Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the White House, said President Biden will not abolish the U.S. Space Force, Defense News reported Wednesday. Psaki told reporters Wednesday during a briefing the Biden administration fully supports the new service branch and is “not revisiting the decision.”

Gen. John Raymond, chief of space operations and 2021 Wash100 Award recipient, said he would “welcome the opportunity” to discuss with the Biden administration the Space Force’s ongoing work.

The new service is overseeing the country’s GPS constellation, monitoring space debris and managing communications satellites, among other responsibilities.

“I’m very proud of the guardians in the Space Force,” Raymond told reporters Wednesday during a morning roundtable. “I see the value of this force each and every day, and I’m happy to talk to anybody about the great work [it’s doing].” 

Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said the service branch needs a multidomain task force in the European theater, Defense News reported Wednesday. The Army established an MDTF unit at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state with plans to form a second unit in the Pacific region within fiscal year 2021.

“The capabilities that the multidomain task force are going to bring and help us integrate, the expertise that it will bring, are going to be very, very important to updating the way we plan to operate on the European continent,” Cavoli said at an Association of the U.S. Army virtual event Wednesday. “And we will be able to extend that to the African continent as well when we get those capabilities.”

Cavoli said recent exercises highlighted the significance of an MDTF unit in theater operations and one of those exercises – Defender Europe – tried to plan “against the hypothetical scenario of large-scale combat operations” in 2035.

He also cited the need for increased fires capability in the European theater and discussed the Theater Fires Command concept.

“We’re also excited about proposals for something called a ‘Theater Fires Command,’ which would develop and curate, hold custody of targets during the competitive phase, and then execute during a potential conflict,” he said.

“That Theater Fires Command will also bring enormous capability with it, and it will put us into — it will help us, as MDO promises, to push away out of a close fight and be able to fight a little bit more at a standoff so that we, when we do engage in a close fight, it would be under much more advantageous circumstances.”

U.S. Army researchers worked with Northeastern University and the University of Southern California to further study ethical artificial intelligence by covering moral dilemmas involving automated vehicles and other autonomous systems.

In the study, they found that the perceived risk of injury to drivers and pedestrians moderated the probability of making the utilitarian choice or reducing the risk of injury to humans or pedestrians. The research also demonstrated how other decision makers’ moral decisions influence those of the participants.

Celso de Melo, researcher at DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL), said the study is relevant to the service’s modernization efforts.

“As these vehicles become increasingly autonomous and operate in complex and dynamic environments, they are bound to face situations where injury to humans is unavoidable,” de Melo said. “This research informs how to navigate these moral dilemmas and make decisions that will be perceived as optimal given the circumstances; for example, minimizing overall risk to human life.” 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) plans to test a new technology designed to support priority communications for emergency response efforts.

“It’s exciting to work with the PIL, using innovative processes to solve the challenges we face in keeping our country safe each day,” CISA’s chief innovation officer, Sabra Horne, stated. 

Crius Technology Group's Comm³ technology would help CISA route security and emergency preparedness communications signals across the electric grid, under the Next Generation Network Priority Service program's second phase, CISA said Tuesday.

CISA wants to demonstrate how electrical power infrastructure can alternatively serve as a communications pathway that prioritizes first responders.

“The NGN-PS Pilot will provide us a key advantage in meeting our emergency communications needs and solving a mission problem, saving us time and money, while we stay focused on keeping our nation safe," said Billy Bob Brown, executive assistant director for emergency communications at CISA.

The agency purchased Comm³ through an expedited procurement process, which the Department of Homeland Security uses to quickly access needed commercial technologies.

Gen. David Berger, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, said he wants the service branch to streamline and accelerate logistics and warfare via artificial intelligence.

Berger, at the National Defense Industrial Association’s expeditionary warfare conference, said he envisions a self-updating system that uses AI to track adversaries, determine optimal logistics routes and deploy unmanned vehicles to deliver supplies, USNI News reported Tuesday. The commandant said marines need to build their trust in AI for his envisioned system to materialize.

“We have programs right now, capabilities right now that allow for fully automatic processing of sensor-to-shooter targeting, but we don’t trust the data," he said.

Berger referenced a study that found that individuals who trained with an AI system have more confidence in the technology, compared those who were just given the system. The general said he'd want industry to help USMC train with and trust AI technology.