Posted by
Cost Estimating NewsBrief: November 7, 2025
Pentagon Draft Memo Signals Overhaul of Acquisition Process
(Executive Gov) The Department of Defense is preparing to implement major changes to how it buys weapons and technology as part of a push to promote competition, reduce bureaucracy and expedite the delivery of capabilities to warfighters, Breaking Defense reported Tuesday. “Every process, board and review must justify its existence by demonstrating how it accelerates capability delivery to meet warfighter needs,” according to a draft memo obtained by Breaking Defense. “Speed to capability delivery is now our organizing principle: the decisive factor in maintaining deterrence and warfighting advantage.” Read More
Raleigh turns to a digital twin to improve city safety and planning
(Route Fifty) In North Carolina, cities like Raleigh are some of the fastest growing communities across the nation. One way city leaders are innovating how they better serve that growing population is through the development of a digital twin of Raleigh, which could help improve community safety and interagency collaboration, one official says. The city of Raleigh’s population surpassed 500,000 people last year, following an increase of 32,728 people from April 2020 to July 2024, according to state data. That means more people driving on the roads and crossing streets everyday, and that “population growth puts a lot of pressure on the local government to continue to deliver the services that make the area attractive to our citizens and new residents,” said Jim Alberque, GIS and emerging technology manager for Raleigh. Read More
Bipartisan Senate bill calls for agencies to report AI-related job cuts
(FedScoop) Federal agencies would be required to report artificial intelligence-related layoffs to the Department of Labor under a new bill from a bipartisan pair of senators. The AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act from Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., calls on agencies and major companies to deliver quarterly reports to DOL on the impact AI has on their workforces, detailing job cuts and displacements. “Artificial intelligence is already replacing American workers, and experts project AI could drive unemployment up to 10-20% in the next five years,” Hawley said in a press release. “The American people need to have an accurate understanding of how AI is affecting our workforce, so we can ensure that AI works for the people, not the other way around.” Read More
How AI fixed the James Webb Space Telescope’s blurry vision
(Space.com) Telescope has been suffering from blurry vision. But a team of Australian researchers created an AI algorithm that fixes the problem — a major relief for the scientific community, which hopes to use the instrument to search for exoplanets around stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The affected instrument is the Aperture Masking Interferometer (API), designed and built by a team of astronomers led by Professor Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney in Australia. API is not one of the main four instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) but a device that enables a special type of imaging on one of the observatory’s main instruments — the Near-InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS). Read More
ICEAA’s NewsBrief is a collection of articles relevant to the cost estimating and analysis community that is delivered weekly to current ICEAA members. To advertise in NewsBrief, contact iceaa@iceaaonline.org.