The U.S. Navy has issued an environmental assessment stating that home-basing 20 Boeing-built MQ-25A Stingray refueling drones at Naval Base Ventura County (NBVC) in Point Mugu, California, will have no significant impact on the environment.

The Navy said Wednesday that the service intends to use NVBC’s training facilities, hangar and related infrastructure to support maintenance and training operations involving the MQ-25 carrier-based unmanned air system fleet.

Activities that will take place at the naval base include over 960 annual Stingray flight operations and related stationing support for approximately 730 personnel and their families.

According to the Navy, the EA comes as part of collaborative efforts with the California Coastal Commission and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in line with National Environmental Policy Act requirements.

Stingray operations will help expand the Navy’s aircraft carrier capacity while developing versatility for aerial refueling as well as multi-mission and sea-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities.

The drone will also help extend the reach of the carrier fleet on the West Coast to support national security objectives, the Navy noted. The EA is available for public access through the project website.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has teamed up with the Norwegian Ministry of Defense to build a high-speed propulsion technology that could support hypersonic and supersonic weapons. 

The partnership is a part of the Tactical High-speed Offensive Ramjet for Extended Range (THOR-ER) program, an initiative that seeks to develop and update solid fuel ramjet technologies into full-size prototypes that could reach extended ranges and high speeds, DOD said Wednesday.

Col. Corey Beaverson, director of mission prototypes at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said the program also aims to inform potential ramjet co-production efforts.

The U.S. Navy's Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division will work with Nammo Group and the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment to explore technologies that are viable for high-speed weaponry.

THOR-ER began in 2019 and is expected to wrap up in 2024. Ramjets are propulsion systems that compress the air for combustion by utilizing a missile's forward motion.

The Department of Energy will use $24.5 million on electricity infrastructure projects that aim to implement clean energy and respond against the climate crisis. DOE said Wednesday that it will distribute these funds across two funding opportunities for research and development on clean energy technologies.

The funding opportunity for “Flow Battery Systems Manufacturing” will allot a maximum of $20 million for R&D on electrochemical batteries powered by externally stored electrolytes.

The second opportunity, titled “Conductivity-enhanced materials for Affordable, Breakthrough Leapfrog Electric applications,” will seek boosted conduction efficiency in manufacturable materials.

“These funding opportunities will help manufacture the next-generation energy storage systems and power lines that support President Biden’s climate goals, create and sustain U.S. jobs and build a strong, secure and efficient electric grid," said Jennifer Granholm, secretary of energy.

The FBI has released a report detailing alleged internet crimes from over 791,790 complaints that the agency's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded in 2020.

IC3's 2020 Internet Crime Report states that the cyber attacks resulted in more than $4.2 billion in losses and that the top three recorded crimes were non-delivery and nonpayment scams, phishing scams and extortion, the agency said Wednesday.

Victims primarily lost money to investment fraud, confidence and romance schemes and compromised business emails, according to the report.

In 2020, IC3 recorded more than 28,500 complaints on pandemic-related scams and fraudulent activities targeting individuals and businesses. The number of IC3 complaints increased from approximately 300,000 in 2019, the report states.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to invest $150 million to help Americans in underserved communities access COVID-19 treatment. 

HHS said Wednesday that it may increase the capacity of health care centers, hire more staff and deliver more equipment to boost the distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments.

Communities with high intensities of COVID-19 cases will receive priority based on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention's index for social vulnerability.

Monoclonal antibody therapeutics, approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), work to neutralize the coronavirus and prevent the COVID-19 disease from developing in the human body.

The U.S. has distributed over 900,000 courses of the COVID-19 treatment across health care facilities in the country.

Christopher Maier, acting assistant defense secretary for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD SOLIC), said the U.S. military must refocus information operations toward diverse threat environments to stay ahead of adversaries, Defense One reported Wednesday.

Maier said at a House hearing that the Department of Defense (DoD) must evolve fast and bring diversity into recruitment procedures to bring significant benefits to national security missions.

A former defense official also said at the hearing that the U.S. Special Operations Command's (USSOCOM) challenges in information operations stem from not having enough civilian oversight on the command. 

ASD SOLIC fills the role of USSOCOM management, according to Defense One. The defense secretary’s office is currently reviewing the potential elevation of the ASD SOLIC’s authorities, according to Maier. 

James Sullivan, defense intelligence officer for cyber at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), noted that IO will serve as a key factor in U.S. competition with adversaries like Russia and China. He added that information domain threats are “here to stay” and that China is likely to surpass Russia in IO through its artificial intelligence and machine learning efforts.

“Cyber is a great equalizer in that nobody is 100-percent mature in this domain and information dominance is effective,” he noted.