Ryan McCarthy, secretary of the U.S. Army, joined senior officials of the military service during a recent demonstration of a tiltrotor aircraft Textron's Bell subsidiary developed for the branch's Future Vertical Lift program, the Army News Service reported Tuesday.

A Bell V-280 Valor demonstrator reached a flight speed of 200 knots and performed vertical takeoff-and-landing maneuvers as part of the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration event.

JMR-TD, which the service designated as a "capability enabler," seeks to explore the potential of next-generation systems to help joint force commanders address multidomain requirements.

The Army is eyeing V-280 and SB-1 Defiant, a compound helicopter offering from the Boeing-Sikorsky team, as potential UH-60 Black Hawk replacements through the FVL program.

McCarthy said the companies are working to address "the issues of specific characteristics that we're looking for — whether it's power or speed."

Boeing and Sikorsky are scheduled to demonstrate SB-1 Defiant on Feb. 20 at the latter's facility in West Palm Beach, Fla.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is collaborating with the Department of Defense to advance the authoritative use of a digital version of the military discharge document – DD 214 – for getting veterans services, FedScoop reported Friday. Kshemendra Paul, chief data officer at VA, told the publication VA and DoD are in the early phases of creating a DD 214 action plan.

“We’re moving toward a future state where veterans don’t need to present the DD 214,” Kshemendra Paul, chief data officer at VA, told the publication. “And it takes time to work through all the policy linkages and then to organize all the different dimensions: the IT bits, the budgeting bits, the business process reengineering bits, the work with regulations that define each of the benefits that VA offers.”

The Pentagon issues the DD 214 form upon a soldier’s discharge or retirement from any service branch. The document, which contains the veteran’s previous assignments and awards, is required for retirees seeking to secure medical benefits, loans and other services from VA.

Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), delivered his remarks to the Homeland Security Experts Group Friday about DHS’ 2020 priorities and election security is one of the priorities he discussed.

He mentioned the efforts of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under the leadership of Christopher Krebs, a 2019 Wash100 Award recipient, to ensure the security and resiliency of the country’s election systems, as well as DHS’ plans to prepare for the 2020 presidential elections.

“We’ll continue to educate targeted populations to make them less receptive to misinformation campaigns. We’ll also continue to work with partners to prepare and practice for potential disruptions,” he said.

Wolf said DHS is encouraging states to audit election results through paper. “In 2020, over 90% of votes will have a corresponding paper ballot. This is a significant achievement,” he added. Other issues Wolf discussed are the international threats posed by Iran, Russia and China, border security and counterterrorism.

Air Force Research Laboratory and its contractor have demonstrated the integrated performance of the X-60A hypersonic rocket's propulsion system during a recent series of ground tests.

The propulsion system underwent cold-flow and hot-fire trials with realistic procedures and hardware, the U.S. Air Force said Wednesday.

X-60A is designed to perform hypersonic flight for research and development efforts that require an easily accessible rocket able to exceed Mach 5 in speed.

Generation Orbit Launch Services serves as the program's contractor under a small business innovation agreement with AFRL. Ursa Major Technologies provided a Hadley liquid rocket engine for hot-fire and cold-flow testing.

“This test series was a critical step in reducing risk and gathering necessary system integration data in preparation for our upcoming flight tests,” said Barry Hellman, X-60A program manager at AFRL.

The hypersonic rocket will undergo fight-testing from Florida-based Cecil Spaceport for further evaluation and maturation.

The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division’s Lakehurst site has recently acquired three new additive manufacturing systems to upgrade its equipment maintenance capabilities.

Two of the 3D printing platforms enable users to overhaul large objects with minimal waste, while the third system assists in NAWCAD’s reverse engineering efforts and negates the need to dismantle the parts of the object in question.

“These three systems will result in a tremendous increase in capability and will have an immediate impact to the warfighter,” said Kyle Cobb, advanced manufacturing technology lead at NAWCAD Lakehurst.

Work performed by the three new platforms, the Optomec CS-800 Directed Energy Deposition AM System, Sciaky Electron Beam AM System and the NSI X5000 Computed Tomography NDI X-Ray System, will support the Naval Air Systems Command. NAWCAD received the systems in 2019.

Additive manufacturing is a time-saving process that uses polymers and powdered metals as base materials to create objects from a 3D blueprint.