The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has appointed Michael Boyce as the new leader of its AI Corps, a move aimed at boosting the agency’s capacity to integrate Artificial Intelligence in addressing significant national security challenges. The AI Corps, which draws inspiration from the esteemed U.S. Digital Service established by the White House, is designed to deploy expert teams to tackle the agency’s most pressing mission requirements, such as fentanyl interdiction, the fight against online child sexual abuse, and disaster damage assessments. Michael Boyce, previously a senior policy ..read more

Dev Technology Group has secured a significant contract with the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA), valued at $170 million over five years. This new contract, part of the Flexible Agile Scalable Teams (FAST) portfolio, focuses on supporting the Law Enforcement/Federal Air Marshal Service (LE / FAMS). Under this comprehensive contract, Dev Technology and its partners will provide an extensive array of services. These include system and application design, agile software development, application production support, and information technology infrastr ..read more

Discussion Highlights with Kenneth Bible, CISO @ U.S. Department of Homeland Security (recently retired) *AI Impact: Ken shares how artificial intelligence, particularly Generative AI, impacts cybersecurity and data privacy. *Collaboration: Partnerships between cybersecurity, privacy, and legal are crucial for addressing concerns that exist in both cybersecurity and civil rights communities. *Zero Trust: What this means and how it applies to AI. *Securing the AI Environment: Addressing challenges of securing where AI models are trained. *Adopting AI Monitoring Tools: Observability and alertin ..read more

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit the United States (US) on May 9, 2024. However, the relationship between the two countries has deteriorated significantly in recent years. Despite Turkiye’s status as a NATO and Western ally, its shifting political landscape has brought it closer to Russia, which conflicts with US interests in the region. Turkiye’s increasing human rights violations, media repression, and imprisonment of journalists have driven a wedge between it and the Western world. The United States has been vocal about its concerns, which has further strained relations. President ..read more

As I approach the end of my first year in retirement from emergency management, I have had the opportunity to look back with a fresh perspective and objectivity.  We are fortunate to have so many of the best and brightest working in this profession.  And we need them because many of the challenges are daunting.  Here are the top five challenges that I see facing emergency management this year. Work-Life Balance A key to any effective emergency management program is experience acquired through strong recruitment and retention.   Emergency managers do a stellar job in r ..read more

The Coast Guard retired the Air Station Kodiak MH-65 Dolphin helicopter fleet during a ceremony, Tuesday. Capt. Timothy Williams, commanding officer of Air Station Kodiak, presided over the ceremony honoring the 36 years of service the MH-65 Dolphin airframe and its crews provided to the Arctic region. Air Station Kodiak currently has a rotary-wing fleet of six MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters. The unit will shift to a rotary-wing ship-and-shore based fleet of nine MH-60 Jayhawks in 2025. Air Station Kodiak will be the fourth Coast Guard Air Station to transition to a single rotary wing fleet of MH ..read more

The U.S. Navy has awarded Electra.aero Inc. a contract under the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) to explore the use of Electra’s electric short takeoff and landing (eSTOL) aircraft as a next-generation aviation solution for logistics in a contested environment. In this study, Electra will work with Navy stakeholders to define specific contested logistics use cases and conduct a conceptual design study to evaluate how its hybrid-electric eSTOL aircraft can address unique Navy capability gaps. Contested logistics, a key topic of national security interest, essentially refers to the movement ..read more

In advance of the summer and underscoring the Biden-Harris Administration’s focus on community resilience to address climate change, FEMA will host a virtual and in-person Extreme Heat Summit series focused on understanding extreme heat impacts and defining actionable ways to combat and prepare for these increasing risks across the country. Well ahead of the start to summer, January through March 2024 clocked in as the fifth-warmest start to a year in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 130-year climate record. NOAA predicts odds for above-normal temperatures ..read more

Gibbs & Cox aims to address the U.S. Navy’s capacity issues in armament and resupply in the Western Pacific by converting surplus oil rigs into heavily armed mobile missile and resupply bases in its Mobile Defense/Depot Platform (MODEP) Concept at Sea Air Space 2024. “Our target here is to find a solution to help the challenging problem of having capacity issues in the Western Pacific. For not enough cells, not enough missiles, not enough of being able to keep those ships in the forward station” Dave Zook, Solutions Architect & Combat Systems Department Manager at Gibbs & Cox told ..read more

The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Winslow Griesser interdicted an unlawful migration voyage in the Mona Passage, Friday. Following the interdiction, Dominican Republic Navy authorities detained three U.S. citizens, who reportedly are affiliated with a criminal gang and wanted in connection with a July 2020 shooting at a residential community in Puerto Rico in which four people were killed. The suspects are currently under the custody of the Dominican Republic ‘Dirección Nacional de Control de Drogas (DNCD) (United States Marshals Service Dominican Republic Foreign Field Office Fugitive ..read more