The commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command has said that the service is looking to major urban centers around the country to increase its recruitment figures, National Defense reported Tuesday.

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Speaking at a Jan. 7 forum that the Association of the United States Army hosted, Gen. Stephen Townsend said that the Army is targeting cities like Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles with the aim of attracting 18 to 24-year-old recruits.

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Townsend also said that the service is improving its presence on social media, noting that “Americans are tech and social media savvy and our Army has not been”.

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The U.S. Army decided to embark on the effort after it failed to reach its recruitment objective in 2018.

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Last year, 70K volunteers signed up for the service, which, according to Townsend, is “more soldiers than we’ve enlisted in well over a decade”.

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The Army’s goal for the year, however, was 76.5K.

The Kessel Run Experimentation Laboratory seeks civilian personnel to help the U.S. Air Force address software matters that affect various weapon and information systems. Kessel Run intends to hire 50 new employees during an event taking place on Jan. 23 to 24 as part of an expansion effort in Boston, Mass., Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said Friday.

The laboratory has opened 18 different types of jobs including program management, software engineering, data engineering and product design. Adam Furtado, lab director at Kessel Run, said that they will work to further refine the F-35 aircraft’s air operations center software.

Individuals interested to apply may register here.

The Department of Energy will award 189 research and development grants worth a total of $33M in support of the Office of Science’s efforts to study the feasibility of new technology, DOE said Monday.

The department will select 149 small businesses in 32 states to participate in R&D programs for the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Biological and Environmental Research and Office of Nuclear Physics. Grants under the program’s first phase will run for six to 12 months and have a median amount of $150K.

The firms who were successful may apply in fiscal year 2020 for phase two grants which will focus on the development of prototypes or processes that build on the companies’ phase one findings. The phase two grants have a $1.1M median amount and will run for up to two years.

DOE will provide funding for the grants through its Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.

Sens. Tina Smith, D-Minn., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Mark Warner, D-Va., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., plan to introduce a bill providing for the back pay of contractor employees who have not received salaries due to the government shutdown. The shutdown has reduced the work hours and pay of contractor workers such as janitors, food staff and security personnel in the government, Smith’s office said Friday.

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“This is about fairness—American workers shouldn’t be forced to go without a paycheck simply because of President Trump’s government shutdown,” said Smith.

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Warner noted that Virginia-based families and other Americans are experiencing the shutdown’s effects, and now rely on congress to address the issue.

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“They have nothing to do with this Trump Shutdown, and we must ensure they are held harmless from this political dysfunction,” said Van Hollen.

The U.S. Navy has decided to designate information about the status of the service’s first unmanned warship as “classified” following initial tests of its first prototype, National Defense reported Monday.

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In November, ONR tested the prototype Sea Hunter ship outside Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. ONR tested the ship’s endurance and range capabilities to establish “operator trust in safe reliable operations,” according to Lt. Cmdr. Tim Gorman, a spokesperson for U.S. Pacific Fleet. Following the demonstration, the unmanned anti-submarine warfare ship’s status was marked as classified, said ONR spokesman Bob Freeman.

The Navy received authority of the Sea Hunter in January of last year after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency transferred the prototype ship to the service branch’s Office of Naval Research to continue development.

DARPA built the ship under its Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel program, which was renamed as Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle under ONR.

President Trump has signed two bipartisan bills into law establishing a bug bounty pilot program at the Department of Homeland Security and will require the agency to disclose all cyber vulnerabilities. The two bills introduced by Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, aim to strengthen cybersecurity at DHS, Hassan’s office said Friday. 

One legislation will leverage ethical hackers to find vulnerabilities in networks and information technology infrastructure at DHS. The Hack DHS Act will establish a bug bounty program that will use the similar approach of the Department of Defense and major tech companies. The second bill from Hassan and Portman will also require the DHS to launch a program managingn its vulnerabilities. The Public-Private Cybersecurity Cooperation Act aims to help the agency speed up the process to fix IT issues by regularly disclosing cyber vulnerabilities through the program.

“Our legislation draws upon the vast expertise of hackers and security experts in our country to identify vulnerabilities and report them to the people in positions to fix those flaws in our systems,” Portman said.

A center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has begun to distribute brochures, videos, flyers and other informative materials to increase awareness about foreign intelligence threats and help U.S. companies protect themselves from nation-state actors.

“American companies are squarely in the cross-hairs of well-financed nation-state actors, who are routinely breaching private sector networks, stealing proprietary data, and compromising supply chains,” William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said in a statement published Monday.

“The attacks are persistent, aggressive, and cost our nation jobs, economic advantage, and hundreds of billions of dollars,” Evanina added.

The materials under the “Know the Risk, Raise Your Shield” campaign suggest best practices to help the private sector safeguard their data, networks and other assets as well as tackle supply chain risks, spear-phishing, social media deception, economic espionage, foreign travel risks, social engineering and mobile device safety.

NCSC started to disseminate a report on foreign intelligence initiatives, which intend to steal U.S. trade secrets, intellectual property and other proprietary data through cyber space.