The National Space Defense Center, a partnership between the Intelligence Community and Defense Department, was declared fully operational on Jan. 8 to support interagency efforts to secure U.S. space assets.

NSDC aims to increase the government’s capacity to protect and defend space-based systems that support joint warfighters, the U.S. Air Force said Friday.

The center will work to develop platforms and services that can help the U.S. attribute, characterize, detect and warn against potential threats to space systems as well as supports information exchange for space defense missions of the DoD, National Reconnaissance Office and other partner agencies.

“We have officially transitioned the NSDC from an experiment to a functioning 24/7/365 operations center focused on protecting and defending the space domain,” said Gen. Jay Raymond, commander of the Air Force Space Command.

“The new 24/7 operations at the NSDC will help ensure the national security space enterprise outpaces any emerging and advanced space threats by facilitating information sharing across the space community,” noted Col. Dan Wright, deputy director of the NSDC.

The Government Accountability Office has included the governmentwide security clearance process for federal employees in its “high risk list” of areas that require changes in order to address fraud and mismanagement as well as reduce waste.

“A high-quality and timely personnel security clearance process is essential to minimize the risks of unauthorized disclosures of classified information and to help ensure that information about individuals with criminal histories or other questionable behavior is identified and assessed,” Gene Dodaro, U.S. comptroller general and GAO head, said in a statement published Thursday.

Dodaro added the high risk list seeks to call on policymakers and government leaders to introduce new measures in order to reduce the backlog and other issues related to the security clearance process.

GAO’s addition of the security clearance process to the high risk list came after the agency released two reports in November and December of 2017 that identified several challenges such as background investigations backlog; delays in clearance processing; and the Defense Department’s concerns over the development of an information technology platform for the process.

The federal government has a backlog of at least 700,000 background investigation cases as of September 2017.

Dodaro will issue a letter to the director of national intelligence, defense undersecretary for intelligence and other principals of the Security, Suitability, and Credentialing Performance Accountability Council to notify them about GAO’s decision.

The U.S. Army and Air Force have teamed up to develop a battle strategy for both service branches to address battlefield challenges across multiple domains, DoD News reported Thursday.

Gen. James Holmes, commander of the Air Combat Command, and Gen. David Perkins, commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, are working together to create the multidomain concept.

Holmes noted the concept will rely on flexibility to understand various elements such as adversary behavior and ability to adapt in changing threat environments.

He added the Training and Doctrine Command will co-host a series of tabletop exercises alongside the Air Combat Command over the next year to evaluate the services’ capacity for collaboration.

“We have developed 13 initiatives … that the Air Force and Army can work together on, and … our goal is to try to find a way that the joint force, working together, can hold the initiative,” Holmes added.