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$249.7 million is the ceiling for the Navy’s eight-year contract to develop
unmanned technologies
strengthen CESER by elevating it to be a directorate position but not subject to who’s in and who’s out — a profes- sional group that is trusted.”
In her June 11 reply to the sena- tors’ letter, Granholm wrote that under the Biden administration’s budget, CESER is taking on new responsibilities that include over- seeing DOE’s emergency response for the energy sector. She added that CESER will continue to serve as DOE’s representative at National Security Council meetings.
She also said CESER’s organiza- tional development would improve under career leadership. “While the organization has made strides without political leadership, the lack of a per- manent director has made it difficult to organize and staff up in a way that a responsive organization should be able to,” Granholm wrote.
— Chris Riotta
Granholm refocuses Energy’s cyber shop
Energy Department officials plan to expand DOE’s cybersecurity capac- ity through new invest-
ments included in the fiscal
2022 budget. DOE has also launched a 100-day plan to assess and review cyberse- curity risks to the U.S. elec- tricity system.
er elevated to the level of a political appointee.
During a June 15 hearing
of the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Commit-
tee, Energy Secretary Jen-
nifer Granholm said DOE
is changing the focus of its Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER) with the goal of strengthening first-respond- er capabilities. The office was estab- lished under the Trump administration.
Additionally, she said she would continue to have a career official lead CESER, despite calls from Senators in both parties to have the office’s lead-
In March, 11 senators — including Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and James Risch (R-Idaho) — sent a letter to Granholm pressing for the restoration of CESER lead- ership at the assistant sec- retary level. CESER is cur- rently led by Puesh Kumar, who has the title of acting principal deputy assistant secretary.
Lawmakers have expressed concerns about whether a proposed budget reduction could undermine the Army’s ability to pursue its modernization initia- tives and whether the service can meet ambitious priorities.
The Army is requesting a budget of $173 billion in fiscal 2022 — a dip of $3.6 billion from 2021 enacted levels.
“We all tend to look at where we are at today, and I’m concerned right now, with the trends that are out there, [about] where we’re going to be with budget cuts in the near future,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Commit- tee, said during an Army budget hearing on June 15.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said the service has focused on science and technology investments and priorities despite budget con- straints, but officials would like more
funding to modernize legacy weapons systems.
“The budget gives us the most effi- cient capability when it comes to readi- ness,” he said. “We have to modernize the Army. Every 40 years, the Army has to transform. It did in 1940 right before World War II, [and] it did in 1980.”
Furthermore, he added, “we have done all we can, the secretary and myself, to protect the modernization of the Army, and we believe we must do that.”
However, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned the Army’s abil- ity to tackle modernization. He said the service has “ambitious and far-sighted objectives, but we must acknowledge that the Army has historically struggled to effectively modernize.”
The Army has been working to facili- tate modernization by adjusting its
acquisition process to allow the service to develop prototypes of new capabili- ties based on soldiers’ feedback before committing to requirements and mov- ing into production, said Douglas Bush, the Army’s acting assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology. But there are still hurdles to overcome.
“That transition from prototyping at different levels of fidelity to actual pro- duction is the difficult part of this new approach,” Bush said during a separate Senate Armed Services Committee hear- ing on Army modernization.
He added that the acquisition office is working with the Army Futures Com- mand to ensure that technology hand- overs are planned in advance and the teams work together throughout the process so that new tools are devel- oped in a way that is “responsible and properly tested.”
— Lauren C. Williams
Jennifer Granholm
King pressed the point at the hear- ing, and Granholm noted that CESER is a relatively new agency and has been without political leadership for much of its existence.
“This is an emergency opera- tion, sort of akin to...an emergency response entity that is nonpolitical. It is not partisan,” Granholm said at the hearing. “What we’d like to do is to
Army modernization under scrutiny amid planned budget cuts
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