FBI Director Christopher Wray has warned the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that vulnerable targets in the U.S. could be attacked with the use of drones, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Wray told legislators during a Senate committee hearing on Oct. 10 that such an attack is possible because drones can be purchased and operated easily.

Wray reminded the lawmakers how his agency had stopped a terror plot in which the attacker, Rezwan Ferdaus, sought to fly explosives into the Pentagon and the Capitol using jet-powered drones that he was able to obtain.

Ferdaus is currently serving a 17-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to charges of terrorism.

The FBI director’s remarks follow the recent signing into law of the 2018 Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, which contains provisions allowing federal agencies to take action against drones that pose a credible threat against people or facilities.

The law, for example, permits authorities to “[use] reasonable force, if necessary, to disable, damage, or destroy the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft.”

The Defense Department has released the MH Genesis electronic health records system at a second set of locations, Federal Times reported Saturday.

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MH Genesis was deployed at four new sites: Naval Health Clinic Lemoore, Presidio of Monterey and Travis Air Force Base, all located in California, plus Idaho’s Mountain Home AFB.

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Stacy Cummings, chief of the program executive office at Defense Healthcare Management Systems, said issues that came up during the initial deployment of the records system include lack of user preference and design errors.

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The EHR system is set to be installed at every military medical center during the next five years. The initial sites, also West Coast military facilities, will resolve identified problems, the report said.

Maj. Gen. Patrick Higby, a 29-year U.S. Air Force official, has been named director of information technology acquisition process development at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition.

The Defense Department said Friday Higby will leave his roles as director of cybersecurity strategy and policy at the Office of Information Dominance and chief information officer at the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force.

As cyberspace operations and support career field functional manager, he oversaw 43,000 officers, enlisted and civilian personnel, as well as the costs and risks of cyberspace initiatives within the Air Force.

He also previously held other roles in the service in the engineering, intelligence, space, communications and cyber career fields, at base, major command and joint agency levels.

Higby entered the Air Force in 1989 as a squadron section executive officer at Fort George G. Meade, after graduating from the Reserve Officer Training Corps.

Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has said the U.S. Army has begun to examine each of its programs to prioritize spending and advance modernization, National Defense reported Wednesday.

“As pressing as the threat is, we will not be handed a blank check. Fiscal discipline and performance will determine whether we will be able to execute our strategy,” he said Wednesday during his speech at the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference.

He said the Army has identified and set its top six priorities for modernization in comparison to the U.S. Air Force.

“The Air Force is not that far along in the process,” Shanahan added.

He commended the service for establishing Army Futures Command this year and cited the need to deal with space and cyber as the new warfighting domains.
 

U.S. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein have said the service is working on restoring and boosting the readiness of airmen using increased appropriations from Congress.

The Air Force said Wednesday it expects 80 percent of its core fighting units to produce well-trained and equipped airmen by late 2020.

The service aims to: prevent any shortages of active duty maintainers and national aircrew by the end of 2018; address issues in the quality of service and life of Air Force personnel; increase financial incentives; and provide freedom over assignments and career choices.

In its readiness priority list, the Air Force also included purchasing modern training ranges and systems, such as simulators and threat emulators, and sustaining weapons.

Goldfein noted that the service is seeking new ways of maintaining legacy planes operated by young airmen.

Maj. Audricia Harris, a spokesperson for the Defense Department, has said that DoD takes national security threats seriously and works to update its cyber defense approaches, CNN reported Tuesday.

“We are continuously strengthening our defensive posture through network hardening, improved cybersecurity and working with our international allies and our defense industrial base and defense critical infrastructure partners to secure critical information,” Harris was quoted as saying by CNN.

She made the remarks after the Government Accountability Office released a report describing DoD’s challenges to secure weapon systems against sophisticated threats and the factors that could affect the department’s efforts to protect those systems.

GAO did not issue any recommendations and noted it will continue to examine the state of military weapons security.

The Treasury Department has released interim regulations for a pilot program to assess foreign acquisitions of critical U.S. technologies and intellectual property in compliance with the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018.

“These temporary regulations address specific risks to U.S. critical technology while informing the development of final regulations that will fully implement FIRRMA,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement published Wednesday.

The pilot program will begin on Nov. 10 and enforce authorities that broaden the scope of deals subject to the review of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. 

Those reviews will “include certain non-controlling investments in U.S. businesses involved in critical technologies related to specific industries.”

The department also issued temporary rules that introduce limited changes to CFIUS’ current regulations in an effort to implement the law’s provisions that took effect upon FIRRMA’s enactment. The regulations are set to take effect Thursday, Oct. 11.

The Treasury said it expects the law to be fully implemented by February 2020.