Brig. Gen. Roy Agustin, director of logistics, engineering and force protection for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa, told  Defense News in an interview published Monday that USAFE has invested in deployable air base systems for use in operations across its 104-nation theater.

He said an effort to procure DABS — a package of military shelters, vehicles and construction equipment — is still in the early stage and received initial funds in the current fiscal year.

“I see it more as the ability to be more agile in our basing,” he told the publication.

Agustin added the systems can support strategic positioning in a given geographic location to accelerate movement of forces who conduct humanitarian assistance efforts or address kinetic threats, as well as support mobility of troops who work with allies.

He noted that the strategy of placing DABS at Poland’s 31st Air Base, which is the location of the first DABS proof-of-concept exercise held from July 16 to Aug. 14, helped U.S. air forces deliver war reserve materiel they had from their site in the West – Luxembourg, Germany or the U.K. – to their base in Poland.

The Department of Homeland Security has allocated over $1.6B in fiscal 2018 funds to preparedness grant programs that seek to help state, local, territorial and tribal agencies respond to disasters and other emergencies.

These allotments comprise more than $1.3B in non-competitive grant funding earmarked by the DHS in June and $345M in competitive grant funding that the department announced Friday.

“The DHS grant programs are flexible by design and purposed to help address our evolving risk environment. Response and recovery to catastrophic events strain our communities’ logistics, supply chains, communications and staffing capacities,” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said.

“That is why our preparedness grant programs build and sustain critical capabilities today, so we will be ready tomorrow,” said Nielsen, a 2018 Wash100 recipient.

To help mitigate terrorism-related activities, the DHS will allot more than $1B for the Homeland Security Grant Program, $402M to the State Homeland Security Program, $580M to the Urban Area Security Initiative and $85M to Operation Stonegarden.

The department will also provide funds for law enforcement terrorism prevention activities, including more than $350M for the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program, $10M for the Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program, $60M for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, $10M for the Intercity Passenger Rail-Amtrak Program, $100M for the Port Security Grant Program, $88M for the Transit Security Grant Program and $2M for the Intercity Bus Security Grant Program.

Defense Department Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy has said DoD is examining the science behind artificial technology and its potential application to the Pentagon’s various missions.

“Our knowledge of what AI does better than humans will ultimately lead to a robust human-machine partnership,” Deasy told audience at the DoDIIS Worldwide conference held earlier this month, according to FedScoop.

He noted that collaborating with AI systems could help warfighters obtain an “asymmetric” advantage as they work to address current and emerging threats.

Deasy also urged government, commercial and academic organizations to support the Joint AI Center.

DoD established the center last month to establish a set of AI standards, reusable technology, processes and shared data for use across the department.

The U.S. Army has opened in Austin, Texas, the headquarters of the service’s new Futures Command that seeks to accelerate the development and acquisition of ground vehicles, precision weapons, communications systems, aircraft and other technology platforms, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley attended the opening ceremony on Friday for the new command’s office located at a University of Texas-owned building.

Officials said Army Futures Command will operate with at least 500 employees and approximately $100M in annual budget to oversee annual procurement programs worth up to $50B.

The launch of the facility came days after the Senate confirmed Gen. John Murray, former deputy chief of staff for the Army’s G8 unit, as head of Futures Command.

Ryan McCarthy, undersecretary of the Army, said the new command plans to “fast track” a night-vision goggle system to facilitate the deployment of the platform to soldiers over the next two years.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has called on the National Guard Association of the United States and the Defense Department to beef up lethality and readiness measures by strengthening the country’s ties with existing allies and creating new ones, DoDNews reported Sunday.

Mattis told the National Guard Saturday at the group’s 140th Conference in New Orleans that in this era of terrorist threats replacing the power struggle among the Americans, the Chinese and the Russians, the organization should contribute to the National Security Strategy by intensifying military readiness.

“We Americans have no God-given right to victory on the battlefield. So we need you, my fine young National Guardsmen, at the top of your game,” he said.

“Lethality begins when we are physically, mentally and spiritually fit to be evaluated by the most exacting auditor on Earth – and that auditor is war,” said Mattis, a 2018 Wash100 recipient.

He expressed concern regarding how defense strategies might be affected without military readiness, citing the results of the World War II battle for Bataan and the first months of the Korean War.

He also stressed the importance of DoD modernization accountability, affordability and performance and celebrated that 87 percent of Congress approved the recently enacted 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

Mattis underlined the National Guard’s role in helping America create alliances via the State Partnership Program, which developed partnerships between Argentina and Georgia, Chile and Texas, Alaska and Mongolia, and Colorado and Jordan.

Researchers from the Netherlands recently said that the proliferation of drone technology, brought about in part by the growth of the drone industry as well as the willingness of governments to sell the technology to allies and partners, would likely put regional and international security at risk.

Foeke Postma and Wim Zwijnenburg of the Dutch non-government organization PAX stated in a July 2018 study that the rise in the use of drones by armed forces around the world could increase the risk of international conflict, citing multiple instances where military drones violated the airspace of other countries, at times resulting in actual open hostilities.

Postma and Zwijnenburg also pointed out that, since drones are piloted remotely, states would more likely be willing to use them while adversaries would be more willing to shoot them down, so “the threshold to use force is lowered on both sides of a conflict.”

The researchers called for “a vigorous assessment” to make sure drone technology is used “within existing legal frameworks” and conforms to international norms, adding that failure to do so “risks overlooking potential threats to international and regional stability and security.”