The Air Force Research Laboratory has partnered with Northrop Grumman and Calspan Flight Research to test the ability of aircraft to communicate at radio frequencies above 300 gigahertz.

AFRL said Monday the team conducted flight experiments as part of the Terahertz Communications program to prove the viability of using THz band frequencies to address future aircraft communications requirements.

During the event, AFRL’s Information Directorate researchers measured propagation loss between two aircraft to determine if frequency intensity was reduced at different altitudes and ranges.

Northrop supported the three-day experiment through its Terahertz Electronics program, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-backed initiative to develop critical device and integration technologies necessary to produce electronic circuits operating at various frequencies.

Col. Jennifer Krolikowski, chief information officer of U.S. Space Systems Command, said transforming the information technology organization within SSC means establishing data fabric as part of efforts to leverage data and facilitating the decision-making process.

“I’m all about the data: How you work to automate it, accelerate it, and exploit it is exciting to me. Turning data into knowledge to make better decisions is the whole purpose of collecting it,” Krolikowski said in an interview with Deloitte published Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

She talked about the CIO office’s efforts to address tech talent challenges, such as reskilling and focusing on knowledge management.

“I’m still working to fill talent gaps and am pulling in more contract support—I love leveraging talent in industry to push IT forward,” she noted.

When asked about the budget, she said the command created a non-tax-based funding line for fiscal year 2024 to help broaden the IT organization’s capabilities.

Krolikowski also explained that her organization prefers “buy” to the “build” approach so as to accelerate the adoption of tech capabilities.

Cherissa Tamayori, director of acquisition at the Defense Innovation Unit, said the Department of Defense must adopt commercial technology systems and culture and make changes to the requirements, budgeting and acquisition aspects of the defense acquisition system to become a “fast follower” as prescribed by the 2022 National Defense Strategy.

Tamayori wrote in an opinion piece published in the April edition of the Contract Management Magazine that DOD should simplify the procurement process and implement commercial best practices by using flexible acquisition authorities.

“This includes the use of the other transaction (OT) authority through commercial solutions openings (CSO), which maximizes competition while minimizing the opportunity costs of participating vendors,” she noted.

Tamayori said the department should replace the requirements process with a “more rapid validation of needs” for dual-use technologies and enable a flexible budgeting process for commercial platforms.

She also called on DOD contracting professionals to understand industry partners by putting themselves in the shoes of commercial stakeholders as well as enhance market research and conduct outreach efforts.

“The DoD needs to proactively build bridges with the private sector to make sure companies are aware of the potential that exists in the federal marketplace and can find opportunities with ease. This is key to ensuring that we are reaching nontraditional defense companies,” Tamayori added.

Oliver Wise, chief data officer at the Department of Commerce, said the Commerce Data Governance Board and the office of the CDO devised a fiscal year 2023 action plan, which comes with three “plays” to scale value from the department’s data.

Wise wrote in a blog post published Monday that one of those plays is transitioning from a siloed to a “more coordinated approach to data management.”

He said the department is advancing that course of action through its strategic acquisition of commercial data with the aid of the commercial data working group.

“Second, we need move from a data ecosystem that is bespoke to narrow use cases, and instead standardized for interoperability and reuse,” he noted.

Wise said the third step is moving from manual to automated data processing and analysis.

He stated that the department is using cloud computing to automate data sharing functions to advance evidence-based decision-making.

Wise went on to note that the department is working to address several questions with regard to data, such as establishing an integrated data ecosystem that offers proactive intelligence on near-term supply shocks and maximizing the potential of artificial intelligence to democratize insights from public data.