Ryan McCarthy, acting U.S. Army secretary, has approved the formation of an installation readiness board of directors that will assess preparedness and funding management efforts at the military branch’s facilities.

The Army said Wednesday its vice chief of staff or assistants secretaries for installations, energy and environment and manpower and reserve affairs will chair the board while four-star generals will serve as voting members.

The board will consider input from Army’s Training and Doctrine Command as well as data from collaborative efforts with academic and commercial organizations in the decision-making process.

Lt. Gen. Gwen Bingham, assistant chief of staff for installation management, said she believes the service branch should adopt big data analytics, smart-city research and artificial intelligence tools to increase the security and resiliency of installations.

Bingham added the Army has awarded energy savings and performance and utility energy services contracts worth up to $2.6 billion combined to industry partners.

U.S. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has emphasized during her keynote speech at a forum hosted by Executive Mosaic‘s Potomac Officers Club that the U.S. needs to establish readiness for potential conflict in the space domain.

The service branch said Wednesday Wilson called for increased resources and flexibility in procurement in order to meet space requirements for joint operations and counter the technology development efforts of adversaries.

She noted that the creation of the Space Warfighting Construct and a new deputy chief of staff for space position, as well as the proposed 20-percent budget increase to fund space programs, will work to help elevate and integrate the space mission.

“Integration of domains at high speed is absolutely vital to the success in future combat operations,” Wilson told the audience at POC’s Space: Innovations, Programs and Policies Summit.

“That means air, space, ground, sea, undersea and cyber — the nation that rapidly integrates all of those domains will inflict surprise on their enemy and prevail.”

The POC space forum was held Wednesday in Washington, D.C., and featured Wilson with other officials such as NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot; Maj. Gen. David Thompson, vice commander of the Air Force Space Command; and George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Charles Hooper, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, wants DSCA to establish a security cooperation university as part of efforts to accelerate the foreign military sales process, Defense News reported Wednesday.

Hooper said at an Association of the U.S. Army event held Oct. 10 he envisions that the new university would “not only provide courses for people going to the field, but a genuine font of learning and knowledge, specifically focused on security cooperation.”

He also pointed to the Defense Acquisition University as a possible model for the proposed new institution.

Hooper, who assumed the DSCA leadership role in August, seeks to increase workforce education for security cooperation professionals and coordination between the agency and the military branches.

Defense Department Secretary Jim Mattis has selected McKinsey & Co. Partner Eric Chewning as a Senior Executive Service appointee and a deputy assistant secretary at DoD.

The department said Tuesday Chewning will specifically oversee manufacturing and industrial base policy as a deputy assistant secretary of defense.

Chewning most recently worked with McKinsey as a partner advising clients in the aerospace and defense industry and is a U.S. Army veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He worked as a principal at Booz & Company, now known as Strategy& under PwC, before joining McKinsey in 2014.

He earned a master of business administration degree at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business as well as an international relations master’s degree from the University of Chicago.