The Defense Department held its second AI Industry Day in partnership with the Army Research Lab to discuss the agency’s progress in artificial intelligence and to identify additional partnership opportunities. The DoD said Thursday the event in Silver Spring, Md., gathered more than 600 attendees from 380 industries, academia and government organizations. 

Dana Deasy, chief information officer at the Pentagon, provided updates on the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. JIAC was established in early 2018 and now consists of nearly 25 representatives from across the DoD. The agency plans to establish the center’s main office in the national capital region and satellite locations across the U.S. to connect innovation districts. 

“Our goal is for the JAIC to have and deliver the capabilities to solve very large, unique problem sets that touch multiple services,” Deasy said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. John Shanahan, director of defense intelligence for warfighter support discussed Project Maven. He said DoD’s Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team already provided initial operational functions and established partnerships with industry and academia to support the AI program. Project Maven aims to accelerate the agency’s integration of big data, AI and machine learning into military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance programs.

The U.S. Air Force has developed a wearable mask designed to protect helicopter aircrew from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear hazards.

The service branch said Thursday its Joint Service Aircrew Mask – Rotary Wing works to protect a user’s ocular, percutaneous and respiratory systems and operates with night vision equipment. The mask features a removable faceplate and increased battery life over the previous Aircrew Eye and Respiratory Protection system. Users of the mask would also gain a field of view made for combat operations in CBRN environments. The U.S. Navy will use the mask to replace the existing CBRN protection system assigned to HH-60G Pave Hawk and UH-1N Huey aircraft.

“This joint service program required us to team with our counterparts in the Army, the Navy and the Marines to derive and balance system requirements that met all services’ mission profiles,” said Mohamed Mughal, chief engineer of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s CBRN Defense Systems Branch.

The U.S. Navy plans to inaugurate a new virtual training facility that would be open to industry, the government and the academe, National Defense Magazine reported Friday. The facility, consisting of 14 workstations, would begin operations in January 2019 at the Orlando-based Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division.

Kent Gritton, director of the joint training integration and evaluation center, said Thursday at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference that the Navy intends to widen the facility’s accessibility in April. He added that the facility will also contain space for the U.S. Army to develop a new synthetic combat training environment.

The Trump administration will meet with top tech executives on Dec. 6 at the White House to discuss innovation and job opportunities, Reuters reported Friday.

Microsoft and Oracle already confirmed participation in the meeting. The White House also expects chief executives from Alphabet Inc., Blackstone Group and Qualcomm Inc. An administration official said talks will mainly focus on future jobs in the technology industry. White House adviser Larry Kudlow announced in October the government’s interest in holding a meeting with industry leaders. 

“We’re going to have a little conference —  the president will preside over it — we will have big internet companies, big social media companies, search companies,” he said. 

President Trump initially met with the heads of 18 U.S.-based technology companies, including Apple Inc, Amazon.com and Microsoft, in 2017. The meeting sought guidance from industry leaders to make the government’s computing systems more efficient.

Defense Secretary James Mattis said that the Defense Department is doing all it can to carry out President Trump’s instruction to establish a Space Force, Defense One reported Wednesday.

Speaking before the media at the Pentagon on Nov. 21, Mattis said defense officials are “trying to produce what the president wants, which is a Space Force capability.” However, the president had initially called for the formation a Space Force to be a new, independent military service. An Oct. 26 memo from the White House revealed the Trump Administration is considering alternative organizational arrangements.

In the memo, National Space Council Executive Secretary Scott Pace and Earl Matthews of the National Security Council asked the Pentagon if the Space Force would be better suited as “a new independent military department” or as “a separate service within the Department of the Air Force.”

Officials speaking on condition of anonymity told Defense One the White House may be exploring alternative Space Force options because of concerns that Congress will reject proposals to put up a new service branch.