COMMANDER U.S. CYBER COMMAND DISCUSSES CYBER DEFENSE AND OFFENSE

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

Right:  Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, spoke to cadets, staff and faculty during a Leader Professional Development Session at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Jan. 9, 2015. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Bunkley.  

Rogers Discusses Cyber Operations, ISIL, Deterrence
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2015 – Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command, took questions here recently on many topics -- cyber defense and offense, finding the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on the dark Web and cyber deterrence -- during a New America Foundation cybersecurity conference.

Rogers, who’s also director of the National Security Agency, spoke with CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto and took questions from the audience and from Twitter and other social media outlets.

Rogers often says, as he did at this conference, that he believes in appearing publicly and putting no restrictions on questions asked of him.

“You can ask me anything,” he said, “because we have got to be willing as a nation to have a dialogue” on cyber issues.

Cyberspace as a Domain of War

On a question about whether the United States is positioned effectively to address cyberspace as a domain of warfare, Rogers said the nation is in a better position in many ways than most of its counterparts around the world.
“We've put a lot of thought into this as a department,” he added. “U.S. Cyber Command, for example, will celebrate our fifth anniversary this year. This is a topic the department has been thinking about for some time.”

But the admiral said he doesn’t think Cybercom is where it should be yet in preparation for fully engaging in cyberspace.

“Part of that is just my culture,” he explained. “My culture as a military guy always is about striving for the best, striving to achieve objectives. You push yourself.”

Defending the Networks

From a defensive standpoint it’s difficult to defend a network infrastructure that has been built over decades, Rogers said, noting that most of it was created at a time when there was no critical cyberthreat.

“We're trying to defend infrastructure in which redundancy, resiliency and defensibility were never design characteristics,” he said. “It was all about ‘build me a network that connects me in the most efficient and effective way with a host of people and lets me do my job.’” Rogers noted that concerns about an adversary’s ability to penetrate the network and manipulate or steal data was not a primary factor at the time.

The department is working to change its network structure to incorporate core security characteristics, the admiral said.

On the offensive side, Cybercom is “working its way,” Rogers said, and doing this within a broader structure that dovetails with the law of armed conflict.
Cyber as an Offensive Tool

“Remember,” he said, “when you look at the application of cyber as an offensive tool, it must fit within a broader legal framework -- the law of armed conflict, international law, the norms we have come to take for granted in some ways in the application of kinetic force.”

Cybercom must do the same thing in the offensive world, the admiral said, “and we're clearly not there yet.”

Like many nations around the world, the United States has capabilities in cyber.
“The key for us is to ensure that such capabilities are employed in a very lawful, very formulated, very regimented manner,” Rogers said.

Legal Framework for Cyberspace

In January 2014, in Presidential Policy Directive 28, Rogers said President Barack Obama laid out the framework he wanted used in the conduct of signals intelligence.

Today, the admiral said, “all that remains applicable.”

Another question from the audience referenced ISIL’s use of the dark Web to raise money through Bitcoin, a form of digital currency.

The questioner described the dark Web as “a bunch of anonymous computers -- a bunch of anonymous users -- that are still able to find each other” using a browser that protects users’ anonymity, no matter what a user is doing there.
Nature of the Business

On collecting intelligence from the dark Web, Rogers said, “We spend a lot of time looking for people who don't want to be found.”

In some ways, he added, that is the nature of the business, particularly involving terrorists or individuals engaged in espionage against the United States or against its allies and friends.

Such activities, the admiral said, are a national concern.

“ISIL's ability to generate resources, to generate funding, is something that we're paying attention to,” Rogers said.

Focusing on ISIL

“It's something of concern to us,” he noted, “because it talks about ISIL’s ability to sustain themselves over time [and] about their ability to empower the activity we're watching on the ground in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya [and] in other places.”
Such activities also are of concern to a host of nations, the admiral said, adding, “I won't get into the specifics of exactly what we're doing, other than to say this is an area that we are focusing attention on.”

When asked about deterring America’s adversaries from carrying out cyberattacks, Rogers said the concept of deterrence in the cyber domain is relatively immature.

“This is still the early stages of cyber in many ways,” he said, “so we're going to have to work our way through this” by developing and accepting norms of behavior in cyberspace that will underlie and support the notion of deterrence.

LANL: ADVANCED MODELING, SIMULATION TECH USED IN LIGHT-WATER REACTOR RESEARCH

FROM:  LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos Boosts Light-Water Reactor Research with Advanced Modeling and Simulation Technology
Simulated nuclear reactor project benefits from funding extension

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 2, 2015, 2014—Hard on the heels of a five-year funding renewal, modeling and simulation (M&S) technology developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory as part of the Consortium for the Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) will now be deployed to industry and academia under a new inter-institutional agreement for intellectual property.

“This agreement streamlines access to the reactor simulation research tools,” said Kathleen McDonald, software business development executive for the Laboratory, “and with a single contact through UT-Battelle, we have a more transparent release process, the culmination of a lengthy effort on the part of all the code authors,” she said.

CASL is a US Department of Energy “Energy Innovation Hub” established in 2010 to develop advanced M&S capabilities that serve as a virtual version of existing, operating nuclear reactors. As announced by DOE in January, the hub would receive up to $121.5 million over five years, subject to congressional appropriations. Over the next five years, CASL researchers will focus on extending the M&S technology built during its first phase to include additional nuclear reactor designs, including boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactor-based small modular reactors.

CASL’s Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) – essentially a “virtual” reactor – has currently been deployed for testing to CASL’s industrial partners. Created with CASL Funding, VERA consists of CASL Physics Codes and the software that couples CASL Physics Codes to create the computer models to predict and simulate light water reactor (LWR) nuclear power plant operations. VERA is being validated with data from a variety of sources, including operating pressurized water reactors such as the Watts Bar Unit 1 Nuclear Plant in Tennessee, operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

As one of the original founding CASL partners, Los Alamos will continue to play an important role in Phase 2 of CASL.  Specifically, Los Alamos has leadership roles in three technical focus areas: Thermal Hydraulics Methods (THM), Fuel, Materials and Chemistry (FMC) and Validation and Modeling Applications (VMA).

Thermal-Hydraulics applications range from fluid-structure interaction to boiling multiphase flows. The Los Alamos-led THM team is targeting a number of industry-defined CASL “challenge problems” related to corrosion, fretting and departure from nucleate boiling.

The Fuel, Materials and Chemistry (FMC) Focus Area aims to develop improved materials performance models for fuel and cladding, and integrate those models via constitutive relations and behavioral models into VERA.  In particular, Los Alamos will bring to bear experience in structure-property relations, mechanical deformation and chemical kinetics to address several key aspects of nuclear fuel performance.

The Validation and Modeling Applications (VMA) Focus Area applies the products developed by CASL to address essential industry issues for achieving the CASL objectives of power uprates, lifetime extension, and fuel burn up limit increases, while ensuring the fuel performance and safety limits are met.

Los Alamos will continue to provide functions that are essential for achieving credible, science-based predictive modeling and simulation capabilities, including verification, validation, calibration through data assimilation, sensitivity analysis, discretization error analysis and control, and uncertainty quantification.

The new IIA agreement makes one of the Los Alamos-developed software tools, MAMBA, available for research, subject to agreements through the consortium partners. In addition, the Hydra-TH application is provided under an open-source license in VERA for advanced, scalable single and multiphase computational fluid dynamics simulations.

CASL, which is led by and headquartered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has created hundreds of technical reports and publications and wide engagement with nuclear reactor technology vendors, utilities, and the advanced computing industry.

Doug Kothe, CASL Director at ORNL, notes that “CASL has benefitted tremendously from the innovative technical contributions and leadership provided by Los Alamos technical staff and is fortunate to have these contributions continuing as CASL moves into its second five-years of execution.”

DOD VIDEO: PROSTHETIC LIMBS WITH SENSATIONS

DOD LOOKS TO 'LONG-RANGE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PLAN'

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

Right:  An Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft from the 909th Air Refueling Squadron refuels an Air Force E-8C Surveillance Target Attack Radar System aircraft Jan. 29, 2013. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Tyler Prince.  

DoD Seeks Novel Ideas to Shape its Technological Future
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2015 – The Defense Department is seeking novel ideas to shape its future, and officials are looking to industry, small business, academia, start-ups, the public –- anyone, really –- to boost its ability to prevail against adversaries whose access to technology grows daily.

The program, called the Long-Range Research and Development Plan, or LRRDP, began with an Oct. 29 memo by DoD acquisition chief Frank Kendall.
The memo said the LRRDP will identify high-payoff enabling technology investments that could help shape future U.S. materiel investments and the trajectory of future competition for technical superiority. The plan will focus on technology that can be moved into development programs within the next five years.

Full and Immediate Support

“This effort is of the highest priority and requires full and immediate support from across the department,” Kendall wrote.

On Jan. 28, the department published a request for information, seeking to identify current and emerging technologies or projections of technology-enabled concepts that “could provide significant military advantage to the United States and its partners and allies in the 2030 timeframe.”

During a recent media roundtable here, LRRDP program lead Stephen P. Welby, deputy assistant secretary of defense for systems engineering, said the RFI deadline has twice been extended, and that more than 300 responses have come in.

“We have gotten some very talented folks replying to the RFI,” Welby said. Ideas are coming from small businesses, from traditional defense sources, and “some from surprising places we hadn't thought might respond,” Kendall said. “And that's exactly what we're hoping to get from this,” he added.

Defense Innovation Initiative

The LRRDP is part of the larger Defense Innovation Initiative, an effort to harness the brightest minds and cutting-edge technology to accelerate the way the department innovates and operates.

Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work is managing and integrating the initiative’s five technology areas, one of which is the LRRDP. In a summer meeting, Welby said, Work “introduced and drew out a historical analogy to where we are today.”

In 1973, the nation was moving out of the Vietnam War, where the military had been focused on counterinsurgency. Budgets were declining. And the Soviets, among other things, gradually had begun to build up their strategic nuclear forces, Work said during a January speech.

In the summer of 1973, with the dangers of nuclear escalation growing, what would later become the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, launched the first LRRDP program to give the president and the joint force better tools for responding to a Warsaw Pact attack, the deputy secretary said.

The group recommended going after conventional weapons with near-zero miss capability -- “a very simple idea that had profound implications throughout the entire defense program,” he added.

In 1977, the DoD leadership directed DARPA to integrate all of the promising military technologies into a system of systems for deep attack. The program, Assault Breaker, called for aircraft with light-area-sensor cueing and surface-to-surface ballistic missiles that could dispense a blanket of anti-armor submunitions.
Picking a Competitive Advantag
e

Assault Breaker demonstrated its capabilities in 1982 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and Work said the Soviets were watching.

“The implications of that single demonstration … really caused them to pause,” he added.

Ultimately, Assault Breaker led to development of the Air Force’s 17 E-8 Joint Surveillance Target and Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, aircraft, its air-to-ground BLU-108 sensor-fuzed weapon with terminally guided submunitions, and the long-range, surface-to-surface Army Tactical Missile System called ATACMS.

“We had picked a competitive advantage that we knew our adversary, the Soviets, could not duplicate and therefore injected uncertainty in their minds, changing their war-fighting calculus,” Work explained.

The joint force took over Assault Breaker, the deputy secretary said, “and we continued to build [the advanced capability] even in an era of declining budgets, starting in 1985.”

Demonstrating the Capability

U.S. forces demonstrated the capability, including that of the E-8C JSTARS side-looking airborne radar system with moving target indication, to the rest of the world in 1990 and 1991. This was during Operation Desert Storm, Work said, “when the Iraqi heavy formations built on the Soviet model were virtually reduced to an array of targets.”

Forty-two years after the plan’s inception, the second iteration of LRRDP is still accepting idea submissions, Welby said, noting that the LRRDP program page at the department’s Innovation Marketplace website features a conspicuously placed green box that says, “Share your ideas.”

Submissions should focus on technology-enabled capabilities that could to enter formal development in the next five to 10 years, the RFI says, offering military advantage during the 2025 to 2030 timeframe.

The LRRDP is looking for relatively mature technologies that can be applied in novel ways for a new kind of system capability, emerging technologies that can quickly be turned to new military capabilities, or technologies for nondefense applications that can offer new military capabilities.

Technology Priorities

Five technology priority areas include space, undersea technology, air dominance and strike, air and missile defense, and other technology-driven concepts.

When program officials find an idea interesting, one of five teams will be sent to speak with the submitting person or company, Welby said, adding that in mid-summer, the best ideas will be shared with Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
“The customer for this is the leadership of the department,” he said, “to help them think through the future and think differently about what the world's going to look like.”

FDIC SAYS BRICK-AND-MORTAR BANKING MAIN MEANS ACCESS TO FDIC-INSURED INSTITUTIONS

FROM:  FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today released a study showing that despite the increased use of online and mobile banking, brick-and-mortar banking offices continue to be the primary means through which FDIC-insured institutions deliver financial services to their customers. FDIC-insured institutions operated 94,725 banking offices as of June 2014, a decline of just 4.8 percent from the all-time high of 99,550 offices in 2009.

The study identifies four main factors that have influenced the number and distribution of banking offices over time: population growth, banking crises, legislative changes to branching laws, and technological innovation. In terms of technological change, there is little evidence that the emergence of new electronic channels for delivering banking services has substantially diminished the need for traditional branch offices where banking relationships are built.

Historically, net declines in branch offices have typically followed periods of financial distress, such as the Great Depression, the S&L and banking crisis of the 1980s, and the most recent financial crisis. The relaxation of branching laws in the 1980s and 1990s appears to have increased the prevalence of banking offices by removing legislative constraints on the size and geographic scope of the branch networks that each bank could operate. Since 1970, banks have introduced a series of new electronic channels for delivering banking services. Yet between 1970 and 2014 the total number of banking offices grew nearly twice as fast as the U.S. population, and as of 2014 the density of banking offices per capita was higher than it had been at any point prior to 1977.

According to the 2013 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, visiting a teller remains the most common way for households to access their accounts.

FACT SHEET ON UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS AND PRIVACY, CIVIL RIGHTS

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE
February 15, 2015
FACT SHEET: Promoting Economic Competitiveness While Safeguarding Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in Domestic Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Today the White House issued a Presidential Memorandum to promote economic competitiveness and innovation while safeguarding privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties in the domestic use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).

This Presidential Memorandum builds on efforts already underway to integrate UAS into the national airspace system (NAS).  The Federal Aviation Administration has authorized the testing of UAS at six sites around the country in December 2013 as part of its efforts to safely integrate UAS into the NAS, as required by the Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012.

UAS are a potentially transformative technology in diverse fields such as agriculture, law enforcement, coastal security, military training, search and rescue, first responder medical support, critical infrastructure inspection, and many others.

The Administration is committed to promoting the responsible use of this technology, strengthening privacy safeguards and ensuring full protection of civil liberties.

The Presidential Memorandum released today ensures that the Federal Government’s use of UAS takes into account these important concerns and in service of them, promotes better accountability and transparent use of this technology, including through the following:

First, the Presidential Memorandum requires Federal agencies to ensure that their policies and procedures are consistent with limitations set forth in the Presidential Memorandum on the collection and use, retention, and dissemination, of information collected through UAS in the NAS.

Second, the Presidential Memorandum requires agencies to ensure that policies are in place to prohibit the collection, use, retention, or dissemination of data in any manner that would violate the First Amendment or in any manner that would discriminate against persons based upon their ethnicity, race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity, in violation of law.

Third, the Presidential Memorandum includes requirements to ensure effective oversight.

Fourth, the Presidential Memorandum includes provisions to promote transparency, including a requirement that agencies publish information within one year describing how to access their publicly available policies and procedures implementing the Presidential Memorandum.

Fifth, recognizing that technologies evolve over time, the Presidential Memorandum requires agencies to examine their UAS policies and procedures prior to the deployment of new UAS technology, and at least every three years, to ensure that protections and policies keep pace with developments.

Consistent with these objectives, the Presidential Memorandum additionally requires the Department of Commerce, through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and in consultation with other interested agencies, to initiate a multi-stakeholder engagement process within 90 days to develop a framework for privacy, accountability, and transparency issues concerning the commercial and private use of UAS in the NAS.

TECHNOLOGY AND SENSING FAILURE

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Warding off failure

Tiny, self-powered sensors push the limits of health and usage monitoring
Imagine a world where bridges, roads, heart valves or knee replacements could monitor themselves and send a warning signal before they fail. Imagine then, if these advanced pieces of technology could power themselves and operate for years without needing any maintenance.

Shantanu Chakrabartty, a researcher at Michigan State University (MSU), has worked for almost a decade on these safety-critical goals. Using four National Science Foundation (NSF) grants since 2006, the associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in MSU's College of Engineering has focused on the fundamental science behind self-powered sensors for health and usage monitoring.

"My part is the core science that drives this technology," Chakrabartty said. "I am interested in the device's physics and in exploring new ways to sense and compute on the sensor. The technology is currently being piloted in different applications, and every new application allows me to optimize the sensor in different ways."

Self-powered sensors developed by Chakrabartty and his collaborators may be attached to or embedded inside bridges, pavements, vehicles, rotating parts and biomedical implants. They can autonomously sense, compute and store cumulative statistics of strain rates, without the aid of batteries.

Tiny sensor networks

With NSF support, Chakrabartty discovered a unique synchrony between the physics of flash memory and the physics of devices that convert mechanical stress into energy.

The innovation, called piezoelectricity-driven hot electron injection (p-IHEI), enables energy-harvesting sensors to be miniaturized.

These tiny sensors can then be embedded inside structures like wind turbines or rotor blades. They can even be placed inside the human body--for instance, in a knee implant or a heart valve.

A network of micro-sized sensors can self-diagnose any catastrophic failure, according to Chakrabartty. Once fully packaged, he hopes the sensor will become an integral part of any "smart" structure, whether it is civil, mechanical or biomechanical.

Remote access to foil failure

The sensors can be remotely retrieved with a smartphone and used to predict the onset of mechanical failure. Users may be alerted to potential problems, minimizing the risk of bodily harm and significantly reducing maintenance costs.

"Currently, we're looking at using a diagnostic ultrasound to retrieve data from the sensors implanted in the body," Chakrabartty said. "This will be highly cost-effective and will be compatible with instrumentation already used by health care professionals."

"My goal is now to explore new biomedical applications of these sensors and push its limits of performance," he said.

One of the new sensor applications is smart sports helmets that diagnose concussions.

"At a time when we all carry sensors in our pockets and on our wrists to monitor many of our daily activities, technology that enables the assessment of the health of critical infrastructure, vital organs or the occurrence of life-threatening events is long overdue and sorely needed," said Massimo Ruzzene, program director in NSF's Engineering Directorate. "Dr. Chakrabartty's innovations in the area of remote, self-powered sensing significantly contributes to this need."

Chakrabartty won an NSF CAREER Award in 2010 for his research in energy-harvesting sensors and processors. Though his Adaptive Integrated Microsystems (AIM) Laboratory at MSU, he has been working on a revolutionary sensing paradigm to help engineers and doctors monitor the health of mechanical structures.

The self-powered sensor research has spawned two U.S. and international patents with several other patents pending. The technology is being marketed by the MSU Technologies Office and has led to the formation of Piezonix, a start-up company based in Michigan.

Key outcomes:

Chakrabartty's technology has led to two issued U.S. patent with several patents pending. The technology also won him the Michigan State University 2012 Innovation of the Year Award, and has created an array of ongoing scientific collaborations.

Nizar Lajnef, assistant professor of civil engineering at MSU, earned his PhD through a related NSF award. His research monitors the degradation of asphalt and bridges. Read more in "Street Smarts – Monitors being created to watch for road and bridge defects."

Formation of Piezonix, a start-up company responsible for commercialization of the self-powered sensing technology.

Several undergraduate senior design projects led to the development of software used for collecting data from the sensors.

Spin-off collaborations include research on smart infrastructure (roads and bridges), smart aircraft skins, smart orthopedic implants, smart heart valves and smart football helmets.


-- Patricia Mroczek, Michigan State University College of Engineering
Investigators
Yang Liu
Niell Elvin
Subir Biswas
Tracey  Covassin
Rigoberto Burgueno
Shantanu Chakrabartty
Related Institutions/Organizations
Piezonix LLC
Michigan State University

NASA VIDEO: #SUITUP FOR JOURNEY TO MARS

NSF ARTICLE ON UP IN THE AIR WIND TURBINES

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Floating wind turbines bring electricity where it's needed

Altaeros Energies' research into advanced materials enables new heights for wind energy
Aiming high

Most wind turbine manufacturers are competing to build taller turbines to harness more powerful winds above 500 feet, or 150 meters. Altaeros is going much higher with their novel Buoyant Airborne Turbine--the BAT. The Altaeros BAT can reach 2,000 feet, or 600 meters.

At this altitude, wind speeds are faster and have five to eight times greater power density. As a result, the BAT can generate more than twice the energy of a similarly rated tower-mounted turbine.

The BAT's key enabling technologies include a novel aerodynamic design, custom-made composite materials, and an innovative control system. The helium-inflatable shell channels wind through a lightweight wind turbine. The shell self-stabilizes and produces aerodynamic lift, in addition to buoyancy. Multiple high-strength tethers hold the BAT in place and a single conductive tether transmits power to a mobile ground station.

The BAT's automated control system ensures safe and efficient operation, the highlight of which is the capability to adjust altitude autonomously for optimal power output. The first BAT model is approximately 15 by 15 meters, is containerized, and does not require a crane or foundation for installation.

Reaching customers

Diesel generators are the standard in power generation for rural and off-grid areas. However, diesel fuel is expensive to deliver to these locations, and diesel generators, though inexpensive to install, are expensive to operate and maintain.

As a result, remote customers typically pay more than 30 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity. The BAT has the potential to bring affordable wind energy to these communities and industries. The first model will provide enough electricity for a small community, or about a dozen American homes.

Combined with significant increases in energy output and the ability to install the unit in 24 hours, the BAT substantially reduces the cost of energy and time to reach customers' energy needs. In the future, Altaeros expects to deploy the BAT alongside first responders in emergency response situations when access to the electric grid is unavailable.

Much like other tethered balloons, the Altaeros BAT can lift communication, Internet and sensory equipment alongside the turbine to provide additional services for customers. The addition of payload equipment does not affect the BAT's performance.

Scaling up

Altaeros was founded in 2010 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company has received NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants (Phase I and Phase II) to test a novel low-cost, high-performance fabric suitable for the BAT's shell, and to develop its modular wind turbine for power performance and ease of installation.

Altaeros recently received Series A funding of $7 million dollars for the continued development and commercialization of its technology.

"The new products being developed by the team at Altaeros are exciting because they have the potential to offer a new method for energy generation which is portable, reliable, quick to deploy, and environmentally-friendly," said Ben Schrag, NSF SBIR program director. "This technology has the potential to avoid many of the key challenges facing traditional wind turbines."

-- Cecile Gonzalez, NSF cjgonzal@nsf.gov
-- Sarah Bates, (703) 292-7738 sabates@nsf.gov
Investigators
Ben Glass
Related Institutions/Organizations
Altaeros Energies, Inc.

NAVY COMPLETES TESTS ON GHOSTSWIMMER

FROM:  U.S. NAVY GHOSTSWIMMER 
141211-N-KE519-014 VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (Dec. 11, 2014) 

The GhostSwimmer vehicle, developed by the Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell project Silent NEMO, undergoes testing at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek - Fort Story. Project Silent NEMO is an experiment which explores the possible uses for a biomimetic device developed by the Office of Naval Research. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Edward Guttierrez III/Released)

Navy Tests New Unmanned Underwater Vehicle at JEBLC-FS
Story Number: NNS141212-26Release Date: 12/12/2014 11:24:00 AM A  A  A  
By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Edward Guttierrez III, Navy Public Affairs Support Element East
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy completed tests on the GhostSwimmer unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story (JEBLC-FS), Dec. 11.

GhostSwimmer is the latest in a series of science-fiction-turned-reality projects developed by the chief of naval operations' Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC) project, Silent NEMO.

Silent NEMO is an experiment that explores the possible uses for biomimetic, unmanned underwater vehicles in the fleet.

Over the past several weeks, Boston Engineering's tuna-sized device has been gathering data at JEBLC-FS on tides, varied currents, wakes, and weather conditions for the development of future tasks.

"GhostSwimmer will allow the Navy to have success during more types of missions while keeping divers and Sailors safe," said Michael Rufo, director of Boston Engineering's Advanced Systems Group.

The GhostSwimmer was developed to resemble the shape and mimic the swimming style of a large fish. At a length of approximately 5 feet and a weight of nearly 100 pounds, the GhostSwimmer vehicle can operate in water depths ranging from 10 inches to 300 feet.

"It swims just like a fish does by oscillating its tail fin back and forth," said Rufo. "The unit is a combination of unmanned systems engineering and unique propulsion and control capabilities."

Its bio-mimicry provides additional security during low visibility intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and friendly hull inspections, while quieter than propeller driven craft of the same size, according to Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC).

The robot is capable of operating autonomously for extended periods of time due to its long-lasting battery, but it can also be controlled via laptop with a 500-foot tether. The tether is long enough to transmit information while inspecting a ship's hull, for example, but if operating independently (without a tether) the robot will have to periodically be brought to the surface to download its data.

"This project and others that we are working on at the CRIC are important because we are harnessing the brainpower and talents of junior Sailors," said Capt. Jim Loper, department head for Concepts and Innovation, NWDC. "The opportunity for a young Sailor who has a good idea to get that idea heard, and to get it turned into action, is greater [now] than any other time in our Navy's history."

The CRIC was established in 2012 to provide junior leaders with an opportunity to identify and rapidly field emerging technologies that address the Navy's most pressing challenges and aims to find ways to quickly employ them in the fleet.

"Our mantra is 'you have permission to be creative.' We want our people to go out there and dream big dreams and put them into action," said Loper. "We want to see projects like this replicated throughout the fleet. The fusion of the deckplate brainpower with support of the most senior leadership in the Navy is going to keep us moving forward throughout the 21st century."

SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT THE U.S.-EU ENERGY COUNCIL

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
Remarks at At U.S.-EU Energy Council
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
European External Action Service
Brussels, Belgium
December 3, 2014

Well, thank you very much for that, Federica. I’m delighted to be here with the high representative and pleased to be in the company of Vice President Sefcovic and Commissioner Canete and Vice-Minister De Vincenti. I’m glad to be back here in this room where we’ve had a couple of meetings already. Last year we were here and we had a good session.

I am not accompanied today by Secretary Moniz. This is not the secretary of energy. He is the acting assistant secretary of energy, and I don’t know how he got here and Moniz did not. (Laughter.) But Secretary Moniz’s flight was canceled, and so he’s gone promptly to the President and he’s asked to be secretary of transportation instead. (Laughter.) Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it, and I’m sorry for that, because as good as the assistant secretary will be, he really knows his stuff, and frankly, he’s got enormous expertise so he will be missed.

But I’m pleased to be here with all of you, and let me begin by applauding the tremendous leadership of the EU in helping to reach a gas deal with respect to Ukraine. That is a very important deal, and it is very successful with respect to the long-term situation. It’s important. And part of our meeting today is really to talk about providing a sustainable energy plan for Europe – for actually more than Europeans – so that all of us can deal not just with issues like climate change, but the economy and the stability of the economy and the stability of the supply. And obviously, it’s not a good idea to depend anywhere in the world on one source. There are disruption and vast implications.

We support major U.S.-EU energy sector reform. That’s part of what we’re going to talk about here today. We think there can be increased domestic production. There’s much to be done on energy efficiency. There’s also an enormous amount to be done in the transformation to a clean energy economy. In fact, the clean energy economy represents the single largest market in the world. And the market that made America particularly wealthy – and I say that advisedly and measured against the 1920s when we didn’t have income tax and people made a lot of money – we actually saw more people make more money in the 1990s from a $1 trillion market that had one billion users. It was the high tech market. The energy market that we are looking at today globally is a $6 trillion market today with 4 to 5 billion users today, and it will rise to some 9 billion users over the course of the next 30 years. It is the largest – you can call it the mother of all markets if you want. And its future is not in coal unless somebody can figure out how to burn it absolutely cleanly. Its future is going to be in clean energy.

So that’s what we’re here to talk about. We want to, obviously, deal with the question – a more prosaic question of how we deal with Ukraine, how we deal with the energy demands of the moment to get through a certain crisis. We want to talk about long-term energy security, which depends on investment in the future. We clearly want to meet our responsibility with respect to climate change. The United States has tried to exhibit leadership together with China as a beginning, as a first step to lay some markers down to encourage people to make the most out of Lima in the next days, and then to make the most out of Paris next year. Because it is clear from all of the scientific evidence that we are behind where we need to be, and catching up is not easy.

So this is our challenge. Technology and our collaboration within the technology sector could be an enormous kick-start to both of our economies and obviously bring us all long-term stability and significant rewards.

I’d just close by saying that I’ve been in public policy now most of my life, 30 – almost 30 years in the U.S. Senate, and now serving as Secretary, and before the Senate, lieutenant governor of a state. I’ve seen many, many debates over public policy issues, and many of them present you with a tension. There’s an up and there’s a down, and you try to fight your way through that tension. When it comes to energy choices, I have never seen an issue that presents as many upsides and as little downside.

People keep saying, well, it’s going to be too expensive to do this, or this may dislocate the economy. It’s just not true. The fact is that the benefits to health, the benefits to – the benefits to health, the savings of hospitals and hospitalization for particulate-imbued diseases or other enhanced diseases as a result of breathing capacity, the enhancement to the environment, the preservation of long-term environment, the diminishment of carbon dioxide, the diminishment of the damaging effects of acidification on the oceans and the impact that is incalculable on species, on coral reefs, on spawning grounds – I mean, you could run the list – the impact on energy security for nations, the lack of conflict as a consequence, the impact on populations that don’t have to move – all of these things are key.

So when you add it all up, the pluses of what we’re talking about here today are just enormous, and we hope that that becomes more and more self-evident as we go forward. And Federica, thanks for hosting us. We appreciate it.

TECH AND NEW IDEAS SOUGHT BY DOD FOR RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT PLAN

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT 
DoD Seeks Future Technology Via Development Plan
By Amaani Lyle
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2014 – The Defense Department seeks technology and innovative ideas as part of its Long Range Research Development Plan within the Defense Innovation Initiative, a broad effort that examines future capabilities, dominance and strategy, a senior DoD official said Nov. 24.

The newly-released LRRDP Request for Information will provide a way for DoD technology scouts to collaborate with industry, academia, and the general public to explore topics and ideas to better identify the “art of the possible,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering Stephen P. Welby.

“We’re interested in getting the broadest set of folks, the brightest minds we can find, to come help us on this effort,” Welby said. “We’re hoping that by casting this wide net, we’ll be able to harness the creativity and innovation going on in the broader ecosystem and help us think about the future department in a new way.”

Domains of Interest

Specific military domains of interest, he said, include space, undersea technologies, affordable protective systems against precision-guided munitions threats, air dominance and strike capability possibilities, ecologically and biologically inspired ideas and human-computer interaction.

“We expect the topics and ideas that come back will inform our science and technology planning and we’re mining that whole space,” Welby said.

He described a “small, agile team” of bright government officials who’ve been charged to engage industry, academia, not-for-profits, small businesses and the general public to help the department explore future possibilities. Inputs will also be accepted from allies and international partners who may have unique perspectives or contributions to the effort.

Officials expect the seven-month study to yield results in time to brief the defense secretary by mid-2015 and influence future budget and offset technology decisions, Welby said.

DoD’s Future

“The key opportunity out of this whole effort is to start a discussion,” he said. “We’re asking questions about people, business practices, but particularly … about technology, what we need to drive the future of the department.”
Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work will oversee the program as part of the overall effort to explore how technology can be incorporated with future DoD strategy and capabilities.

Pentagon officials noted a justified urgency in reviewing the future systems and architectures to maintain dominance over competing investments around the globe.

“There is no better time to look at the long-range strategy we’re taking to invest in technologies that will make a difference,” Welby said.
Capability Breakthrough in the 1980s

During the 1980s, Welby said, DoD found itself facing the Soviets and recognized there was a better way to confront the issue rather than a “tank-versus-tank” military buildup.

“The big breakthrough in that time period was introduction of precision weapons … and technology that allowed us to replace quantity with very precise technology-driven capabilities,” Welby said.

That, he said, has been the key driver in the way the nation has conducted itself in the national security environment for more than 40 years.

“People have understood our playbook,” Welby said. “Adversaries are now building systems that look to blunt particular United States’ advantages and we’d like to revisit that.”

Efforts in 1973 included the original Long-Range Research and Development Plan, which ushered in nascent digital technologies, early iterations of global positioning systems and the beginnings of the future Internet.

Today, he said, DoD faces challenges posed by globalization and technologies driven by both the military and commercial sectors.

“We’re now asking broader questions like, ‘How does the United States maintain its … lead against the entire path of technology and innovation going on globally?’” Welby said.

Maintaining a compelling U.S. advantage in technology is critical, he said.
DoD’s long-range plan, Welby said, will focus on “near-peer competitors,” state actors and a broader scope of conventional deterrence, namely key technologies that will enable the protection of U.S. interests and freedom of movement, and deter future aggression into the 2025 timeframe.

NASA PLANS MARS MISSION IN 2030'S

FROM:  NASA 

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s – goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010. Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet’s history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth? While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are helping us prove many of the technologies and communications systems needed for human missions to deep space, including Mars. The space station also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space and how to protect astronaut health. Our next step is deep space, where NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples. This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help NASA test new systems and capabilities, such as Solar Electric Propulsion, which we’ll need to send cargo as part of human missions to Mars. Beginning in FY 2018, NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket will enable these “proving ground” missions to test new capabilities. Human missions to Mars will rely on Orion and an evolved version of SLS that will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown. A fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers already are on and around Mars, dramatically increasing our knowledge about the Red Planet and paving the way for future human explorers. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover measured radiation on the way to Mars and is sending back radiation data from the surface. This data will help us plan how to protect the astronauts who will explore Mars. Future missions like the Mars 2020 rover, seeking signs of past life, also will demonstrate new technologies that could help astronauts survive on Mars. Engineers and scientists around the country are working hard to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars, and safely return home from the next giant leap for humanity. NASA also is a leader in a Global Exploration Roadmap, working with international partners and the U.S. commercial space industry on a coordinated expansion of human presence into the solar system, with human missions to the surface of Mars as the driving goal. NASA's Orion Flight Test and the Journey to Mars Image Credit: NASA

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"STEALTHGENIE" SPAYWARE APP SELLER PLEADS GUILTY

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Man Pleads Guilty for Selling "StealthGenie" Spyware App and Ordered to Pay $500,000 Fine

A Danish citizen today pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia and was ordered to pay a fine of $500,000 for advertising and selling StealthGenie, a spyware application (app) that could remotely monitor calls, texts, videos and other communications on mobile phones without detection.  This marks the first-ever criminal conviction concerning the advertisement and sale of a mobile device spyware app.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Dana J. Boente of the Eastern District of Virginia and Assistant Director in Charge Andrew G. McCabe of the FBI’s Washington Field Office made the announcement after a hearing before U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia.

“Spyware is an electronic eavesdropping tool that secretly and illegally invades individual privacy,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell.  “Make no mistake: selling spyware is a federal crime, and the Criminal Division will make a federal case out if it.  Today’s guilty plea by a creator of the StealthGenie spyware is another demonstration of our commitment to prosecuting those who would invade personal privacy.”

“The defendant advertised and sold a spyware app that could be secretly installed on smart phones without the knowledge of the phones owner,” said U.S. Attorney Boente.  “This spyware app allowed individuals to intercept phone calls, electronic mail, text messages, voicemails and photographs of others.  The product allowed for the wholesale invasion of privacy by other individuals, and this office in coordination with our law enforcement partners will prosecute not just users of apps like this, but the makers and marketers of such tools as well.”

“Mr. Akbar is the first-ever person to admit criminal activity in advertising and selling spyware that invades an unwitting victim’s confidential communications,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge McCabe.  “This illegal spyware provides individuals with an option to track a person’s every move without their knowledge.  As technology evolves, the FBI will continue to evolve to protect consumers from those who sell illegal spyware.”

According to the statement of facts accompanying the plea agreement in the case, Hammad Akbar, 31, is the chief executive officer of InvoCode Pvt. Limited and Cubitium Limited, the companies that advertised and sold StealthGenie online.  StealthGenie could be installed on a variety of different brands of mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Blackberry Limited’s Blackberry.  Once installed, it could intercept all conversations and text messages sent using the phone.  The app was undetectable by most users and was advertised as being untraceable.

Akbar was arrested on Sept. 27, 2014, in Los Angeles and pleaded guilty today to sale of an interception device and advertisement of a known interception device.  After accepting the guilty plea, the court immediately sentenced Akbar to time served and ordered him to pay a $500,000 fine.  He was also ordered to forfeit the source code for StealthGenie to the government.

On Sept. 26, 2014, the court issued a temporary restraining order authorizing the FBI to temporarily disable the website hosting StealthGenie, which was hosted from a data center in Ashburn, Virginia.  The court later converted the order into a temporary injunction, and the website remains offline.

According to Akbar’s admissions, StealthGenie had numerous functions that permitted it to intercept both outgoing and incoming telephone calls, electronic mail, text messages, voicemail, and photographs from the smartphone on which it was installed.  The app could also turn on the phone’s microphone when it was not in use and record sounds and conversations that occurred near the phone.  All of these functions could be enabled without the knowledge of the user of the phone.

In order to install the app, the purchaser needed at least temporary possession of the target phone.  During the installation process on an Android smartphone, for example, the person installing the app was required to grant a series of permissions that allowed the app to access privileged information on the device.  Once the app was activated, it was started as a “background” (i.e., hidden) service and set up to launch automatically when the phone was powered on.  The only time that the app interacted with the screen was during activation, and the icon for the app was removed from the phone’s menu.  Akbar admitted that because of these characteristics, a typical smartphone user would not know that StealthGenie had been installed on his or her smartphone.  

Akbar also admitted to distributing an advertisement for StealthGenie through his website on Nov. 5, 2011, and to selling the app to an undercover agent of the FBI on Dec. 14, 2012.

This case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and was prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney William A. Hall Jr. of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jay V. Prabhu and Alexander Nguyen of the Eastern District of Virginia.

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U.S. OFFICIAL'S REMARKS FOR TECH PANEL AT U.S.-INDIA SUMMIT

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
Remarks for Tech Panel at U.S.-India Tech Summit
Remarks
Charles H. Rivkin
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
New Delhi, India
November 18, 2014

Thank you.

I am honored to join so many key leaders in the ICT sector, from both our governments and private sectors. And I would like to thank the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Government of India’s Department of Science and Technology, who partnered with the U.S. Government to sponsor this important summit.

There is only so much you can do to make a garden grow. You can plant the seeds. You can enrich the soil. You can water at the right times. You can pull out the weeds. You can make sure the garden gets enough sun. But then it’s your job to get out of the way and let the garden grow on its own.

As governments, there is much we can do – and much that we should do – to help the ICT sector grow. After all, a rich and fertile ICT sector can do so much for the people we are sworn to protect and serve – our citizens.

It may sound surprising to hear a U.S. Government official start a speech by talking about gardens – and maybe that has something to do with the agriculture panel where I’ll be speaking shortly!

But it helps me underscore a fundamental point.

A rich and fertile sector was certainly the impetus behind the Digital India program, whose vision we support and whose goals we are eager to help advance.

But like the gardener – we can reach those goals best by removing the obstacles to growth, and letting things grow by themselves.

In terms of the potential for India’s ICT sector, this couldn’t be a more auspicious time.

According to the Economist magazine, India’s internet users are expected to double to more than 550 million people by the year 2018.

This will make India the world’s second largest internet market. And we fundamentally agree with the Prime Minister’s assessment that this growth will be a game-changer, driving economic growth and personal empowerment.

With this growth come many opportunities, whether we are talking about e-government that can connect people to important services … or e-commerce and other internet-enabled applications that can help small and medium-sized businesses grow and have more access to global markets …

… or quite simply, a broad platform that will allow more people to connect to the world at large.

Two way investment, unhampered by government protectionism and restrictions, would go a long way towards realizing that potential.

We also agree with India’s premise that “IT plus IT equals more IT.” And that ties in perfectly with Secretary Kerry’s prosperity agenda which does not see trade and investment as a zero sum game, but one of equal participation, open competition and mutual advantage.

Our companies are eager to invest in India, employ its citizens and operate service and manufacturing centers here.

But that means competing on equal terms, with no government-imposed restrictions or requirements that amount to protectionist barriers.

There is so much that our IT sector can bring to the table, whether that’s helping to expand broadband access, or develop emergency and disaster communications networks, or simply support social networking, online shopping, e-health, e-learning and e-government – all of which create efficiencies, stimulate economic growth, and improve social well-being.

Removing barriers would also go a long way toward improving India’s manufacturing capability too.

If any country has the intellectual capital and university system to further develop its ICT sector, it’s India.

By removing those barriers, India’s IT industry would have direct access to global supply chains – which are so critical for its innovators and entrepreneurs.

Measures like these would bring greater resonance to India’s message that it is “open for business.”

So would a bilateral Mutual Recognition Agreement, which would save manufacturers the time and expense of additional product testing, so they could deliver products more quickly to each other’s markets and lower costs to consumers.

Finally, we believe there is no greater step to helping the ICT industry contribute to the Indian economy than by opening up the satellite industry.

The Indian satellite industry is successful and mature enough to compete on the world stage without government protections.

An open, competitive satellite industry would fulfill Digital India’s goals, and offer widespread national coverage – from the Himalayas to the Nicobar Islands and everywhere between.

By bringing broadband internet access and mobility connectivity to its people, and emerging as a manufacturing hub for satcom components and systems, India would demonstrate that what’s good for the citizen and the consumer, and what’s good for the investor and the entrepreneur, is also good for the economy, for our countries, and for our citizens.

Thank you.

ROBERT O. WORK STRESSES ENGAGING BUSINESS FOR CONTINUED U.S. TECHNOLOGICAL EDGE

FROM: U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT 
Work Looks to Industry to Maintain Technology Edge
By Amaani Lyle
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19, 2014 – In remarks at the Defense One Summit here today, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work stressed the importance of engaging industry, services and the Defense Business Board in maintaining the United States’ technological edge in coming years.

Work noted the challenge of balancing resources and requirements against the landscape of what he called an “especially chaotic” drawdown and a persistent continuing resolution over the past five years.

“The temporal aspects of this strategy are going to be much more challenging than in the past,” Work said. “And we’re going to have to do rapid prototyping … or we will continually lose ground.”

Budget Uncertainty Threatens Advances

Speaking on acquisition and technological advances, Work described the Defense Department’s focus across the decades, from the 1950’s nuclear weapons, 1960’s space, 1970’s stealth and microelectronics, 1980’s large-scale systems of systems into current systems that can face asymmetric challenges.
But efforts to increase base-level demonstrations, exercises and prototyping, Work said, can by stymied by budget uncertainties.

Work said that in response to those uncertainties, the department will seek to enhance its effectiveness through the Defense Business Board, which includes former chief executive officers, chief financial officers, chief operating officers and captains of industries.

“They’re now an operational arm directly associated with my deputy chief management officer and they’re going to help us benchmark against civilian business practices,” Work said.

So far, the DoD has been able to annually identify some $26 million in savings from duplication of contracts, administrative costs and other expenses over five years through these internal analyses, he said.

“That gave us great confidence that as we look at the broader defense agencies we were going to find significant savings,” Work said.

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