to a software update that caused them to lose some of their documentation. I think it also would be hard to ameliorate all of the problems that we found with this process, because some of them were there from the beginning, for example, not clearly defining criteria, and so it would be hard to go back and do that.

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There’s yet another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The latest class action targets the Air Force’s religious accommodation process, arguing that process is set up in such a way that getting a religious exemption to the vaccine is almost impossible. The plaintiffs argue that violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment. Mike Barry is senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit legal group that focuses on religious liberty issues. He’s one of the attorneys representing the airmen challenging the mandate, and he spoke more to Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: Mike, thanks for being here. And let’s start by talking a bit about your clients, where they are in the Air Force vaccine exemption process and what led you to file the suit?

Mike Barry: Well, First Liberty Institute represents nine Air Force members who are challenging the Air Force’s enforcement of its vaccine mandate. And our clients are, they’re stationed in various locations, quite a few of them are here in Texas. And they have different ranks, different different job responsibilities in the Air Force, a number of them are actually pilots in the Air Force. And so all of them have requested religious accommodations from the vaccine mandate, which is, of course, something that DoD regulations and even federal law, clearly permit and allow. And, in fact, the Department of Defense allows medical exemptions and administrative exemptions from the vaccine. But although the Air Force has approved hundreds of medical and administrative exemptions, they have only approved a very small handful of religious exemptions and even the ones that they’ve approved by their own admission, they are only for Air Force members who are basically already separating or are already on their way out. So our lawsuit is really predicated on on the argument that this is all a sham, that the Air Force is not following the Constitution. They’re not following federal law. They’re not following their own regulations. And they’re discriminating against people in the military.

Jared Serbu: This case seems remarkably similar to another case that I think First Liberty was also counsel on with a group of Navy SEALs before the very same judge, I believe too. You got a preliminary injunction in that case and a favorable ruling from the Fifth Circuit. Are there major differences here? The story seems pretty similar to what’s going on with these airmen.

Mike Barry: No, really, I mean, this is happening across the entire Department of Defense. The only difference is really is that each branch of the military has their own internal regulations and policies for how they adjudicate these things. And so of course, that means you have to bring different lawsuits on behalf of people, depending on what branch of the military that they’re in. But in terms of the underlying legal issues that are raised, no, they’re exactly the same. The military across the board is discriminating discriminating against people of faith. They are, they’re ignoring the law, they’re ignoring the Constitution. And really, the greatest harm here is not just to our members of the military who are suffering under this, but it’s actually to our nation. Our military, I mean, you can open any news feed that you want. And you’ll see headline after headline talking about the recruiting and retention woes that plague our military right now. We are hemorrhaging people like crazy, and we’re having a really hard time recruiting capable people to join our military. That means that this is quickly becoming a national security concern. We are kicking out people by the thousands. And yet we’re short, we’re saying that we’re having a hard time recruiting people. And in one instance, I saw one of the head people for recruiting in the military said, “We’re having a really hard time identifying, basically people who are eligible to serve in the military. And one of the reasons for that is if they if they’re between the ages of 17 and 23, and they’re not vaccinated, we’re not even willing to talk to them.” And so they’re basically closing off an entire segment of society in a discriminatory manner. Because of those people’s religious beliefs and religious convictions. I mean, this is quickly becoming a national security issue for our nation.

Jared Serbu: I want to go back to what you said earlier about the process being a sham, because I want to try and draw how much of an issue that actually is, in these cases. In a hypothetical alternate universe where it were the Navy and the Air Force, the rest of the services had an exemption process or a waiver process that did look more credible to you and to the court, do you lose these cases?

Mike Barry: No, I think what happens is they become much smaller cases, right? They become the exception and not the norm. I think that a process that is not a sham looks a little bit something like the military regardless of what branch we’re talking about, takes an honest look and says okay, what is this person’s job or their function? And is there somewhere else we can assign them where maybe they’re at less risk of of COVID transmission or they start looking at the data, right, the actual CDC data and the COVID day they start look kicking it around and saying, You know what? Starbucks, for example, doesn’t have a vaccine requirement. And yet people who work and – I mean, you’re coming in very close proximity with thousands of people per day, hundreds of people per hour. And at least in the Starbucks is that I’ve been in recently where they’ve been packed in like sardines. And yet they say, you know what, we now believe that it’s okay, for our employees to not be vaccinated, it’s okay for our customers to not be vaccinated. And I haven’t heard of a single Starbucks shutting down. Same thing on airplanes, right? Commercial airlines has said, you know what, we’re gonna lift the mask mandate. Of course, that came because of a federal judge’s ruling. But nevertheless, how many, I fly almost on a weekly basis for my job. And I have yet to hear of a single flight being canceled because there was a COVID outbreak at 30,000 feet. So everywhere else in society has been able to figure this out, but our military hasn’t because they take such an iron fisted, draconian approach to everything. And to say, basically, no, you will do this because we said so and if you don’t, we’re gonna kick you out. And then if you come back and you say, oh, no, but my exemption is a medical exemption [see Contraindications and Precautions] not a religious exemption, then the military says, Oh, well, in that case, we welcome you with open arms. And that is textbook discrimination, right? When you treat people who have a medical exemption for more favorably than you treat somebody who has a religious exemption, that is textbook discrimination, and that’s what’s happening. And that’s why this is a sham.Jared Serbu: The Air Force case is a putative class action. If the court certifies the class does the class become all unvaccinated airmen or everyone who’s been denied a religious exemption? How large is the class?

Mike Barry: It would be everyone who is requested and been denied a religious accommodation from the vaccine mandates, specifically the COVID vaccine mandate. So that, right now that number is several thousand. I know, off the top of my head, the number in the Navy is somewhere near 4,100. It’s just under 4,100. The Air Force number is probably in the same ballpark.

Jared Serbu: Got it. I think one of the military’s concerns is what’s the limiting principle here? Because how do you avoid getting to the point where anyone can deny or refuse any lawful order by claiming that they have a sincerely held religious belief that would be encumbered by it?

Mike Barry: Well, I mean, that’s the beauty of the way that the law works, right? The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), it doesn’t, the sincerity issue is what everybody seems to be concerned with, right? Well, what if somebody’s not really sincere? And what if this is political ideology masquerading as as religious piety? Right? Well, the good news is the law is set up so that the government actually can win those cases, when all they have to do is demonstrate that they have a compelling interest. And the way that they are accomplishing their compelling interest is the least restrictive means on the person’s religious beliefs. So if you can find a way to accommodate somebody’s religious beliefs, in a less burdensome way right, a way that’s less obstructive or cumbersome on their religious exercise, then if the person is really sincere in their religious beliefs, they’ll usually accept that. They’ll accept that alternative and say, okay, you know, I’m willing to do that instead. So for example, in a different context, somebody who says that they’re a Sabbath observer, and they cannot work on the Sabbath, but that they’re willing to trade ships with somebody, most of the cases I’ve seen, they’re actually willing to take, what most people consider be a less favorable shift. Right? So if they work Sunday afternoon, or if they’re scheduled to work a particular Sunday afternoon, they say, “Well, I’m a Sabbath observer on Sundays. Hey you have the Friday night shift, right? I’m happy to take that one from you. If you want to swap with me,” and they do that through the employer, or their employer offers that. They’re usually willing to accept that and say, look, yeah, I’m happy to. Night shifts aren’t popular, especially on Friday night, and things like that. But I’m willing to do that. It’s really the same thing in the military context with this vaccine, where they’re saying, Look, teleworking or, doing a lot of these other measures, right, social distancing, masking, testing, whatever the case might be. They’re not pleasant. They’re burdensome, but the person says, “But you know what, at the end of the day, I’m not have to inject something in my body that violates my religious beliefs. I’m willing to go through that.” And usually when somebody is willing to go through those measures, that demonstrates a degree of sincerity. The problem here is that the government is simply unwilling to offer any compromises. They’re basically saying, “Nope, the vaccine is the only way that we’re going to allow you to continue to remain in the service.” And one of the things I forgot to mention was the whole concept of natural immunity. Why is the DoD ignoring natural immunity when the CDC and other epidemiologists and medical experts have all generally agreed natural immunity is a real thing. And in some cases, according to some reports, it’s even more durable than the vaccine and you don’t have to get boosters and things like that. But the DoD is just saying “Nope, we won’t even recognize that we won’t even consider it,” even though they consider natural immunity for other communicable diseases and infections and things like that.

Jared Serbu: Last thing, there’s a lot of these vaccine cases, even just military vaccine cases floating around in various district courts and circuits the moment.

Mike Barry: I think there’s almost 30 now.

Jared Serbu: Yeah, there’s a ton. Assuming, maybe I’m assuming too much. But if they eventually get consolidated in the Supreme Court grants cert [writs of certiorari] on something that considers the issue more broadly, would you expect that we’ll get a case or a ruling that goes beyond the narrow issue of vaccines and gives the military some guidance as to how RFRA and broader religious accommodation issues apply to the military?

Mike Barry: Probably not at the Supreme Court level. The Supreme Court is historically, they only address the legal issues that are brought before them, right. They don’t offer what are, in the legal speak, we call advisory opinions. In other words, it’s usually ill-advised to take an opinion on one subject or one issue, and then try to extrapolate and say and that and say, Well, that should apply across the board to all issues. So that’s usually unwise, and so practitioners who are in front of the Supreme Court frequently like us, we usually know not to do that. So I think that if one of these cases does end up in front of the Supreme Court, it will probably be addressed just on the narrow vaccine issue. And now people will be able to take the analysis Supreme Court used and say, “Okay, the way that they analyzed this issue, that might give us some indication of how they would analyze other issues,” right. But what we can’t do is say, well, because they ruled this way, in this case, this is how they’re going to rule in all cases.

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• The Air Force now has its own cooking show. The service launched the Nutrition Kitchen on YouTube last week. The goal is to help airmen and their families make healthy choices by teaching them new ways to cook. Each episode introduces different ways to make a classic meal more nutritious. The recipes are developed to be tasty and low-cost.
• Customs and Border Protection is moving out on seven best practices to improve efficiency at the border. In a new report, the Government Accountability Office’s recommendations highlight ways border patrol agents can use data and take advantage of existing processes to better manage and document crossings. In response to the report CBP is planning to complete all the improvements by January 2027, with many finished by 2024. By the end of the year, the department will hire a dedicated liaison to the Checkpoint Program Management Office and start quarterly reviews of its data systems and reports.

• The Department of Homeland Security wants to get Freedom of Information Requests out the door more efficiently. DHS is moving to a new FOIA system it said will process records requests faster. The department said the transition will be staggered across FOIA process centers to minimize disruptions. The agency said the new tools will provide DHS FOIA professionals with access to advanced e-discovery tools that are common in the private sector. The DHS Privacy Office will begin the transition in late June.

• The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is encouraging organizations to look beyond the password. CISA’s new “more than a password” campaign is pushing the use of multi-factor authentication. Agencies already have marching orders to adopt MFA from last year’s cyber executive order. CISA said using at least two types of authentication reduces the likelihood of a cyber attack by 99%. The agency’s new campaign includes guidance and resources for organizations looking to adopt MFA.

• The Department of Veterans Affairs told Congress it doesn’t need any more cyber expert audits. More than 1,200 employees and contractors across 60 programs already conduct oversight of VA’s technology systems and applications. Kurt DelBene, VA’s CIO and assistant secretary for information and technology, told House lawmakers their bill, the Strengthening VA Cybersecurity Act, is unnecessary. DelBene said FISMA audits, oversight by GAO and inspector general reviews already are equal or go beyond what the bill calls for. House and Senate lawmakers introduced companion bills in March requiring VA to bring in a federally funded research and development center to assess up to 10 high impact systems.

• More than 4,000 federal employees joined the American Federation of Government Employees last month. And the trend of feds joining unions seems to be sticking, AFGE said. A union director said AFGE is routinely adding more than 4,000 members per month. In May, AFGE saw its largest net gain of union members in nearly four years. The union is also trying to organize both young workers and federal retirees to serve as mentors to new union members.

• Bringing employees with disabilities into the federal workforce is one thing, but getting them to stay remains a challenge. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finds that in fiscal 2018, agencies exceeded a 2% hiring goal for employees with substantial targeted disabilities. But the federal government fell short of meeting a goal for 12% of new hires to have any sort of disability. The EEOC report also found federal employees with disabilities were less likely to hold leadership positions at their agency, and more likely to leave government service, both on a voluntary and involuntary basis. (Federal News Network)

• Some Thrift Savings Plan participants are expressing frustration with an attempt to modernize the TSP website. Customer service delays, long waits and technical issues are major points of concern for TSP participants. That’s as they are looking to log in for the first time with the new My Account system. The board in charge of the TSP acknowledged the delays and told participants they are working to resolve the issues. That comes after the board rolled out a new mobile app and updated the TSP interface on June 1. (Federal News Network)

• The House is set to consider eight small business bills this week with votes expected as soon as today. These include the Strengthening Subcontracting for Small Businesses Act that would encourage agencies to consider prior compliance with subcontracting plans as part of a prospective vendor’s past performance rating. Another bill, the Women-owned Small Business Program Transparency Act, would require SBA to provide report to Congress a host of data including the amount of contracting dollars awarded through the program and the number of certifications being issued.

• U.S. military aid to Ukraine underscores the need for permanent watchdogs at the State and Defense Departments. That’s according to a letter good government groups sent to Senate leadership. A dozen nonprofit organizations are urging the Senate to confirm Rob Storch as DoD’s first permanent inspector general in six years. The groups also called on the Biden administration to nominate a new IG at State. The letter states permanent IGs would oversee spending in Ukraine better than giving this work to a special IG, as some senators have proposed.

• The Defense Department pitted all of the military services against each other on a video game platform. One came out victorious. The Air Force won out in the military’s first-ever Armed Forces Esports Championship. The competition was part of a convention bringing together military, industry and academia to tackle mission support and force development issues. The Defense Department started its gaming league in 2019, which brings together more than 25,000 service members. The Pentagon uses gaming as a means of recruitment, training and as a way to build morale in the ranks.

• The Census Bureau is making it easier for researchers and businesses to use its Geocoder tool to find addresses and other data to match geographic locations. The update includes moving the tool to the cloud and using open source software. Census said the modern technology will mean faster processing and shorter response times for its users. The Geocoder can locate all possible structure numbers even if physical structures do not exist. This is the first update to the census geocoder since 2013.

The Government Accountability Office says the service missed some serious best practices in its decision to move SPACECOM from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama. The move provoked Congressional claims of foul play the Trump administration and a Defense Department Inspector General’s investigation.

The GAO report, which the organization released Thursday, states that the Air Force only followed seven of the 21 analysis of alternatives best practices, who the watchdog says can “help increase transparency and avoid the presence or appearance of bias.”

GAO said the Air Force’s process of selecting Huntsville led to significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.

“Air Force officials told GAO they did not use the analysis of alternatives best practices as a guide during the revised process because the practices were not required or relevant to basing decisions,” the authors of the report wrote. “However, GAO believes that the analysis of alternatives best practices are relevant and, if effectively implemented, can help ensure such basing decisions are transparent and deliberate.”

The criteria is based on four categories judging how comprehensive, well-documented, credible and unbiased the decision was in the Air Force’s process.

The service got the best marks for being comprehensive by defining mission need, developing alternatives and assessing their viability.

The worst assessments came in the credibility section. The Air Force failed to include confidence levels, life-cycle cost estimates and did not perform an independent review.

“While the January 2021 selection of Redstone Arsenal as the preferred location for U.S. Space Command headquarters was consistent with the Air Force’s analysis, our assessment of the Air Force’s revised selection process and attendant analysis against our analysis of alternative best practices identified significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility,” the GAO authors wrote.

GAO, much like DoD IG, is recommending that the Air Force come up with guidance for how it will objectively select bases in the future.

Members of the Colorado Congressional delegation said the GAO report confirms their concerns about the basing decision.

“Over the past year, we’ve repeatedly raised concerns that the previous administration used a flawed, untested, and inconsistent process to select a location for SPACECOM,” they wrote. “The reports from the GAO and the DoD IG both confirm that the basing process lacked integrity and neglected key national security considerations.”

They go on to say that they urge the Biden administration, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review the findings and make a decision that prioritizes national security.

The DoD IG report on the basing decision stated that it complied with federal law.

The report said 21 of the criteria used by Basing Office officials to choose the headquarters, 18 were reasonable. However, eight of those criteria could not be fully verified when it came to ranking the best locations for the headquarters.

However, all of the information going in-depth as to why Huntsville was chosen over other locations and the points the location accrued compared to other possible spots is redacted from the report.

For several years now, the Air Force, at its most senior levels, has recognized its policies and procedures have a strong tendency to force airmen to misspend their time on ancillary tasks instead of the ones they signed up for.

The service has had some success at reducing distractions like excessive computer-based training and performance evaluations, but it’s done less in the arena of bureaucratic administrivia. Things like paperwork.

Just like many other government agencies, the Air Force’s internal processes live and breathe via forms that have to be filled out manually, and each one takes time. How much? That was a difficult question to answer until the Virginia Air National Guard’s 192nd Wing saw a chance to do things differently.

“The information we were filling out on these forms was very repetitive: ‘Who’s your supervisor? What’s your social security number?’ And everything that they need to know on all these forms is already known about us. There’s technology out there that should be pre-populating this information,” said Chief Master Sgt. Joseph Young, who helped launch just such a technology solution while he served as the 192nd Operations Group’s senior enlisted leader. Young now serves as the senior enlisted leader for wing inspections, and has stayed involved in the process.

Early results from what the wing calls “HR Smart Weapon” are extremely promising. Its back-of-the-envelope math, based on a fair amount of real-world testing, suggests the Air Force could save about 156,000 person-hours per year if the approach they’re experimenting with was deployed across the whole service. And that’s for just one form.

The initial idea grew out of an Air Force initiative that tries to find “airmen-led” ideas that might cut costs, improve readiness, or give airmen back some of the time they waste on non-value-added tasks. Assisted by AFWERX, the service’s main innovation arm, the program allocates tens of millions of dollars each year to what the Air Force calls squadron innovation funds.

Young said the paperwork streamlining idea first came up during a training event in Las Vegas for how to spend those funds effectively. There, airmen were asked to pitch ideas, and the time suck surrounding manual form filling quickly emerged as the biggest pain point for the 192nd’s attendees.

“Even though they’re digital forms, it’s still paperwork,” he said during an interview for Federal News Network’s On DoD. “We have a particularly difficult time with the onboarding process. It can take upwards of three months from the time a person shows up for them to get their initial paycheck, in particular, for people who are coming from different organizations that are already in the military. No particular office is the problem. It’s the paperwork and the disparate databases that are involved, and they don’t necessarily talk quickly to one another. So we were trying to solve that problem.”

AFWERX suggested using a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) solicitation to ask vendors for help, and after whiteboarding the problem with several of them, the wing settled on Tackle AI, an Illinois-based firm that focuses its work on exactly this issue but had never done government work before.

“They specialize in extracting data from unstructured documents, so they could take all of our legacy forms, ingest them into their AI algorithm, and then create profiles for each individual,” Young said. “So the next time somebody would bring up a form, this profile information is automatically populated. And whenever the database didn’t know something about you from the ingest process, it would ask the user for that information. And once a user provided that information, you wouldn’t need to provide it again in the future.”

But it took a fair amount of back-and-forth between the 192nd’s testing team and TackleAI’s engineers to get the concept working for the Air Force’s needs. That’s partly because the wing wanted the technology solution to not just help fill out the forms, but also track their progress through each office who needed to view, approve, and send them up the paperwork chain.

They pulled that off too, Young said, and it was important that they did. After all, the inefficiency of the current, paper-centric system isn’t just a pain for the airman who first fills out a given form. Supervisors and various other approving officials need to see and sign off on them, and right now, that’s mostly done via PDFs attached to emails.

“Email is a terrible place to track things. Things get lost all the time, you have to sort through what’s important and what’s not, and it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks, especially when you’re trying to route and coordinate things. HR Smart Weapon makes it easy by showing you, ‘Hey, it’s got to go to these five offices, and this is the person who approved it at the previous office,” Young said. “So it helps you not only save time, but you can do analytics and see clearly whether a certain office is getting backlogged. Then, the commander can make decisions to shift resources to plus-up that office with additional personnel so they can be more efficient, or we can look into other ways of continually improving that process.”

The wing’s initial tests, or what it called a “bake-off” between the current, manual paperwork process, and the AI-assisted one, appeared to show concrete time savings: 35 minutes versus 20 minutes per form, on average.

And the forms were more accurate, which is key too. A simple typo in a manually-entered field can cause the whole form to get kicked back to the last person who approved it. Those kinds of errors happened 12% of the time under the manual process, but 0% of the time with HR Smart Weapon.

Granted, the tests were extremely small scale. Only five forms were tested for each method, and it’s extremely likely the broader Air Force would want to see much more testing before scaling it up. HR Smart Weapon would also need to make its way through various other approval gauntlets, like earning an authority to operate on DoD networks, no small feat.

Young said his team understands all that. It’s just a proof-of-concept for now, but one that’s worth the Air Force’s attention. And he acknowledged that even if the approach gets approved for operational use, there are going to be cultural adaptations needed too, partly around the question of whether commanders will be willing to trust algorithms to fill in boxes that used be completed by highly-trained human beings, no matter how mundane those box-filling exercises really are.

“I fully expect people to be hesitant, he said. “Even myself, it’s going to take me a little bit longer initially, because I’ll want to double check everything before I hit ‘submit.’ But if we have a level of confidence that this does what it says it does, and it’s accurate, I mean the sky’s the limit. As soon as we add more forms to it, we’re going to have that level of trust that it is filling out accurate and current information. That will help reduce time and give it back to our airmen and our commanders to do what matters most, and that’s to be in front of your airmen and not be encumbered with all of this paperwork. We can get after the mission by doing less paperwork.”

The contract will build F-35 facilities at the base, which was devastated by Hurricane Michael in 2018, destroying or damaging almost every building on the property.

The $532 million project, which includes $72 million in contingencies and oversight, will deliver 11 projects that directly support flight operations for the F-35, which will arrive at the base in September of next year.

“The rebuild gives us the unique opportunity to reimagine how we accommodate the needs of the F-35,” said Col Travis Leighton, chief of the Air Force’s Civil Engineer Center’s (USACE) Natural Disaster Recovery Division. “We’re leveraging cutting-edge technology to increase cybersecurity and perimeter defense, enhance base safety and equip airmen to execute the missions of today and tomorrow.”

The rebuild includes more than 40 military construction projects at Tyndall. The ones supporting the F-35s include hangars, a maintenance complex, a headquarters, training facility and equipment storage facility.

The Air Force has been billing the Tyndall rebuild as the next generation of military installations. It’s expected to cost about $4.9 billion to get the base fully operational.

“The rebuilding effort must incorporate planning and design strategies that support operational readiness and efficiency; create a secure, resilient environment; address flood and storm surge risks; and consolidate development to use land efficiently,” the Air Force’s website for the Tyndall rebuild states. “A consolidated development will support the creation of a walkable community with a sense of place that is more cost-effective with regard to infrastructure and lifecycle costs.”

The Air Force is well underway to build Tyndall as an installation that is resilient against climate change and extreme weather, while also building state-of-the-art facilities.

The base will be able to withstand winds of 165 mph.

“In partnership with Department of Defense engineer organizations such as USACE and the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, we will have put $2 billion of construction on contract in just the past six months,” said Brig. Gen. Mark Slominski, AFCEC built infrastructure executive director and chief of the facilities directorate. “Our teams epitomize the motto ‘Execution inspires confidence,’ as we join numerous stakeholders synchronizing built infrastructure design and construction to enable weapon systems to launch from our power projection platforms.”

Tyndall’s first military construction project broke ground in October 2020. The Air Force said the planning and construction of the base intertwine resilience, innovation, technology, readiness and airmen well-being.

The installation already has some cutting-edge facilities like a Hololab, which holds virtual reality training equipment.

Tyndall’s rebuild will be a test for DoD, which is concerned about the resiliency of its bases against climate change. The department already outlined more than a thousand military sites that are vulnerable to changing weather.

In 2019, the Government Accountability Office warned that more bases could end up like Tyndall. It exposed issues with DoD’s guidance for handling extreme weather and ignorance of future weather patterns.

Since then, DoD has taken a much more proactive stance on climate change and is planning on reinforcing bases against future disasters.

The issue of whether there should be a Space National Guard has gone back and forth between Defense officials and lawmakers for the past couple years. Now, legislators are making moves to establish a part-time component for the new service.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are introducing a bill in both houses to create a Space National Guard. The effort led by Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) would ensure a pipeline for guardians to work part-time and move between active duty and the Guard.

It would eliminate the need for the Space Force to route funding between it and the Air Force, and would allow the Space Force more control over Guard members who work on space functions.

Currently there are more than 1,000 Air National Guard members who perform space missions.

“Without a National Guard component for Space Force, we risk losing many talented individuals who want to keep serving their country and their states after they leave active duty, and that is simply unacceptable,” Feinstein said. “Creating a Space Force National Guard would also save money and ensure a smoother process in the event we need to activate personnel. Not establishing a Space National Guard was a mistake when Space Force was created, and this bill will remedy that.”

Not everyone is convinced that a Space National Guard is the best idea, however. Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tweeted last Friday that she thinks the component is a bad idea.

“Why would a governor ever need satellite operators to support their state/local issues? The argument that people are already doing this is not a good one — sounds like a realignment issue and not a ‘Let’s just create another bureaucratic org,’” she wrote. “What happened to the Space Force being new/revolutionary/unique? What happened to redefining how we support the space mission? Seems to me like Feinstein and Rubio are forcing the opposite values that the USSF was established on to get more money for their states.”

The Space Force itself isn’t so sure it wants a traditional Guard component. Service officials floated the idea of a “space component” last month during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, which would be a hybrid structure merging full- and part-time guardians.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond described it as the service’s number one legislative priority.

“You could keep the Guard units in the Air National Guard and have the Air National Guard continue to provide support,” Raymond said. “Option two is you could take the men and women out of the Air National Guard and set up a separate Space National Guard. Or you can take those capabilities out of the Guard totally and put them in this one component.” — SM

Air Force missing out on DoD’s colorless money software pilots

As part of its 2023 budget, the Air Force is making a serious effort at getting in on the Defense Department’s effort to prove that budgeting for software development is very, very different from budgeting for traditional weapons systems.

As of now, the Air Force is the only military service that’s not participating in DoD’s Software and Digital Technology Pilot Program at all. And the vast majority of the Pentagon’s overall proposed increase for 2023 within the pilot effort is explained by Air Force requests to change that. The service has teed up eight potential candidates for Congressional consideration.

Under the program sometimes called the “Budget Activity 8” pilot, DoD components are allowed to use “colorless” money for software development, without having to worry about whether the phase of development they’re in should be funded by R&D, procurement or operations accounts. Critics have long argued that funding construct, intended for weapons system development, makes no sense for software and simply bogs down efforts toward agile development.

Andrew Hunter, the recently-confirmed assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, said his discovery that the Air Force wasn’t participating in the pilot caused him “dismay” when he assumed the new role.

“But it’s not from lack of interest,” he said during a conference hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School last week. “The Air Force submitted several candidates [in past years] to be part of the software pilot program, but we were unsuccessful in the competition for being selected. I’m rueful that we aren’t doing it. And it’s maybe slightly ironic, because I’d like to think the Air Force was a leading voice in making the case for the flexibilities required to do effective software development.”

The pilot program is only in its second year, but so far, Congress hasn’t shown overwhelming enthusiasm toward expanding it. Lawmakers didn’t approve the addition of any new programs between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022. The House Appropriations Committee’s version of the 2022 bill would have expanded the program, but its Senate counterpart never approved a Defense spending bill of its own.

Overall, for 2023, the Defense budget proposal would place $1.785 billion worth of DoD software programs in the BA-8 pilot, up from the $742 million Congress approved for this year. The vast majority of that increase would come from the Air Force’s proposed additions, which total $946 million.

The programs include:

• Strategic Mission Planning and Execution System ($100 million)
• Air & Space Operations Center ($178 million)
• Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System ($136 million)
• Distributed Cyber Warfare Operations ($37 million)
• Air Force Defensive Cyber Systems ($241 million)
• All Domain Common Platform ($190 million)
• Air Force Weather Programs ($58 million)
• Electronic Warfare Integrated Reprogramming ($6 million)

—JS

USS George Washington deaths on Austin’s radar

The tragic events aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington are catching the attention of the nation’s top Defense official.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers last week he was concerned about the three suicides aboard the ship last month and the five in total over the past year.

“This is a really, really important issue,” Austin told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. “That’s why we’re asking you for, in this budget, additional resources to help us provide greater access to our troops which includes telehealth care opportunities as well.”

About 400 sailors were living aboard the USS George Washington as it is being repaired in Newport News, Virginia. The Navy is now moving more than 250 sailors off the ship for mental health purposes and is looking at moving all the sailors to short.

“There are choices that have been made or will be made in the future in terms of how billet sailors when that repair is ongoing,” Austin said. Whether or not we made the right choices is left to be seen. Certainly there’s a problem there, we got to understand what that problem was a bit more and then we have to figure out what to do to ensure that we don’t have these kinds of problems in the future.”

Austin is waiting on two investigations from the Navy on the climate and command aboard the ship. The maintenance is taking longer than expected and the ship will be docked for another year. It was supposed to be finished this year.

“For hundreds of those sailors they have no access to housing or a car and they’re stuck on a ship. This is really demoralizing,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said. “I am troubled by the Defense submission on the Navy because I see it getting worse. I just wanted to point a flashlight at this part of the budget and say, we got to do something and I’m not sure what it is.”

There have been seven deaths in the last year among the 2,700 sailors working aboard the ship as it is overhauling at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia.

Five of those deaths are apparent suicides, three of which were in the space of one week last month, leading the service and others to wonder about the mental health among the Nimitz-class carrier.

The Navy is already taking some steps to address mental health concerns. It has embossed a 13-person special psychiatric rapid intervention team to provide services from April 16-19. The ship also added an additional clinical psychologist and social worker. Sailors are being given expedited appointments with mental health services on shore in Hampton Roads. Telehealth options are also available.

NBC News reported that the Navy is offering other morale boosting activities like a video game competition and soccer tournament.

However, sailors told NBC that morale remains low and some feel that the efforts are too little, too late.

Late last month, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) sent a letter to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday asking for answers on conditions and climate aboard the ship.

“I am calling on the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, and CNO Gilday to provide the House Armed Services Committee and members of Congress with a full accounting of what steps are being taken to address command climate, safety concerns, mental health, and other issues that may have contributed to this tragic loss of life on USS George Washington,” she said. “Every member of our armed forces must be treated with respect, and we have an obligation to ensure that our active-duty personnel on USS George Washington and around the world are being heard and supported while serving our country.” — SM

I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

Instead of being inundated with the very harassment the article is trying to expose, I was greeted with a community of people who genuinely care for women in the military and were horrified to see the abuse they endure online for simply serving their country.

In case you missed the article, or gave up after seeing the monstrous 6,000 word length of the thing, the upshot is that women serving in the military are targets of sexual harassment, bullying, hazing, doxxing and other abuses online. Their fellow service members perpetrate much of this behavior. The Defense Department isn’t keeping track of how often this is happening, and is rarely prosecuting its employees for harming their sisters-in-arms.

The result is detrimental to women’s mental health and their retention. It also hinders the military’s need for diverse ideas and people to fill its ranks.

The responses I got from the article were women sharing their stories, people hoping to solve the problem, general outrage and, of course, one or two trolls.

One female veteran emailed me about her time in the Air Force.

“The misogyny and hatred that I experienced during my brief period of service was traumatic,” she wrote. “When I left the military I was psychologically damaged and felt on edge at all times. I felt like I had seen the darkness that lived in the hearts of every man.”

What she went through is unfortunately all too common for women service members.

While the article gave some people a platform to share their story, it also got some people thinking.

Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force JoAnne Bass, the service’s highest-ranking senior noncommissioned officer, posted the article on her Facebook page.

“Wingmen — No Airman should have to hide… No Airman should have to deal with this at all…” she wrote above the article. “This isn’t a female, or a male, problem. It’s a PEOPLE problem. And we ALL have to take ownership in this. This is our family. Our culture.”

Commenters expressed shock and anger that fellow service members were cannibalizing their own on the internet. They called the behavior toxic and heartbreaking.

Other airmen did something really beautiful too. They offered their support to people being harassed.

“I believe, if you asked my team, they would relay that our family has no place for toxicity and if it exists anywhere, it’s stamped out quickly,” one airman leader wrote. “Should any of my airmen read this and disagree, my DMs are wide open. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. It’s not just Commanders with this responsibility either. Supervisors at all levels can provide direct counseling and mentoring to their Airmen. If they see the beginnings of anything, step up and stop it. This is OUR Air Force and we must take ownership to make it the place we want it to be.”

Bass is no stranger to harassment. Just last year, she told Task & Purpose she was the target of “insulting, disrespectful comments,” that were “unwarranted, inappropriate, and could even pose a national security risk.”

However, a lot of commenters smelled hypocrisy in the water from the Air Force too.

Around the time my article was published, Air Force Maj. Gen. William Cooley was on trial for forcibly kissing his sister-in-law while she was in the car with him.

He became the first Air Force general ever convicted in a court-martial. He was found guilty of abusive sexual contact. The punishment was five months docked pay and a letter of reprimand. He faced a max sentence of seven years in prison and a loss of pay and benefits.

“Lmao. A two-star general just got court martialed of a sexual assault charge and his punishment was a lousy fine and a reprimand,” one commenter wrote. “The double standard is amazing.”

Another said, “Perhaps this will answer some questions about the climate our leaders are creating. He gets to buy his way out of jail. Sexual assault conviction with a maximum jail time of seven years and he gets to pay money instead. Do better.”

My article wasn’t all about sexual harassment, though that is a large part of the abuse women service members face online.

One commenter we still haven’t heard from is the Pentagon itself. I spent years trying to get DoD and the services to talk to me about online harassment.

The military would not talk about online harassment in general or specific cases with me.

Probably the most common comment I got from people who read my article was this:

“DoD’s silence is deafening.”

Nearly Useless Factoid

By David Thornton

Deborah Sampson was the only woman to earn a full military pension for participation in the Revolutionary army. In 1782, Sampson and two sergeants led about 30 infantrymen on an expedition that ended with a confrontation with Tories. She led a raid on a Tory home that resulted in the capture of 15 men. At the siege of Yorktown she dug trenches, helped storm a British redoubt, and endured canon fire. She was struck in the head with a sword, and after being shot in the thigh, removed the pistol ball herself.

Source: National Women’s History Museum