Gen. David Berger, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, outlined his plans for advancing the transformation of the service branch’s force structure by 2030, Seapower Magazine reported Thursday.

The Force Design 2030 report seeks to shift the Marine Corps’ focus from countering violent extremism in the Middle East to peer-level competition in the Indo-Pacific region in accordance with the National Defense Strategy.

“As a consequence, we must transform our traditional models for organizing, training, and equipping the force to meet new desired ends, and do so in full partnership with the Navy,” Berger wrote in the report.

He said the Marine Corps “must pursue transformational capabilities that will provide naval fleets and joint force commanders with a competitive advantage in the gray zone and during contingency.”

For its objective force, the service plans to increase the number of its rocket artillery batteries from seven to 21 and add three more light armored reconnaissance companies. The Marine Corps also intends to raise the number of its active component unmanned aerial vehicle squadrons to six and active component aerial refuel transport squadrons to four.

Berger also mentioned his plans to divest tanks, heavy helicopter squadrons, two light attack helicopter squadrons and three infantry battalions, among others.

Suzette Kent, federal chief information officer and a 2020 Wash100 award winner, said agency CIOs, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and industry partners are ramping up efforts to meet the information technology demand among teleworkers and carry out missions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Federal News Network reported Thursday.

“Everyone is acting with urgency not only inside the federal government, but also the vendors we are working with,” Kent said. “We have been inundated with offers from vendors. We are collecting all those offers and going through them in a way that’s efficient to decide what we can use.”

She said her office has discussed with telecommunications firms and internet service providers about ways to meet the increasing IT demand and ensure the security platforms are installed on networks.

Kent mentioned that agencies conducted individual evaluation of their capacity and launched measures a few weeks ago in preparation for the current situation.

“Right now over the last week and into this week, we see those investments in modernization, like moving to the cloud and the scaling that comes with it, prove the value and give us the results we wanted to see,” she said. “Agencies are able to go from volumes of a snow day in a region to much larger scale volumes across the country.  We’ve done virtual private network testing, and vendors have been very responsive to scale up licenses and with technical tweaks that agencies needed.”

Michael Rigas, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a memo Wednesday outlining temporary procedures on how agencies can facilitate vetting and appointment of employees amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The memo states that agencies that have capabilities to collect and process fingerprints are allowed to continue and comply with guidance for screening new personnel and their eligibility for personal identity verification credentials.

OPM will also allow agencies seeking to onboard new hires but do not have the capacity to perform fingerprint collection and processing must follow the current guidelines to advance the vetting process.

“Agencies will delay reporting the final adjudication of the background investigation until a fingerprint check has been completed and considered in the adjudication,” Rigas wrote in the memo. “Existing mechanisms for measuring the timeliness of adjudication compliance will continue; however, agencies will not be held accountable for adjudication reporting timeliness during the period this guidance is in effect.”

Rigas noted that the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency is establishing a procedure for background investigations processing that allows agencies to defer the requirement for fingerprint submission. “Once an agency is able to collect fingerprints for an individual whose investigation was submitted without them, the agency must submit the fingerprints to DCSA as described in DCSA’s procedure,” he added.

In-person identify proofing is required for the issuance of a credential. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, agencies seeking to onboard new hires may consider to perform identity proofing through remote inspection via email or video link.

Space and Missile Systems Center, now part of the U.S. Space Force, approached California’s state and local officials to maintain space technology production activities amid the coronavirus outbreak, Space News reported Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. John Thompson, SMC’s commander, said they had to sustain authorities’ awareness of work being done in support of national defense.

“We worked very closely last week with Santa Clara County in California, for example, to help Lockheed Martin and ensure the county knew the work done at Sunnyvale is critical to national defense,” he said in a home-based interview with Space News.

The commander also pointed out SMC’s priority to sustain work with small businesses and nontraditional contractors. He said these contractors offer technologies that SMC intends to incorporate into the defense procurement ecosystem.