Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, has issued his first planning guidance for maintaining superiority in the maritime domain, Defense News reported Wednesday.

His guidance’s lines of effort are divided into warfighting, warfighters and future Navy subheads and the first priority focuses on improving ship maintenance and advancing modernization to achieve readiness.

The document calls for Naval Sea Systems Command to come up with a plan within 60 days on how to sustain and improve the maintenance industrial base as well as achieve an 80 percent reduction in days spent on depot maintenance extensions in 2020.

The guidance directs Fleet Forces Command to ensure the Optimized Fleet Response Plan offers adequate forces to meet requirements for deployment and enough time in maintenance and asks the command to respond by January.

Other key takeaways from the document are the Navy’s warfighting goals, the push for more advanced training, deployment of Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines and the focus on electronic warfare and directed energy to defend ships and reduce cost.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) sent letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Federal Trade Commission and five health care companies requesting information on measures they implement to address bias in algorithms.

The letters were issued after a study in the journal Science found racial bias in an algorithm, Wyden’s office said in a news release published Tuesday.

The lawmakers posed questions to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons and CMS Administrator Seema Verma about the actions they have taken to address the impact of algorithmic biases on health disparities, engagement with other federal agencies and external stakeholders regarding algorithmic biases and enforcement tools used to address such bias.

Booker and Wyden also sent letters to executives of Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group asking details about the algorithms their firms use to enhance patient care as well as implemented measures to prevent bias.

U.S. officials said the Trump administration considers deploying 14,000 more troops, additional ships and other military hardware to the Middle East to counter the threat posed by Iran, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The U.S. military buildup in the Middle East started in May driven by a series of attacks in the region linked to Iran and officials said President Trump is expected to decide on the new deployments as early as December.

The report said the additional troops could double the number of service personnel sent to the region since May and could serve as a deterrent against Iran’s possible retaliation for economic sanctions imposed by the administration.

John Rood, senior policy official at the Department of Defense, said although no decision has been made on the expanded deployment, the situation is expected to stay fluid. “Deterrence is dynamic, our response is going to be dynamic,” he added.

U.S. Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Stephen Wilson said at a recent industry conference that linking weapon system simulators “will differentiate us against a peer threat,” Defense News reported Tuesday.

At the Interservice/Industry, Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fl., Wilson spoke about the importance of the ability to connect platforms for the combat simulation purposes.

He also discussed the Air Force’s Simulator Common Architecture Requirements and Standards, or SCARS, program that aims to develop an open architecture for its simulators with improved security and upgrade capabilities.

Wilson also believes that SCARS can have non-combat applications.

“If somebody is off building a system outside of our portfolio, if it’s built to a common standard, I think that would effectively make all the systems, whether they’re in our portfolio or not, more interoperable,” he said.

Last year, the Air Force published a request for proposals for SCARS for a potential 10-year, $900M contract. The service branch is scheduled to award the contract next year.

The U.S. Agency for International Development plans to implement cybersecurity evaluation metrics for contractors as part of its first digital strategy scheduled for release in early 2020, Fifth Domain reported Tuesday.

Michelle Parker, senior policy advisor for the Center for Digital Development at USAID, said the agency intends to evaluate its contractors’ data and privacy policies as well as the operations of their respective chief data, information and information security officers. USAID will also require contractors to identify technologies they intend to use for projects and provide details on potential vulnerabilities and actions for risk mitigation, she noted.

In addition, USAID plans to assess data privacy and cybersecurity standards that comply with U.S. as well as European laws. According to Parker, the agency is meeting regularly with entities like the departments of Homeland Security and State for further recommendations and potential frameworks.

“Moving forward this is going to be a significant change in how we do business,” she said. “For everything digital, we now need to think about how do we secure information and how do we protect the privacy of our beneficiaries.”

Christopher Scolese, director of the National Reconnaissance Office, has said the agency is prioritizing satellite and ground system modernization as well as efforts to accelerate on-board data processing, Space News reported Tuesday.

Scolese told reporters ahead of an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event that the NRO also seeks to leverage small satellites and launch vehicles, in addition to new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing to update ground systems.

“Clearly we’re going to need a diverse architecture,” he said. “We’re very much looking at proliferated architectures to increase revisit time, to reduce latency and provide resiliency and fast refresh when you need it.” 

According to Scolese, China is “putting spacecraft up very quickly” and the U.S. needs to retain its status as a world leader despite current challenges.

Scolese officially took charge of the NRO in August following his joint confirmation hearing with Gen. John Raymond, commander of the U.S. Space Command, in June.