Randy Resnick, senior advisor of the Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office in the DOD, said Wednesday that the department is developing those guidance documents as expansions and variations of the 91 baseline “target-level” zero-trust activities it has already released for industry models to meet.

The new IoT and OT guidance are expected sometime in September, Resnick said at the GDIT Emerge: Edge Forward event, produced by FedScoop.

DOD uses what it refers to as “fan charts,” Resnick said, to lay out the various security controls vendors must build into their zero-trust solutions to meet the baseline for military services and defense agencies. In total, there are 152 controls — 91 at the target level and 61 at the advanced level, which “offer the highest level of protection,” the department said in guidance from 2024.

Resnick said that the fan chart for operational technology is “different” than that of the 91 activities needed to meet target-level compliance, though “there’s a lot of overlap.”

“The number of activities to hit target-level OT is different,” he explained.

For securing IoT systems with zero trust, Resnick said it’s essentially the same 91 target-level activities, plus two additional controls.

Explaining why it was necessary to build out additional overlays for OT and IoT systems, he said the way you respond to an incident is quite different, especially for operational technology.

With OT, Resnick said, “You want to have it fail open, or you want to have it fail in a way that doesn’t disturb or cause more mischief or harm than you want.”

Once those pieces of guidance arrive in September, just one more such directive remains for the DOD to issue: zero-trust overlays for weapons systems, said Resnick.

With the 2027 deadline looming, Resnick said he feels like “we’re in good shape,” especially after his office was spared in recent DOGE cuts, he said.

He explained that the department continues to experience successful pilots with industry that meet target or advanced levels of zero trust. And with more of those solutions taking shape, it’s getting closer to the point where DOD organizations will be able to “just buy it, implement it, install it, and pretty much get there before the end of [2027],” Resnick said.

The hard part will then be installing the solutions, he explained.

“We’re talking professional services and a whole army of people that are probably going to be required,” Resnick said. “We’re talking about full swap-outs and new infrastructures. This is not a small problem … I certainly hope that industry is thinking like that.”

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The Pentagon plans to award up to $280 million next year for Microelectronics Commons projects, according to a press release. Funding for the program supports six technology areas: secure edge and Internet of Things computing; 5G and 6G; AI hardware; quantum; electromagnetic warfare; and “leap-ahead” commercial technologies.

“The U.S. military has an ever-increasing need for innovation in the microelectronics that underpin many of our modern weapon systems, including communications equipment, planes, tanks, long-range munitions, and sensors. This Call for Proposals is the next step in our effort to bridge the valley of death from ‘lab-to-fab,’” Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering David Honey said in a statement.

The term “valley of death,” in defense acquisition parlance, refers to challenges that are often encountered in transitioning promising technologies from research and development into production.

“Today, microelectronics designs that are proven within U.S. universities and businesses of all sizes frequently do not enter large-scale production because the transition from laboratory to fabrication is notoriously difficult; a high technology readiness does not mean high manufacturability. The Commons is focused on easing this transition for microelectronics that are essential for our national security,” according to the release. “The Commons aims to ensure that the U.S. defense industrial base will have access to a robust pipeline of world-leading microelectronics produced in U.S. foundries, and the ability to shape that pipeline to address the future demands of our warfighters.”

The initiative is supported by eight innovation hubs that were announced in September, which are intended to help scale production. They include the Northeast Regional Defense Tech Hub in New York; Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub in Arizona; Commercial Leap Ahead for Wide-bandgap Semiconductors Hub in North Carolina; Silicon Crossroads Microelectronics Commons Hub in Indiana; Midwest Microelectronics Consortium Hub in Ohio; California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub; California-Pacific-Northwest Artificial Intelligence
Hardware Hub; and Northeast Microelectronics Coalition Hub in New England.

More than 380 organizations are part of the various hubs, including more than 100 academic institutions, according to the Pentagon.

Respondents to the solicitation must be members of the National Security Technology Accelerator and a Microelectronics Commons hub, according to the call for proposals.

The DOD plans to award prototype other transaction agreements for selected projects, which may lead to follow-on awards.

“Upon successful completion of this prototype effort, the Government anticipates that a follow-on production effort may be awarded via either contract or transaction, without the use of competitive procedures,” according to the solicitation.

Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division is the contracting activity.

Responses are due Feb. 28, 2024. The Pentagon anticipates issuing awards in the third quarter of fiscal 2024.

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That’s according to a new Air Force request for information, seeking contractors capable of providing such an AI-driven surveillance system so that force protection personnel will not have to watch “other country nationals,” as the solicitation refers to them, while they work on Centcom’s forward locations.

To be specific, the Air Force wants information about contractors that can “deliver, assemble, build, and fabricate a fully functional artificially intelligent (AI) enabled monitoring system for specific site(s) located in US Central Command (USCENTCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR) using real-time digital twins with computer vision and IoT sensors.”

Such a system would augment the Air Force force protection personnel whose job it is to watch these nationals, according to the service.

“This Artificial Intelligence system would replace the need for in-person monitoring and reduce up to 75% of those billets, enabling USAF resources and Force Protection assets to be employed against higher priorities,” the RFI states.

The AI capability would ideally use “automated alerts, digital twin of the site(s), AI
predictive monitoring, and ability for global monitoring all to detect/track the [other country nationals’] pattern of behavior in and around the designated/approved site” and “integrated automation -by layering in artificial intelligence- to address safety and/or security concerns as required,” the procurement documents explain.

The system would primarily be used at Al Udeid Air Base but could be deployed at other Centcom facilities as well.

Responses for the RFI are due by Feb. 10.

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