The chief information officer for the Department of Defense partnered with the Defense Information System Agency to conduct an analysis to determine which applications should continue operations for fourth estate organizations, Federal News Network reported Monday.

John Hale, chief of cloud services at DISA, said the analysis will guide federal defense agencies in their consolidation initiatives. 

“We looked at the individual applications, what they were hosted on, what environments there were, how many servers, storage and interactions with other systems, and out of that we put it through a series of software analysis tools and out of that came a set of recommendations that the DoD CIO’s office published in an internal report,” he said. 

The analysis determined the applications that should go to MilCloud 2.0, off-premise commercial cloud, traditional platforms or stay in its current location. 

The CIO from Defense and DISA also found duplicative efforts among the 28 fourth estate agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Missile Defense Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

As part of its cloud initiatives, DISA is upgrading its MilCloud 2.0 offering to allow mission partners to operate in a secret environment. The agency plans to begin using the platform in August. 

The Naval Research Laboratory devised an approach that will address potential gaps in optical materials to boost their quality.

The lab said Monday its scientists created a laser processing methodology that works to reinforce the optical properties of monolayer molybdenum disulphide and diminish the size of light emitting diodes. The process could boost the materials’ optical emission efficiency particularly in the areas traced with laser beams.

“From a general perspective, this work enables the integration of high quality, optically active, atomically thin material in a variety of applications, such as electronics, electro-catalysts, memory, and quantum computing applications,” said Sauhan Sivaram, the project’s lead author.

President Trump and Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced several efforts to advance 5G adoption and expand broadband access in the U.S.

Trump said in his speech at the White House on Friday that the country will have 92 5G deployments by the end of 2019 and his administration will eliminate regulatory hurdles to facilitate network build-out projects.

After the president’s speech, Pai unveiled the FCC’s 5G FAST Plan and discussed the strategy’s three components: free up more spectrum, promote 5G wireless infrastructure and update regulations. He said the commission will offer 3,400 megahertz of spectrum in three different bands at its third 5G spectrum auction beginning Dec. 10.

The FCC also formed the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to invest $20.4 billion in high-speed broadband networks in the next 10 years to provide up to 4 million rural households and small businesses access to such networks.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps concluded the exercise ANTX West 2019 exploring how both services could integrate new information warfare technologies into operations in the field, USNI News reported Friday.

The 10-day event at the Navy’s offshore San Clemente Island ranges and in San Diego laboratories and facilities involved nearly 60 defense contractors, tech companies, military laboratories and members of the academia. During the exercise, Navy and Marine Corps officials assessed matured technologies, including communications, sensors, countermeasures, command-and-control, strikes, non-kinetic fires, counter-intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting systems.

“We’re out there testing ideas, seeing what works, what’s possible. This is innovation,” said Rear Adm. Donald Gabrielson, commander of Carrier Strike Group 11. “This is exciting because it’s going to produce results.” 

Service officials attending ANTX West sought new command-and-control and surveillance technologies to give Navy and Marine forces new capabilities in highly-contested, high-tech environments.