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.”

The Senate on Thursday voted 85-7 to approve a package of bills that would appropriate $854B in funds for fiscal 2019, Reuters reported Thursday.

Senate leaders on both sides of the aisle agreed to combine the appropriations bills for the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education in order to facilitate the passage of the package in the upper chamber as they work to avoid a government shutdown by the end of September.

Military Times reported the minibus measure would allocate $675B in fiscal 2019 funds for DoD, including approximately $68B for overseas contingency operations.

The defense appropriations bill would earmark $34.5B for the defense health program; $237B for readiness efforts; $24B for the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding programs; $42B for 12 F-35 fighter jets; and $930 million for hypersonic programs.

The report said the House is expected to tackle its appropriations measure once it resumes legislative session on Sept. 4.

The FBI has launched two new programs that adopt artificial intelligence systems to track and counter insider threats, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

The agency’s Javelin initiative focuses on monitoring security violations, internal misconduct and internal espionage, while the Insider Threat Analysis Platform analyzes large volumes of data to identify potential threats.

“For us, AI is a little bit tricky, in the sense that we have to be able to fully explain our methodology,” said John Adams, executive assistant director of FBI’s information technology branch. He added that the agency is building “some machine-learning capability” into the insider threat system to identify suspicious activity.

The FBI is also employing lessons learned from its cyber investigations to boost its insider threat program.

Meanwhile, the organization is looking into expanding its IT workforce after securing funds to fill data analytics positions across its 56 field offices.

Adams noted that the FBI is working around challenges such as salary expectations to recruit more data scientists as the agency seeks to migrate its data to the cloud and streamline its data sharing operations.

He added that the agency is focusing on protecting its employees’ personally identifiable information as it leverages cloud services over the next few years.