President Donald Trump has nominated James Anderson, a former intelligence officer at the U.S. Marine Corps, to be assistant defense secretary for strategy, plans and capabilities.

Anderson serves as vice president of academic affairs at Marine Corps University and oversees MCU’s academic and professional military education programs in that capacity, the White House said Tuesday.

He previously served as director of Middle East policy at the Pentagon’s Office of the Secretary of Defense.

He is a recipient of the Department of the Army Superior Civilian Service Award and the OSD Medal for Exceptional Public Service.

Anderson holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Amherst College, as well as a master’s degree in law and diplomacy and a Ph.D in international relations from the Tufts University.

The Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity conducted an extensive adversarial cyber test of the Light Armored Vehicle last month at Camp Pendleton in California.

The Marine Corps Systems Command’s LTV program manager required the technical assessment, the Department of the Navy said Monday.

Capt. Brian Greunke, network test engineer at MCTSSA, said the test aimed to identify potential cyber vulnerabilities in the vehicle and examine the potential impact of a vulnerability on missions.

“As vehicle platforms change vehicle control from a purely mechanical form to a digital form, the surface area for attacks increases significantly,” Greunke added.

Chim Yee, MCTSSA cyber engineer, said that adversarial cyber tests offer information that can support risk management and mitigation efforts.

The U.S. Army is seeking to develop a new virtual training environment with higher fidelity than older simulation systems, Defense News reported Monday.

The Synthetic Training Environment effort aims to replace the Army’s stove-piped trainers made in the 80s and 90s with a virtual multi-domain environment that provides enhanced realism.

Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais, who leads the effort, told Defense News that the STE would be finished much earlier than 2030 due to technological advancements in the gaming industry.

The upcoming Army Futures Command will contribute support for the STE’s development.

The Air Force Research Laboratory has released a new video that shows the service’s proposed concepts for unmanned aircraft and other weapon systems, Military.com reported Monday.

Some of the programs cited in the video “Air Force 2030 – Call to Action” include the Loyal Wingman, Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project, Gremlins, next-generation flight suits and laser weapons.

Loyal Wingman is an unmanned aircraft designed to be deployed with F-35 fighter jets to collect intelligence data and navigate through enemy territory, while the Gremlins are microdrones that are built to swarm hostile defenses.

The military branch expects the flight demonstrations for the Gremlins and the Loyal Wingman project to occur in 2019 and 2022, respectively.

AFRL partnered with Raytheon and Boeing in 2012 to test the CHAMP missile system that homes in on electrical systems and power grids through high-powered microwave emissions.

The Air Force has requested $504 million in fiscal 2019 funds to support research, development, test and evaluation of next-gen air dominance programs and plans to invest approximately $11 billion in the next five years on such initiatives, the report added.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPZpp_Y6Er8

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) have called on President Donald Trump to support the sale of the Lockheed Martin-built F-35B fighter aircraft to Taiwan to help the East Asian state build up its air defense capabilities.

The lawmakers wrote a letter to Trump Monday and asked his administration to supply additional F-16V fighter jets “if determined that release of the F-35B to Taiwan is premature,” the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council said in a news release Monday.

“These fighters will have a positive impact on Taiwan’s self-defense and would act as a necessary deterrent to China’s aggressive military posture across the Asia-Pacific region,” they added.

Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, said the council believes the sale of additional fighter jets to Taiwan supports the White House’s policy to advance “capacity-building” among Asian allies, offers U.S. companies an opportunity to export defense systems and serves a response to China’s force modernization initiatives.