The House Armed Services Committee is poised to move forward with a number of new IT efforts. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON: The House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) markup of the fiscal year 2022 defense budget includes hundreds of amendments that are intended to set the Defense Department on a trajectory to deal with a set of complex national security challenges over the next decade.

In a hearing on Wednesday that stretched nearly eight hours, the HASC considered 780 amendments to be included in next year’s National Defense Authorization Act, the primary bill for funding national security and defense initiatives. Perhaps the single most remarkable of these is an amendment to raise the NDAA top line by $23.9 billion. But tech innovation, US competitiveness, and cybersecurity formed a central focus from the start.

“If there’s one overarching theme of our approach this year, it’s to transform where we’re heading and focus on technology and innovation and how to start using that better,” HASC chairman Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said in opening remarks. “As we all know and have learned, being able to protect your systems [from] information warfare, cyberattacks — all of that is a lot more threatening than it used to be, and I think our mark today does a better job of protecting that.”

There are too many amendments to summarize in a single article, but the so-called CITI En Bloc 1, a group of 36 individual amendments, is notable. (CITI is an acronym for the HASC Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems, chaired by Rep. Jim Langevin, D.-R.I.). This block of amendments alone includes a key set of initiatives that span cybersecurity, 5G, artificial intelligence, electromagnetic spectrum operations, software, microelectronics, and information operations.

Here’s a summary of several important amendments included in the CITI En Bloc 1, which the committee passed unanimously:

  • Requires the Joint Chiefs of Staff to report to the House and Senate on commercial solutions for and the interoperability of Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) tech. Interoperability entails linking commercial technology with battlefield management systems, among military branch networks, and between allied communications systems. (Sponsored by Jerry Carl, R-Ala.)
  • Requires DoD to identify the resources necessary for, and to regularly update Congress on the progress of, executing the implementation plan for the 2020 Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy. (Sponsored by Langevin.)
  • Requires regular updates on the DoD’s progress in the development, adoption, and deployment of 5G and Open Radio Access Networks (O-RANs). (Sponsored by Pat Fallon, R-Tex.)
  • Requires DoD to develop a strategy for “maneuver autonomy capability” in major weapon systems by 2025, largely by exploring applications of autonomy-enabling software. (Sponsored by Jim Banks, R-Ind., the CITI subcommittee ranking member.)
  • Requires the creation of a national network of microelectronics research and development. (Sponsored by Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz.)
  • Establish a “cadre” of software development and acquisition experts to “ensure a consistent, strategic, and highly knowledgeable approach to developing and acquiring software.” (Sponsored by Anthony Brown, D-Mary.)
  • Requires the National Security Agency director to identify “impediments” to establishing an authority for issuing cyber directives for National Security Systems, a special class of IT systems. Homeland Security, through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, issues cyber directives for executive branch agencies. The Joint Functional Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network issues directives for military and subordinate components. But no authority can currently issue cyber directives for the special class of NSS. (Sponsored by Andy Kim, D-N.J.)
  • Requires DoD-wide adoption of a Protective Domain Name System. (Sponsored by Scott Franklin, R-Fla.)
  • Requires update on the DoD’s artificial intelligence to “to map and analyze the vast and evolving landscape of Department policy, regulations, and strategies to provide decision makers the ability to quickly search millions of pages of documents to identify a comprehensive catalogue of information to make more efficient policy decisions.” (Sponsored by Langevin.)
  • Requires a feasibility study on establishing a single “clearinghouse” or point of contact charged with all DoD cyber recruitment and retention initiatives. (Sponsored by Rep. Elisa Slotkin, D-Mich.)
  • Requires a strategy and posture review of US information operations, specifically the “ability to influence and disrupt adversary information flow and decision-making, as well as defend and bolster our own.” This entails electronic warfare, cyber operations, operations security, and information assurance. Separately, but related, requires developing a plan to compete in the global information environment. (Strategy and posture review sponsored by Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. with the plan requirement sponsored by Langevin.)

There are still major steps to take before this language becomes law. The HASC’s NDAA now awaits a full vote in the House and then will head to reconciliation with the Senate before being signed by the president. But the fact the language was voted through en bloc is a sign it’s noncontroversial and will likely survive in the final version of the bill.