U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has said DIA looks to gather intelligence and information on emerging technologies across the ground, sea and air domains, DoD News reported Tuesday.

He noted during a question-and-answer portion at the Defense One Tech Summit held Tuesday that the agency aims to form analytic data teams as part of efforts to manage big data.

“How do we take a traditional analyst and link him up with a data scientist?”

Ashley added that he predicts activities in the space domain will grow over the next decade and believes military platforms can be used to interdict satellite systems in space and on the ground.

“The re-emergence of great power competition – Russia and China – you start seeing a closing gap in all domains, and they are being contested.”

The defense component of the Senate Appropriations Committee has submitted a fiscal year 2019 funding bill that would support investments and programs on military and national security.

The committee’s chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., announced Tuesday that the FY 2019 Defense Department funding bill provides for $675 billion, $20.4 billion more than the budget enacted for FY 2018.

Of the proposed FY 2019 DoD budget, $607.1 billion is allotted for base funding, while $67.9 billion is for overseas contingency operations.

“During our review of the president’s budget, we conducted seven public hearings and two classified hearings to better understand the request and the needs of the armed services and intelligence community for the fiscal year beginning October 1st,” Shelby said.

“The subcommittee has worked in a bipartisan manner to produce a bill within an allocation that is consistent with the two-year budget deal passed earlier this year,” he added.

The defense subcommittee also identified resources for assets not included in the initial budget request, encompassing basic research, hypersonics, directed energy, artificial intelligence, microelectronics, missile defense, cybersecurity and test and evaluation infrastructure.

Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told C4ISRNET in an interview published Tuesday that interoperability between elements of the ballistic missile defense system seeks to help synchronize and integrate platforms to “provide an optimized, layered missile defense.”

“Tactical cross-element communication is critical for warfighter coordination to maximize collaborative defense of assets, conserve interceptors and provide common situational awareness for combatant commanders,” Greaves added.

He said the FTX-35 test completed in April at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico was carried out in compliance with the fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act.

Greaves, a 2018 Wash100 recipient, noted that the test helped demonstrate interoperability through data exchange and engagement coordination between Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems with the aid of tactical data links.

President Donald Trump intends to nominate Alan Shaffer, formerly director of science and technology at the NATO Collaboration Support Office, to be deputy undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment at the Defense Department.

He managed DoD’s approximately $25 billion research and engineering budget in his previous role as principal deputy and assistant defense secretary for that area, the White House said Tuesday.

In that capacity, he also managed science and technology, developmental test and evaluation and systems engineering programs.

Shaffer served in the U.S. Air Force for 27 years before he entered the Senior Executive Service in 2000.