Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are slated to test their precision strike missile offerings in support of the U.S. Army’s Long Range Precision Fires initiative, DefenseNews reported Monday.

Efforts under the tests are intended to help the Army adjust the maximum range baseline for the service branch’s planned precision strike missile. According to the report, the companies will conduct two more tests respectively prior to the conclusion of their missile’s technology maturation and risk reduction phases.

Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, head of LRPF program at the Army, said the range requirement may reach 342 miles from a current baseline of 310 miles based on the results provided by the firms.

“We want to make sure the performance matches their models or gives them an opportunity to update their models, and then give them a chance to come back with an updated estimate of what they think they can really do,” said Rafferty

The LRPF program seeks to build a missile system that will replace the service’s Army Tactical Missile System. The Army will select and deploy a precision strike missile in 2023.

The U.S. Army is working to achieve its goal of establishing global multidomain operations by 2035 as part of its modernization strategy unveiled in 2016, Defense News reported Monday. The strategy’s six priorities encompass future vertical lift, long-range precision fires, next-generation combat vehicles, air and missile defense, lethality and next-generation network capabilities.

In an interview with Breaking Defense, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said the service is establishing organizations focused on multidomain combat, including security force assistance brigades.

“I can envision us standing up organizations that are focused around providing long-range precision effects that can be used below the level of armed conflict in the areas of intelligence, information, cyber, electronic warfare and space,” he added.

The Army plans to begin initial fielding of technologies under its cross-functional teams from fiscal 2020 to 2022, according to a draft document of the strategy. Training, integration and implementation is expected to take place from fiscal 2023 to 2025.

Army officials said equipping the Extended Range Cannon Artillery system with an autoloader presents a challenge to the service branch, National Defense reported Monday. ERCA supports the Army’s long-range precision fires modernization priority and seeks to expand the Paladin self-propelled howitzers’ range to 70 kilometers.

“Of course when you introduce an autoloader into a preexisting chassis that we have with the [Paladin Integrated Management platform], there are all sorts of technological risks involved with that,” Col. Timothy Fuller, program manager for armored fighting vehicles, said Monday during a panel discussion at the Association of the United States Army’s conference in Washington, D.C. “It also adds an entire new cab to the vehicle,” Fuller added.

Rafferty said the service plans to use feedback from warfighters to support the development of the cannon. Rich Granitzki, long-range precision fires science and technology adviser for Combat Capabilities Development Command, said the Army is using prototypes “to drive down some of the risks” and facilitate the transition to the autoloader.

The Office of Personnel Management is using an in-house app to track federal employee performance and is working to grow the digital tool’s adoption next year, Nextgov reported Friday.

The agency began digitizing its employee performance assessments in 2012, and has now implemented its USA Performance app across 35 federal government agencies, covering about 35,000 employees. M.C. Price, associate chief information officer for infrastructure at OPM, said the task to digitize the process was complex.

“It was very complex to digitize it and to meet all the agency requirements on the different forms,” he said.

Associated officials told NextGov the agency expects to add 41K employees to the system in 2020.

The U.S. Air Force has added new features to a platform that airmen use to receive and share mission readiness data. The Visible, Accessible, Understandable, Linked and Trusted Data or VAULT platform now allows users to control and experiment with data and generate analytics-driven results, USAF said Friday.

The update also includes tools for metadata and storage management, data cleansing and data ingestion. All these new tools are intended to improve data exploitation and better inform decision making.

“With these capabilities now realized on the VAULT Platform we can fully harness the power of data to make timely decisions and achieve mission success,” said Col. Charles Destefani, acting deputy chief data officer and lead data architect at the Air Force Chief Data Office.

The updated VAULT also allows airmen to use custom applications to manipulate information.