Two military heads have said adopting a modernized logistics process will help speed up the delivery of aviation parts to aircraft maintainers and provide cost savings, USNI News reported Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, deputy commandant for aviation at the U.S. Marine Corps, noted during the U.S. Naval Institute and Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Maritime Security Dialogue that additive manufacturing will accelerate the spare part logistics system.

He believes 3D printing will help contractors develop small aircraft components onsite, making more replacements available when they are needed instead of going through various lengths to produce them.

However, Rudder explained that additive manufacturing is still limited to non-air-worthy components, which can hinder vendors from supplying parts that still need to be assessed for flight suitability.

Meanwhile, Vice Adm. DeWolfe Miller, commander of the Naval Air Forces, said understanding and strengthening the aviation parts supply chain is critical in maintaining aircraft and reducing expenses.

The U.S. Navy has started following a new logistics sustainment system that aims to modify the acquisition and development process for replacement parts, as well as focus on assigning parts that will return to the military after they arrive.

Richard Spencer, secretary of the U.S. Navy and a 2018 Wash100 recipient, has said there is a need for the service to address its recruitment and retention issues to modernize its culture, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Spencer believes there is a need to encourage more people to join the military, as the Navy and the rest of the U.S. armed forces are recruiting talent from the same group of potential service members.

“We have to make a compelling argument for people to come into the service and serve their country. We believe we have those programs laid out for both the Navy and the Marine Corps,” he explained.

On the other hand, the Navy official said the service is working on its readiness issues, with 76 out of 110 recommendations from a strategic readiness review already implemented. 

The Navy is also leveraging data analytics processes to monitor the performance of new programs and make necessary modifications.

Army Secretary Mark Esper has said the service has evaluated every activity and program within the “equipping peg” and identified $25B in funds that could be shifted toward its top six priorities for modernization, Defense News reported Monday.

The service’s modernization priorities are the next-generation combat vehicle; long-range precision fires; network; soldier lethality; future vertical lift; and air and missile defense.

“That dollar figure is a low-end number over the Future Years Defense Program,” he said Monday at a press briefing at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

“We had to make those trade-offs, and it resulted in, again, reductions and cancellations and consolidations, so that is our intent as we continue to go through the other pegs,” he noted.
 

U.S. Army Undersecretary Ryan McCarthy told Defense News in an interview published Monday about the service’s efforts to transition the Army Capabilities Integration Center and Research Development Engineering Command to Army Futures Command.

He said the branch expects to complete the move of the center under Futures Command by the end of fall 2018 and the R&D command by next spring.

McCarthy noted that the acquisition military deputy will work with Gen. John Murray, head of Army Futures Command, as an adviser to facilitate collaboration.

“We really wanted to do this so we could draw those two communities as close together as possible to continue to work and improve upon a collaboration between the teams,” he added.

McCarthy also discussed how the service will transition legacy systems into modernized platforms over the next decade and his involvement in the Army’s Command Accountability and Execution Review initiative.

Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the recently passed FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 would increase the government’s capacity to protect U.S. citizens from drone-induced threats.

She highlighted that existing regulations constrained the Department of Homeland Security’s jurisdiction to address drone threats prior to the bill’s passing, the DHS said Thursday.

“The department’s lack of authorities also prevented us from testing truly needed drone-defense technologies,” Nielsen said.

“Today Congress took a major step forward to address these vulnerabilities,” she added.

Nielsen highlighted the bill’s role to help the government detect, track and mitigate armed and threatening unmanned aerial vehicles in the country’s airspace.

To conclude her statement, the secretary thanked members of Congress who were instrumental to the bill’s passing.

The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 renews the Federal Aviation Administration‘s authority as a federal agency and includes provisions that allow the government to attack drones threatening to national assets.

Patrick Shanahan, deputy secretary of defense, recently said that the U.S. military will be pursuing hypersonic weapons as a joint effort between service branches, adding that development initiatives would be in line with future funding requests, CNBC reported Wednesday.

“Part of what we are doing is figuring out how many do we need, how do we make this more modular, and how do we stand up the industrial base that goes along with this,” Shanahan said while making assurances that the U.S. will operate hypersonic weapons “sooner and more often than people have ever expected.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new hypersonic missile in March, while China announced in August that it had successfully tested a hypersonic aircraft.

Hypersonics, which can travel at a speed of roughly one mile per second, are weapons that the U.S. cannot defend against at present.

President Trump has released a new strategy meant to protect the U.S. from evolving terrorist threats.

The White House said Thursday the National Strategy for Counterterrorism centers on identifying terrorism sources, separating terrorists from their support system, modernizing American counterterrorism tools and preventing extremist radicalization and recruitment, among other things.

The new approach also stresses on building and strengthening secure borders and points of entry, protecting critical infrastructure and ensuring readiness.

The Trump administration additionally aims to boost America’s local and international partnerships such as with NATO allies to increase support for counterterrorism projects.

“The National Strategy for Counterterrorism recognizes the full range of terrorist threats that the United States confronts within and beyond our borders, and emphasizes the use of all elements of national power to combat terrorism and terrorist ideologies,” said Trump in the foreword of the counterterrorism document.