The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has decided to block Chinese company ZTE from contracts under the $8.3 billion Universal Service Fund, due to national security concerns.

FCC said Tuesday its Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau denied ZTE's petition for reconsideration of being branded as a threat.

“At the next Open Meeting on December 10, the Commission will vote on rules to implement the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement program to help carriers remove and replace untrusted equipment from their networks, months before the statutory deadline," said Ajit Pai, FCC chairman

The commission declared Huawei and ZTE threats to national security in late June. ZTE requested reconsideration, and FCC rejected that petition.

This decision prohibits the Universal Service Fund from being used for purchases of ZTE products and services.

"Now it is more vital than ever that Congress appropriate funds so that our communications networks are protected from vendors that threaten our national security," Pai added.

The U.S. Army has established a new directorate that will focus on program integration standards, future threat analysis and technology collaboration across the service branch, C4ISRnet reported Tuesday.

The service's Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors now has a new integration-focused directorate with three sub-offices.

The first one, labeled “Futures,” will tackle threat analysis, technology transitions and the integration of testing activities into multidomain operations and other programs.

The second one, “Architectures," will work on standards that guide integration between different programs. The last office will work to foster collaboration between PEO IEW&S and other Army organizations.

Christian Keller, who has spearheaded Army projects on aerial intelligence sensors, will lead the directorate.

“We have [a] very complex system-of-systems environment we’re dealing with,” Keller said. “We have various sensor capabilities out there, which have to interface to ground stations and may have to interface to various users, both maneuver wise and fires wise and everything like that.”

A B-1B Lancer aircraft carried a joint air-to-surface standoff missile with an external pylon at Edwards Air Force Base to demonstrate expanded carriage.

The aircraft demonstrated performance that may serve as stepping stones to carrying hypersonic weapons in the future, U.S. Strategic Command said Tuesday.

“Adapting a small number of our healthiest B-1s to carry hypersonic weapons is vital to bridge between the bomber force we have today, to the force of tomorrow,” said Gen. Tim Ray, who leads Air Force Global Strike Command.

The flight demonstration followed multiple ground tests including one that featured a modified internal bomb bay. The U.S. Air Force will use the demonstration's input to determine B-1B's future technical and weapons integration requirements as a multi-mission aircraft.

"This is a major step forward in our global precision fires capability and it is important we pursue these technologies to remain ahead of our competitors. My goal is to have a limited number of B-1s modified to become the roving linebacker of the western Pacific and the North Atlantic," Ray added. 

The U.S. Army partnered with Howard University to launch a facility that will study and develop artificial intelligence-based technologies for multidomain military operations and civilian applications.

The Howard University Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will introduce scholarships for science, technology, engineering and mathematics as part of the Army corporate laboratory's efforts to grow its workforce, the service branch said Monday.

The facility will explore the fundamentals of trustworthy approaches, infrastructure for AI research and development efforts as well as AI applications for the Department of Defense (DoD). The center will be led by Howard’s Prof. Danda B. Rawat, professor of computer science and director of Howard’s Data Science & Cybersecurity Center.

"Diversity of science and diversity of the future S&T talent base go hand-in-hand in this new and exciting partnership," said Brian Sadler, senior research scientist for intelligent systems at the Army.

DoD invested $7.5 million for the research center.